The Apprenticeship Way with Marc Alan Schelske

What would you learn if you had the opportunity to go back and revisit your spiritual journey of twenty-five years ago? What if that experience happened in community, with folks who were there with you, when it happened? What would you learn? How are you different? What losses and what growth would you notice? The release of Kansas 25, a re-recording of her award-winning album, Kansas, gave singer songwriter, Jennifer Knapp, just that experience.

Jennifer Knapp is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, author, speaker, and advocate whose two-decade career has significantly impacted the music industry. With over one million albums sold from her first three releases—”Kansas” (1998), “Lay It Down” (2000), and “The Way I Am” (2001)—Knapp achieved Gold certification for “Kansas” and earned four Dove Awards along with two Grammy nominations. Originating from Kansas, she has performed globally alongside artists like Jars of Clay and participated in the Lilith Fair Tour in 1999 and 2010. Known for her poignant exploration of human experiences and spirituality, Knapp took a seven-year hiatus in 2002, returning with the album “Letting Go” in 2010, which debuted at No. 73 on the Billboard Hot 200 Chart. Beyond music, she is a pioneer in LGBTQ+ advocacy within Christian communities, being the first major artist to openly discuss her identity, which sparked national dialogue and led to appearances on platforms like Larry King Live and TEDx. In 2012, she founded Inside Out Faith, a non-profit organization advocating for LGBTQ+ rights in faith contexts. Recently, she completed a master’s degree in theological studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School, reinforcing her commitment to social justice through music and advocacy. Jennifer Knapp’s diverse talents and dedication to inclusivity continue to inspire audiences worldwide.

Marc Schelske 0:00
Hey, friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth, following the way of Jesus. This is episode 55: A Better Place Than Here.

THIS WEEK’S SPONSOR
Today’s podcast is made possible by The Writers Advance. I’m a writer. I love supporting writers. Five years ago, I created The Writer’s Advance. It’s exactly what I needed–A writing weekend that has been crafted to be precisely what writers need to push forward their current project. It’s not about networking or listening to experts speak or trying desperately to get an agent or editor to notice you. Nope. It’s about writing and reconnecting with why writing matters to you.

At the end of every writing weekend, I send all the participants an anonymous survey to get feedback so that I can improve the experience. You can read their words on the event website, but I wanted to just read a couple of their comments to you right now, because they really tell the story. This is an anonymous feedback from the retreat two years ago.

“This was an amazing weekend. The hosting was on target. The venue was peaceful and offered more than I expected. I loved the pacing. Marc is a great host and guide, and provides just the right amount of encouragement and accountability. So looking forward to the next one.”

Here’s another. This is a comment about last year’s event. “This weekend reenergized my commitment to my writing craft. It was an excellent blend of accountability, flexibility, creativity and guidance. I felt supported as a human and a writer the whole time I was there.”

One last one. This is from Tara Rolstad, a professional speaker who has attended The Writer’s Advance multiple times. Now, she won’t be there this November, because she is going to be busy launching her new book, a book that came to life at the writer’s advance! This is what she said. “I’ve come to see The Writer’s Advance as a gift I can’t afford not to give myself. I got more work done this weekend than I have in months, and to do it in a gorgeous, peaceful, comfortable location in the company and support of smart, quality people? Invaluable! I’m deeply grateful.”

Maybe that is the sort of thing you need, or maybe you love a writer and want to give them an incredible gift. Well, the next Writer’s Advance is just around the corner, November 7 – 10, and registration closes on October 5. So I would love to see you there and support you and your project. All your questions are answered on the website. What are the accommodations like? How much does it cost? What’s the food like, and can they handle special dietary needs? Yes, they absolutely can. All that at www.thewritersadvance.com for more details. I hope to see you there.

INTRODUCTION

In the late 90s, I was a fresh-faced youth pastor with a guitar, doing all the things that line of work requires. Youth group events, silly games and small group meetings at Denny’s, and leading energetic songs with hand motions, planning summer camps and passionately preaching the gospel, all with the hope that kids might have an encounter with Jesus. And I remember in 1998, an album came onto the Christian music scene that just captured my mind. It was called Kansas.

It was the debut album of a young singer songwriter named Jennifer Knapp. The tracks are fantastic, but what caught my attention most were the lyrics. Outside maybe two other musicians I had never heard Christian songs that felt this honest to me. There was a yearning I felt in the lyrics. In one song, Whole Again, she said, “If I give my life, if I lay it down / can you turn this life around, around / Can I be made clean by this offering / of my soul? Can I be made whole again?” There was this sense of being drawn by Jesus and at the same time feeling in exile. Another song, Refine Me, says “You’re my God and my father / I’ve accepted your son / but my soul feels so empty now / What have I become?” I’d felt that. I’d done all the things I was supposed to do, and yet many of the things my church promised me weren’t happening. What was going on? Knapp’s songs contained authentic declaration of real struggles. Sometimes those struggles were internal feelings of inadequacy, even sinfulness. Other times, those struggles were with the accepted preconceptions of Christian culture. In her song, In The Name, she wondered honestly, “To each his own / won’t lead you home / and probably never will.” That hit hard. The whole album carried this deep sense of standing on the edge of something bigger, and that something felt like the presence of God too me.

I followed Jennifer’s next few releases, and then in 2010 she just disappeared, at least from the perspective of my small Christian world. What happened? Well, Jennifer came out, and the Christian music industry that had celebrated her, and the Christian community that had commended her thought and bought her concert tickets just didn’t have room for a Christian musician who was openly gay. In the 14 years since, so much has happened. Jennifer found new community. She had to. She found new fans. She had to. She got on with her life. She found a partner. She wrestled with what it means to have faith and have had a real experience with Jesus, and then, at the same time to have been excluded from community by some of Jesus followers. And then a couple of years ago, the idea surfaced for her to re-record her seminal album, Kansas. The support that welled up for this project was, I think, beyond Jenn’s expectations. She did it, and that album is now available.

It’s called Kansas 25 and I’ve been listening to this album over and over since it came out, and it has been such an interesting experience for me. The lyrics of the song are the same, the arrangements are similar, but I’m listening as someone who has spent twenty-five years going deeper in my pursuit of Jesus in the way that some characterize as deconstruction. In the same way, the songs are also being sung by an artist with twenty-five years more life experience, and those years include pain and joy, exclusion, new community, letting go of old and unhelpful theology and embracing new things that are life giving. And so for me, as I was listening to this album, those songs, they just hit so differently with the weight of twenty-five years more lived experience and more theological exploration.

As I realized what was happening in me as a listener, I thought, “Man, I would love to talk with Jennifer about what happened for her as she did this.” What was it like to re-record these songs, what was it like to face who she was as a young singer, a young writer, and what did she learn about her own spiritual development? Well, I reached out and I asked her, and she said, Yes! Jen’s official bio says she’s a Grammy nominated singer songwriter, author, speaker and advocate known for her musical talents and commitment to social causes. With a rich history spanning over two decades, Knapp has left an indelible mark on the music industry. Her career includes the remarkable achievement of selling over a million albums with her first three releases, the Gold Certified Kansas (1998), Lay it Down (2000), and The Way I Am (2001). Alongside this commercial success, Knapp has been honored with four Dove Awards and garnered two Grammy nominations.

I started my conversation with Jen by asking her what it felt like when she discovered that there was this whole community who wanted to revisit the Kansas album with her.

THE INTERVIEW

Jennifer Knapp 7:35
Really, the journey back into Kansas, for me, is a story of coming back to music in 2010 and taking a big, long break away from Christian music. For sure, I knew I was never going back to that place, and I was also simultaneously coming out, and I have to be absolutely honest and say that I was completely ambivalent about, if not resistant to, in any way, engaging in faith conversations with people in public. For sure, private. It’s, you know, private’s another question. Also, in that my own discomfort of playing that older material for a variety of reasons. When I look back, you know, I was hurt by my religious experience. I was at a crossroads deciding how much of that I would engage in public or not, and also just getting new and back to music and really looking forward to doing the music that was ahead of me and not behind me.

All that to say is that show after show after show that I’m playing, even after I came out, were people talking so much, you know, “Please play this song.” And you know, one of the famous stories that I tell is a lesbian bar I was hanging out in Philadelphia. It’s probably the first six months of me getting back out on the road and touring. And I might have come out after that, I can’t remember, but it was inside the first year or so. And here I am on a Sunday night, and it’s packed out, and there had been a few drinks happening about an hour or so into the show. The the gals in the bar were like, “Play Martyrs and Thieves,” which is one of the epic songs off of Kansas. And I didn’t want to play it. I was afraid to play it. I didn’t know if I would perform it well. I didn’t know if I was just going to be mad by the end of it. It’s six minutes long, so it’s a little bit of a commitment to to like have to pretend you care if it turns out I didn’t, but the crowd was just really begging me to play this, to the point that I understood something about the fact that my resistance to it was starting to very much be inhospitable.

That was a very uncomfortable feeling for me. I just remember this moment. I ended up playing it and the whole bar starts singing. And there are these, you know, women holding each other. There are former Youth group group, kids that are now adults that are just standing on top of the bar singing at the top of their lungs. And I looked around this room going, “My gosh. If, if this obvious group of human beings can somehow not give up a song that means something to them, Why am I giving up something that came from me and out of me?” remember that moment kind of opening the door up to my previous catalog.

What was amazing to me, and this is kind of in the vein of what happens when you’re a singer-songwriter. I felt that from my body. I play with my guitar. AndI wrote these songs a long, long time ago in a room just by myself, and I could tell that these songs came for me. So even the parts of me that might have felt, you know, intellectually alienated from them, or spiritually alienated from them, I could tell when I put them on. They were my shoes, you know what I mean?

Marc Schelske 11:11
Interesting. Wow.

Jennifer Knapp 11:12
Yeah. And that, that story… I mean, that’s a story like about… that started about 15 years ago, but throughout the course of that time, like, it was… I feel like it was the people who had had owned and listened to this music. And as so many people have described it to me as this is the soundtrack of their experience, when somebody said that to me, it’s like, I didn’t want to be a person that took that away from them. I didn’t want that because at the heart of what I do as a musician, and the way I go out into a public space, it’s a gift. It’s sharing, it’s community, it’s positive, it’s affirming. So I don’t want my shit to go on everybody else’s table. I mean, that’s mine to work through…

Marc Schelske 11:55
Right!

Jennifer Knapp 11:55
You know? And if I’m going through something or whatever… I mean, I’ve worn my heart on my sleeve from the day that I walked out on stage. And so it’s not that I’ve ever kind of tried to veil that or hide that from my audience, but I don’t necessarily think that sharing something means assuming that the rest of the room will take on, you know, your level of frustration or anger, but to if I ever confess them out loud, it’s a sense of help me release this. And so in a way, like the story of Kansas kind of flips a little bit on its head for about 10 years, because it’s my audience now giving that record back to me.

I’ll fast forward 25 years ahead, by the time we get to this celebration, I realize that, you know, there are a couple of things that have happened in the lifetime of this record, and not the least of which is a narrative for LGBTQ community inside of faith circles, right where we come out and we have been forcibly exiled or marginalized, or even completely erased from narratives. And that is one of the things, not all the things, but one of the things that’s kind of tempted to have happen with this particular record, to act like it didn’t exist, or that it wasn’t a significant record in the history of contemporary Christian music. And it’s not that I felt like I needed to do that for myself, but it was literally over the last fifteen years hearing people talk about how critical these particular songs had been to them in their journey, and even when I wasn’t there. I didn’t have anything to do with it, but it’s a part of our spirituality, a part of our community, a part of the fabric of who we are, and we collectively share what now exists out there, and no one can take that away. I know that people know the songs. I don’t have any need to sell more copies of this record, but what I really wanted to do was give that gift to say, “Thank you. I heard you. I know that this song has journeyed with you, and I bet that we have all changed a little bit in that 25 years, you know, we’re the same people, but the experience has changed, the filter with which we see the world.”

And I thought, wouldn’t it be an interesting artistic experience to go back and record this record and see what that sounds like, to see if we can actually get… if this record has been doing what it’s been doing, will it do a new thing and reflect the journey of all of us that have kind of been through that space? It’s an acknowledgement, at the very least, that we’re all willing to understand our own evolution, our own journey, within our faith tradition, within our theology, within our community, and all the things good and bad that come with it. And yet somehow, you know, even when we’re frustrated with where maybe our particular faith community may or may not be, or whatever the church in air quote is or isn’t, we’re somehow persisting in some way. And, not, you know… for me, that’s kind of the strange thing. I didn’t really want to make another Christian record, but it’s also part of my story, and it’s a part of our story, and so no matter where we kind of end up with it, it’s still reflective. I think when you, when I meet the audience of people that I hang out with all the time, I mean, I’m struck by how genuinely affirming human beings they are, how amazingly integrated into their communities they are in terms of, you know, positive influences inside of their inside of their worlds. And not everyone is still persisting in practicing Christianity, but they’re all extraordinary human beings who have lived examined lives and challenge themselves to be still pursuing the hopefulness of their best selves. This happens to be where I started, and to be able to celebrate that a lot of us took a lot of positive things out of that was something that I thought was really important to not necessarily erase, but to actually celebrate.

Marc Schelske 16:01
That’s really interesting on so many fronts. One front is just, you know, most creative people that I know kind of have this drive to keep moving forward, and the idea of going back and revisiting creative work of yours from a previous era of your life–I would say most creative people I know are not really excited about that. They want to move forward to the next thing. They’re not the same person that they were when they made that previous thing. When I go back and look at a sermon that I wrote 25 years ago, I’m like, ugh.. I’m so sorry that I did this to people…

Jennifer Knapp 16:31
Yeah, we don’t really want to reread it or…

Marc Schelske 16:33
Right!?

Jennifer Knapp 16:34
It kind of falls short. I would say that that’s true. I mean, I think for… in coming up to the twenty-five year anniversary of the record, I’d had, a lot of close friends going, “We ought to do something. We ought to do something.” I’m like, I don’t know. it took me a while to kind of get enthusiastic about it. It wasn’t a given that I was going to re-record this record. I’ll put it that way. And it wasn’t until like, that narrative that I’ve just kind of come across had kind of illuminated itself and started to realize is like, I don’t need to do it. I have no personal stake in going back to it. But fueled with making a gift? That was a project I’d never really done before. Because if you think about an artist, most of the time, we’re creating new stuff all the time, right? And then you go into the studio and you go and record it, and you’re, you know, you’re going out, and it’s always a new thing. You make it and then you wait to see what life extends out from it. There’s very few opportunities that I get to know what you like…

Marc Schelske 17:42
Yeah, right.

Jennifer Knapp 17:43
…how it will touch your heart, how it has touched your heart. And that I can give you a gift that I know will hit you like, right in the center. I mean, I haven’t talked about any of these… like, before we released this project out to the masses, I hadn’t given a lot of lip service to what was happening with the re-recording. So it was just, “Hey, it’s twenty-five years. We’re going to re-record it. It’s going to be really great.” It wasn’t till after it released that everybody starts chatting, you’re listening to it, right, sharing your stories about listening to this record, that I was like, my gosh, it actually happened like, the gift of this, the reminiscing, the the ability that people had to see themselves and and even rescue some of their own soundtrack in ways that they’d never imagined, was such an honor to witness. To hope that a project can do that. I mean, I’ve never… that’s so weird. I mean, it’s a strange kind of ministry. It’s not really recording project. And in a weird way, I can’t use believe, I just used the “M word…”

But in a lot of ways, right? Like the first record, the first time I recorded this record, I’m a new kid. I’m a new kid on the block. I know nothing about contemporary Christian music. We’re sitting down. These are songs that you never heard. So in some way, every performance is trying to woo you into liking me, liking the song. You know, hoping that it just hits some deeply spiritual mark. And it’s all bullshit, because at the end of the day, all we can really do is live authentically and hope that it arrives at the spot. You know, that who we are or what we offer as a gift. You don’t know that the first time through. And I think that’s the same way with other projects now like this. Will this experience turned out to be a completely unique experience for me, because then it opened me up to like, I don’t have to woo somebody with this recording. I just had to sit down and live with it. I had to live with what I’d written. I had to write with the body that I had now. I had to build a new relationship with these songs. Like, people are going, “Oh, when are you going to rerecord, you know, “Taylor Swift” your other records?” And I’m like, I don’t I know that I’ll do that. This was a different mission. It wasn’t just re-recording a project.

Marc Schelske 19:58
Seems like there’s this completely unexpected thing that happened, right? So you had this moment in time where, because of coming out, that era of your music career, and the community and the audience that existed at that point in time was brought to a close. You didn’t do it, but it was kind of done. And then you go on in your own journey, and you do the things that you do as a musician, as an artist, you take time off. Now, you’re on that train. This album still exists separately from you, having interactions with people, and something that you planted in that album grew separately from you. You were not watering…

Jennifer Knapp 20:39
Absolutely.

Marc Schelske 20:40
…You were off doing other things,

Jennifer Knapp 20:42
I would have told you that I would have really loved it if it died. There were points in my experience where I was so frustrated by where conservative Christian culture was going, that if I could have taken my name out of it and taken any role that I had in… I would have loved to have had that happen. As you were kind of speaking, I was like, This is what happens when we accept the truth of our journey, when we acknowledge where we’ve been and what we’ve done. That’s what this project really is. And, you know, I can’t take away the fact that I’ve had a significant experience inside of my faith community. Yeah, now, where I go from here and what my future looks like is anybody’s guess. You know, I’m I’m still on a journey forward as much as I’ve ever been. But there’s a part of us, especially when we’ve been harmed or we’ve been frustrated, or we find a level of disagreement or a conflict… the idea that exorcism works, or excising something is the way that we will find healing and hope. I’m not saying like… you know, some things are bad. Take them out. You know, cancer is not a good thing to leave around. But at the same time, like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as I say… you do that, you get a wet, critically injured baby.

Marc Schelske 22:05
Right, right! Yeah.

Jennifer Knapp 22:06
You throw a portion of yourself out. Is that really what you want to do? Whether one chooses to do that or not, my point has been, don’t just do that, but think first. Really examine it, be able to live in those things. And sometimes you will find that the some of the pain and suffering that we experience through those types of journeys, is about leaving things behind that are actually uniquely ours, a fabric that’s interwoven into who we are. When I talk about these songs, like when I talk about playing them, and I feel that I know they came from my body and my person. Every time I play them, I cannot deny it. When I play them again, I am reconnecting, in a weird way, with something that is of me, that is honest. And I think in that I realized in feeling that physical sensation and playing that music, I realized that faith for me was a really important thing that I didn’t want to have lost in the conflict, that I was actually willing to fight for that and through that.

Or maybe, not fight, but to be at peace. Like to “be still and know that I am God.” I use that so much to myself, going, Why am I fighting a battle that… you know… Am I worried about what everybody else thinks about my faith? Am I doing my faith the right way so I’ll be qualified to be called Christian or not Christian? Frankly, I don’t care what you call me anymore. I really, genuinely don’t. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have a discipline. The more secure that you get in an understanding of who you are and what you’re trying to accomplish, it’s amazing how quickly the external voices and critiques and judgment become disempowered to have influence. Like, to kind of knock you off your your mission and where you want to go, like, the confidence you have to choose your path.

Marc Schelske 24:08
Yeah.

Jennifer Knapp 24:09
Most of the time, like, when we’re uncertain, It’s really easy to knock us off when we’re not as certain as what we want to accomplish or where we want to head. So, yeah, it’s, one of those things that it just amazed me that by just being able to accept, like, yeah, that’s where I was at, these are the things that I did, and you know what? Darn it, that really changed my life in some really remarkable and profound ways that I don’t want to lose. I don’t want to lose my ability to reach back and touch that memory, to be connected to that memory, because I realize that no matter what I do, I’m really actually not going to be able to disentangle myself from it. It is a part of me. It is part of my journey.

Marc Schelske 24:52
Yeah, so this is the weird gift/torture, then, that your audience handed you, right? They like said…

Jennifer Knapp 24:58
It was a weird torture!

Marc Schelske 25:00
“Jennifer, we would like you to go back into a room with your younger self, half your age, and just hang out together and see what what happens. What do you learn? What threads remain important? What needs to be set aside? What happens when you go back into that room with your younger self and face who she was and what her hopes were?”

Jennifer Knapp 25:24
Well, I’ll tell you, one thing I didn’t do is I didn’t go back and listen to the original recording. That I put on to Steve Hindalong’s shoulders. Steve is the producer of this record. I put this on Steve to listen to the old the old stuff, because I didn’t want to have it in my head. I wanted my voice of today to be able to carry it. I neither wanted to copy it, nor did I want to be intimidated by it. I wanted the song as it sat with me today. I knew things had changed a lot. I’m a different guitar player now. I sing differently now. And, on a weird note, like there’s some like archeological differences… archeological? I don’t know. There are, like, some actual tangible material differences in the record. This record is six minutes longer than the original…

Marc Schelske 25:29
And you cut a song?

Jennifer Knapp 25:51
Well, on the on the vinyl, I had to drop one because vinyl is like a finite… right? It’s a finite space. So because of the length of recording, I had to drop Refine Me, so it’s only on the digital versions. But I also changed… and I was adamant to have the acapella piece, the song called Faithful To Me, I was adamant that I wanted it intact. So the way that I sing it live has always been a verse and a chorus and a verse and a chorus. It’s just those two sections and on there’s no recorded version of it in that form. So those were really the only things that I had. But yeah, between tempos and the way that we just played these songs, and even strangely, I cut some… I did some arrangement where I did cut, like, some bars from songs in an attempt to make them shorter, just because of form, just an artistic decision that I just had. But even with those cuts, it’s strange, yeah, we ended up having a materially longer record than we did. Sort of like age does? It kind of gets us all sagging…

Marc Schelske 27:26
Yeah, right!

Jennifer Knapp 27:27
It gets us longer, in a lot of ways. A little grayer. I need a little bit more time to do the record. Like, the idea of going a hundred and eighty beats a minute was not really on for me at this point. It was intriguing that, you know? It would have been fascinating to see. It was kind of a weird science experiment in that way. You know, we just play these songs, will they be the same as the other one? And clearly they weren’t. And it was fun to see that kind of show itself.

Marc Schelske 27:58
When you went, metaphorically, back into that room with your younger self, what are you noticing? Spiritually and personally? You talk about how these songs feel like they came from your body, and they feel deeply connected to you, but you’re also in many ways different. Or I should say, you’ve been through a lot since then that has shaped who you are. So when you’re in this dialog–who you are now, in the journey that you’ve had, in the spiritual journey that you’ve had, with your younger self, who’s right at the beginning of the career, who’s a fairly new Christian, who’s in this brand new, burgeoning industry, CCM, with all kinds of new pressures–when you’re in dialog with that person, what did you notice?

Jennifer Knapp 28:45
Well, it’s interesting that you say the younger self, because… Singing is such a physical thing, like singing and playing. And it was really in the performances of these that… I mean, it began in the physically aware spaces. Like when I’m holding my breath for a really long phrase, I’m like, “What was she doing?” I would literally be talking out loud, going, “That young whipper snapper.” Or, if I was frustrated with a turn of phrase or a chord or arrangement… I mean things that I wouldn’t do now, for better, for worse, right? It was amazing that physically performing the songs made a connection to realizing I am not in the same body that I was, you know, 25 years ago. And, to start talking about myself, I would like, literally, yeah… “that girl, young Jen, is so full of herself. What was she thinking?” But, that physical connection really gave me pause to think back, in connecting and seeing her in that way. This was going to sound weird and so dissociative. But being able to see and watch yourself, kind of in your imagination, be able to look back, look at her, see what she was doing, bewildered, enthusiastic, in no way deceitful. It was lovely to be able to look in on her and in a weird way, and go, “Wow, she was really just genuinely doing her thing.” And at times that I was critical, even in the process, in the present day, kind of going back and recording something, I would go, “You know what? You gotta hand it to that kid. Don’t take anything away from her.” I don’t think I had given myself a level of grace in this time of my life, not as an apology, but to not be embarrassed about my my sold-out-Kool-Aid-drinking-years of Christianity. I think that was a part of it.

Marc Schelske 30:52
It was earnest!

Jennifer Knapp 30:54
It was earnest. It really was. Now, I think that same spirit of that young person still lives in me today. I love being earnest about my work. I’ve never regretted being honest and authentic and wearing my heart on my sleeve. I’ve regretted when I knew I went against that. I’m more than happy to take responsibility for who and what I’ve been and what I’ve done throughout my life. I prefer that to denial or to trying to twist myself into something that’s not seeking what my heart really, truly longs for. Which is a weird thing to say in a Christian environment, and still a hard thing for me to say now, because I think oftentimes, particularly with Christianity, there’s a lot of conversation in and around the denial of self…

Marc Schelske 31:48
Yeah.

Jennifer Knapp 31:49
…and a mistrust of our inner voice. To seek something from our own hearts [is seen as] as genuinely corrupt, as opposed to replacing our inner heart and our inner voice with the voice of God, right?

Marc Schelske 32:03
Yeah, right.

Jennifer Knapp 32:04
I don’t know how we know the difference of that. To be honest, to me, I know when I’m lying to myself and I know when I’m not. I mean, I sometimes find out later. But, you know, I think it’s been a really easy thing for the church to take away our trust of our own self and an autonomy away from us, and which–I would put in a theological position as the temple of the Holy Spirit being in our hearts. If the sanctuary that is within us isn’t trustworthy, and we don’t trust that sanctuary, then where do we begin? Because that is the temple. If anyone’s concerned that that is some way of a denial or an opening to a dark space, I would say quite the opposite. I think it raises the ante for our responsibility to know that we have a discipline and a practice and a care and an awareness and a will to create in ourselves a holy sanctuary…

Marc Schelske 33:14
Yeah.

Jennifer Knapp 33:15
…to be responsible for the care of that. That’s not accidental. That’s not just simply trying to set everything on fire, but to actually build something mindfully, you know, with purpose. That, to me, has done exactly the opposite. It wasn’t setting the foxes loose at all. For me to be able to go, “No, this is my voice, and this is my heart.” And that included days where I was like, “Screw you God. This is where I’m at.” Seriously. Like, this is what everybody else says, or this is what my church says, or this is what you know, this is maybe where I feel like God might, may or may not want me to go. And I have said, “No, I’m not willing,” you know, and just being honest with myself about, like, whether I’m resistant. I’m more Jonah than anything. I have sat under a withering vine for more hours than I cared to confess.

Marc Schelske 34:07
Yeah!

Jennifer Knapp 34:08
But at the end of the day, none of us change, none of us do work, none of us go down a road at some point, unless we get the full enjoyment of that journey, unless we, at some point, have acknowledged our choice and our free will to go down that road. Yeah, so, it’s not that I want to be in contest with that, but the joy and the raised responsibility of saying I will be responsible for my heart and I will do the work to know what is the voice of my heart and to do the work, because what I want is to be an affirming human being. I want to live a life that when other people around me, they experience a sense of affirmation, that they know that I will love them, that they know that I’m a person who is interested in the liberation, that I’m interested in life over death.

Marc Schelske 34:58
Yes.

Jennifer Knapp 34:59
I’m less interested in religion. What I’ve found through music in this process of creativity is it being able to go, No, that is in me. It really is in me. I really do want to sing. I really do want to sing this song. I really am angry–whatever it is. That earnestness of that young girl, I think, is something that I’m so grateful to see still lives in me. Yes, even though sometimes she embarrasses me.

Marc Schelske 35:26
That’s so wonderful. There’s a line in in Visions that has stayed in my brain ever since hearing the first album, and it is this line that I think speaks to that continuity you just mentioned, which is” They say that I am much too demanding to want a better place than here.” There’s so much in that, because there’s the “they,” whoever they are…

Jennifer Knapp 35:55
Right.

Marc Schelske 35:56
There’s all these voices that are telling you, you know, “Don’t feel how you feel. Don’t want something different. What we tell you is right is what’s right. Just buy the line that we’re giving you.” So, you’ve got the whole “they” and and you’ve got this heart, this little heart that’s saying, “No, there’s gotta be more than this. Don’t you see how this is not enough? Don’t you see how this is leaving something important out. Don’t you see how we’re not loving in the way that Jesus taught us to love?” That heart is crying out, “There’s gotta be something better than this, isn’t there? Come on guys.” And that tension between the voice of the “they” who’s saying, “No, no, this is really all there is. How we are telling you it needs to be, you just need to get it. You’ve got to get on board.” right? That yearning heart, to me, that’s not demanding. That, I feel, is the Spirit of God at work in us, wanting to see the life, wanting to see the fulfillment of liberation, wanting to see grace really be grace, instead of just a branding on another set of standards for who gets to be in and out of a community, right? That’s there, and I feel like, as I hear you talk today, I hear that same continuity to that earnest kid on stage.

Jennifer Knapp 37:17
Yeah, I think for me, it definitely channels the direction of keeping hope. It’s more about the foolishness that I have in persistently hoping and persistently challenging myself to do better and to seek better, and to have an imagination. You know, I don’t want to get into the weeds or stress anybody out, but heaven, heaven for me, is a very hard thing for me to imagine in the ways that it’s typically been described to me.

Marc Schelske 37:49
Sure.

Jennifer Knapp 37:50
That’s the thing I’m working for, right? I’m going to be rewarded by choices that I make in this life, by living in some, to me, imaginary space in the future, that’s just grand up in the sky somewhere. That’s not what I mean by the better place.

Marc Schelske 38:10
Right!

Jennifer Knapp 38:11
I’m demanding of myself the imagination. I’m demanding of myself the courage to maintain hope. It’s not a pass or fail. But it’s completely saying, “don’t give up.” Every single day that I am going to drive to be heading in the direction. That isn’t trying to attain… You know, I’m not trying to attain or get or be rewarded. It’s a different type of thing that hope does. It is our aspiration to live into and unto the heights of what love and grace and liberation can be. And I don’t even fully know what all of those things are yet, but as I’ve continued to be demanding of that…I mean, at the time that I wrote that I was single, celibate, and had no hopes or prospects for love in the future. In fact, a lot of this record, I was just beginning the journey of figuring out how to love myself, because if we’re to love the Lord God with all your heart, mind, your soul and your neighbor as yourself? Well, I was like, I can’t love my neighbor because I don’t know anything about how to love myself.

Marc Schelske 39:20
Yeah.

Jennifer Knapp 39:21
That’s where I started, and if a lot of my early work seems narcissistic, it’s because I didn’t know how to love myself. I was trying to figure out and work out what God saw in me that was loving. As I started to piece that together–fast forward ten years into the future, until when I met my partner–I was starting to understand something about love enough to then now come in contact with my neighbor or somebody else, like somebody I wanted to love, and somebody whose love I wanted in return. That like another way out from my narcissistic center, going out and stretching further and further and further you, and to see how much–to be demanding of that.

Marc Schelske 40:02
Yeah.

Jennifer Knapp 40:03
I don’t need to prove anything, not in that sense. But to be open and aware and and continually willing to learn something about and a new area of which I may find to love that I didn’t before, to let go of something or to discover something, just constantly kind of looking for an opportunity to grow. I see it in there. I’m like, “Oh, that kid. She probably didn’t know what the hell she was talking about!”

Marc Schelske 40:29
Of course! Of course, yeah.

Jennifer Knapp 40:30
But it’s still in me. That is the root, and that’s when I look at her and go back to the baby in the bathwater, or even the grace, going if I just shut her down, then that theology wouldn’t have grown from a seed of what that was to what it is today. I can think of twenty more examples of where that is a root of something that I can see connected to its growth in me today, and I’m so grateful for her enthusiasm and her earnestness, like I said, even though sometimes she embarrasses me.

Marc Schelske 41:02
That’s so rich, I feel like maybe that’s part of the thread in this conversation of deconstruction. For some people, deconstruction is about tearing down, or needing to tear down structures that have been unhelpful. But my experience has been that there’s been a continuous unfolding that has taken me deeper in ways that the community that raised me didn’t expect or prepare me for, and that yearning that you talk about–that maybe the young Jennifer with that yearning, maybe she’s naive, maybe she’s a little bit narcissistic. I mean, we all are at 25, right? Maybe her vision is limited–but that yearning for what I believe is the fullness of life that we were made for, that yearning is the thread that has taken me into the places that I’ve gone that look externally to some folks like deconstruction. When I listened to Kansas 25 the first time, I felt that same thing. Some part of this, obviously, is my own projection. I have no idea what’s going on inside of you, your life and experience…

Jennifer Knapp 42:14
You can have it. You have your own life and experience. I want to take it away from you.

Marc Schelske 42:17
Thank you so much. But I hear you [singing Kansas 25] and it just felt like a richer, deeper experience that had spaciousness for the painful, the uncertain. It seems like the longing is for something that’s bigger than that, a life that has space for all of that, even when it doesn’t fit on a stage or inside someone’s preconceived expectation of what you need to be.

Jennifer Knapp 42:47
It’s interesting, because when I go back to that time, one of the one of the details of my experience at the time that I was writing that was very much attached to my coming into Christianity and having an experiencing a profound culture shock with the church community. So unlike a lot of a lot of my peers and my friends who had essentially evangelistically witnessed to me and I converte. I accepted Jesus Christ, and I… That’s so weird every time I say that, because it’s not, you know… I remember… I can’t believe I did that, even to this day. I can’t believe that I actually did that. At the same time, it profoundly changed my life! So, how do I make sense of that?

Marc Schelske 42:58
Right?

Jennifer Knapp 42:58
I was so earnest, like I genuinely wanted to be a new creation. I didn’t even know what that meant, but I wanted, and I understood something needed to do an about face in my world. I wasn’t wooed necessarily by religion. I was even rolling my eyes at the time, going, “What am I doing here in this space with these folks?” But, there was something there that had sparked in my heart, a hope that I hadn’t yet seen in a possibility of loving and caring for and being connected to something greater than myself. That’s the best way I know how to describe it. And so here I am, like basically, a hot mess, not having any tradition or experience inside of the faith community at all. I was walking into church on a Sunday morning, smoking, putting my cigarette butts out right on the church steps, walking into church, dropping a few F bombs, coming right back out and lighting back up. And was pretty rough for the Baptist contingency around me, and they were so excited that I was there. But, you know, a few months into it, they’re like, “Okay, we need to talk about your becoming that new creation. Now, you need to start putting things away.” It was conversations about not cussing anymore, conversations about not having sex, conversations about not smoking. What was I going to do on the outside to start looking like what God wanted my heart to be on the inside?

In some ways, I think that that landed with me okay. I was starting… I was definitely reading my Bible. Like, I read that sucker. I mean, I was diving into it. I was taking my discipleship seriously. I was going to Bible study groups and learning, mostly in a Baptist feel but I’d had other groups as well. =I was definitely trying to become a Christian, because, again, in earnestness, I made this decision, and I meant my decision. So when everyone around me is saying, “This is what a good Christian looks like,” then this is a good heart of mine that wants to make good on the discovery of this profound joy and free new grace that I’m experiencing my life. I wanted that to be evident. So of course, that was helpful in some ways, to have my community go “This is the way. If you look and act and conform in this way, you will be celebrated.”

But the side of that–and even though I was going into discipleship and Bible studies, one of the critiques I have in this is part of that thing is this idea that we’re not necessarily… where the rubber hits the road sometimes is what we are imagining is that we’re shaping ourselves into a conformity to look like something that looks like Christianity. And a lot of the deconstruction space where we’re calling upon what many people are telling us in good ways and bad. There’s some positive to that. I mean, there are people who’ve been living this journey long before I have or long before we find it and we get into it. So we always begin to a certain degree–and this is where I say we can be a little bit graceful–we are relying on the stories that are told to us.

Marc Schelske 46:56
Yeah.

Jennifer Knapp 46:56
…and the flame that we as moths were drawn to. But the difference in this, at some point, is our level of autonomy and engagement, our development of our own–and I would again, go back to that kind of sacred temple in ourselves–of the part where we begin to be part of living out that faith, to be able to have a… You know, quiet times were a thing. I don’t know if that’s still around. It was like, “Oh, you have to have a quiet time every day,”

Marc Schelske 47:25
Right.

Jennifer Knapp 47:26
And so what that was… I’ll say it was told to me as a discipline that it was my obligation as a good Christian to spend an hour a day reading my Bible, praying, and I would journal. So I did those things “religiously.” I was glad I did that discipline. I enjoy that time. I enjoy reflection. But I also hated that somebody would ask me, “Did you do your quiet time?”

Marc Schelske 47:57
Right?! Yeah, for sure.

Jennifer Knapp 47:58
it’s this box or this thing that we’re doing, rather than… So on one hand, I had a discipline that gave me an opportunity to practice and began to engage in the care and the awareness and my own practice of of developing my spiritual life. But weirdly, no one actually taught me how to develop my spiritual life. They told me to have a quiet time and if I didn’t check off with my accountability partner, and said that I’d only had three quiet times in seven days. And you know, there was a judgment about whether or not that was fruitful. That wasn’t helpful,

Marc Schelske 48:33
Right.

Jennifer Knapp 48:34
But, what was more helpful is that I actually didn’t have time for quiet time because I had three other hours of completely obsessing about this other issue that I’ve been thinking about. I didn’t want a quiet time that was an hour. I wanted a life that was contemplative. The whole life.

Marc Schelske 48:49
Right? Yeah, yes!

Jennifer Knapp 48:53
I didn’t want to do what Christianity told me; I wanted to live my faith.

Marc Schelske 48:59
Yeah.

Jennifer Knapp 49:00
I don’t want to knock the community, because we do need that, and we do need the witnesses, and we do need to be connected to one another to help and share and tell these stories. But it’s a difference between sharing a story and witnessing that information and then telling somebody that this is what you should conform to. You should look like us, instead of having collaborators that are seen with you as you live your life. And so for me, discipleship taught me what conformity looked like in a lot of ways. You know, these are the things that Christians do, say and act, and if you come out the other side, you will be a good Christian. But, nobody actually told me that if I have a contemplative life I engage, I will ask at least this one question, “What does it mean to live in the Spirit of Christ?” That is a question that I’ve been working on for thirty-five years.

Marc Schelske 49:53
Right, yes.

Jennifer Knapp 49:54
What is the Spirit of Christ? If I say, what’s the spirit of Marc? What’s the spirit of Jenn? I have to spend time, you know… you have to spend time with somebody else. You have to look at what they’ve done and what they do and stop talking and start watching. You know, live with and be around. It’s not just spirit as in fantasy. I think we know what we mean. You can write a song in the spirit of Jenn Knapp. There’s people out there who do it. My spirit isn’t doing it. So far as I know, I don’t have my own unique Holy Spirit that’s going out and doing that. But I wanted to understand that question. And as I read the whole text, as I looked around my community, as I looked around the world in what this meant, I began to say, “These are the things I want to be propelling me to the future.”

So, the idea of being told what to do so quickly felt like I was supposed to be conforming to something, and that’s not what drew me in there. It was a spirit and longing to know what the Spirit of Jesus was. I’m like, “Well, okay, great. I said the F bomb three times today in church. I’m sorry. Here’s a dollar for the the jar.” But I wasn’t cruel to anyone today, and I genuinely become a lot more hospitable to myself and to other people. I’m becoming more compassionate as a human being in my life in ways that I never even thought was possible. I don’t care what I get credit for or don’t, but my life has changed because of that, and the people around me’s life has changed. And that’s the true test of it. So that kind of “undoing,” I was already starting there and I think that’s that’s held up in kind of trying to go, I know, I mean, told these things, but there’s also a Spirit of to this that seems more, it seems wider. It seems not conforming. It seems rebellious in its nature.

Marc Schelske 51:49
Yes.

Jennifer Knapp 51:50
People will be confused. People will say that you’re going out on a limb. People will say, people will say, they will say. And you still have to go out there and live it. The thing that you hear in your heart, whether it’s contemplative or prayer or God–I don’t know how we say that–but if whatever that still small voice is, it’s a voice that you want to follow for whatever reason, and you go to follow it. Then test it. The next step is to take it out of that place where you discovered it, hopefully in a contemplative place, and to go out and test it and to see if it is something that is actually honest. Will this bring life? Will this discovery or this longing that I have to be compassionate mean that I talk more or talk less when I leave my home? You have to go out, and sometimes I’ve been wrong. Sometimes, I did not get that right. I have to go back. I didn’t understand that. It’s not working because I I’m not getting it. I’m not hearing it yet. So more work for me, but that that kind of going back to those spaces. [Kansas], it was written by a girl who didn’t want a less life, didn’t want a constricted life. I read the Scripture, “You shall have life, and you should have it abundantly,” and I read that in a way that I wanted that…

Marc Schelske 53:22
Yeah…

Jennifer Knapp 53:23
…and I want that now to this day. And every time that I took that out, I would have somebody else come over the top of me saying, “Be careful about that abundant life, because you can have too much Liberty in your life.” I’m not asking to sample every drug out on the street. I’ve done that. I know that kills my body and that’s not good and I make poor choices. I know I want abundant life. I want my hand to be open. I want to be non-threatening to other human beings. I want to not be jealous of you. I want to be invested in your life, and want you grow and flourish, and I want you to not be an enemy, and I want you to be a partner with me. Let’s start there. That’s what abundant life is. All I can do is try and take care of my my space around me.

When I started looking at things like that, I would find myself in contest and being pushed back inside of some of my faith communities, like, “No, it’s doing it the way this looks.” I know that I can do the thing that looks that way. And right now I’m angry because I’m doing the thing, and I’m getting credit for doing the thing, but I’m an asshole on the inside. I don’t want to be doing this. I don’t agree with this. And you know, that went on to be a breaking point with me for some things, at the point where I kind of… there’s part of… some of the spaces, some of the reason why I didn’t work inside of Christian music anymore. There are those things that they do feel like we’re deconstructing and we’re having to undo those voices, you know.

At the same time, give the community a little grace. We do have to share our experience by telling and allowing people to witness our stories. But the I think, if there’s a difference at all, I would probably say there’s the spot of authority inside of that. Looking at people we know and reliably trust more on a lateral plane, rather than an up and down plane, rather than a plane of people telling us what we can do–kind of up and down and where you succeed and you rise, or you know, kind of how you the membership is counted–but rather, who are the people who are willing to collaborate with you, the people who are willing to witness as you experience and test and build your faith and and exercise the will, the free will that we have to be able to actually be participants in–and joyfully so–the journeys that we are taking.

Marc Schelske 55:51
That was good, and I feel like it really captures a practical picture of what the better place is that we’re longing for. That that kind of life is the better place that we’re demanding. And you were doing it then, and you’re doing it now, and you’re living in that, and it’s really encouraging. I mean, I was floored by how deeply Kansas 25 impacted me and spent time…

Jennifer Knapp 56:20
You and a lot of other folks! It’s nuts.

Marc Schelske 56:22
Yeah, and I had to spend some time trying to understand. What has happened here for me in this? And it was deeply– is still deeply meaningful. And so I just am so grateful that you chose to enter into the difficult space to give that gift to all of us, and hopefully, in some way to yourself, because it’s been quite impactful, and I’m just so thankful to have that as part of my journey.

Jennifer Knapp 56:49
Well, thank you. I would say, thank you for that. I mean, that is its gift. There are moments, and I’m sure as you’ve had years of the ministry, the times you look back on on your influence or your participation inside of faith communion, and probably go, “Why am I here? And have I done anything? Or what’s it mean?” And the older I get, legacy is not quite the word I’m comfortable with, but I me an, I think we all kind of hope that the trail behind us isn’t a path of devastation.

Marc Schelske 57:22
Right! At least.

Jennifer Knapp 57:24
So, that’s all to say that I genuinely have felt so honored to be able to witness folks take a moment… and just give them, like you were saying, like to sense… like the the response that a lot of people have had to Kansas going, “Wow, I really had to take more than a few moments, like a day or two,” and some people are still a little bit longer, depending on where they are on their journey. But that kind of pause–I think, particularly in our current climate where we’re so pressured by the tyranny of the urgent, with social media and phones and alerts are going off all the time and demanding our attention–to take a minute to be able to check in with your own self and your own journey in your life, to have offered a gift that allowed someone to do that? For me is, it’s just out… I can’t even get my head around it. Like, I wish I could have said, Yeah, that’s what I meant to do. Like, that’s a total lie. Like, I can’t claim that, but it’s beautiful to witness that. And to know that when I look back on on my experience in the last twenty-five years, in the weird way I kind of connect back to the earnestness of that young gal and go, “Wow, she really did demand that, and she hasn’t stopped.”

To be able to to know that… I like playing and I like making records. It’s fun. But I also… when I came back to career 2.0, as I’ll call it, I really wondered, “Is this going to be meaningful to me in any way?” Because I don’t really care about money, and I like playing and performing, but believe it or not, as self centered as I may sound and contemplative I may be, I’m actually not interested in all the praise. I don’t really want to be a rock star. Why am I doing this? Why am I coming back and playing? Like, if I’m just going to go to bars and play music for money and just do all the miles on the road, is this going to be a meaningful life to me? I had no idea that… because I was like, I’m not, …There’ll be no ministry in front of me. There’ll be no reconnecting. There’ll be no public dialog in and around faith, because the last thing I want people to do is put a “Christian” in the headline with my name.

Well, I can’t get around that anymore. People still do it, even no matter how much I cuss and no matter how far I’ve gone out. And I’m not writing specifically about Christianity, and this blows my mind. All I ever wanted to do in my work was to just leave a good path, like to offer… to open the door up to something that… I don’t know, but something I have. I didn’t write the rules of love. I just know that when you love people and you hope for people, and you go into a room and you want to offer a gift to people, and you offer it, and you don’t expect… Career 1.0, it’s more like propaganda. You constantly have to be a representative of Christianity all the time. And now I’m not trying to represent Christianity. I’m trying to offer a gift. It’s strange. Like, doesn’t it blow your mind?

Marc Schelske 1:00:42
Right! No, what you just described is what it ought to be. Like that ought to be Christianity, not the image management, just the offering the hospitable gift.

Jennifer Knapp 1:00:51
Who are you? Who are you, Mark, and what is the gift that you have?

Marc Schelske 1:00:55
Yeah…

Jennifer Knapp 1:00:56
What is the holy gift of you that you offer and present to the world. What do you work on? What do you uncover? How do you spend your time? How do you raise the bar to be the fullest you, the best you. And I’m not talking best, like the best abs, the best beard and goatee. That’s not what I’m talking about. How do you really make a mark, to let the people you know love them and literally change their lives forever?

Marc Schelske 1:01:26
Yes, Yeah!

Jennifer Knapp 1:01:28
If there is a Spirit, a Holy Spirit, a love of God, that’s permeating through and in all things, how–and in this space that I have found myself in this moment–how do I know how to recognize that? How do I get in rhythm with that? How do I be the unique me in this space that adds to that space? It is the thing that I will say, regardless of where I have found it to anyone I speak to., You know, I’ll be talking to a cabbie or talking to somebody who goes, “Oh, I heard this about you, that you’re a Christian.” I’m like, okay, that’s fine. That’s where I learned that, and that’s where I practice that. That’s fine. But here’s the thing, I’m here for you right now. Like, I’m not trying to sell you something. I don’t want anything from you. I just want to be with you and witness you. How can I help you today? Like, what do you need? How do I be a friend with you? To me, that was… and then, this goes back to an early beef I had with evangelicalism. Like, man, don’t just try and sell! Guys on a street corner, standing on soap boxes yelling, “turn or burn,” telling you that you’re going to go to hell and you’re going to be punished unless you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Today, I’m like, that’s not a witness. It’s not a witness. What changes people is that you actually connect to them.

You know, I was, in some ways, critiquing my own experience into Christianity. What got me here was more about the spirit of the people that I was with than any of the talk of the Spirit that those people did. Does that make sense?

Marc Schelske 1:03:02
Yeah. Yea, yeah.

Jennifer Knapp 1:03:02
Like the coercion, like the kind of coercive nature. It was the relationships that I built, the participation and community, the understanding and being able to step back and be able to see and witness something good and something holy. I am amazed that I get to do that to this day. Every day I go, even if I’m bored and I go to a show, and I’m like, “Oh, I’m tired now. All my gear weighs really heavy. I can’t believe I have to drive six hours today. I get up, and I think, “I wonder who I will meet today?” I wonder what they will teach me today. I wonder what they will show me, and I wonder what I will show them. And just waiting for that to just happen, I wonder what fragrance the room will have when we get there. Oftentimes it’s beer and body odor. Every day is unique, because human beings are extraordinary. And if you tell another human being that you see their extraordinariness, it’s amazing to see how their faces light up and how extraordinary they really do become.

And that’s what I think about my audience, which is just weird. I say… people around me all the time know this about me, that I really hate saying “fan base” or “audience,” or any of that, because it’…s I just, I feel like I’m going out and connecting, and it’s been probably, more strangely, more of service and more of a gift than I would have ever have imagined in my previous days in Career 1.0. Not to say that it wasn’t earnest then, but it’s just a whole other level. It’s good because the money’s crap and the venues sometimes are crap too, but, but Yeah, the people are here, even though we’re not necessarily doing like I was told originally when I quit contemporary Christian music. “Well, you’ll never have a platform again because you aren’t doing the work for the Lord.” And I’ll be like, well, you should maybe come out and hang out with some people, because you just threw off a whole lot of people who are kind of having church. We didn’t preach, we didn’t treat… we were just gathered. We were two or more there, gathered in the Spirit. And, I shudder to thank anybody who doesn’t understand that thinks that I’m speaking religiously. I’m not. People are amazing human beings, and I am so grateful that those amazing human beings have continued to keep me standing up and have never mocked me for my earnestness.

Marc Schelske 1:05:29
So good. Jennifer, thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you for spending this time with me. Thank you for this album and the long, long road of work that you’ve done getting to it. It’s an honor to spend this time with you and to be one of the recipients of how you’ve shared your journey.

Jennifer Knapp 1:05:51
It was a privilege, Marc. I appreciate it, and thank you very much for asking me.

REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 1:05:55
At first glance, this conversation is an interesting window into the life of a creative person who had the unique opportunity to go back and reflect on who they were twenty-five years ago. But that’s not all this is. There’s something important here, I think, for all of us, even if we don’t have a body of work to look back on.

Jenn’s story is a story of growth. Now, that doesn’t mean every part was fun. Growth means change. Change always means loss, and loss means there’s going to be grief in the story. But that process of changing, growing, losing, and grieving allows us to let go of what came before that was limiting or unhealthy or just plain wrong, so that we can embrace the good, the new, that perhaps God is setting before us. In my own story, there have been times when my life of faith was really all about security. It was a kind of faith that longed for certainty, that demanded certainty from teachers, from scripture, from sermons, from precise step-by-step methods for prayer or evangelism or church growth. Well, that kind of Christianity is about making us feel okay, making us feel that the uncertainty of life can be managed by a God who turns out to be more like a wish-granting Genie.

But then life happened. There was change, loss and grief and growth. And instead of yearning for security, I now long for transformation. Like Jen–you heard her say this–I don’t want to do devotional times; I want to have a contemplative life. I don’t want to do church authorized service projects. I want to be the kind of person who is generous to those around me and and steps in where necessary, to bear the burden of others who are suffering. I yearn for a life that reflects a place that is better than this.

Young Jenn’s yearning and her earnest heart inspired me twenty-give years ago, and the journey that Jenn has been on since challenges me today in a different way. Can I persist in faith even when the calling of Jesus doesn’t look like what I was taught? Can I grow in my pursuit of God, even if it takes me beyond the safe borders that I was trained as a child in, or that I learned as a young pastor? Can I continue, step-by-step, to follow the Spirit of Jesus wherever that guidance leads, even if other followers of Jesus don’t understand?

There was a moment in the interview where Jenn spoke right to me by name, and I wanted to pass her challenge on to you, because I think this might be an invitation from the Spirit. Who are you? What is the holy gift you offer and present to the world? And as we reflect on that, I wonder if we, as followers of Jesus, can let go of those motives that lead to exclusion in the pursuit of certainty and security and rather embrace the other-centered, co-suffering way so that we can participate in God’s work to love the world toward healing.

May you sense the holy yearning for a better place than here and trust the better way of Jesus to lead us toward others and toward God.

Thanks for listening. You can check out what Jenn is up to on her website, which includes tour dates and much more about her music. Www.jennifernapp.com. And of course, she’s got a bunch of great albums on all the streaming services.

Notes for today’s episode and any of the links that have been mentioned you’ll find at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW055.

Now, if you found today’s conversation helpful, interesting, compelling, then subscribe to Apprenticeship Notes. My email newsletter. It’s monthly-ish. Really, I send it out about eight to ten times a year. I’ll never spam you. I’ll never sell your information. This newsletter includes an exclusive essay that you won’t find anywhere else, insider commentary on my latest podcast episode, on my blog posts, books that I recommend, spiritual practices I’d like you to try and more. If you subscribe, you’re going to get a free little book, an ebook called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. In it, I teach a spiritual practice–a prayer, a short breath prayer that I wrote that I’ve been praying for the last five years, and it has been so helpful to me as I face the anxiety and uncertainty of our time, and I want to share it with you. So subscribe to my newsletter. Get that book at www.MarcOptIn.com.

Until next time, remember: In this one present moment, you are loved, you are known and you are not alone.

Do you know the hidden history of the place where you live? If we want to be part of God’s work of bringing restoration and liberation, we can’t ignore what’s happened in the past. Telling this truth is the only way to get to healing.

Sarah L. Sanderson is a writer, speaker, and teacher. Her writing has appeared in PBS Newshour, Blackpast, Christianity Today, and various other journals. She’s a thoughtful human, a justice-minded Christian, and a skilled writer.

Marc Schelske 0:00
Do you know the hidden history of the place where you live? If we want to be part of God’s work to bring restoration and liberation, we can’t ignore what’s happened in the past, as much as we’d like to. Telling this truth is the only way to get to healing. Hey, friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 54. Knowing the past to make a better future.

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Before we start, I’d like to tell you about Apprenticeship Notes. Apprenticeship Notes is my new email newsletter. What is this? Why should you subscribe? Why on earth would you want one more newsletter in your inbox? I’m glad you asked. Social media has just stopped working well for many people. Our social media feeds used to be spaces where we had some control. We could choose to follow people who are interesting to us. We could connect with friends, we could learn from the experience and wisdom of other people. For well more than 10 years, my social media feeds, particularly Twitter, were a significant benefit to me, especially as a writer.

But nowadays, in most cases our social media feeds are filled with ads, sponsored posts that are ads but don’t look like ads, and influencers trying to sell us on their latest master course. And even when we find and follow the people we want to hear more from, the black-box algorithms determine whether or not we get to see what they have to say. And usually what the algorithm shows us is just stuff that gets us ramped up. That means more anger, more division. It’s a mess.

I’ve been slowly transitioning away from using social media as the main avenue for communicating about my writing. It’s really scary. I can’t even express to you how big of a change this is. At one point I had 35,000 followers on Twitter, I could reliably post a new blog and around a thousand people would see it. But that’s not true any longer and it hasn’t been for a while. And so I decided to begin building a different kind of space where I could write, encourage people, and serve folks who want to grow spiritually and value the writing that I do. The first step of this new plan is my newsletter.

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About eight minutes down the street from my house is the historic main street of Oregon City. Oregon City is the town at the end of the Oregon Trail. For certain Americans in the mid 1800s, Oregon City was a symbol of hope. It meant a new start, the possibility of land and work, a place to build your family and a future. That vision was so compelling that somewhere between 300,000 and half-a-million people traveled the Oregon Trail in about a five year period. And that vision lies at the heart of how Americans and Oregonians see themselves. Hearty, creative people willing to work hard to succeed. People who will pack up all their earthly belongings and head west across a continent, just to give their families a better chance. This is part of what many of us think it means to be American.

But Oregon City, that city of hope, is also the town where, in 1851, a black innkeeper named Jacob Vanderpool was tried and convicted explicitly for the crime of being a black man. Yep, Oregon. The lovely state where I live was founded as a whites-only state. The Oregon Territory had a law banning black people from remaining in the territory, and later the constitution of Oregon expanded on this with an exclusion clause that did two things. It banned slavery in the territory, but it also prohibited black people from living there. That clause remained in the Constitution until 1926.

When I look around at the state that I live in, I first see the beautiful trees, and the overwhelming beauty of the Columbia Gorge, and the rich, vibrant farmland of the Willamette Valley. That’s all easy to see. But for some of us–people who look like me–it can be easy to overlook that there are hardly any black people here. Officially, the 2020 Census reported that only 2% of the population of Oregon identified as Black or African American, and almost all of those live in a single county in one city. This is not an accident, the stark reality of that matters.

There are folks here–I count myself among them–who believe that the way of Jesus requires an open invitation without discrimination, and that Jesus’ other-centered way leads us to participate in restoration and liberation in our world. But to do that, we need to understand why our world is the way that it is. So, all that’s why I found Sarah Sandersons new book, The Place We Make, so compelling and helpful. Sarah is a neighbor of mine; she lives a few minutes from me. In her beautifully written book, she researches the story of Jacob Vanderpool, that innkeeper who was exiled from Oregon because he was black (and also so that a white man, another innkeeper could eliminate his business competition). During Sarah’s research, she discovered more about how this happened, how similar things happened to the native people who lived on the very land where Oregon City now stands, and even how her own family was involved.

Many of us (most of us, maybe?) have long since acknowledged the harrowing and unjust history that lies behind the mythology of our country. Many of us genuinely want to be part of building a more just community. But those big ideas can quickly become abstract, and as long as they stay abstract, it’s tough to imagine concrete steps we can take to move things forward. Sarah’s book grounds this history in real people and real places. Most of the names I recognize. I’ve stood in many of the places. And as I read, I found the abstractions of this enormous problem dissolving in the local details. I suspect that every community across America could use a book like this. Sara’s goal in this book is not to instill shame, it’s to uncover the truth. Shame is a terrible motivation for change. But as Jesus told us, the truth will set us free. Being able to look at the truth behind the places we find ourselves in is a crucial step to being able to be part of making those places more welcoming and more just.

So, I’m thrilled to introduce you to Sarah and her book. I recommend her book wholeheartedly. Sarah is a writer, a speaker, and a teacher. Her writing has appeared in PBS News Hour, Black Past, Christianity Today, and various other journals. She’s a thoughtful human, a justice-minded Christian, and a skilled writer. In The Place We Make, Sarah quotes Mark Charles, a pastor who is also a Native American and a Native American activist. He said, “The heart of our nation’s problem with race is that we do not have a common memory.” This seems to be the driving motivation for her book, and so I asked Sarah to talk about what that means for her.

THE INTERVIEW

Sarah Sanderson 10:15
Yeah, that quote was really powerful for me. The way that we, as white people, think about our past and talk about our past is different from the way people of color think and talk about their past. And it feels a lot of time like we’re just talking past each other, especially with recent laws that have gone in–I touch on in the book, and they’ve only gotten worse since the book was published. These states that are removing African American courses from their curriculum, they’re removing standards…,

Marc Schelske 10:50
Right.

Sarah Sanderson 10:51
And I don’t know if you saw this little clip of an animated video that they’ve created–Prager University has created to show in Florida?

Marc Schelske 11:04
Yes, right!?

Sarah Sanderson 11:04
And the little Christopher Columbus saying, “Before you judge, just remember that in those days, slavery was no big deal.”

Marc Schelske 11:11
Right? Right. Exactly!

Sarah Sanderson 11:12
It’s like, that is the epitome of this lack of common memory. Who are we talking about, when we say slavery was no big deal? Clearly, we’re not talking about the people who were enslaved, because it was kind of a big deal to them. So can we, as white people, move closer toward understanding what is it about a person of colors holding of their history, rather than moving farther apart? So that the divide keeps getting bigger and we keep talking past each other? Can we move closer toward understanding? “Oh, yeah, it was a big deal, and I need to look at that, honestly.”

Marc Schelske 11:56
Man, that’s, I think, a really helpful frame. I know, in my own personal experience–this is not to make any of my suffering analogous to slavery–but the emotional experience of having something bad happen, explaining that to somebody else, or responding, and having them tell you, “It wasn’t a big deal.” That emotional experience is rough. It’s not fun. And it’s not fun even when the issue at hand is not really a giant situation. My emotional response to being told I’m overreacting is never, “Oh, you’re right. Thanks for illuminating me.”

For me to imagine that the specific trauma that we’re talking about is not only slavery, where individuals and families were forced to work without pay, were treated brutally, their lives were treated as not valuable, they weren’t given care that they needed, often killed. You know, it’s not only that, but then that is embedded in a larger system, at that time, that narrated to the world, “OK, not only is it okay, this is what has to exist, this is the only way that we can have an effective economy.” Think about all of the pressure during the final phase of the COVID locked down. How there was so much pressure that we have to get back, because if we don’t, the economy will collapse. And then, multiply that across the billions and billions and billions of dollars involved in the slave trade, and listen to the voices of white people–not all white people owned slaves, but all white people participated in the economy that slavery allowed–and so then, for those people to say, “Well, the economy requires this.” Right? And then generations later, to be told when an African American person speaks up and says, “There are still traumatic consequences of this in the world and in our lives,” when they speak up and say that, to be told, “It’s not that big of a deal. It didn’t actually happen to you. Why are you reacting this way?” How do we end up in that place? How can a children’s curriculum like the Prager U curriculum that you mentioned, say, without being ironic, it just wasn’t that big of a deal?

Sarah Sanderson 14:14
Yeah, you’re touching on another thing that I really wanted to get at with my book, which was that history has shaped now and it’s still with us now.

Marc Schelske 14:26
Yeah!

Sarah Sanderson 14:27
And so you know, you can’t just say like, “Well, these things happened a long time ago. Why are we still complaining about them?” Because the things that they did are still here, you know? The processes and the systems and the, you know… as you mentioned, like who lives in Oregon today was shaped by what happened over a hundred and fifty years ago. And so for us to really look at, how is our history still with us? And for me, it was a lot about examining my own heart as a white person, and things that I didn’t realize were still with me. And to look at, “Okay, where is white supremacy culture showing up in my own heart?”

Marc Schelske 15:16
Yeah, the question that you just asked, I think, really is the heart of this whole conversation. It’s the heart of both what needs to be said and the heart of what I think a lot of people reject and react to. “What is the place of white supremacy in my heart?” Because I have not had personal relationships with a white person who identifies as a white supremacist. In our minds, when we hear that phrase, we imagine a sort of very visible, stark figure whose life is oriented around violent racial behavior. So we think of the KKK. We think of cross burnings. You know, maybe it’s dressed up a little bit, and we think of like David Duke, and how he was running for president some years ago–and that seemed crazy to some people. And so all of that is so very easy to push away across a line, that it belongs to other people, that belongs to bad people, that belongs to hateful people. And I mean, honestly, I don’t think most any of us identify ourselves as hateful.

Sarah Sanderson 16:18
Right.

Marc Schelske 16:18
And certainly, very few would say, “Yep, I am a white supremacist.” That is a label that’s attached to things that we don’t necessarily think of for ourselves, most of us. So when you ask the question, “how do I see white supremacy working in my own heart?” I don’t think what you mean by that is, “In what way am I a participant in the KKK or desiring to do racial violence?” I don’t think that’s what you mean. So what what does that mean?

Sarah Sanderson 16:46
It’s a good question. I got so familiar with the language in my own head, and my mom read the book, and she was like, “Are you sure you want to tell people you’re a white supremacist?” Like, well, that’s not what I’m trying to say. No, I don’t belong to the KKK. But it was a literal hierarchy of white people at the top, and then this, and then this, and then black people at the bottom. What are the ways that this thinking has seeped into my mental framework, without me even being aware of it?

I was very much a person who thought that I loved everyone and wanted to serve everyone. When I was 20, I went off to Malawi, and… you know, I wanted to help little African babies. I mean, my whole narrative of myself was “I’m a person who’s doing the right thing for the right reasons.”

Marc Schelske 17:40
Sure.

Sarah Sanderson 17:41
And then, when I got to Malawi, the first morning I was there, I looked out the window and the first thought that flashed into my head was, “This is a dangerous place.” And then I realized, I only think that because these people are black. And I did not know that lived in me. I had no idea that I was equating black skin with danger. But as I thought about it, of course, that’s the lie that had been fed to me my whole life.

Marc Schelske 18:15
Yea.

Sarah Sanderson 18:15
And you see that lie everywhere! And so, to be willing to say, “OK, yes. This lie exists, and, it has affected me.” That’s not the same thing as saying, “I’ve signed up for the KKK,” but it’s saying, “How can I deconstruct the lies that are swimming around in my head without me even knowing that they’re there?”

Marc Schelske 18:36
That’s the insidious part. Because, I think, if the idea that white supremacy exists in the neighborhood of people who want to do racial violence, I can discount it as nothing to do with me. And I can even think that what is necessary to fix that is that the people who have those feelings need to have their feelings changed. They need a heart change, right? It’s a sin problem. They need to have Jesus change their heart so that they love everyone.

That pushes the whole conversation into a very individualistic space, where the solution is for individual people to decide in their heart to be loving and kind. Well, certainly, I am all in favor of individual people deciding in their heart to be loving and kind. The trouble is that when it comes to things like mortgages, we don’t get to have a mortgage by deciding in our heart to be someone who is a responsible mortgage holder. There are gatekeepers who evaluate us on certain standards, some of those standards we know and some of them we don’t. And they decide whether we can get a mortgage, or more realistically, they decide whether we can get a mortgage that is in an affordable range for us, which is the same as deciding if we can get one or not. But it never involves them telling us no, right. They just say, “Oh sure, you can get a mortgage with a 21% interest rate.” And you’re like, “Well, I guess that’s not going to happen,” and you move on. And so that isn’t an individual thing. There’s a system in place.

So then when we back up from that system, and we learn about redlining in Oregon, where there’s neighborhoods that explicitly would not allow people of color to get a mortgage. I have church members who live in those neighborhoods now, people who own mortgages in neighborhoods where black people didn’t get the mortgages, right. And so while that individual may not have been racist in their explicit thoughts, it’s conceivable to say that there was a benefit that occurred to them that goes all the way back.

You know, you’ve got this beautiful painting… picture, wood cut, or painting of Oregon City at a certain date on the cover of your book. I can see those places. I’ve walked on those streets, and to realize that that city exists there at the expense of an indigenous community that was removed. Yeah, that’s not something you see when you’re walking down Main Street, Oregon City, stopping at the coffee shop, reading a book in the bookstore? You don’t have to think about that.

Sarah Sanderson 21:00
Right? Yeah. And I think that a lot of times the knee-jerk response of people who don’t want to deal with this issue is to say, “Well, it’s too big. We can’t give Oregon City back. So why would we even bother?” Right? But like figuring out, first of all, what happened? And then second of all, how was what happened–like you say–showing up today? And then, what piece of it can we take responsibility for? And you’re right, it’s got to be both big and small. Major laws have to be changed. And whole systems have to be turned upside down. But also, there are small things in each of our local locations that can be talked about. When we look at the local things, it starts to suggest what a path might be to respond.

Marc Schelske 22:02
I’m interested in hearing about that path of personal response. Let’s move in that direction. But first, before we do, you were involved in this project for quite some time. You have your head in these books and this research project, you’re getting familiar with these characters, coming face to face with, not only the events that happen historically, but even how your own family is entangled in that, Talk about what that was like for you. What personal insights came to you while working through this project?

Sarah Sanderson 22:33
When I began, I just simply was curious about… My brother had just told me, “Hey, Oregon was founded on anti-black exclusion laws,” and I had no idea. I was shocked. I wanted to know more. I came across Jake Vanderpool ‘s name on a website and something just kind of pulled me in. I wanted to know more about this one person, I think because it was one story. It felt like it was maybe possible to wrap my hands around this one person who lived really close to where I live today. Then when I got into it, I realized that my own family members had been part of the story, which I didn’t know when I began. My family members lived there at the time that Jacob Vanderpool was there, and so then it became personal for me. My family members were witnesses to this. And then I found out that I’m related to Theophilus McGruder, the guy who pressed charges against Jacob Vanderpool. Not only did they witness it, but they made it happen!

The concept that kept coming to me was when Nehemiah stands…Nehemiah and Ezra, in Nehemiah, chapter nine, they bring all the people of Israel, they’re coming back from exile. And it says they stood in their places and confessed their sins and the sins of their ancestors. And I think that’s something we don’t really know how to do today. We don’t want to confess the sins of our ancestors; we don’t really even want to confess our own sin.

Marc Schelske 24:12
Sure. Sure. Well, the issue then is that we have such a an individualized view of identity, and that has tracked into the way that Christians talk about the gospel. And so of course, sinners need to confess their sins, particularly if they get caught, right? So that’s very focused. An individual did a bad thing. Part of the process of restoration, reconciliation, and ultimately, forgiveness and salvation is that they own it, confess it. I think most people nod their head at that. But then because our cultural worldview is so individualized, the idea that I would be held responsible in some way for something that somebody else did is just alien to us. In the culture that you mentioned, the ancient Hebrew culture, the ancient Near East, and that time, the Bronze Age era, they did not have… they did not share with us that individualized worldview, they had a collective worldview. They believed that the family, the tribe, the nation were bound together in in very explicit ways. And so for them, confessing the sins of their ancestors made sense, because they had a mechanism to explain how the trauma of the present moment could be connected to things that I didn’t personally do but that happened in the past. That is something that just simply doesn’t exist in the current culture that we live in, except for voices that are beginning to say, “Hey, look, this isn’t about you pressing the button…

Sarah Sanderson 25:50
Yeah.

Marc Schelske 25:50
…This is about you being the fruit of a tree. And that tree has significance for what’s going on around you.” As I read the book… you know, I drive down McLaughlin Avenue probably every day. I go by buildings that have his name on them. The structure of the town of Oregon City, these people had a hand in what buildings went where and where the streets lie, and ultimately, who got to own those properties. Johnson Creek is right up the street for me and it sort of defines the map. And it’s named after this guy Johnson, who did some really horrible things to the native women who lived in the area. Johnson Creek! I see that… you know, all of this stuff. it’s so present. And so the way that I want to separate myself from it by saying, “Well, I’m not individually responsible for those things,” that wall gets gets thinner, more fragile, because I’m beginning to see “No, no, no, there are ramifications for things that happen that are playing out in my life currently.” And the issue is not that I need to confess my culpability for what happened 250 years ago. The issue is am I willing to acknowledge that some of the benefit that has come to me today that I benefit from is the result of those people’s choices? And not only that, some of the benefit that has come to me, would have gone to other people, maybe Native people, maybe black Americans, if those people up the family tree had made different decisions.

Sarah Sanderson 27:33
Yeah, there’s a book called, Reparations by Duke Kwon and Greg Thompson. They give as analogy of if your dad stole a car, and then died, and left you the car, it would still belong to the person that it was stolen from, right. Like, the police could still come to you and say, “No, this is theirs. You have to give it back.”

Marc Schelske 27:56
Yeah.

Sarah Sanderson 27:56
And so, even when it’s been stolen, many generations before, there’s still a sense in which there’s something that rightly belongs to someone else. And so how do we as a community decide to… not that we are responsible, right, like, I didn’t actually do the things 150 years ago, but can I take responsibility? Can we as a community take responsibility for this stuff that happened all these years ago? And say, “No, we don’t want to keep holding the bag of the stuff that was passed down to us, we want to set this right.”

Marc Schelske 28:36
And so then that raises the very difficult and complicated feeling question of “OK, then what does it look like to set it right?” Because, as you said earlier, whether or not giving Oregon City back to the native people who lived there at the falls, whether or not that’s the right thing–which people will argue–the system that we have, and the way land is owned with mortgages, and all of this, all the stuff that’s tied up over a hundred and fifty years, is not going to allow that as a simple solution.

Sarah Sanderson 29:09
Right.

Marc Schelske 29:10
OK. So then it it’d be easy to just take a deep breath and say, “Well, we there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Sarah Sanderson 29:18
Right.

Marc Schelske 29:18
So, the situation with Jacob Vanderpool maybe feels slightly more manageable. Because you could say, “All right, Jacob Vanderpool is a Dude. We can track down his family tree. And we can do some calculations and figure out what his grant-great-great grandchildren ought to have had, if his Inn was allowed to prosper. And we’ll do a fundraiser or GoFundMe or a government program, and we’ll help them with that advancement. So even though a lot of people would argue that and say, for various reasons why that’s not good or just or fair, at least as a solution, it feels slightly more conceivable then “Let’s return all of Oregon City to the native people who lived at the top of the falls,” and yet it still feels enormous. And so once again, I’m left in a place where even good-hearted people that want to say I see how restoration requires ownership and acknowledgement and confession and repentance, and… you know, the scary word you said in the title of Kwon’s book, reparations, which is just rooted in the word repair…

Sarah Sanderson 30:27
Right.

Marc Schelske 30:28
…that we have to do something to repair the damage done, I can see that. But I’m just at a loss for how to do that in a way that is is doable and just.

Sarah Sanderson 30:39
It is a huge question. It’s not like you and I are gonna sit here and figure out the answer, right? This is this is bigger than all of us. Honestly, here’s what I’m praying for, Marc. So I think a lot about Nehemiah and the people who confessed their sins and the sins of their ancestors. I also think a lot about the Egyptians when the Exodus happened. They’re on their way out the door, they’ve just had the very first Passover, the pharaoh has said, “Go, get out of here.” They’re going to the promised land. And it says that God moved the hearts of the Egyptians to give them gold, just shower them with gold. And I don’t know that every white person is called to just like empty their bank account for every person of color, but can God move our hearts to desire justice? I don’t know what it’s going to look like. But I’m praying that there will be a softening of hearts.

Marc Schelske 31:37
Yeah. How did that look for you?

Sarah Sanderson 31:40
Yeah, one simple thing is that I just knew that I wasn’t… I couldn’t take the money from this book. It’s not like I’m sitting on tons of money and I’m just giving away… but it just felt like I can’t take the money for this. There’s also the sacrifice of of my time. But these are like, small personal thing.

Marc Schelske 32:00
Right.

Sarah Sanderson 32:01
So, I don’t know what it’s gonna look like for every person to do small personal things like that. Like shopping at a black-owned business, or whatever it is. But I also think that collectively, as a nation, we need to have a conversation about our history. There does need to be some… I mean… I don’t want to say reallocation of funds or you know… people are gonna say communist or whatever, I should probably not even… we should probably go back and erase all of this. But we have to be willing to look at our history, to have these messy conversations: What has happened? How has it shaken out? And how can we enact laws and systems that begin to repair?

There’s one thing I did not talk about in the book. I live in Gladstone, which I didn’t say in the book, because there’s Proud Boys in Gladstone, too. I don’t want them to show up at my front door. But in Gladstone, just down the street from me, there’s a piece of property that once was used in 1922 as an initiation for the Ku Klux Klan. A hundred and ten people were initiated into the KKK at a spot that’s just six blocks down the street from where I’m sitting right now. In the newspaper, this 1922 newspaper, it says that two thousand people came out to witness this. And so you could say like, “Well, that happened a long time ago. What are we supposed to do about it now?”

But then, I found out that in 1980 twenty kids came to Gladstone High School, which is where my kids go, dressed in KKK hoods and gowns for costume day. They weren’t sent home to change. Their picture was taken and put in the yearbook. We had this thing in 1922. A hundred and ten people were initiated into the KKK. But then in 1980, people were showing up to high school dressed in KKK hoods and gowns. That still… like okay, that’s in my lifetime, but it’s not in a lot of people’s lifetime yet, right. But then, like my, my son’s best friend, he’s biracial. He was sitting in Gladstone High School just a couple of years ago watching a basketball game. And all the kids around him started pulling his hair and calling him the N word.

It’s about both. It’s about the legal and economic systems, and it’s about how are we going to reach the hearts and minds of the seventh graders who are sitting in the bleachers at Gladstone High School, and they don’t even know the history that they’re stepping into. They don’t know that the KKK was initiated down the street and their parents or grandparents came to school in hoods in 1980. But somehow it’s filtered down in the water to them. I don’t know what the answer is for the economic whatever, but in order to have the collective will to do something economically, we’ve got to get honest about how those things that happened a long time ago are still here in our hearts.

Marc Schelske 35:08
Right, exactly. Right. And the property that you mentioned is still a gathering place. It’s property that’s owned by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. It’s used for large Annual Convocation gatherings. People go there for special religious events. And so what does that mean? What opportunity is opened if that organization were to understand this history? Would they be able to say, “We are the stewards of this place now, and maybe we weren’t a part of that event, but is there a way for us to, as you say, take responsibility in a way that leads toward healing and hope and restoration?” What could that look like?

Sarah Sanderson 35:53
Right!

Marc Schelske 35:54
Could an event happen? Could there be some way that that could be commemorated? Could there be some way where that could be named, so that people, like those seventh graders…

Sarah Sanderson 36:05
Yes!

Marc Schelske 36:06
…are able to hear the story and be told, “This is not who we want to be?” Because saying to a seventh grader today, “this is not who we want to be” is actually running direct resistance to McLaughlin and McGruder, and all those guys who literally said explicitly on paper, signed by witnesses, “this is who we want to be. We want to be the kind of people that exclude African Americans, we don’t want them here.” That is our heritage. I can’t undo what those guys did. But I can be a part of saying, as a community, “that’s not who we want to be.”

Sarah Sanderson 36:46
Exactly, yes. So I’m meeting with them in a few weeks. I’ll let you know how it goes. I have a vision for some kind of a gathering. What if we could get more people to come out for a reversal of that thing that happened in 1922, then came out for the initial thing? And you’re right! We have to say it explicitly because we haven’t yet. Explicitly, in history, it was said, “White people are better. And we’re going to not listen to these people. And you can own these people.” Yes, we’ve, we’ve overturned some of those laws, but we haven’t had a moment where we’ve said, as a nation. “This happened and we don’t want to be that anymore.”

Marc Schelske 37:31
Yeah. All right. So there’s another group of folks who are resistant to this conversation that you and I are both part of, and that’s the church. There are folks in the Christian church who will say that these kinds of conversations may be necessary to have, but they aren’t Christian conversations. Some folks will be even more extreme than that. They’ll say this kind of conversation is a distraction, or this kind of conversation is “woke,” where they’ve taken an African American term and turned it into a pejorative, and said, this is you getting drawn into some kind of secular liberal agenda, this is not what Christians should be about. So you’re a follower of Jesus. You may have even had people express these sentiments to you. So in your journey with this book, and now that you’re talking about it, how does this whole thing fit for you within the gospel work of Christian people?

Sarah Sanderson 38:22
Yes, I have had some people come to me with concerns like that. And for me, that’s why it’s important to get back down to where is this in my own heart. That’s pretty hard to argue with. Is there racism out in the world? We can debate that…

Marc Schelske 38:42
We can; certain people will not.

Sarah Sanderson 38:44
Right.

Marc Schelske 38:44
Our African-American friends will not debate it with us. They’ll be like, “The only reason you’re debating it is because you don’t want to acknowledge or take ownership.” Right? It’s not debatable.

Sarah Sanderson 38:53
But I mean, those people who have like… those people who say, “That’s woke, we shouldn’t be talking about that,” like they can debate that.

Marc Schelske 39:00
Yeah.

Sarah Sanderson 39:01
But for me to say, “No, I was afraid of black men because they were black. Because I grew up in a society that taught me that black men were dangerous.” How can you argue with that? I’m telling you; that’s how I feel, have felt, and I’m working to overturn. So there’s… that’s one aspect of it, getting down to the real confession of what’s really in my heart.

And then, you asked about the gospel piece. I think, what enables me to disclose that is that I know that I’m loved and forgiven by Jesus, because I had so much fear and so much shame. It was really hard to sit down and write this book, especially that chapter where I uncover my own personal things that I’ve discovered in myself that I didn’t even know were there. So much shame and fear. And the only way I was able to do it, was because I knew that Jesus loves me and forgives me, and I had nothing else to lose. So Paul says we have to boast in our weaknesses. And we’re free to do that because we’re loved. There’s no other way that you can boast about your weakness and your shame and your failure, and not boast, as in, I’m proud or happy that this is here, but boast in the sense of like, “I’m going to be honest about this, even though our culture does not want to admit that these things are still here.”

Marc Schelske 40:41
Christians ought to be able to be at the forefront of of owning this, of saying these things are true about me and our community and, and taking steps to name that. And we can do that because of grace and forgiveness. But that still leaves it in the location of the individual heart. So what would you say about the place of this larger conversation about racial justice and the systems of racial discrimination? How do you see that connecting with the work of the church?

Sarah Sanderson 41:16
Well, I mean, when we when we’re talking about repenting, naming our own sins, naming our collective sins, the white church has a lot to repent of. In Jamar Tisby’s book, The color of Compromise, he does a great job of laying out in all these different denominations, and all these different churches throughout American history, the church has engineered and been complicit with white supremacy for hundreds of years. I think every town can do the work of finding out what its history is, and beginning to ask, “How can we repair this?”

Every family can do the work. Every church can do the work of asking both denominationally and locally, “Who are the people that founded our church? And what did they believe? And what did they do?” Is it easy to pull skeletons out of closets? No. But it’s important. I mean, I don’t know that I’m convincing your person, your mythical… not mythical… but your your person that you’ve invited into the room with us.

Marc Schelske 42:28
I don’t know that they’re going to be convinced, but I do think that it’s something that we need to talk about. Because when you think about younger Sarah, or similarly, younger Marc, being members of the Christian community, maybe even in roles of influence or leadership, being people who, as you said earlier, really thought we were saying and doing and believing the right things, really desiring, longing, to be of benefit to folks in the world, right? And even, like your trip to Malawi, even taking steps to do what, at the time, felt like constructive ways of making a difference. Those people also exist now. And in the same way that you said it was scary for you to think of naming these things as functioning in your own life, many folks in our peer community in the church are in that place right now. We have to invite those people to courage, right?

The people that are standing opposed to this are not going to be convinced by this. They’re not going to read your book, unless the Spirit does some amazing thing and transform the situation. That’s not who we’re talking about.

Sarah Sanderson 43:48
Right.

Marc Schelske 43:48
Right? We’re talking to the folks in the average church, down the street from where I live, who think of themselves as good people who want to do the right thing, who want to be part of God’s work in the world, but who are afraid to push into this space because of the social risk.

Sarah Sanderson 44:09
Yeah, I mean, that is a real fear. And I’m hoping to offer in my own self, someone who doesn’t have all the answers, but who’s willing to step into the conversation anyway. I don’t think we need to feel like we have to have all the answers before we step into the conversation. Because the conversation is both speaking and it’s also listening. And so maybe the first step for people in that position who are feeling afraid, not knowing what to say, the first step is to do more listening.

Marc Schelske 44:43
To help us with that gift, as we close, why don’t you name some of the specific books and resources that people who might be listening to this podcast can go to if they are people who have that interior sense that they want to be in this conversation… it feels like the right thing to be in this conversation, but maybe they’re afraid to ask or don’t know where to begin. What are the authors, the books, the resources, the people that they can pay attention to on social media that you might recommend as a starting point?

Sarah Sanderson 45:16
These are my top two books for Christians who… books for white American Christians, who want to get involved in this conversation, and they’re not sure how to start. So this one is Jamar Tisby, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism. So this is more of a history, and it’s pretty short. It’s not a comprehensive history, but it’s a history of where the American… the white American church has gotten it wrong. This book, Dear White Peacemakers, by Osheta Moore, is a lovely… there’s memoir, there’s some self-reflection, but there’s also a lot of speaking specifically to white Christians, and saying, “I know you’re afraid I know you’re scared. I know you don’t know how to speak into this. There’s grace for you.”

REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 46:14
I’m a white, middle class American Christian man. As I close this episode, I want to talk for a moment, to those of you who are like me, just a white Christian, talking to other white Christians for a bit.

Like Sarah, I grew up in the church with an authentic desire to do the right thing, to love like Jesus loves, like Sarah talked about, I would never have considered myself to be racist, precisely because I was told that racists were hateful, violent, wicked people. And because I didn’t think I was hateful or violent or wicked, I couldn’t see how my life was deeply formed by attitudes and assumptions about the superiority of white people like me.

It’s taken a long time, a lot of listening, a lot of paying attention to the lived experience of black people in America, and a lot of setting aside my own self-defensiveness, for me to see what I had not been able to see. Whether I like it or not, there are significant differences between the way I experienced this country, and the way that black Americans experience it. It took paying attention to hundreds of little puzzle pieces: how I felt when I got pulled over for speeding, the tone with which I felt comfortable addressing the officer, the ease with which I move in so many spaces, just acting like I belong there, just going wherever I want, the way that I’ve been able to easily get a mortgage to live where I want to live, the way my financial creditors have been willing to work with me when I had hard times, and so many more little details.

And then there was noticing the justifications I had adopted. You know: my life was easier because I was educated, I followed the plan, I was a good Christian, or because I followed the law, or because I had the good fortune of having two parents in the home. Now certainly all those things made a difference in my life. But I wasn’t able to see that there were many black and brown people with the very same qualifications I had, who didn’t get the same opportunities I got. It took a long time to understand that I’m the beneficiary of a system that was built, brick by brick, over 400 years expressly to benefit people like me. And that system has been in place for so long that it had become invisible to me. And because the system was invisible, I was able to believe that all of what I have, I have on the basis of merit and hard work alone.

The truth is I have worked hard, but so have many black and brown people. I’ve put in the time, but so have many black and brown people. I’ve kept the law and played by the rules, but so have many black and brown people. Look, I know how difficult it is to admit that there might be such a thing as a system of white supremacy that has structured this nation since its founding, since before its founding! I know how painful it can be to acknowledge that I’ve been the beneficiary of that system. I know how much anxiety there can be around this conversation. I know it’s controversial. I know it feels enormous. I know it feels too big to handle. But use your compassionate imagination for a moment. If the issue of racial disparity and injustice feels too big to handle for a white middle-class American Christian like me, like many of you, than how much more painful does it feel for the people that aren’t the beneficiaries of generations of benefit of the doubt?

The ethic that shapes the way I see the world is the other-centered co-suffering way of Jesus. The apostle Paul summarize this by saying that when we bear one another’s burdens, we fulfill the law of Christ. Well, my white brothers and sisters, there is a burden being carried in this nation by black and brown and indigenous people. And that burden is heavy. It is costly. It is unjust and it is not their problem to deal with alone. It seems clear to me, that for us to fulfill the law of Christ in this time and place, we have to join in bearing this burden until we find ways to relieve it.

It was white people, like me, who stood up in Oregon and said, “We want to be the kind of people who exclude others for our own advantage.” They said it outloud. They said it with white hoods in a public gathering space about 10 minutes from my house. They also said it in writing in the Oregon constitution. Like I said to Sarah, I can’t undo what was done in the past, but I can step up and say, “I want our community to be different.” Does that align with your heart? Then begin thinking about how you can be part of bearing this burden and repairing it. In our conversation, Sarah said, “I don’t think we need to feel like we have all the answers before we step into the conversation. Because the conversation is also listening.” She’s right. If your heart is moved, if you feel that something must be done, but if you’re not sure where to start, then make a commitment to start listening and see how the Spirit leads you. Will you step into this conversation?

May you find the courage to enter into this hard work, and may the Spirit guide your imagination to see how you can be part of repairing what was done, so that others can experience the fullness of life.

Thanks for listening. Notes for today’s episode, and any links mentioned can be found at MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW054.

If you found this conversation helpful, then subscribe to my newsletter, The Apprenticeship Notes. Get my writing about once a month, subscribe and you’ll also get the free little book I’m offering, The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. This spiritual practice that has been so helpful to me as I face the anxiety and uncertainty of our time. I used it this morning as I was thinking about the war that’s happening right now in Israel. Maybe you would find a place for a spiritual practice of centering like this. Subscribe at www.MarcOptIn.com.

Until next time, remember: in this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

There are many debates and disagreements within Christianity. Behind most of these, you’ll find one very significant issue. How we read the Bible. The way we read the Bible and what we believe about how the Bible came to be directly gets at what we believe about God. Can Christianity work if the Bible isn’t perfect?

Zack Hunt has spent the last decade writing about the interplay of faith and politics in the public sphere on his eponymous blog, Substack, and Patheos as well as contributing articles to multiple publications. He’s also made appearances in Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Huffington Post, and various other media outlets.

Marc Schelske 0:00
Hey friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 53. What if the Bible isn’t perfect?

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is made possible by Journaling for Spiritual Growth. This is my new book. It launched in November of 2022, so it’s just a few months old, but it’s already finding its people. And that is so exciting to me, especially since this is a book with a pretty small target audience. I heard from one woman who grew up in the church, and her comment after reading Journaling For Spiritual Growth was how relieved she felt. For her, this little book helped her to untangle her picture of God and find a healthy way to pursue spiritual growth. I teared up, listening to her.

Here’s an Amazon review that just moved me. “I wish this book had been around when I was at the start of my deconstructing process and trying to form a new connection to my last shred of spiritual practice with the Bible. After reading this book, I can tell you it is something special. I found this book clear, focused, and transparent in its intentions. It became my friend in a way as I explored the prompts. It makes room for one’s personal story and experience. Give it a try. I hope it gracefully surprises you as it did me.” As an author, I could not ask for higher praise than that.

This little book is a six-week process to gently guide you through building a lasting and sustainable journaling practice, where you’ll experience spiritual and emotional growth. My intention was to write something helpful and healing. And if that sounds intriguing, you can get it in all the book places where you can get a signed copy directly from me at my website. Learn more about the book and the places that you can get it at www.JournalingForSpiritualGrowth.com.

INTRODUCTION

Marc Schelske 1:50

There is significant division and disagreement in the greater Christian community. This includes long historical arguments about theology, like exactly what it means that Jesus saves us and exactly how that comes about, and arguments about what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus, even arguments about practical things like the role and rights of women, or the nature of the family, or the role of the church and its relationship to government. Important stuff.

In the moment we find ourselves in, we’re witnessing a resurgence of a kind of authoritarian Christianity that seems to believe that everything would be better if their sort of Christian was in charge of everything, in charge of libraries and schools and elections. Of course, there are many Christians, myself included, who see this tendency as opposed to everything Jesus stood for. And even that is another argument between Christians!

And behind these arguments, you’ll find one very significant issue. Rarely in life can you reduce so many complex problems to one issue, but in this case, I think we can. What’s the issue that has such a wide-reaching impact? How we read the Bible. How a Christian reads the Bible says something about what they think the Bible is about, how they think God relates to humanity, and what exactly they think about how God’s power works. All of these big ideas are wrapped up in this one very practical thing.

Christians come to the Bible with a point of view about what the Bible is. Theologians refer to this question as the matter of inspiration, and this is the heart of so many of our different ways of being Christian. So many of our arguments about the issue is more complex than a simple binary. We can, for our purposes today, suggest that there are two main schools of thought on inspiration.

On the one hand, we have folks who believe that inspiration means that the Bible, as we have it now, is exactly what God intended it to be. And because God’s not a liar, that means the Bible cannot contain any discrepancies or errors. This also means that the words in the Bible stand as an exact, clear revelation of God’s precise will. These folks see the Bible as primarily a divine document. For some of these people, the Bible becomes almost interchangeable with God.

On the other hand, you have folks who believe that inspiration means that, however, the Bible was formed, God was involved and is able to use the Bible as we have it now for spiritual purposes. Now, this group tends to think that the Bible is, in one way or another, primarily a human document.

Now both of these camps that I’ve explained in this simplified way have variations, and an honest accounting of these views would include a lot more nuance than what I just said. But the core question about inspiration remains the same. In what way is the Bible a divine document? And in what way, if any, is the Bible the human document?

Zach Hunt has been thinking about this for a while. He’s worked in church life and ministry in a variety of ways for more than twenty years. He spent a lot of time and effort thinking about how the church got into this position, both through his own formal education with a graduate degree in theology and another from Yale Divinity School in Christian history and then through his own work in the trenches of pastoral ministry where these ideas have to take on practical skin.

Recently, Zack released a book on the subject called Godbreathed: What It Really Means For the Bible To Be Divinely Inspired. And right away, in the introduction, he gets to the heart of this problem. These are his words: “When we treat the Bible and God as interchangeable, something else happens, often without us even realizing it. Because the Bible doesn’t exist on its own, because it was written by people in a culture and time far removed from our own, it requires interpretation. So when we make God and the Bible interchangeable, what we are also doing is making ourselves or rather our interpretation of the Bible, interchangeable with God.” And so I asked him to talk with me about this problem and how it underlies much of the tumult in Christianity today.

CONVERSATION

Zach Hunt 5:43
What I’m really trying to have a conversation about in Godbreathed is this baseline foundation of where we’re all coming from. Because the reality is none of us come to the Bible as a blank slate, you know. You hear a lot of folks talk about, you know, a plain sense of scripture or plain reading, or they’re just, you know, reciting the Bible, or, “if you have problems, take it up with God, or Jesus”, or whoever it is, and really is like, none of that is true. We come to it with a whole host of assumptions, and ideas, and beliefs before we ever open its pages. And that’s okay. It’s inevitable.

The problem is when we don’t acknowledge that. You know, the problem comes in when we act as if we are free from any sort of bias, or, you know, preconceived notions, that we come to the Bible as a fresh slate and that we’re just repeating the words, unfiltered, ideas unfiltered. And that’s almost never the case, even when we repeat Bible verses that we use as proof texts to prove our theology. Oftentimes, the words that we’re repeating are not the words that we’re saying in our beliefs. There’s translation. There’s interpretation that happens from the page to the profession that a lot of times we miss because we’ve been conditioned to think that, well, we’re just, you know, repeating the Bible. And so what I’m trying to really get to in this book really is twofold.

One is this idea that it’s okay to ask questions, you know. Because growing up in my evangelical background, in my immediate context at my church, you know, that was okay, but in the broader world, asking questions about the Bible, or doubting or pushing back a little and criticizing, you know, was blasphemy because the Bible was akin to God. And so, if you’re questioning or criticizing scripture, you’re spitting on the face of God. And so I want to give people permission to ask questions, to be free to wrestle with Scripture in the same way that the people of God have since before there was a Bible. I mean, you go back to the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible story of Jacob, and he’s literally wrestling with God. So the idea that we can’t do that with the words of people written about God is crazy. But that’s an unspoken–sometimes spoken in certain contexts–constraint that most of us face.

But the other was, is trying to approach scripture in a way that is honest and that maintains intellectual integrity. Because, you know, to hold up things like biblical perfection or inerrancy requires more mental gymnastics than I am physically capable of. It’s dishonest on the most basic level, but to get to that, the people who affirm it, don’t start there. They’re starting before that with a confession of faith. It’s already been decided before the folks who believe in inerrancy pick up the Bible that the Bible is perfect. And so they spend all their time from that point on trying to reconcile and do all this work that’s completely unnecessary because the Bible doesn’t need to be perfect to communicate truth because that’s not how truth functions.

You know, your parents teach you truth all the time growing up. Your teachers teach your truth. Your pastor teaches you truth. None of those people are perfect. And that’s what makes the Bible challenging is that it has both. We have to do the hard work of understanding those cultural contexts and facts. But we also have to do the work of understanding the role of storytelling, and how that worked in the ancient world, in the ancient Near East, and for the people of Israel, and why there is still truth to be gleaned from stories whether or not they took place historically,

Marc Schelske 9:21
We had a really interesting example of how this plays out practically last night in our discussion at church. The lectionary passage that we had last night was Matthew’s version of the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet. So we read this passage out, and we go through our discussion process, “What about this passage is meaningful to you” and something began to happen. People were talking about the story. They began unconsciously–not noticing they were doing it–to synthesize details from the different gospels, and those details were not in our text.

We stopped, and we said, “Wait, why do you why do you think that about this person?” “Well, the Bible tells us that this was a sinful woman,” and I’m like, “Wait, look at our text. Does our text in Matthew say this was a sinful woman?” We looked? No. Well, why do I think that? Oh, we flipped over, and we’re like, that’s in Luke’s gospel. Why do Matthew and Mark not name this person? Luke calls this person a sinful woman, and then John identifies it as Mary of Bethany. And Mary of Bethany was known to Jesus and the disciples. They were friends. So why wouldn’t the disciples and Matthew and Mark have recognized that it was Mary of Bethany? That doesn’t make sense. The minute I started asking this question of them, “Where are you getting that detail?” And we looked at the text, we’re like, “Oh, something is happening here.”

Why do we have this intuition to synthesize the stories? And I think it’s what you’re talking about. It’s that because we have this preconception that the Bible is journalistic reportage, that every detail is portable into all the versions. So like, for example, the metaphor that came up was that we think of the Gospels as four different security cameras aimed at the same intersection. And because they’re on different corners, they catch different details, but they’re all talking about the same event. But when we looked at the text the way we did, we’re like, that can’t actually be the case. Right? Just this one detail. The disciples knew Mary of Bethany. Why would they not have recognized her and left her unnamed in Matthew and Mark? Why would that be? That doesn’t make sense.

So what does that mean? Does that mean these are different events, and Jesus got anointed by multiple women? Does that mean that the human author of the Gospels had a point they were trying to make? Matthew’s version very clearly is making the point that this unnamed woman, who’s not a disciple, who’s an outsider, who wasn’t invited to the party, is the only one in the room who’s conscious that Jesus is about to die. That’s very clearly Matthew’s point. But Luke’s point isn’t that at all; Luke’s point is about forgiveness of sins. So these two narratives are talking about something different, and we can’t see that if we have to synthesize them into one story.

Zach Hunt 12:00
Exactly. And that gets to a big point that I try to hammer home, particularly in the second half of Godbreathed., The phrase or the idea that “the Bible says” is incoherent. It’s meaningless. Because the Bible doesn’t say anything. Because the Bible is not a book. It’s a collection of books. Some people have used the metaphor of a library, like a collection of books. I love that image. In the book, I talked about the Bible as an anthology. If there’s cohesion in the Bible, it’s this big story that’s being told. I mean, ultimately, that’s what the Bible is; it’s the story of the people of God, but it’s the story told by the people of God and how we understood God’s relationship with us and vice versa across time.

And if you understand in that sort of context and the sense of like a literary workshop that is continually being worked on, then the Bible becomes a sort of dynamic and living, breathing story today, not just this old book that sits on the shelf. Because you and I are part of the storytelling. You know, we may not write a gospel or an epistle or anything like that that gets canonized in the Holy Scripture, but if the Bible is the story of the people of God, that story did not end in the fourth century, or whenever you want to choose to say the Bible was, you know, closed. That story continues to be told.

Now that opens up a whole new can of worms about what inspiration looks like, you know, about the movement of the Holy Spirit, about how we interact with scripture. Those are huge questions that I only touch on in the book because, again, what I’m trying to get to here is we need to get back to the very, very basics. We have to start all of these conversations at the very, very, very beginning of what is the Bible before we get into this stuff about inspiration and healthier ways of reading the Bible.

I tried to tackle its history because I don’t think most people really are familiar with biblical history, not biblical history of, like, you know, when Joshua entered the promised land, but like, when was the Bible actually written? Who actually wrote it? How did it develop? Because I’m coming at this with several degrees and even, I was still surprised to learn new things. Mark is usually regarded as the oldest gospel that was written or the first gospels written. Mark was not written in the sense that we write a book today, like if you or I sit down, we write a book, it gets published in one single volume, but that Mark, maybe even other gospels as well–especially if you know the Synoptics are borrowing from each other (meaning Matthew, Mark, and Luke) this really, you know, makes a lot of sense.

Mark really started as a collection of what were essentially sermon notes, you know, of parables, of stories that were passed around by the disciples by other teachers, so that people had these notes to essentially preach from, to keep the story going and to continue to tell the story. And so those get coalesced into one single volume by an editor, by multiple editors, and then you have… You see this editing going on with Luke and Matthew off of Mark, and John’s over here doing his own, you know, wild and crazy things. If that is how the Gospels came about, if the Gospels come about over a longer process than most of us imagined, then there’s no original document to appeal to, to say, “Oh, the Bible is perfect in its original documents,” because those things don’t exist. I mean, in one sense, they literally don’t exist. I mean, we don’t have them.

Marc Schelske 15:13
Let me pause real quickly on this because I want to highlight something you just said that I think might be helpful to understand. So you just pointed to a phrase, critiquing that phrase, of “the Bible is accurate in the original documents.” And that phrase is important because that phrase is one of the stands that is taken by folks that hold to inerrancy.

Zach Hunt 15:36
Correct.

Marc Schelske 15:36
So sort of a simplistic inerrancy is the Bible that I have in front of me is perfect. But that can’t stand very long because when you read the Bible, as you have it in front of you, there are places that disagree. Something as simple as my example that in Matthew’s Gospel, the host of this meal was Simon, the man with skin disease. In Luke’s Gospel, the host was an unnamed Pharisee. That’s a difference. Maybe it’s the same person. But it’s clearly a difference, right? And so you begin to have to reconcile those things.

Well, a more nuanced version of inspiration is, “Well, the Bible is not perfect exactly as we have it today, because there’s been translation and scribal errors and transmission concerns, but the original document, what we refer to as the autograph that that parchment that Mark was writing on, that’s the document that the Holy Spirit inspired, and that document was perfect.” So that’s what you’re referring to, and it’s often held up as, “Well, yeah, we have these particular issues today in the text, but we can kind of wind our way past those.” But our confidence in Scripture is based on the idea that, in the original autograph, it was perfectly inspired without error. And you’re saying, well, in many cases, there’s no original document to lean on. The gospel that we have now is a curated document that’s built from a collection, and that collection existed because it was important to the people in the communities of the early church.

Zach Hunt 17:08
I think that’s a great point to hit on, you know, in the other direction. Because we’re critiquing conservative theology, but if you go to the other extreme, you get the “Dan Brown theology” (or theology is maybe too strong the word) conspiracies, you know, that the Bible was put together by a bunch… a secret cabal in Nicea in the fourth century, and they picked and chose blah, blah, blah. And that’s not true, either. I think exactly what you said is how I put it in the book as well. I mean, these are a collection of documents that came together because they were important to the people who read them. They were seen as true by the people who read them, even if those people did not experience those stories firsthand, even if those people had no way to prove historically that any of those stories were true, they were true to them because they had experienced that truth in their lives.

So, going back to the Hebrew Bible, that’s the reason that those stories were eventually written down, because they weren’t written down originally, either. They were stories told by campfires and out in fields and to your kids before they went to bed. The people of Israel wrote those stories down about Exodus and the promised land and things like that, and God being faithful because they experienced God’s faithfulness in their lives. There have been many times in church history, including today, where there are cabals of old men who make decisions and manipulate the church, but the coming together of scripture was not one of them.

But because it’s not that, it also speaks to the beauty of Scripture because it’s written by so many people. Like you said, we’ve got four different gospels, and you know, in the context of other faiths, that’s kind of weird. You know, why don’t we have one gospel? Why don’t we have one authoritative story? But that’s also very Christian, in the sense that we’ve got all kinds of churches and denominations and traditions and theologies because, at the end of the day, the stuff that we’re talking about is weird, and confusing, and huge. I mean, you’re talking about God becoming man and Resurrection, walking on water. Of course, there’s going to be different perspectives. And so when we try to flatten scripture into this one narrative, this one story, this one perspective, then we fundamentally don’t understand the Bible, we don’t understand the people, the story of the people of God, and I would argue, we don’t understand how the Holy Spirit works in terms of inspiration.

We look at 2nd Timothy 3:16, where we get the phrase theopneustos, which is the Greek word for “Godbreathed.” We think of that as sort of a one-off kind of moment, I think (again, not consciously), but you know, God breathed the scriptures, and we have them, and now we move on. But God breathing into, God breathing life, is an ongoing process. You know, we see that the beginning of Genesis when God takes dirt off the ground and breathes into it life, and gives humanity our start. We see it in Exodus when God breathes into the Red Sea, and it divides, and the people find new life on the other side. We see it–and this is how I conclude the book–we see it in the valley of dry bones with dead bones coming back to life, with flesh and sinews and eyeballs and ears and everything else. We see it in the tomb on Easter Sunday, where God breathes new life. And we see it every single day when you and I take a breath.

If we’re going to make the sort of claims that we do in the Christian faith, that God is the author of all existence, that God is the Creator, that God has all these big lofty things, then we owe our life to God, then therefore, that very breath that we breathe is God-breathed. And so that inspiration is an ongoing process, not a once-in-two-thousand-years one-off moment. If we understand inspiration in that way, that the Holy Spirit continues to breathe new life into us so that we can be inspired or in-filled with the Spirit, then our charge as a Christian is to continue to share that inspiration, that life, that God-breathed life, with others.

And if that’s the case, then scripture can only be used, or should only be used, in a way that generates new life, that is life-giving. So if we’re gonna talk about the Bible being God-breathed, then the Bible has to be life-giving or how we use the Bible has to be life-giving, otherwise we’re not using it in the way that it was intended to be used, either by its authors or by God. And I would go so far as to say that if we’re going to give a definition to blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, that ambiguous sin that’s mentioned in the New Testament, this would seem like it. If we’re going to take this text that we claim is breathed out by the very divine breath of God and is intended to bring life and hope and love to the world, and we use that and contort it and twist it into a weapon of death to wield against our enemies. I can’t think of a better definition for blasphemy of the Holy Spirit than that.

Marc Schelske 21:36
I had not actually made the connection before, I don’t know why, of the Genesis creation story of God breathing into the earth-formed body, God breathing in the breath of life, that that being the same act that Timothy’s passage is referring to–that’s really a great connection. And that passage when you brought it up, I think, is actually a really great illustration of the problem you’ve been talking about since the beginning. Right? Because that passage in Timothy that’s our proof text for inspiration, right? All Scripture is inspired for the purpose of teaching. Well, in order to understand that, I’m coming to the text with a pre-existing belief about what inspired means. Right?

So when I cite that verse to somebody in an argument, I’m like, well, “All Scripture is inspired, you know, this passage in Timothy says so,” I’m saying my particular view of inspiration–if I’m speaking from the view of plenary inspiration, verbal inspiration, it’s perfect without error, right? I’m bringing that meaning. That meaning is not in the text. The text just says all scripture is this Greek word that you cited, theopneustos, is God-breathed and useful for instruction. And then somebody has to look at that passage and go, “Well, what the heck does it mean for a passage of scripture to be God breathed? What is that about?” And if I bring my prepackaged belief that oh–you know, this is going to be a caricature, but this is what I was raised with. The caricature I was raised with was that Paul, or Mark, or John is sitting in a little, a little writing nook in their shed at a little wooden desk, with their papyrus, and there’s of like this Holy-Spirit-light beaming down on their forehead, and the words that are coming out, are precisely what God intends. Well, today, if I describe that process to you outside the context of Christianity, there’s a word for that. It’s called automatic writing. And it’s considered to be occultic.

Zach Hunt 23:34
Right. That’s the one I grew up with. And I talked about it. That was kind of my assumption as well. Yeah. I mean, we have to really step back and just ask basic questions. I don’t think that we do, because like you said, we show up and we’re like, oh, this verse means X, Y, or Z and we never stopped to think, “Well, why do you think that that means that?” I think that that’s a failure, not just on us as individuals, but on like, the church and discipleship. We’ve been conditioned for at least five hundred years to believe that salvation happens by faith alone. And so we’ve reduced “faith alone” to mean right answers. And so, we’ve streamlined the entire salvation process into essentially an assembly line of salvation, where you show up, you say the prayer, you believe the right things, we package you off, you go home, and you get to go to heaven. And that’s just not the biblical story. You know, if we’re gonna talk about a biblical story, that’s just… that ain’t it.

Marc Schelske 24:25
So let’s talk about one of the problems of what you just laid out. If part of what makes salvation possible is that we believe the right thing, if that’s one of the criteria, then it’s really important that you have a source of the right beliefs.

Zach Hunt 24:41
Absolutely.

Marc Schelske 24:42
That becomes fundamentally necessary. And so, depending on your tradition, you have a source. So in traditional Catholicism, the source is the Magisterium. You have the church saying, “This is the true doctrine about this idea, and if you agree with it, you’re in line with the church. You check that box. Post-Reformation, protestants don’t have a Magisterium that they call a Magisterium. They don’t have an official committee that says this is the thing. What we say is, “Oh, the Bible is our Magisterium; the Bible is our standard of faith and practice.” But in practice, the Bible has to be interpreted. That’s where you began, right? You began with the question that we all live in a culture. We all see the world around us in that cultural viewpoint. If I’m going to say about the Bible, “Oh, the Bible clearly says,” I’m reading my own cultural assumptions and predispositions to be able to say that, and now I have a source, which is my community’s Magisterium.

Zach Hunt 25:41
Right.

Marc Schelske 25:42
Whether that’s an official Magisterium, like the Catholic Church, or just my collection of John Piper books, whatever it is, I have a source. That source is what allows me to check the box of salvation that says I believe the right things about Jesus, God, eternity, and reality.

Zach Hunt 25:59
Exactly. Another phrase you’ll hear a lot, you know: “The Bible is my highest source of authority.” BS is what I would say. Because, one, that’s just intrinsically impossible. In making the Bible your source of authority, you are still the authority, choosing to make that your authority. You’re also making an authoritative decision on what those Bible verses mean, and which ones you’re going to follow, and which ones you’re not going to follow, and which ones you’re going to reconcile as weird and not applicable anymore. How I’m interpreting God’s authority in my life is still coming down to me, and whether or not I believe that that voice in my head is the Holy Spirit telling me to do something, whether I believe I’m being pushed or called, or however you want to phrase it. As Christians, we can die to self and do all these things we are called to do, but if we’re not honest about our role in that, that’s where problems become prevalent and where people end up getting hurt, abused, oppressed, marginalized, and even killed when we pretend as if “No, this isn’t me doing this. This isn’t my decision to X, Y, or Z, I’m under the authority of Scripture, I’m under the authority of God.

Marc Schelske 27:05
So somebody says, “Well, this is my view, (let’s say) on the role of women,” and someone argues back, and they’re like, “Well, you’re not arguing with me. You’re arguing with God.” And when they say you’re arguing with God, what they are actually doing is they’re pointing to a particular verse of scripture, and they’re saying that verse of scripture is God’s ultimate, all-time, perfect will for all cultures and all moments, and my understanding of that scripture is accurate. It’s a power move.

Zach Hunt 27:31
Oh, absolutely. It’s absolutely about power and manipulation. And it’s also deeply ironic because we’re appealing to the voice of God. You’re appealing to the scripture that we say is inspired to silence people. And yet one of the very first miracles of the Holy Spirit that we see in the book of Acts is the Holy Spirit enabling people to talk more, giving voice to the apostles to speak, and also for people to be able to hear in their own language.

I look at passages like that and say God wants these conversations. God wants us to be able to talk, to wrestle, to debate with one another. To me, that’s, again, why we need to look at the Bible in a different way than just this one volume, but all of these different voices. Because that’s what we see reflected in the Bible. It’s really the story of our own lives. Look at these stories as a reflection of ourselves. And when we do that, it makes more sense. Because we’re not perfect, we don’t have complete, total knowledge of everything. We’re gonna make mistakes. We’re gonna put our foot in our mouths, we’re gonna say dumb things, we’re gonna do terrible things. And we’re gonna do some terrible things in the name of God. And that’s exactly what you see in the Bible. All throughout the Bible is the story of the people of God, but it’s also our story. Because it’s people doing terrible things in the name of God. It’s people getting things wrong. It’s people doing great and beautiful and wonderful things as well.

And it goes back to these fundamental conversations about who we are as the people of God, what our story is, and where we come from. And so I hope people feel the same permission and freedom after reading this book that folks felt two thousand years ago when these stories that we’re reading in the Bible were written because you don’t have to affirm inerrancy to be a Christian. It’s a relatively new invention. You don’t have to believe the Bible is perfect. Contrary to what I was told, you can doubt or even disbelieve one part of the Bible, and that doesn’t mean everything else comes down like a house of cards because that’s not how the Bible works. You can believe that the creation story is a poem or a myth or whatever, that it’s not historically accurate–because science tells us that it’s not historically accurate, and Jewish rabbis will tell you that’s not really the point of Genesis one and two–but you can believe that and still believe other portions of the Bible are historically accurate because again, it’s not one book. Genesis functions differently than Psalms, which functions differently than gospels, which functions differently from the Pauline epistles, and Revelation, and so on. It’s about stepping back and just being honest about what the Bible is and who we are.

Marc Schelske 30:00
There feels to me to be a deep insecurity around scripture, around perhaps our basis for authority as a community. Maybe that’s part of what develops when Darwin comes out with evolution, and all of a sudden, we’re questioning. They’ve got the scientific method; what have we got? And so now we’ve got to start making biblical interpretation more scientific so that we can play in the same field. And so there’s this deep insecurity that we’re desperate to have one true meaning of the text, which requires a kind of understanding of inerrancy to even make sense. But in my own study, when I’ve begun to read the writings of ancient Christians, they just don’t have that insecurity about the Scripture. The Patristic writers, they were very clear. They’re like, “oh, yeah, scripture has multiple layers of meaning. And, and in fact, if you’re stuck on the literal meaning, that’s the most basic basic one. You got to get past that. You’ve got to get beyond the literal meaning to the spiritual meaning before you’re even experiencing what the Holy Spirit is doing.” They were not at all insecure about the idea that passages could be weird and that they could have disagreements, all that stuff. That was just like part of the deal for them. It seems like in evangelical Christianity, we’ve lost that capacity to play with scripture in that way.

Zach Hunt 31:19
Oh, absolutely. This is not liberal progressive Zach making up ideas. What you described is directly from Origen, who is one of the earliest theologians in the church, and who has had more influence on the development of Christianity than anyone outside of Paul and Augustine. He says there are two different senses of Scripture. You know, one is the literal sense, which are the words that are literally on the page. But then, like you said, there’s this deeper spiritual truth. And what he says–that to me was as liberating as it was provocative–is that he even goes further and says that there are certain… stumbling blocks is the phrase that he uses or how its translated–certain stumbling blocks or just wrong things in Scripture that can’t be true, that can’t be the way that we should do things. Things like “slaves obey your masters for this is right in the Lord.”

He goes even further than that and says that those stumbling blocks, those errors, were allowed to be there by the Holy Spirit to draw us beyond the literal words on the page and down into the spiritual texts or spiritual truth in the text. Which is, which is crazy! Because, on one side, it’s liberating and allows us to be open and honest and say, when Paul says, “slaves should obey your masters,” that’s just wrong. But what’s crazy is he’s essentially saying that the Bible is not perfect and God made it that way.

Marc Schelske 32:30
Right?

Zach Hunt 32:30
So what I love is it’s not just like him saying, yeah, the Bible is not perfect, and so you can have this squabble with Inerrency folks like John Piper. He’s just saying, you know, “the Bible is not perfect and it’s not just people’s fault. It’s God’s fault. Because God wanted it to be this way.” And I love it because what it speaks to is this authentic relationship, this authentic trust that God places in people to tell our story, to tell God’s story, to tell our story together. And that it’s okay if these things come in, if–and this is obviously a big if–if we can be open and honest about that. If we can say, this is just not wrong. This is a stumbling block; there must be something deeper there.

And I think that we can get to that deeper spiritual truth without having to have a Ph.D. in biblical languages and all this other scholarly work because there’s the other guy I mentioned before, Augustine, who jumps in and says exactly what Jesus says in the greatest commandment: if your interpretation of Scripture, no matter how great you think it is, no matter how much grammatical work you’ve done, language studies, exegesis, if your interpretation does not lead you to love God and neighbor more than you’re wrong. I can, in the 21st century, look at a passage like Paul saying, “slaves obey your masters,” and say, “Well, that’s just wrong because that doesn’t lead me to love my neighbor. Why is that? Why would that be in there?”

Well, then it takes me to that deeper spiritual sense and reminds me that I see in a mirror dimly, right that I see in Paul the same failings that are in me that are in people a hundred and fifty years ago, that we’re still enslaving people by using this very passage. But I see a flawed human being, I see someone who’s not perfect, I see a person who makes mistakes, I see a person who’s who’s just like me, still being used by God. And that’s a really beautiful, hopeful thing. And if we can begin to see scripture in that way, then I can be used by God, too. There’s a lot of hope and life, I think, to be found there. But again, it goes back to like fundamentally rethinking, you know, our relationship with the Bible, our understanding of the Bible, and our calling, you know, as the people of God,

Marc Schelske 34:27
There’s a way of talking about the flaws of inspiration that leads to ultimately no belief in scripture or no belief in God. And I think, quite honestly, that that’s an evangelical or fundamentalist response to the question. Usually, that’s a person who was raised in a community that said to them the Bible is perfect and every in every way, it doesn’t have any discrepancies or failures. And that’s because God doesn’t lie. And if one thing isn’t true, the whole house of cards falls down. And they’ve looked at it for themselves, and they’re like, “Well, okay, it doesn’t hang too. Gather so the Bible must not be true. And probably the idea of God I was given as a child isn’t true either. I’m out.” And so they have left, but they haven’t left… they’ve left in a way that is still fundamentalist…

Zach Hunt 35:12
Yeah, right.

Marc Schelske 35:14
…that’s still rooted in the idea that the Bible has to be perfect, and since it’s not perfect, I’m out. That’s not what you’re talking about. You’re talking about something else. And so I’d love for you to walk us in that direction. Because I’m sensitive to the fact that folks who were raised with this idea of inspiration, one of the benefits of this view of inspiration is a kind of security and a kind of certainty. I can trust who God is because I can trust what Scripture says. If I take that away, am I taking away certainty? Am I taking away a sense of security? But that’s not what you’re trying to do. So what is better on the other side of this conversation?

Zach Hunt 35:54
Freedom and love. I think those two things are foundational to the Gospel. It’s one thing to just talk about whether or not the Bible is inerrant or perfect, or historically accurate, or scientific, or whatever. You know, that’s one conversation. The other half of the conversation–this is where the book ends up–is what’s the point of the Bible? You know, what does it even exist for? What does Christianity exist for? Like, why would we follow Jesus? For me, it’s not stay or go; it’s not just those kinds of options. We can also rethink what it means to be a Christian and what salvation is about, and begin to rethink that maybe this isn’t just about me going off to heaven, but about me beginning to help bring heaven to earth as it isn’t heaven. Just like Jesus prayed!

We have other options for dealing with scripture, other healthier options, options that allow us to take it seriously, even if we’re not always taking it literally. Because sometimes, taking it literally prevents us from taking it seriously. What I’m trying to do is offer people the freedom to ask questions, to push back, to doubt, to acknowledge that, yeah, the Bible is wrong about some things. Some things are minor. Sometimes they’re scientifically inaccurate because these are people who lived 3000 years ago. But sometimes they’re big deals like “Slaves obey your masters,” or “women be silent in the church”, or, you know, “if your child has been unruly, take them outside of the camp and stone them to death.” If we as a people can’t say that is objectively immoral, then we have completely lost the plot of the gospel.

Marc Schelske 37:21
That moment, when we look at those passages and decide what to do with them, is actually telling on our view of God.

Zach Hunt 37:28
Exactly, yeah.

Marc Schelske 37:29
Because if I can look at that passage, “take your unruly kids outside the camp and stone them,” and I have to say, “Nope, God said that. That is God’s design,” then I’m just admitting that when I say something is good, I just mean it’s something that comports with the will of God, and God is how God is. Period. In this case, God is an authoritarian who doesn’t abide disobedience.

Zach Hunt 37:55
For me, when I talk about Augustine, Origen, and this hermeneutic of love, I’m not looking at love just as a lens through which to read the Bible but as the beginning and end point of everything. God is love. When we say that, the description of that loving relationship that we use in the Christian tradition is Trinity. You know, because God is in this loving community, right? God is in this loving communion of Father, Son, Spirit. And when we say that, it’s not a descriptor of God; it’s who God is. There’s nothing behind that. It’s not like I say, “Hey, Zack is bald and has a beard,” but there’s more to me than that. When I say God is love, that is the core of who God is. And so that’s the beginning, and if that’s true, that has to orient how we think about the Bible.

If the Bible is inspired, then it’s inspired by love, and so that has to guide our reading. And that’s what Jesus says when he says, “This is the greatest commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself.” It’s what Augustine is saying when he says you can’t interpret Scripture correctly if it’s not leading you to love. And it’s what I’m saying in Godbreathed. Love is not just this warm, fuzzy feeling but this call to justice, this call to a better, more hopeful, life-giving way of being in and for the world. That’s not just how we read the Bible, but it’s how we live life.

And so, ultimately, what I’m trying to do with Godbreathed is to get us to fundamentally rethink how we live. Because if we’re going to make the claim that the Bible is our foundation, and the Bible is our authority, things like that, then we have to describe how that is and how that plays out in life. And so when I, when Augustine, whoever, that I quote in the book, talks about love, it’s not just this warm, fuzzy lens through which we read the Bible, but it’s the beginning and end point of our lives as individuals and reality as itself. I think that’s what the gospel is telling us. The gospel is Jesus trying to restore this loving relationship between creation and its creator. It’s love that we read in Genesis when God takes that dust from the ground and breathed the breath of love, of God’s love, into it to create humanity. And it’s love that we see in the book of Revelation when God makes all things new and brings people together, and there’s no more sorrow or tears or dying because death is no more. I mean, that’s, that’s love, you know, brought to its completion.

CLOSING REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 40:03
As I said in the beginning, so many of the tensions and disagreements we have in the Christian world come down to how we read the Bible. And there’s an unspoken question behind that question. How do we see God?

If our picture of God is of a strict authoritarian who brooks no disobedience, who demands unwavering loyalty, who has no time or patience for the struggles and uncertainties of being human, then it makes sense that scripture would be a reflection of that kind of God. If that God is real, then scripture, of course, would be an unquestionable, incontrovertible manual for pleasing this God.

But if our picture of God is something different, if we see God as Jesus portrayed: as a father who runs to the lost son, as a stranger who picks up the wounded alongside the road, as a shepherd who seeks out that one lost sheep, if those pictures are trustworthy descriptions of God, then Scripture must also be something different.

Zack invites us to consider that possibility. He said in our conversation, “We have other options for dealing with scripture, other healthier options, options that allow us to take it seriously, even if we’re not always taking it literally. Because sometimes taking it literally prevents us from taking it seriously.” If this is new ground for you, that I invite you to ask those questions. And maybe Zack’s book is a good place for you to start.

May you find your way to a spiritual place that is full of freedom and joy. Rather than laboring under the harsh eye of a God who is constantly measuring you, may you see that you have always belonged, have always been loved, and are always invited to be part of God’s work of loving the world. Thanks for listening.

Notes for today’s episode and any links mentioned can be found at MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW053. If you found today’s conversation helpful, then subscribe to my newsletter, Apprenticeship Notes. This newsletter goes right into your email inbox about once a month. It includes a reflection written just for my subscribers that won’t be found anywhere else, insider information about my blog posts and podcast episodes like this one, books and spiritual practices that I recommend, and an update on my latest writing project. Subscribe now, and you’ll also get a free little book when you do. It’s called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. In this little book, I teach a spiritual practice that has been so helpful to me as I face the anxiety and uncertainty of our time, and I like to just share it with you. Subscribe and get that book at www.MarcOptIn.com.

Until next time, remember: In this one present moment, You are known, you are loved, and you are not alone.

Often the church seems in a panic to avoid the influence of culture, but what if the church is already fully bought into the assumptions of culture? Western culture assumes that strength, leadership, and being right are the way of success. Does the way of Jesus calls us to something different?.

Mandy Smith is a pastor, author, and speaker. She pastors St. Lucia Uniting Church, in St. Lucia, in Queensland, Australia. She’s a regular contributor to Christianity Today and Missio Alliance.

Marc Schelske 0:00
Hey friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 52. Childlike faith is better than childish faith.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Marc Schelske 0:18
Today’s podcast is made possible by the Untangled Workshop. Some of us don’t do too well with emotions, ours, other peoples’. It doesn’t matter. For some of us, they’re confusing. For some of us, they’re overwhelming. For some of us, it feels like we live at the whim of emotions that are explosively beyond our control. Others of us can’t seem to feel anything at all, even when it seems like we should.

For most of my life, emotions were a deep struggle for me. I had no idea how much my early childhood trauma had shaped the way I experienced my emotions. I just knew that my emotions, other people’s emotions, anyone’s emotions made me uncomfortable. Things are much better for me now, but I remember what that ache was like. And that’s why I teamed up with a skilled trauma therapist, Byron Kehler, to create The Untangled Workshop, a roadmap for understanding and navigating our emotions.

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INTRODUCTION

In the church I grew up in, we were regularly warned about the danger of culture. The gospel was going to be watered down by culture. Our witness was going to be undermined if we got too involved in culture. We were supposed to be countercultural, but not not like the hippies! We stood for truth and truth had to be protected from the infiltration of culture.

Now, there’s something reasonable about this fear. Culture is a powerful force. We all grow up within a culture, it’s unavoidable. The culture that we were raised in shapes our thinking and our view of ourselves and others. In this sense, culture is the sum total of the norms, expectations, commitments, and presuppositions that most everyone around us implicitly assumes. There are certain visible expressions of culture like music and movies. But behind all of this are these shared common assumptions. So this concern the church has about the danger of the influence of culture makes some sense. We can and often do find ourselves living in a culture that operates from very different values than what we want to live by, or from what we believe God’s calling us to live by. In the normal process of getting along in life, it’s very easy to accommodate and normalize attitudes and values that we disagree with. When the values of Jesus conflict with the values of the world that we find ourselves in, we ought to pause and consider our participation. That all makes sense.

But the particular concerns we had, at least in the church tradition that formed me, were quite narrow. We were concerned with things like movies and music and entertainment. We were quite worried about particular folks that we thought would lead us away from our supposedly Biblical worldview, like feminists and liberals! And yet, as a child of the church who has been observing and thinking about this stuff for a long time, I’ve long suspected that maybe we’ve been focused on some of the wrong things. And perhaps by being so distracted by our particular list of moral concerns and cultural enemies, we failed to notice other much more significant ways that our culture has shaped the church.

This past year, I was introduced to pastor Mandy Smith. She has been thinking about how we follow Jesus for a long time. Her first book, The Vulnerable Pastor: How Human Limitations Empower Our Ministry, suggested that maybe some of our foundational ideas about leadershi– being in charge, being strong, being the person up on the stage–are actually getting in the way of following Jesus well. But her next book… man, the subtitle of this book really intrigued me. The book is called, Unfettered: Imagining a Childlike Faith Beyond the Baggage of Western Culture. In this book, she spoke directly to this concern I’ve been feeling. Is there something in the culture that formed me, something deeper than the concerns I grew up with in my church community, that was twisting the way I was living and experiencing the way of Jesus, that was even twisting the way the church shapes itself in the world.

In the introduction to Unfettered, Mandy talks about two postures that are deeply embedded in us, at least those of us formed by the pervasive influence of Western post-enlightenment culture, I think, therefore, I am. And I do therefore I am. She suggested that these two postures are an inheritance from Western culture, actually some of the foundational drivers of why our culture is the way that it is. And then she suggests that when we are led by these motivations, we live in ways that don’t seem very much like the good news of Jesus at all. So I asked her to unpack that with me.

INTERVIEW

Mandy Smith 6:14
I’ve also had experience in a church that was very worried about being pure in a in a culture that was going to taint our faith. And in a way, those kinds of concerns about movies or music or whatever are easier concerns, because you can see them, you can see…

Marc Schelske 6:35
Right.

Mandy Smith 6:35
…oh, that movie has this scene in it, s o therefore I will not watch that movie. The kinds of things I’m talking about are just in the water, harder for us to really name. And sometimes even the way that we do the kind of critique of culture that we were just talking about, is more telling of the way that we’re shaped by culture. The way we do things is a part of our theology as well. And so if we bring in all of the polarization from culture, for example, into the way that we’re dealing with the more obvious elements of culture than it just shows how we’ve been shaped in our culture. We’ve been shaped in our own character, in the very foundations of our faith in ways that, sadly, are more challenging. We’ve been discipled, really, by our education, by the media, by culture. It’s just what we swim in.

So the trickier thing is to stop and be aware of these habits that we have, which makes sense when we live in a culture that that is secular, that in many ways doesn’t even claim to be founded on submission to God. So we shouldn’t be surprised. It’s not being dishonest about it. But if the culture that we live in is shaped by an assumption that ultimately human agency and human intellect is our hope, then of course that will become how we are shaped even as Christian people. And so, I’ve noticed in myself, even, you know, daily things, that I am doing very Christian things… you know, as a pastor, even the way that I prepare to preach, which would feel like one of the most Christian things you could do perhaps…

Marc Schelske 8:27
Yeah…

Mandy Smith 8:27
…It’s so easy to do in a secular way. It’s so easy to do in the way that the world would do it, which begins with the assumption that it’s all up to me.

Marc Schelske 8:37
Okay.

Mandy Smith 8:37
And while I would claim… if you asked me consciously, “Is God helping you write your sermons?” I would say, “Yes, of course.” My theology, my conscious theology, is one way, but theology is also expressed in our habits, and our instincts and how we actually make choices in the moment. So in the moment when I’m anxious about whether my sermon is going to be very good, and every single week, I have a fear that this is the week I have nothing to say, every single moment, you know, every time when I’m like, Okay, it’s time to get work on that sermon, and the anxiety is there, and everything in my culture has taught told me, when you feel that anxiety, that’s a sign you’ve got to really work hard.

Marc Schelske 9:19
Mmm, Okay.

Mandy Smith 9:20
And so the first thing I want to do is get in front of my laptop and just bang away feel, like I accomplished something. But if I really believe what I claim to believe, that God is the author of every sermon, that God is writing the sermon in me, that God is already working in my congregation, and knows how this passage of Scripture is going to mean something to each single one of them, then wouldn’t I actually begin in a different way? Wouldn’t I stop to say, maybe there’s already a power at work that I just need to somehow join. I need to set aside my own power long enough to figure out a way to join this thing that’s already surging in and around me. But it’s really deeply ingrained to do the other thing.

Marc Schelske 10:06
Yeah, I mean, that idea that the whole goal of life is about attaining, holding on to, and expressing power–that is the world that we are just soaked in. Competence is one form of that. Hustle culture is a form of that. And we’re not even talking about expressly Christian things. And yet, as you say, these are ways that we engage our life in our faith, our relationships, even inside the community of folks who’ve said, “Yep, I follow Jesus, Jesus way is What matters to me.” Your statement, “theology is expressed in habits,” really grabs my attention. I’d love to hear you talk a little bit more about that.

Mandy Smith 10:54
One way that really is telling is when suddenly there’s a crisis. You know, you’re in an elders meeting, and you’ve just discovered that the offering is tanking, and you got to fix this now. Or I’m often in spaces where it’s a denominational, kind of level, and there’s a problem. All the churches are shrinking, and we got to fix this thing. And it is interesting, because the more evangelical or conservative spaces often go to a place of strategizin. You know, get the consultant in, get some guy in to come and tell us how to fix it, or read a book, we’ll do a thing. Sometimes when I’m in the more progressive spaces, it becomes this kind of… let’s just have a think tank, you know, we’ll have a collaborative conversation, and we’ll get to the bottom of this thing. We’ll lament, and… you know. I’ve been in both of those kinds of rooms, and I don’t want to make fun of other people, because I do the same thing.

When I’m chairing the meeting, it still goes the same way, but it’s more… maybe it’s easier when someone else is chairing the meeting to notice it. That it just spirals. It spirals into anxious… a kind of despair, a kind of desperation. It’s that feeling that often makes me think, hang on a second. This is this is a sure sign God is not in this, because even when things aren’t great, and we haven’t got the answers yet, when God is involved in the conversation, there’s a lightness about it. You know, there’s a… when you see all the psalms of lament, Yes, something’s wrong, but the Psalmist just pours that out to God, and there’s a space where you feel seen and held in that, even even before any resolution comes or any change is possible. You see in those psalms, almost all of them turn to praise and thanksgiving.

Marc Schelske 12:52
Yeah, and the thing’s not even fixed yet. If we think about the narrative sequence of the Psalm, whatever was causing the lament is still probably going on!

Mandy Smith 13:03
Yeah. So this is not to say that we shouldn’t have conversations, and have think tanks, and that we shouldn’t have a strategy. My question is what’s the order of this? So the way I often put it is that our western culture has taught us that it’s all up to you. This is why we’re all burned out and exhausted and doubting. It’s because there’s this fundamental kind of assumption underneath it all that It’s all up to you.

Marc Schelske 13:31
Yes!

Mandy Smith 13:32
Which is not a hopeful space to be in. No wonder we’re all depressed and anxious. And so in that moment, the knee jerk response… you know, there’s a crisis. It’s just hit the fan in our personal life, or in our church, or in our denomination or whatever, and we have been shaped by a culture that says, respond, respond, respond, respond, fix it, answer it, solve it, go, now. And we just do not have everything at our disposal to be able to do that. It’s always going to be a desperate endeavor. So, I see us as Christian people, who would claim to trust that God ultimately is carrying everything… we kind of ping pong back and forth from “It’s all up to God” to “It’s all up to me,” and back to, “It’s all up to God.” Because it feels really spiritual to say, “Well, it’s all up to God.” But we still have to do things. We still have to get up and preach that sermon or plan that thing.

Marc Schelske 14:31
Right!

Mandy Smith 14:33
And so then once we’re engaged, then it’s back to being all up to us again. And neither of those actually requires any partnership with God because either he’s doing it all or we’re doing it all.

Marc Schelske 14:44
Right. It’s almost like we don’t know, we don’t have a model, maybe, of what that partnership looks like. Because the response of saying, “Well, it’s all up to God,” I think for many of us feels like we’re saying, “Well, I should be passive. I should not take action. When I should not push… on the progressive end of things I could sense myself saying, “Well, I don’t want to impose power into this situation. I want to step back and not drive it. And even that is a kind of passivity which we, sort of from life experience, we’re like, “well, that’s not going to get anything done.” And it’s going to leave a vacuum for somebody else to step in, and they’re just going to do the thing that I’m not doing. They’re going to take charge.

Mandy Smith 15:25
Right.

Marc Schelske 15:25
So we have all this going on in our head. So what does it look like? Maybe this is a conversation worth digging into, then. What does it look like to try doing those things in a different way? What does that different way even mean?

Mandy Smith 15:41
Yeah. So we still do have a call to respond. Passivity is not… I don’t know why we think passivity is this inherently Christian thing? Jesus emptied, yeah… but he got up and he did stuff all day long, you know. He said, “Yes” to the Father. So, what I propose, and it starts… It’s Alliterative, so it must be true–is that we do have a response, but it’s not the first thing. So I say Rest is our first response. And from that Rest, we always Receive something. When we’ve set aside our own agenda and our own power, we always Receive something and then we know how to Respond. And that rest may be, you know, go on a sabbatical.

Oftentimes, it just means take a breath, stop. I’ve been in so many rooms, where there has been some kind of crisis that’s just hit the fan and somebody is good enough to think, hang on a second, let’s pray. Let’s sing a worship song, or let’s read a passage of scripture. And I’ve never seen that happen without it bringing some kind of… it’s like someone just open a window and the air is just different. And it doesn’t mean that it’s been resolved necessarily. We may not know the answer yet. But in every situation I’ve seen it happen, it’s brought just a different peace. It’s reminded us, okay, we don’t have to fix this this second. Or it’s reminded us of something from from our past. It’s given us a new imagination of the future. It’s maybe made us remember, oh, there’s a person we need to bring into this conversation. It’s just brought a different something into the room that’s reminding us we’re not alone in this.

And this, for me, comes from Jesus saying, “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest, and take my yoke upon you.” It’s kind of an oxymoron, but this is the kind of rest that He invites us into, that is not rest and do nothing. Like, “You chill, I’ll take care of the world for you.” And it’s not, “You’re out there doing everything in your own strengths. And I’m chilling back in the throne room, because I’ve sent you out to do my mission on on my behalf.” I don’t know where I pick it up, maybe youth group camp or something, this sense of like… maybe it comes from like pilgrimage days, or crusades, or something of like, the king has called me into the throne room, and he’s given me a mission, and he sent me out. And in that metaphor, he’s still back there in the throne room, and he’s sent me to do hard stuff. And so when it gets really hard, I resent him. And that doesn’t feel very hopeful.

But what about this possibility that God is already on mission in the world. And for some reason, he wants us to deal with him, like we bring something to it. Maybe the joy of watching it unfold, and the the way that we’ll need to depend on him when it gets really hard. I don’t really know exactly why he doesn’t want to do it by himself. But I love to imagine instead, that we have the kind of father who just wakes us up in the morning really early, and it’s like, “There’s something going on today. I want you to be a part of it. Grab a few things. We’re going. Like, there’s an adventure in store. And it is going to be hard, but I’ll be there with you when it gets hard. And so then the partnership is possible, and then when it’s difficult, it just it requires us to dig even deeper into our reliance on him.

So I summed it up with this, with this invitation to begin with rest, which is the opposite of what our culture tells us. But if it’s not all up to us, we have that beat. You know we have that moment to say, “Yes, Jesus invites us to rest in Him.” And whatever yoke we take up is a yoke we share with him. You know, we have this image of this double yoke that that the older ox would carry most of the weight and be the one guiding the younger ox sharing this yoke together. And that feels more like partnership. That feels more like relationship.

Marc Schelske 20:00
Yeah.

Mandy Smith 20:01
And that feels more hopeful.

Marc Schelske 20:03
There’s a great deal of trust that is shifted there, right? Because the model that you ascribe to our western cultural heritage, the trust is really in me. If I’m trusting in myself, rest is about rejuvenating my resources. So the rest I do so that I can recharge whatever resource I have, so I can again, trust in my ability to get this job done. What I hear you saying is that the rest is actually because we’re trusting God’s presence, and we’re trusting God at work, and we’re trusting that somehow we’re caught up in what God is doing. And so the rest is about embodying that. I don’t have to rush into a solution, if I actually trust God is involved in this conversation already.

Mandy Smith 20:51
Oh, absolutely. Yes, it’s fundamental. And the things that we are longing to see, you know… we’re longing to see lives transformed, our own and others, we’re longing to see communities renewed, we’re longing to see the church actually remember her mission and be flourishing and fruitful again. We’re longing for the whole world to be restored. And maybe that happens on the other side of our control.

Marc Schelske 21:18
Maybe! Pretty sure…

Mandy Smith 21:21
Yeah. So the places where I have just been wrapped up, caught up in something that that was so transformative and beautiful, it’s been a space where I’ve had to step out of my comfort and, and say Yes to things that make me feel really stupid, or where I’m worried about being embarrassed, or I’m worried about being disappointed. And it makes sense, really, because of the really transformative moments are moments where nobody planned it. You know, where it just kind of happened. And it comes from this space of saying yes to things that we didn’t make happen. So even, you know, having a time of opening up the floor to somebody else in the middle of a church service, somebody who we don’t know what they’re going to say, and that very sense of not being in control and not understanding what’s about to happen is a transcendent moment. But it’s scary if we want to be making sure every minute is programmed and everything is controlled, you know.

Marc Schelske 22:20
In Unfettered, you play with this idea of trust, trusting rest, and the activity that grows out of that, if that’s a fair way to put it. You play with that idea using the language of childlike faith versus childish faith, I think. Can you talk a little bit about what those distinctions meant for you, how that was helpful for you and thinking through these things?

Mandy Smith 22:46
You know, this does not begin as a theological endeavor, or a primarily intellectual endeavor. It was a personal experience, that then I had to read and talk to people and figure out what on earth is happening to me. I was really surprised when I started looking into the childlikeness stuff, because Jesus specifically says, “Unless you become like a child, you can’t enter the kingdom.” And we’re all busily thinking, like, “How do we get into the kingdom?” And I don’t hear anybody saying, “Oh, he told us already. It’s really simple.” You know…”

Marc Schelske 23:16
Right. Be childlike.

Mandy Smith 23:18
And if we ever do see anything about that, it’s usually whimsy and wonder, which is lovely, but you can’t live in that space. That’s nice for when you’re on going for a walk or on vacation or something. And so then we don’t know how to actually live daily life like a child. And I think it has a lot… in the way that Jesus is talking about it, it seems to have a lot to do with not expecting to be in control, not being surprised that you’re small, not being ashamed that you’re limited. And so much of our western culture really does shame human limitation.

Marc Schelske 23:54
Right, yes!

Mandy Smith 23:55
There’s this there’s this kind of assumption that like, you know… most of our ads are like, something’s wrong with you, because you haven’t figured out how to keep your hair from falling out yet, or how to make your children eat their vegetables or whatever, so just buy this product, and you’ll be like everybody else who somehow doesn’t have to struggle with that human limitation. All of that reminds me so much of Jesus’ temptation in the in the wilderness. I feel like there was an ad campaign happening there, too, you know. He refused to be ashamed of his humanity or his humanness. I love him for it, because he was not ashamed our humaneness. The strange experience of being a human being is the experience that I think we were more comfortable with as children. So the whole point for me about the childlikeness is to remember we have done this before, and we can do this again. As human beings, we are limited, we get tired, we run out of ideas, we get old, we get sick, all of those things are true.

And as human beings, we also have this remarkable quality about us that has this capacity to create, and to love, and to make a difference in the world. God gave us… You know, in creation, God gave us this partnership with him to steward this beautiful creation that he’s made. You know, even if we didn’t have ideal childhoods, there still was a way when we were children that we were more comfortable being humans, that we weren’t surprised if we couldn’t solve all the problems. That would just remind us, we should ask for help. We weren’t ashamed if we couldn’t do everything ourselves, but we also knew… I’m gonna… I’m walking into this room, and I have something to say.

Marc Schelske 25:36
Yes.

Mandy Smith 25:37
And there’s something really beautiful about finding the balance of those two things. So for me, the childlikeness is being unafraid to be powerless. And I also talk about adultlikeness, which is being unafraid to be powerful, because we often don’t talk about the negative side of being an adult either. So, if you ever say, “We should be childlike,” somebody will always say, “But don’t be childish!” you know. And for me, “childish” is this kind of passivity of like, “Oh, I’ve got nothing to say, I’ve got nothing to bring,” which feels really humble, and feels kind of Christlike, but it actually can be disobedience if God is calling us to use our agency. Underuse of power is also power abuse.

Marc Schelske 26:22
Yeah.

Mandy Smith 26:23
The other kind of power abuse is the one that we talk about more often, which is adultishness, which is being afraid of powerlessness. So wanting to always be in control. And so the beauty, the balance is found in knowing we’re not everything, but knowing we still have something to bring, and stewarding that faithfully.

And I will just say this one thing, that I think it’s really important at this moment where we are thankfully, having really good conversations about abuse of power. I never know how to say this well, without sounding kind of bitter about this. But the reality is, most of the power abuse that we see in politics and in the church has been masculine power abuse, because women haven’t had a chance to. We don’t even know how women abuse power! I hope we get a chance to find that out. So this is not to say that men are the only ones who do it, they’ve just been the ones who’ve had the most opportunity. And so it would be really helpful, in my mind, if while we’re having these conversations, we talk about the ego, all that kind of stuff are the traditionally masculine ways that power is abused. And there may be some women who have used power in that way too. In my experience, and in the experience of many women that I talked to, power abuse looks more like avoiding power altogether.

At this moment, when we are saying, “Don’t seek the limelight, don’t reach for the microphone, don’t pursue positions of influence,” I see how that’s an overreaction to the abuses of power in the ego sense of things. But it has really done a number on me and people like me, that speaks directly to my temptation to avoid power, and to avoid the agency God has given me, I just think we need to be really careful because there’s there’s also a kind of power abuse in under-use of our agency, because God has called us to speak and proclaim something into the world, to make a difference in the world and to act on his behalf. Which is terrifying, because you can make a lot of mistakes! Yeah, it’s easier to do nothing. So that’s a long answer to your question. But that’s what comes to mind for me with childlikeness and childishness.

Marc Schelske 28:32
So maybe you could share some thoughts of how that shows up in practical ways, maybe in your own life experience or ministry experience.

Mandy Smith 28:41
Yeah, I remember being in an elders meeting a few years back, and we were making a big decision on behalf of the whole congregation. We’d gone through a whole process over about six months. We brought somebody in to help us think about it. We prayed about it. The elders had all made themselves available to the congregation. We’d had meetings and conversations. It was time to just make the decision. And we all felt like, “Yea, we should move ahead into this.” And in this elders meeting, somebody said, “Oh, but you know, we should just put it in the bulletin one more time and say, we’re thinking we’re going to go in this direction, unless somebody has a problem with that.”

And that sounds really humble. And I do think that that’s the kind of thing that we do when we are worried about power abuse. And I think this person had good motives, that they know, it has happened in churches many times before that the leaders just walk all over everybody. I get it, but I was surprisingly disturbed, because there was this roadblock in this ability to just say it’s time to make a decision and move forward. And that is a really risky moment. You know, that’s really scary. And this is What leadership is, is saying someone’s got to make a decision and risk failing and looking stupid.

And so, I actually preached a little sermon, and I think I was preaching it to myself at the same time, because I was just processing some of these things myself. I said, You know, Jesus had authority. Jesus astounded people with his authority. And we just think authority is a negative thing because it has been abused, but Jesus’ Authority came from his submission to the Father. He wasn’t just stomping all over everybody, he had emptied Himself, and so whatever he received from the Father, he has the right to bring… in the same way that a parent has authority over the child, not because the parent is just the boss, but because the parent has given so much for that child. You know, you’ve lost sleep, and you’ve prayed, and you’ve read books, and you’ve tried to figure out how to help this kid grow up. That doesn’t mean that a parent is 100% correct all the time, but it means the parent has a right to speak into that child’s life.

And so I kind of preached this little sermon to the elders and said, each one of you has had dozens of conversations with people in this congregation, we’ve prayed, we’ve given our time and our energy to this thing. We have authority because we have submitted to the needs of this congregation. We’ve listened and we’ve prayed. And now we have the right to act and make a decision. I think it’s really good for us to acknowledge that it is really scary to use that agency and to step into that authority, but the kind of authority that isn’t abusive is the kind that comes from our submission, our emptying. It’s not just “I get to stomp around and boss people around,” you know? It’s coming from how we’ve emptied.

Marc Schelske 31:30
That’s really good and helpful, I think. I tend to be on that side… because I’m so concerned about the way power has been abused in the church, I tend to be on that side of almost thinking of power in itself as a bad word. And to think of the emptying, the kenosis, that we get out of Philippians 2 in Jesus life… I mean, it’s clear looking at Jesus’s life, whether the kenosis refers to the incarnation, or whether it refers to his humble demeanor, or whether it refers to the cross, all of those things are acts of agency. Maybe agency is a word that I can use more safely than power. They’re all acts of agency, where he’s moving in a particular direction with a particular agenda. He is doing that, right? So then what would the emptying out be? Well, the emptying out is that it is entirely other-oriented, it is taking into account the real and authentic needs and experience of the people that he’s serving. It is not about self-building. It is not about self-protection. It is not about trying to appear strong or competent or brave or in charge, right? So if we strip out those things, which are the things we’re so used to being the definition of what it means to be a competent person, then maybe there is a model for agency that is self-giving and other-centered.

Mandy Smith 32:53
Yeah, yeah. Because for me, so the way this actually unfolded, I was on a sabbatical, and I was like, “What am I supposed to do with myself, Lord?” And I felt this permission to just be like a child for eight weeks. Just eat when I feel like eating, and go where I feel like going, and cry if I need to cry, and nap if I need to nap, which is great. Man, that sounds good, doesn’t it? I could use that right now. And what it ended up becoming was just remembering those little urges that you had as a child of like, “I just feel like lying in the grass and I’m gonna line the grass.” But it took a little while to get back… to kind of clear away that junk that’s in the way of those little moments of like, “Huh, I wonder if that moss is really soft, it looks really soft. I’m going to touch it.” And I promised myself I’m just going to say Yes to every single one of those things. As long as it’s not illegal or dangerous or whatever, I’m just going to say Yes. And it was so surprising how many adultish kinds of Western kinds of habits were keeping me from that joy and that childlikness. That it was like, “You know you’re gonna look stupid. You’re gonna be disappointed.”

Marc Schelske 34:04
Yeah.

Mandy Smith 34:04
Why would you bother? That’s a waste of time. You’re an important person. Important people don’t lie on the grass.

Marc Schelske 34:10
Right, right! Yeah, exactly.

Mandy Smith 34:12
And that started making me think, like what is it that so precious about these things that seem like nothing… Lying on in the grass seems like nothing, and yet there’s this almost like spiritual warfare happening when I’m wanting to do it. And it made me even more determined, like, dang it. I’m gonna lie in the grass, if it kills me.

Marc Schelske 34:32
Yeah, those formational voices are so loud and weirdly also, while being loud, easy to not notice.

Mandy Smith 34:42
Yes, it was just this kind of instinct that came along, there was this joyful instinct that just wanted to explore the world, wanted to partner with creation. And then there was this other instinct that was like, “Just protect yourself. Worry about what everybody else thinks,” which is this adultish kind of something in us, which just made me so sad. And so for eight weeks, I was like, I’m not listening to you. I don’t care. But it was real. I don’t want to minimize it. It was real. I remember one day, at the very beginning, I felt this instinct to drag a stick along a long fence in a park. And I was halfway along the fence, and I was like, “Oh, I’ve got to go back to the beginning of the fence now and find a stick.” And I couldn’t find a stick. It became this real project now. And so I was like, “Oh, I’m gonna drag this stick along this fence, if it kills me.” And I was really self conscious, because other grownups are walking past and I was like, “What are they gonna think of me, I’m supposed to be a lead pastor, I’m supposed to be, you know, sensible person.”

Anyway, all of this is just to say that when I was wrapping up my sabbatical, I had awoken something in me… I’d had eight weeks now, and I’d awoken something in me, and I could no longer tell the difference between my childlike instinct and the Spirit of God in me. I was just so awake, so open to the world. And when I went back to work, it took on a much more serious turn. This is where I had to learn about agency, because it wasn’t just like, “oh, doesn’t matter if I lined the grass or not.” Now it was the very first week I went back to work, we read the passage from James that says, “If anyone among you is sick, then call the elders and pray and they will be healed.” And when I heard that being read, I saw the picture in my mind of a woman from our congregation, who, if you would ask me, the person who was hardest to imagine being healed, it was this woman. And I just felt this childlike thing in me that was like, “Pray for her to be healed.” And I had to make a promise again, I’m going to say Yes, because all that junk came at me again. “You’re gonna look…” even more so! “You’re gonna look foolish, you’re gonna disappoint people, you’re going to be disappointed.”

I was not a part of a tradition that does healing prayer. I didn’t know how to do healing prayer. And I know that it can be abusive sometimes, too. That the person being prayed for can be wrung through the wringer. I know that’s traumatic for people sometimes. So I was like, I don’t want to do it, but I’ve promised God that I will say Yes to these prompts. And that took our whole congregation on this journey of learning how to pray well for people. And it started… At first, I didn’t do it, and I mentioned it in passing to someone else, and they said, “I had the same image in my head when we heard that passage.” So then I was like, Oh, dang it. Now we have to do something. And so I thought, well, the passage says to call the elders and pray for that person, so I just called the elders to pray. And the more people who heard about it, the more people said, “I’ve been wanting to ask the healing prayer for me as well.” So instead of us as elders praying for this one lady, twelve people came to ask for healing prayer.

I read the passage from the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus says, “Father, all things are possible with you. Take this cup from me, and not my will, but yours be done,” which I think is the most perfect prayer. That’s not a model prayer that we think of in the way as the Lord’s Prayer, usually, but it’s such a beautiful prayer when you just really want something, but you also just want to give it over to God, whatever the outcome is. So we pray that prayer. We said, “God, you can do everything, heal this person, but not our will, but yours be done.” Which we summed up by saying, we don’t know What God will do, but we know What he can do. To live in that beautiful space where we’re gonna assume God is working, but we also can’t ever know exactly how he’s going to work.

So all of that is a very long way of saying, what began with just a childlike instinct of lying in the grass–and nobody saw me, and it doesn’t matter if I did it or not–became a very public… I mean, it became the way that I lead now.

Marc Schelske 38:52
Hmm, wow.

Mandy Smith 38:54
Leading, doing important things, of sensing a prompt from the Lord and saying Yes to it. And it’s terrifying, because I have no idea what’s going to become of it. And it also is the space where anything transformative, anything powerful and miraculous comes. I have to keep doing it. But, and I was actually just lying in bed this morning, praying for this podcast and remembering this, that sometimes the childlike Yes, sometimes that obedience takes you into really hard things.

Marc Schelske 39:26
Yeah.

Mandy Smith 39:28
So, this is where that adultlikeness comes in, of the perseverance, and the tenacity and the patience. So it’s not like, you know, that was wonderful because it became a wonderful prayer experience for our whole congregation, but that person wasn’t healed in the way we expected. In fact, they passed away. And right now my ministry, you know, I’m in a space of doing regeneration work in a congregation that has almost closed its doors, and there’s some really hard stuff. There’s something cruciform about that, that God… Jesus’ childlike obedience to the Father took him to the cross.

Marc Schelske 40:12
Yeah. Yeah, right.

Mandy Smith 40:14
So it doesn’t always become something fun. But also his childlike obedience to the Father is what got him up every morning to go out and proclaim good news in a world that needed it. And that got him rejected, that got him in so much trouble. But it brought the kingdom.

Marc Schelske 40:33
It sounds like when you tell that story, that in the initial experiences on your sabbatical–the grass and the fence–that there was almost a diagnostic function happening, where those silly activities were sort of surfacing these voices that were impeding you from hearing and responding to the Spirit. And that maybe to even get to the, like you said, sort of bigger, more important moments of listening to the spirit, that somehow these voices that are enculturated into us had to be had to be brought out. Like, I’m afraid, I’m afraid, I’m afraid of something, I’m afraid of looking like something… what’s going on?

Mandy Smith 41:17
Absolutely. It’s all the false selves in us, right? And this is what I’m realizing through experience, that we aren’t going to be transformed until we’re obedient. Because it’s in the discomfort of the obedience that all those false selves come up. So, if we are called to proclaim something, and we don’t understand it, or we’re worried about how we’re going to look, or if people are gonna like us, and we proclaim it anyway, we’re gonna be transformed by that. And when we get rejected… you know, probably some of the most transformative moments in my life have been the moments where I did what I thought I was being called to do, and it didn’t bring me to a place of success. In fact, it’s brought me to a place of rejection, which is… I’m a peacemaker, so that’s the worst thing for me. Then there’s a moment to come back to the Lord and say, “Who are you again? Who am I again? Why are we doing this?” You know, to hide in Him, and to find our identity in him, and every single time those false selves in us are healed, or we’re released from them as we come to know more and more who we actually are.

Marc Schelske 42:37
This is another place, I think, where the culture that has shaped us surfaces, right? Because the culture that shaped me certainly is an Up-and-to-the-right culture. History is improving. Technology is improving. If we just work hard things will get better. Everyone has the same 24 hours. What are you doing with yours? You know, and if we support someone with mental illness in the right way, and they get the right counseling, and the right drugs, their mental illness will go away, and they’ll become a normal contributing member of society. That’s the narrative of our culture, and I think you’re saying that maybe that’s part of the problem.

Mandy Smith 43:17
I guess the question is, what is improving? It may not look like the world’s idea of success, but if we are being made new, then that is a different kind of improvement. So our values are changed. Our goals are changed in all of this. I’m starting to see, you know, I used to talk a lot about how small the kingdom is, and Jesus talks about that all the time. This kingdom is like yeast. I think it’s just that we have to think about it in those terms, because that’s how it seems to us, but actually, it’s the most powerful thing. It has outlived the Roman Empire. The things that we think are really big and important, they can all be measured. You know, the Roman Empire could be. You could count all of its treasures, you could count all of its soldiers and chariots and fortresses. And that made it feel real, because it was physical and solid, and it had power, and, Yes, it did a lot of stuff. That was real. It did accomplish things in the world. But in some ways, because it’s so material, it can be overcome. Another army can come and take it apart.

Marc Schelske 44:32
Right.

Mandy Smith 44:32
The people can die, you know, but when we’re talking about the kingdom, that is a thing stirring in the human heart, You can’t see that, so it feels like nothing.

Marc Schelske 44:45
Yeah, right. Right.

Mandy Smith 44:47
But that’s the eternal thing, that’s the real thing that’s really happening here. And when that can be passed from one human heart to another human heart, then even in oppression, even in persecution, that’s happening underneath the surface. And so, I often like to remember that, you know, yeast seems small and insignificant, but once you knead just a tiny bit of yeast into a whole big lump of dough, you’re not getting that out. Like, if you really hoped to make sure that bread didn’t rise, you’re just out of luck, because it’s through the whole thing now. And so I’m trying… I can see my imagination slowly changing to realize, like… I actually feel sorry now for the things that are passing away, for the things that look so big and important, but which will not last, because the thing that Jesus has given us is forever, unfading, living in a place that nothing can touch it.

I’m reminded of Thomas Merton talking about this diamond. He says there’s a point of light in each of us. It’s like a diamond. That is God’s name written in us, and it’s the center of everything. It’s the center of our true selves. And I think maybe the more we become like Jesus, the more our whole self becomes that. It’s not just a little point in us anymore. It becomes… you know, prepared for an eternal glory. You know, I’m reminded of C.S. Lewis’s description of heaven in the great divorce, that heaven is the most real, and maybe we just need our imaginations restored to be able to embrace that.

Marc Schelske 46:42
As I said earlier, the church of my childhood was obsessed with avoiding the influence of the culture. As I survey the landscape of Western Christianity over these past two or three hundred years, I wonder if we ended up falling into the very ditch we were desperate to avoid. In our conversation, Mandy spoke with such gentle pastoral wisdom. Is your sacred imagination sparked? Mine is. Her distinction between childish faith and childlike faith really intrigues me. So much of human behavior is essentially childish: selfish, desperate for security, willing to take from others if it makes us feel better, excited to be the top dog on the playground, liable to argue that our dad’s bigger than your dad. Does that sound at all like the way the church is behaving? Does it sound at all like the way of Jesus?

What if the way of Jesus starts by not being ashamed of our limitations? What if all our attempts to be strong and right and in charge are actually part of what Paul was talking about, when he warned us of the influence of “the Flesh?” What if the posture of the warrior isn’t reflective of the way of Jesus? Honestly, I have a hard time imagining the western church without these fears.

I suspect the Spirit of God is inviting us to imagine something different. Something that looks more like a table gathering, and less like a conference or concert. Something that looks more like mutual aid and community service, rather than something that looks like a corporation or an empire. Something that is uncomfortably inclusive, and that has the courage to respond to the difficult prompts of the spirit, something that in Mandy’s language looks more childlike. If Mandy’s insight intrigues you, I recommend both of her books. You can find her and her writing at www.TheWayIsTheWay.org.

May you find the courage to let go of childish ways so that you can embrace a vibrant, childlike faith. Thanks for listening.

Notes for today’s episode and any other links that have been mentioned you can find at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW052.

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Until next time, remember, in this one present moment, you are loved. You are known, and you are not alone.

The life of a follower of Jesus is not about assent to an idea, or rigorous attention to a life of religious activity. Matt Tebbe says, “There aren’t two things: faith and action. There’s just one thing: Faithful Action.” We discuss.

Ben Sternke is an Anglican priest, author, and leadership trainer. He’s one of the co-founders of Gravity Leadership and pastors at The Table Indy, in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Matt Tebbe is also an Anglican priest, author, and leadership trainer. He’s the other co-founder of Gravity Leadership and pastors at The Table Indy, in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Marc Schelske 0:00
Hey friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 51: “Faith when you don’t feel faithful.”

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is made possible by Journaling for Spiritual Growth. This is my new book. It launched in November of 2022. So it’s just a few months old, but it’s already finding its people. And that is really exciting to me, especially since I knew going into it that this book had a pretty small target audience.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a woman who read the book and had grown up in the church, and her comment after reading Journaling for Spiritual Growth was how relieved she felt. For her, this little book helped her untangle her picture of God, and find a healthier way to pursue spiritual growth. I teared up, listening to her.

Here’s an Amazon review I want to share with you this really moved me: “I wish this book had been around when I was at the start of my deconstruction process, trying to form a new connection to my last shred of spiritual practice with the Bible. After reading this book, I can tell you it is something special. I found the book clear, focused, and transparent in all its intentions. It became my friend in a way as I explored the prompts. It makes room for one’s personal story and experience. Give it a try. I hope it gracefully surprises you as it did me.”

As the author who wrote this book, I could not ask for higher praise than that. This little book is a six-week process to gently guide you in building a lasting and sustainable journaling practice where you’ll experience spiritual and emotional growth. I intended to write something helpful and healing. And if that sounds intriguing to you, you can get it on all the online bookstores, or you can buy a signed copy directly from me at my website. Learn more about the book and what’s in it at www.JournalingForSpiritualGrowth.com.

WHERE HAVE I BEEN?

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? My last podcast episode was almost six months ago. Well, I’ve been up to my ears in research for my master’s thesis, reading a bunch of patristic theologians, and liberation theologians from the last few generations, thinking about how our picture of God allows us to accept abuse of hierarchy in the church in the world. That’s not right. It’s not okay. It doesn’t align with the way in the teaching of Jesus. And so I hope–if my research goes well–to be able to offer something that is a healthier, more life-giving view. But that’s all for later. I’m still in the research phase. And on top of that, I’m a pastor and a parent of teenagers, and I have a couple of other side gigs that I do to help pay the bills. And so, the podcast has had to take a backseat. I’ve got three new interviews recorded that I’m excited to share with you. My plan is to publish them once a month or so when that all depends because I’m the editor and I’m the producer. That all depends on how the thesis process goes. So with that catch-up about where I’ve been, let’s dive into today’s topic.

INTRODUCTION

The great philosopher and theologian Dallas Willard said, “You can live opposite of what you profess, but you cannot live opposite of what you believe.” Let that sit for a moment. Willard was poking around in the heart of an issue many Christians struggle with. Is Christianity about belief? Is it about action? Which one’s more important? How are they related?

Many folks in Christianity grew up in very legalistic church communities. That’s my story. And regardless of what was taught, the practical experience was the only thing that matters was right action. When those people discover the gospel of grace, they’re so relieved. They’re so free, and they never want to get trapped on the treadmill of performance again. So they often think that belief, specifically belief in Jesus’ forgiveness and grace, is the most important thing.

Now increasingly, though, there are Christians who look at that model and are asking critical questions. What good is a belief in God’s grace and mercy, if the Christian who holds that belief is neither gracious and merciful? How can the church hold to the self-image it has of being a community of love and healing and care when we continue to hear stories of abusive leaders shutting down dissent or hurting people, or taking advantage of those who are weaker than they are? What about incidents of outright abuse? What about historical abuses like slavery or the Indian boarding schools? Folks like these, and I’m among them, wonder if believing in Jesus’ grace and mercy is worth much if the church fails to enact grace and mercy towards real people. So what do we do with this thorny tangle?

Last year, Ben Sternke and Matt Tebbe released a fantastic book called Having the Mind of Christ: Eight Axioms to Cultivate a Robust Faith. In this book, they share the fruit of years of pastoral ministry, and their work at gravity leadership, laying out principles for a Jesus-centered faith that is both transformational for the individual and makes a difference in our world where inequity and exploitation are all too common. But that’s not what we’re going to talk about today.

Today, Matt and Ben are with me to discuss an idea that surfaces in the last chapter of their book. They tackle the question of belief and action by saying that there aren’t two things, faith, and action. There is just one thing: faithful action. That caught my attention. And I asked them to chat with me about what this means. In their book, they wrote that the life of a follower of Jesus requires not merely cognitive assent to an idea, but something more. So I started our conversation by asking them to tell me what that means.

INTERVIEW

Ben Sternke 6:02
Being a follower of Jesus is not merely cognitive assent to an idea. I mean, this is something that we picked up from Willard, as well. He does talk about–and this was transformative for me–he talks about how what we think about beliefs is, is basically like, its assent to an idea. It’s, “I agree with this idea.” But when the scriptures talk about faith, they’re talking about so much more than that.

There are a couple of different ideas here here, I think, that are worth exploring. One is, Where is your trust? Like, what do you trust to be true? And so I think Willard uses this example, actually, where he talks about getting on an airplane. And there’s a lot of trust involved in getting on an airplane, right? It’s unnatural for us humans to be flying 30,000 feet above. So there’s a lot of trust in the pilot to do their job and a lot of trust in the mechanics and the whole process. There’s all this trust that goes into believing that it’s going to be safe for me. If I get on this plane here in Indianapolis, I’m going to end up where I want to go. I’m trusting those people.

Somehow in the areas of religion and spirituality, we’ve adopted more of that latter idea about what faith is to be like, “Do I have the right ideas about how Jesus’ atonement saves us?” Rather than more of the practical aspect of faith, which is “Do I believe that if I trust what Jesus says that my life will be okay?” And that’s more the realm that I think we need to get into when we think about belief. Because, yeah, believing in Jesus has to be more than just saying that, you know, I think Jesus existed. And I think Jesus was the Son of God. I mean, all those things are fine. But we have to say, like, do I trust Jesus to save me, actually?

Marc Schelske 7:49
Part of the trouble is that we have these statements in Scripture that say things that feel really frank and clear, like, “believe and be saved…”

Ben Sternke 7:56
Right? Yeah.

Marc Schelske 7:57
But then we have to say, Well, wait a minute, what do we mean by belief? And were the people sitting in the room hearing that statement in the first century, were they hearing intellectual assent to what I just told you? Accept this idea? Or were they hearing something different?

Matt Tebbe 8:16
Yeah, Mark, I think one of the metaphors that Scripture uses to describe the relationship between Christ and the church is marriage, right? And if my wife looked at me, and said, “Do you believe in our marriage?” What she’s asking is, “What is my level of commitment and participation the marriage?”

Marc Schelske 8:37
Mmm, that’s great. Commitment and participation, right?

Matt Tebbe 8:39
Yeah. And so she’s not asking if assent to the marriage’s existence. We all know that’s not what she’s asking for…

Marc Schelske 8:47
Right, exactly!

Matt Tebbe 8:48
Okay. What it means then to confess with my mouth or believe, is to be committed to participating in the reality of Jesus’s lordship, and that’s all-encompassing.

Marc Schelske 9:01
Yeah, right. Right. Yeah. Back to the airplane analogy. I can imagine that there’s an engineering school somewhere where a bunch of engineers or pilot-in-training could sit in a room with a whiteboard, and talk about the physical principles that allow flight to exist. But then, if somebody in that room still fundamentally in their heart is like, “I just really don’t feel like it’s safe to be on an airplane.” And so then they don’t fly. They’ve got this theoretical knowledge. They may even say, “This is true. The physics of this process is true. I assent to it being true.” But for some reason, they’re not going to fly?

Ben Sternke 9:39
That actually reveals then our true and deepest beliefs. I think it’s a better way of talking about belief, rather than what ideas do I agree with. What are my actions show me about what I most deeply believe about who God is? I might trust Jesus to save me after I die, but like, do I trust Jesus to enough to pray for daily bread, for example., Do I trust Jesus to, you know, make the kind of decisions I would make throughout my day to, like, parenting my kids in a new way? Or do I trust Jesus enough to listen to what he says? But if all Jesus was good for is like getting us into heaven after we die, then the New Testament doesn’t need to be that long. He doesn’t need to do any teaching. All he was doing, you know… like the New Testament, would be three sentences. It just be like, “Hey, Jesus died, and if you agree with that, then you get to go to heaven. Congratulations.” But there’s tons of teaching, right? And you know, the apostle Paul, in the New Testament letters, they all bear this out. This is a life that we are invited into that we learn, we have to learn, have to learn how to participate in the life that God shares with us.

Marc Schelske 10:48
That brings to my mind, the echo of Jesus in the parable of the Ten Virgins and the whole narrative of facing God and facing judgment that kind of follows along there, and the language of Jesus saying to someone, “You said, Lord, Lord, but I don’t really know you.” All of those elements of Jesus’ teaching get at what you’re talking about, I think, which is that there’s something beneath, or behind your ability to say, “Yes, Jesus is my Lord.” And that means this certain set of doctrinal things. You know, there’s something behind that includes Matt’s phrase–which I thought was really helpful–was commitment, like, “Yes, I’m on board with this,” and participation, like that those are sort of… maybe there’s a better word that is both those things, right? Because I have things in my life I believe I’m committed to, but I’m really not participating in them that much. You know…

Ben Sternke 11:47
Yeah.

Marc Schelske 11:47
And I’ve had some things I’ve had to participate in that I don’t really believe in all that much. I’ve had that experience too. So this other thing that my behavior, my action towards others, now we’re talking about moral behavior, now we’re talking about justice behavior, now we’re talking about the way we show up in the world and make choices with money and all that stuff. That actually has to do with the reality of my belief.

Ben Sternke 12:10
You know, I use the phrase a lot, you know, that we participate in the life that God shares with us. And I think that’s a metaphor that really helps me understand what’s happening in salvation. It’s not like, God is saying, “Hey, you get a free ticket to heaven.” That’s salvation–it’s not quite it, it’s not enough. Nor is it saying, “You have to jump through these hoops, and then God will…

Matt Tebbe 12:30
Yeah.

Ben Sternke 12:30
And so there’s this relationship of… it’s just an exchange of goods and services. It’s just like, “If you jumped through the hoops, you know, God will save you.” And so yeah, it’s much better news to say, you don’t have to jump through the hoops, and God will save you. But what is that salvation? Well, it’s a life. It’s a life, and God actually shares it with us. This is the incarnation, right? So Jesus didn’t come necessarily just to sort of pay a price or to, like, you know, create a salvation mechanism. Jesus coming to us was God coming in the flesh. And there’s this new thing, the God-man, right, this person who is both fully God and fully human, that draws us then as humans into the life of God. That’s the work that I hope the word “participation” can do for us. So even as I do my… as I think ethically and morally about how my life is supposed to go, I want the people that I pastor, the people that I disciple, I want them to have a sense that they’re not doing that as a performance for God. They’re doing it as a participation in God.

Marc Schelske 13:43
Yes, yeah. And that really requires us to think a little bit differently, some of us, about the role, or motivational place of heaven, eternity, afterlife, right? Because if we grew up in a faith tradition, where the whole point… there’s two dates that matter. There’s the date you got saved, and there’s the date you go to be with Jesus in eternity, and everything else… the only value of the whole rest of the timeline is that you can screw those two dates up. Right? So you gotta live through this whole journey trying not to do the things that will blow, you know… or you have a theological system that says you can’t blow it, you know, you got saved, and you’re going to be fine. And so just sort of put up with the life story. Oh, maybe now you have the task of sharing this with other people. That’s what you should be doing. You should be witnessing. But really, all that matters is sort of the sweet by-and-by, right? And this language that you’re putting forward is that that vision isn’t where our attention is focused. Our attention is focused on right now. Like this moment matters. This is actually where I’m going to choose to be enacting the way of Heaven. Not doing something so that I will get to heaven, but enacting the way of Heaven right now or not?

Ben Sternke 15:05
Yeah. And that’s continuous, then that is a continuity between what we do and Heaven or, you know, the age to come.

Matt Tebbe 15:12
I think a lot of people would agree with what we’re saying. The issue, I think, for most of us is, we ironically, we agree with what we’re saying, but we don’t know how to do it. Right? So we vacillate between making faith just sort of this ideological philosophy, we have to check all the boxes, or this moral performance, where we are simply trying harder to behave better, or trying more to do more, right? And so there’s this reality we’re describing of this embodied participation, of this committed allegiance, that feels like an undiscovered country. We can’t even describe it. How do we do it? That’s where I hear most people getting frustrated or wanting more. And I think that’s one of the reasons why we wrote this book, is because this is our experience of how to get into that life, how to actually do it,

Marc Schelske 16:07
Right. And the principles, then, become essential, at least for folks whose spiritual geography is a lot like mine, sort of coming from a legalistic or fundamentalist place to a place that’s not that or perhaps even more progressive folks like that, like me. I have a deep allergy, a visceral allergy, to anything that smells like legalism.

Matt Tebbe 16:29
Yeah, yes.

Marc Schelske 16:30
And so what’s been weird for me, as I’ve begun to enter into sort of more progressive Christian spaces, is hearing progressive Christian principles talked about in ways that smell exactly like the fundamentalism of my childhood.

Matt Tebbe 16:47
Oh, interesting.

Marc Schelske 16:48
Right. It’s a completely different philosophical matrix. It’s a different set of biblical commitments. But there’s still, like, there’s a set of things you’ve got to do exactly the right way. There’s a set of vocabulary you have to use properly. If you don’t use those things, the way we’re going to manage you is we’re going to shun you, which was the religious tool of my childhood. Like all that stuff, and I’m like, whoa, whoa, wait, all of these new commitments I have, they come to me from my following of Jesus. I got here because of my deep desire to find a way to live a life and pastor a church that feels like it’s in alignment with the way of Jesus that I see in the New Testament…

Matt Tebbe 17:28
Yeah.

Marc Schelske 17:28
…but all of a sudden, I’m hearing and feeling this sort of very familiar ghost of “You got to do certain things in the right way to be accepted and to be acceptable.” And I’m like, Whoa, no, no, no, no, no, no. Right. And so then when I hear you say, “Yeah, it’s not just faith, it’s also action,” there’s a little bell in the back of my mind, that’s like, wait a minute, wait a minute. What does this mean? Really?

Matt Tebbe 17:52
It’s a trap, right? There’s the trap of moralism, or the trap of certitude, or the trap of being locked in the mind or being all externally focused. And so part of the work then we’ve been exploring is how do we not get locked in these traps? The life of the mind is crucial. We’re using words. I’m talking about concepts right now, appealing to the mind, right? Yes. So it’s not that this is anti-thought or anti-idea or concept. And obviously, what we’re doing, we’re treating each other with kindness and respect. So it matters how we behave, and it matters what we believe. But we’ve truncated those things because we’ve sequestered them into places like you’re describing that create some sort of legalism or some sort of certitude testing. And I think that we lack an integrative approach that deals with the whole human person, which is why this committed participation thing is important to us.

Ben Sternke 18:44
It is difficult to break out of that paradigm. It’s complicated, as you said, Marc, by our histories, our pasts, you know, the things that smell familiar–I think that’s a great metaphor, you know–for the ways that we get… I mean, that’s one of the other metaphors is triggered, right?

Marc Schelske 18:57
Yeah, right.

Ben Sternke 18:58
Something happens in our body that reminds us of something else. Then it’s hard not to associate this new thing with the old thing.

Marc Schelske 19:07
It makes me think of, like, you know, the old theologians talking about the via positiva and the via negativa when we talk about God, right? There’s some things we can only talk about by saying, “We’re really clear it’s not this. We’re really clear it’s not this. We’re really clear it’s not this. That leaves this sort of space in the middle that is hard to define, but we know it’s not, we know it’s not exploitative. We know it’s not manipulative. We know it’s not by force. We know it’s not… you know, we know all that. So then, how do we do it? And that, I think, is where the eight principles in your book are so helpful because they really are just explicitly saying, “Here are eight of the ways that we can say, ‘yes, it is this.'”

Ben Sternke 19:47
Yes. Yep. Yeah, I love that way of putting it, Marc. I think the axioms did come through that kind of work, right? That both Matt and I, as we encountered those kinds of confusions and those kinds of… “Hey, we’re missing each other here. What’s happening?” The axioms we’ve kind of settled on through that work of saying, “Oh, here’s an assumption that is worth stating explicitly,” even if it feels theologically naive, or, well, everybody agrees with that. But, actually, when you begin to explore it and say, “Well, how, do I live like this is just true? Or are there little eruptions, you know, of the real–to put it that way–in my life that demonstrate to me that “Oh, actually, there, there are certain kinds of situations that I approach as if God is not always present and at work,” (which is one of the axioms.) That’s interesting. And how do we just be curious about that, and playful and gentle, but curious and say, like, “I wonder what’s going on there for me?”

Marc Schelske 20:46
Yeah. And medicinal, maybe, right? Like, if I’m not living as if God is real in that domain of my life, what is that diagnostic of? In my legalistic background, the question would be, “Oh, that reveals that I’m not fully committed, or I’m not fully sanctified, or I haven’t really turned that over to God, or I’ve got persistent sin in my life.” There’d be all these answers to why that’s happening that have to do with my fundamental acceptance.

Ben Sternke 21:15
Yes!

Marc Schelske 21:16
Right? Whereas, if we’re looking at it diagnostically, it’s, “No, no, no, no, we’re not even having the conversation whether you’re accepted, you’re accepted.”

Ben Sternke 21:25
Right.

Marc Schelske 21:25
But what does this say? Why does your knee hurt? That means something. There’s something going on. We should look at that.

Ben Sternke 21:31
Yeah, that’s one of the biggest paradigm shifts for me in my in my faith has been going from assuming that, like noticing something wrong in my life is… like condemnation being right on the heels of that, to noticing something wrong and thinking, like, “how am I sick? What healing do I need?”

Matt Tebbe 21:51
Yeah,

Ben Sternke 21:52
…and trusting that God’s right there? “I’m glad you noticed this, because I’ve been ready.” But God invites our participation in that. He doesn’t just sort of do it automatically, so to speak.

Matt Tebbe 22:02
Yeah.

Marc Schelske 22:03
So, you have this great framework that I want us to talk about toward the end of that chapter. But as you set up the framework, you use a phrase that was a little bit one of those hang-up phrases for me, right? You begin talking about people who’ve committed to the way of Jesus acting as if it’s true. And that phrase brings up some connotations for me that I don’t think are what you mean, right? So sometimes you hear that phrase, and kind of a manifesting tone, like in hustle culture, like “dress for the job you want not the job you have…”

Ben Sternke 22:41
Fake it till you make it.

Marc Schelske 22:42
That’s exactly it. Yeah. Or then also in kind of the tone of hypocrisy, right? That you’re doing something that isn’t authentic, right? And authenticity is the preeminent value of our culture. And so if you are doing something that’s not authentic to you, well, you’re just lying, you’re a hypocrite. You’re saying, well, there’s, there’s a marriage, there’s a connection between what we do and what we believe. And so press into the doing. Okay, so let’s talk about how we press into the doing without it being either of these other negative things.

Matt Tebbe 23:18
So, it’s the difference between someone pointing at you and threatening you to do something, or inviting you to do something you don’t think you can do, and reaching out their hand towards you. “What if you trusted me? Maybe you could take my hand. And together, we could do this?” To make it more “spiritual,” Marc: Maybe you don’t have to pray for the faith in order to do this. But maybe faith is taking one step and doing it. Maybe you already have a mustard seed. And even though your feelings aren’t all aligned, or there isn’t 100% clarity, you don’t know how it’s going to go. You can’t manage or secure the outcome ahead of time. Maybe it’s enough to take one step. Maybe there’s a reason scripture talks about salvation and the process of being saved as something we’re to work out with fear and trembling. Sometimes fear and trembling feels like fear and trembling.

Marc Schelske 24:17
Right! Why would it not?!

Matt Tebbe 24:21
So, I want to I want to affirm everything you’re saying about this fake-it-till-you-make-it, punch-myself-in-the-soul, pull-myself-up-by-the-bootstraps, white-knuckle-this-thing, you know what I mean? Put on a happy face out. There’s a faking that’s different than a faithing. And one is consent and surrender. Faithing is consent and surrender, and the other is straining and posing.

Marc Schelske 24:50
I think that it’s really helpful to remind us about the fear and trembling piece, right because part of that longing our culture has, both in the church and out, for certainty It leads us to want faith to feel like courage. That if I believe in something well, then I clearly like I know everything about how it works, like those engineers studying how airplanes can fly. I know all that. And I am I feel my feelings are aligned. Right, I moved into this thing because it was authentic. My emotional experience was moving me there and I feel strongly about this as a kind of certainty. Yeah, right. And so to say that I could move forward that faith could actually feel like fear and trembling. Yeah. deconstructs that certainty, right? Faith actually will not feel like courage. Probably faith will feel like I don’t know if I know what I’m talking about here.

Matt Tebbe 25:45
Yeah. So even the way we use language, we talk about faith as something that’s static. So do you notice I said faithing? Because faithing is a dynamic, participatory action. You can’t have courage without fear. There is no courage unless you have fear.

Marc Schelske 26:02
Right, right.

Ben Sternke 26:04
In the original language, in Greek, obviously, the word that we’ve been using for “faith” is the noun form of the word that we’ve said is “belief,” right? So that. those are, pisteuo and pistis. And so. So that is… I like the using the word faithing because it sort of gets us out of our normal categories of what we think of faith as. Because I think that’s one of the main traps that we’re trying to help people get out of when we talk about “believing is acting as if it’s true,” is the trap of thinking that faith is certainty. And so we encounter this all the time with people we disciple, people who go through our cohorts. This knee-jerk assumption for most of us, if we’ve grown up in any kind of Christian tradition, is, “oh, yeah, I gotta, I gotta, like, believe harder that that’s true.”

Marc Schelske 26:46
Right! What does that even mean?

Ben Sternke 26:48
I know, you can’t even do it. And so, like, “I know that God loves me, but man, I just, I just, I guess I just gotta believe that more.” It’s like, well, like, that’s actually impossible, right? You can’t do it. You can’t actually do it. But what you can do is, again, take a small step. This is why for our cohorts especially, we always come back to concrete moments in people’s lives. Because, again, we can’t learn how to trust that God loves me. We can’t learn how to trust that abstractly or generically.

We can only do that in the moments where we discover that that is actually okay, “What I’m really believing in this situation, the reason I act this way with my kids, the reason I treat my employees this way, is it has has to do with this.” Okay, there’s a false belief here. And just making a small adjustment is what we’re talking about. It’s gentle. It’s consent. It’s, it’s almost like there’s a, there’s a playful curiosity about it. “Well, what if you tried something like this instead of that and let’s see what happens.” There’s also that sort of experimental… “You know, let’s talk about it later. What happened?” Just change one little thing.

Marc Schelske 27:59
Yeah, the “try” word there really pushes us over into the realm of practical action.

Matt Tebbe 28:07
Yeah,

Marc Schelske 28:07
Like, “try” means, “Oh, you’re gonna do a thing.” You’re gonna have a conversation, you’re gonna take an act, you’re going to do some things, right? And that’s… So many of us have this mindset that faith is an abstract thing, either an abstract intellectual thing or, in some traditions, an abstract emotional thing, which is where you can have language of belief harder, right? Most of my early most of my early ministry experience was in youth ministry. And we talked about that kind of stuff all the time, we were so focused on the intensity. I look back, and I’m like,” What does that even… What does it mean? Like, “Pressing in?” Like I’m praying? uuurgh Like, there’s, you know… That is… it’s incoherent. Looking back at it. It’s incoherent to me, you know? What was I asking a kid to do?

Matt Tebbe 28:56
Yeah, we use the word experiment. Experiment takes the pressure off of nailing it and getting it right. Because you do an experiment because you don’t know what you’re going to find. Or you think you know, but you don’t. There’s some open-endedness and room for discovery in an experiment. And I think part of why that legalism you talked about earlier, Marc, or just an easy-believe-ism, which is sort of like this idea of getting my ideas in order. They are so appealing because they give us the illusion of control.

Marc Schelske 29:27
Right.

Matt Tebbe 29:29
It’s something we can control, and faithing, consenting to the God of love, who holds everything together, is… love is anti-control. It’s uncontrolled. You can’t love someone or something and control it.

Marc Schelske 29:47
Right?

Matt Tebbe 29:48
Right. And so, for me, then I think of an experiment as how I do two things that seem like a paradox. Use my agency here unto a goal and end and lay down control.

Marc Schelske 30:05
Right, right. Yeah, exactly.

Matt Tebbe 30:06
Those seem like a paradox to do both those things at the same time.

Ben Sternke 30:10
I think we oftentimes those are some of the moments where we reveal that we were seeking control through our agency. when something that we were hoping… we didn’t realize it maybe at the time, but something we hoped would happen didn’t happen. Well, then we’ve got, oh, well, did it work? It’s like, well, that, you know, that’s, again, that’s treating this whole relationship, this whole faith, this whole life with God, as a mechanism that works or doesn’t. That’s not what it is. It’s a life.

In one of my cohorts that I’m leading right now, through Gravity, there’s a woman there who has reported that one of the things that has been on her mind lately is that she… she’s noticed that she and her husband are spending a lot more time on screens during their free time. And it sort of agitates her, bothers her. And she sort of has this feeling of like,” I don’t want us to be spending so much time on screens.” And so her initial response is just to sort of set boundaries around that. So let’s just put our phones away after dinner, and then we’ll just, you know, we’ll have a conversation or lets you know that. So she’s trying to fix a problem, right?

But as we dug into that a little bit with some compassion and with some curiosity and say, like, well, what gives you the idea that you’re spending too much time on screens? What’s going on for you? It came up that, like, she’s been through a lot of loss lately. She was like, “I think what’s happening is that I’m sensing that we need to be tending to this. But being on screens feels easier.” And uncovering essentially that what she was truly believing in her bones, is that “I can’t face the grief of these losses, because it will overwhelm me.”

Marc Schelske 31:45
Yeah.

Ben Sternke 31:46
And so the good news for her that the truth that, you know, we sensed as a group that God was speaking to her, that we checked with her, was just that “What if God’s waiting for you in that grief? What if God is there, and God will make sure that you are not overwhelmed, that God will sustain you in that? What is the path to your healing? And she, she affirmed that. She said, Yeah, that’s true.

So then the next step is like, what do you do, then? How do you trust that good news that God is waiting for you in your grief? And so, for her, it was a really simple step. It was one little thing. It was, “I’m going to have one conversation with my husband where I just tell him what I’ve discovered about myself. And the reason that I am sort of agitated about screens. And I’m going to say that this is something that I’m sensing that I need to do. And I wonder if you might need to do it, too. And I wonder if you’d be open to us having these kinds of conversations together, where we talk about the past, where we maybe cry together about what we’ve lost? Would you be open to that.” And that was it. Her husband might not be open to it. He might think that’s a stupid idea. But her opening up, having the conversation, sharing where God was speaking to her, that was her faith.

Marc Schelske 33:06
Yeah.

Ben Sternke 33:06
And the following week, we got on the call, and we rejoiced with her that she acted in faith. She acted as if it was true that God was waiting for her in her grief by taking this small step of opening up. “Maybe I could talk with my husband about this grief.”

Marc Schelske 33:20
At the close of this last chapter, you talk… you have this process, this cycle, that you encourage people and you talk about. There’s this sort of sequence of compassionate awareness, creating alignment, and cooperative action. And you portray this as a circle that kind of feeds in on itself. And you wrote, “Cooperative action is the embodiment of your faith, no matter how you feel.” So in the story, you just told, if I’m understanding that correctly, that woman is doing cooperative action…

Ben Sternke 33:57
Yes.

Marc Schelske 33:57
…by following through on that conversation, right? And that discerning with you in community that maybe this is where God’s showing up, or maybe this is what God is asking. And so she’s going to consent and participate with that idea, in actually enacting that conversation. So let’s talk about that cycle and what cooperative action is, because that feels so much more compelling to me, then, then kind of that fake-it-till-you-make-it sort of tone that we were talking about earlier.

Ben Sternke 34:28
Her faith in that moment, that was her cooperative action. And that’s something that she can do, whether she feels amazing and joyful about it, or she’s terrified. She can have the conversation, no matter how. And we discerned that together. It didn’t feel overwhelming. It didn’t feel like too much. It felt like something that she could she could say, “Yes, I can do this.” And that would be, you know, faithful action that opens up probably more faithful action. It’s not like that fixes her problem. Right? It’s not like she doesn’t need to grieve now. I mean, there’s still grief that needs… lament, right? But this opens the door into some of those things that she she needs to continue to walk in, you know, she’s gonna be faithful to this.

Matt Tebbe 35:08
The circle in this book, and the way that Ben just described this, it’s not a prescription. So then she’s not coming to like the spiritual doctor, who says, “Here, here’s your script, have one conversation with your husband, and that’ll take care of this problem.” But it’s much more of like, if God’s present and at work here, and if he cares about it more than you do, and if it’s all about love, what could any of this have to do with that? These are things that God has said. This is the way Jesus operated. They seem to be like grounding assumptions Jesus makes about reality, and people, his Father. So let’s just say, let’s just dare to bring that lens to the situation. What does it reveal? What wasn’t seen before? And then let’s discern together what it looks like if you have the faith to do it, to move towards God and other people in love, trusting that, you know, God is present and at work.

Marc Schelske 36:07
Right.

Matt Tebbe 36:08
So then it’s an empowering conversation, where this person, or whomever, myself, or you, Marc, we, we have a choice. Either I’m alone on this rock, spinning at 1000 miles an hour, hurtling through space at 11,000 miles an hour, and the best I can do with my pain is to distract myself from it. Or the God that Jesus reveals moves towards people in pain, weeps at tombs, holds people who are suffering, touches them, and he wants to hold me and touch me, too. That’s not something I have to necessarily just think about more, but I can open my life up, embodied, open my life up to some experiment, and then see what happens.

Marc Schelske 36:54
Right? That’s the “as if” part.

Matt Tebbe 36:55
Yes!

Marc Schelske 36:55
I don’t know how this is gonna go. We don’t know if the husband is going to respond. And even if the husband doesn’t respond, even if the husband says that’s a terrible idea, that’s not the end for her. She’s still… then the next thing for her is going to be, “Okay. Well, how are you going to process your grief in a way that you can do without your husband participating?” Right?

Ben Sternke 37:16
Yeah. How do I how do I find a space to continue to walk in faith? And this is different for every single conversation. Like even leading these kinds of conversations, I like have no idea where we’re going. I have no clue at the outset what’s happening here.

Matt Tebbe 37:31
Yeah.

Ben Sternke 37:31
And, you know, and I’ve been doing this a long time. There’s no control there, either. And so we just opened ourselves up to even having the kind of conversation where we could discern cooperative action, what that would look like. Is this opening up to, well, “How is God at work here?” I don’t know. And what is your… because… that was her faithing. But there was also enough faith for her to faith. Right? There was enough faith that that made sense, that’s kind of the edge of her faith right there.

Marc Schelske 38:01
Right, right. Yeah.

Ben Sternke 38:02
And so wherever we’re hitting the edge of our faith, it’s always fear and trembling. It’s always like… those are the liminal moments. Those are the parts where like, “Oh, God, I’m so scared. I don’t know what, you know… I’m not sure what’s gonna happen here.” There’s other parts of our faith that feel a little bit more secure. Right. But whenever we’re talking about those edges of our faith, that always feels that way. It’s always it’s always tender. And it can’t be predicted at the outset. What would be a good step of faith? And so a lot of times those questions are helpful just to say, like, do you have enough faith to just have this conversation? Is that out of the question? That’s fine. And that oftentimes happens. People are, “I could never do that.” Alright. That’s fine. Well, what can we do?

Marc Schelske 38:42
The thing that feels hopeful to me in this is that it sounds like you’re saying there’s a way for me to have faith when I don’t feel very faithful.

Matt Tebbe 38:51
Yes! Yes.

Ben Sternke 38:53
Yes, that’s a good way to put it.

Matt Tebbe 38:55
Yes. This is another part of this process. Marc. You know, if you’re around a sinner long enough… Ask Ben about this. He’s been around me a long time. You got a list of things that you want to change about that person.

Marc Schelske 39:08
Sure.

Matt Tebbe 39:08
Right. And as pastors, it’s hard for us not to notice things that are wrong with ourselves, with the people, with our church. And I think that this process disciplines me when I’m with somebody not to say, “Okay, I’m glad you finally want to listen to God. Here’s a list.” But rather, it’s like, “Okay, where do you have an awareness and faith that God’s present and at work? We start with where you are, versus where I wish you were, or where maybe guilty or toxic conscience tells you you should be.

Marc Schelske 39:39
Right.

Matt Tebbe 39:39
So, for instance, this woman is so frustrated that we’re on our screens. That’s the pain point. But being curious there, bringing some compassion to that reveals that that’s not really the problem. That’s just sort of getting my attention. And so we find that, like, you know, if somebody’s being on their screen bothers me, and I tell them, Hey, would you stop me on your screen when you’re around me? And what’s really going on is that they’re doing the best they can, with this huge cancer of pain in their life, that I’ve, I’ve managed my own irritation and their behavior and missed a golden opportunity to actually love somebody.

Marc Schelske 40:16
Boy, that feels so good, right? Because I think that there’s so many of us that have kind of the background where instruction or mentoring that we receive kind of amounts to “just have more faith.” In a way, you’re saying, have more faith, but what you’re saying is, “We’ll just sort of step into the things that seem like the kinds of places God shows up.

Ben Sternke 40:41
Mmm, yeah.

Marc Schelske 40:42
Like you don’t know for sure, right? We don’t know for sure if God put that issue on her heart about grief. But does that sound like the kind of thing God might do? I mean, if you were just… just based on what you know about Jesus, do you imagine you might find him in the tomb of your grief? Can you just imagine how that’s possible? Okay, well, try it out.

Matt Tebbe 41:01
Yeees.

Marc Schelske 41:01
That’s so good. I feel like this really opens the conversation of faith up to be accessible to a lot more people, because I think there’s a lot more people who don’t feel very faithful. And to say to them, you know, there’s, there’s a way for you to have faith, even if you don’t align with these particular stories about what faith looks like. Just walk into it.

Ben Sternke 41:23
That too, I’d want to add an encouraging word. I think the feeling of not feeling faithful is rooted in faith. Your desire to be faithful s your faith. And it’s precious to Jesus.

Marc Schelske 41:38
I want us to take a moment here at the end to have you give us a couple sentences about the Gravity cohorts. You’ve told the story about this woman. You’ve mentioned the cohorts in passing, I don’t know that everyone who follows my podcast would even know what that is. So what are these cohorts? Who are they for? How do they work? How does that help people have this kind of faith we’re talking about?

Matt Tebbe 42:02
It’s a group of seven people or so that we take through our curriculum, including this book that helps people gain this operating system, to use a metaphor, this way of being with God and other people, where we are increasingly coming to trust the God of love, and that God’s making a coherent sense out of our life as a participation with him. And so the cohort is very much a place of formation and discipleship, but it’s also a place where you learn a process and a language to use with other people in your life, to help people discern the kingdom of God, to learn how to proclaim good news to yourself and other people. And then craft these experiments of trust. So I can, I can embody and participate in faith, you don’t need to run across the Sea of Galilee, just take a step. And then our life becomes a series of experimenting with steps. Right? It’s a game, it’s a holy game of increasingly turning our life over to Jesus with our very life. Instead of like “Every head bowed, every eye closed, playing the Chris Tomlin song on repeat.” My actual life is my spiritual life.

Marc Schelske 43:14
Right?

Matt Tebbe 43:14
Yes, let’s treat dinner tonight as an altar call. So that’s what the cohorts do.

Ben Sternke 43:22
Yeah. And just on a practical note, too, just to give people a better picture of, like, how they work: They’re online groups. So we meet on Zoom. They meet every week or so, it’s a weekly group, that meets for about 75 minutes for a year, so for 12 months, and so there’s weeks take off, obviously, for travel and vacations and things like that. But it’s a year-long commitment to be part of an online group of seven or so people that agree to learn together, you know, how to discern what God’s doing, and how to say yes to it, and how to grow our faith and learn to live in love.

Marc Schelske 43:59
If somebody thought that was intriguing and might be helpful for them, where would they go to find out more about that?

Ben Sternke 44:05
You can go to www.GravityLeadership.com/academy. If you’re intrigued about it, go ahead and visit the website. But also, if you just email. Email [email protected] or me, [email protected]. And we’d be happy to chat with you about how it works and all that kind of thing.

Marc Schelske 44:22
Fantastic. Thank you so much. Gentlemen, I really appreciate you taking the time to get me over my hurdles with your book. Not every author is willing to do that. Like, “Hey, I loved your book, except this part. Let’s talk about that!”

Ben Sternke 44:35
Yeah. Yeah. I love that, Marc. I see it as more opportunities for me to learn how to better communicate what I’m trying to say. I found this conversation very generative. Thank you.

Marc Schelske 44:45
Me too. Great. Thank you guys.

REFLECTION 

At one point in this conversation, Matt said, “My actual life is my spiritual life.” Yeah, yes. That’s the thing. So many of us were taught that the spiritual life is some elevated condition that we have to attain by effort, by feeling a certain way, or by spending a certain number of hours in deep spiritual disciplines– whichever variety your church liked best. We were given this picture that only certain special people could really attain such a life. That can’t be what Jesus meant, right?

If Jesus is good news for everyone, then Jesus has to be good news for the tired and the hopeless, and those without any extra time because they’re busy making ends meet. If Jesus is good news for everyone, then Jesus has to be good news for folks who don’t look very Christian, and for folks who have been run out of the church. Jesus has to be good news for those who don’t have a good memory that enables them to memorize Bible verses, for those with PTSD, and for those who are so hurt they never want to step foot in a church again. If Jesus is good news for everyone, then the spiritual life must be our actual lives, and a life of faith has to be something other than some outstanding shiny spiritual accomplishment. Faith isn’t some weird attempt to believe harder. It’s certainly not a metric of how many Bible verses you have memorized, or how many hours you volunteer.

As followers of Jesus, we’re not committing to a life of obligatory religious behavior, nor are we committing to a life of plastic certainty. And we’re certainly not committing to a life where we have all the answers, and we need to take control so that we can force other people to live in the way that we think they should. No! Instead, committing to the way of Jesus means trusting that in this life, the very life we live today, we are fully in God’s presence, we are not alone. And in that space, we can explore and experiment with spiritual growth, and trust that God’s Spirit will meet us there.

May you release the chains of certainty and obligation, so that you can relax into the present moment where Jesus is waiting for you, knowing that your very desire to be faithful is faith.

Thanks for listening.

Notes for today’s episode and any links mentioned can be found at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW051.

Did you enjoy that conversation? Did you find it helpful for your journey? Then subscribe to my email list at www.MarcOptIn.com. You’ll get, at most, one monthly update that will feature my latest online writing, a link to a new podcast episode if I published one, book recommendations, and other things that I think might be helpful to your journey. And as a bonus, you’ll receive a free copy of a little book I wrote called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. This little prayer offers a spiritual practice that has helped me face the anxiety and uncertainty of the last few years. It’s been deeply helpful to me. I want to offer it to you. I look forward to staying connected with you.

Until next time, remember in this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

What do you do with an opportunity that comes your way that isn’t right for you? That happened for Jonathan Puddle, and he turned into something beautiful.

Kevin Makins is a writer, speaker, and maker of things, who is also just a regular pastor, serving at Eucharist Church, in downtown Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Marc Schelske  0:00  

So are we willing to let God change our minds? Hey, friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske, And this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 50. When God changes our minds, or maybe a better title: A weird thing happened on the way to the devotional book. You’ll see what I mean.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is made possible by Journaling For Spiritual Growth. Yes, finally! My new book has at long last made it through all of the hurdles of writing and editorial and revision and design and all that stuff. Pre-orders are live right now. And on November 15, it will be available to you. I’m so excited about this.

Now, if you follow me online, or you’re a regular podcast listener, you already know I’m a big advocate for practical, doable, intentional practices that contribute to personal and spiritual growth. And that’s what this is about. Journaling has been a part of my spiritual practice for about 30 years now. And working with lots of people as a pastor, and in other capacities, for more than two decades, I’ve seen that for many people, journaling is the most consistently transformative practice. But I’ve also seen a lot of people try journaling and then give up. A lot more are intimidated about starting. It feels like a really big deal.

So, I wanted to offer an easy-to-follow process that can help a person start a flexible, gracious, sustainable journaling practice that can serve over the long haul. That’s what this little book is about. It’s a day-by-day guide that will, over the course of six weeks, help you set your expectations, lay the groundwork, and begin building a habit of journaling that is specifically focused on personal and spiritual growth–and that will work in your actual life. If that sounds intriguing, you can learn more about the book at www.JournalingForSpiritual growth.com.

And as I said, the book is presently in preorder. That’s really important. Why? Because when people preorder a book that does two things. First, it tells the all-seeing algorithms over at Amazon and on social media what’s interesting to people. When that happens, the algorithm start sharing it with people that we don’t even know. But the second thing is that all those pre-orders get counted as sales on the first day the book goes live. That boost helps the book become visible through all the noise of all of the other books. So, the more pre-orders there are, the more visible the book becomes, the more it can be found by other people. I would like to invite you to head over to one of the vendors listed on the book page on my website and preorder a copy.

If you preorder a copy just for yourself, I’ll invite you to a special online book launch party happening on November 22. If you preorder three or more copies–you know, to give to your friends–I’ll invite you to that online book launch party, and I’ll send you a free signed copy along with a starter journal that you can keep or give to one of those friends. And if you preorder five or more copies–like for your book group, or your church group or more friends–I’ll invite you to the launch party, I’ll send you that signed copy with the starter journal, and I’ll give you an hour of my time that you can use in a variety of ways.

Those are all listed along with information about these other giveaways over at the website for the book, exactly the same place where you’ll find the links for preordering. So head over to www.JournalingFor SpiritualGrowth.com.

INTRODUCTION

A couple years back, my friend Jonathan puddle wrote a beautiful trauma-informed 30-Day devotional called You Are Enough: Learning to Love Yourself the Way God Loves You. But that book is not the topic of today’s conversation with Jonathan. Today, Jonathan and I are going to chat about a weird, unexpected project that came as a result of him writing that first devotional. An unexpected opportunity came his way. A publisher approached Jonathan and asked him to write a year long, daily Bible Devotional for men. Well, that’s not really Jonathan’s audience. It’s not the kind of book he’d really use. The specifications for the project were really odd. They were algorithmically determined, which is just weird. But this whole thing turned into something beautiful.

Jonathan is an award winning writer, podcast host, children’s pastor and publishing consultant. This whole project just came out of left field and I was really intrigued to learn how the project turned out for him. And more importantly, how it led him to think about some big ideas like healthy masculinity, how we see the Bible, why some of us have set the Bible down and maybe how we come back to it, where we see God’s love and whether we are open to letting the spirit change the way we see the world ourselves and God. So I started by asking Jonathan to explain how this strange book came about.

INTERVIEW

Marc Schelske 5:05
You successfully wrote and published and got out into the world a beautiful, reflective devotional book that helps people–anybody–go deep into their own heart to understand how God sees them. After that book is out there, you get invited to write another devotional that was not on your radar, that was not the kind of devotional that you would ever have had on your to-do list. The publisher approaches you and says, “Can you do this?” So what was that invitation? And what is this book that we’re talking about?

Jonathan Puddle 5:40
I love that because my friend Anthony said, “Jonathan, your first book changed my life and changed the way I relate to God. And when I heard you had another devotional coming out, I was thrilled. And then I heard it was a Bible devotional for men. And I figured you had sold out.” Yeah, that’s exactly what he said to me. He’s like, man’s trying to get paid.

Yeah, honestly, it’s a funny thing. I had no interest in writing anything like this, as you said. I used to run a Christian bookstore and devotionals were the bread and butter of Christian bookstores–devotionals and journals. But the ones for men are always atrocious. This project came up, and initially, the publisher asked me to write a different devotional, just another 30-day devotional. And I thought, yeah, I can do that. But they actually didn’t take my sample. And a few months later, they came back and said, “Hey, we’ve got another project, a 365-day Bible Devotional for men. Would you be interested? And I was pretty much like, “Hard pass, you guys, hard pass.” But what initially drew me to it was the intensely strict content limit. I was only going to be given around 120 words per day, including the Scripture content. And I had to try and write something on that. And so honestly, man, I took the job because I thought it would stretch my writing talent. And then, actually, you and I started talking about it. And you said to me, “Jonathan, I know you’d never read a book like this. I know, I’d never read a book like this. But you could bring something unique to this space.” And that got the wheels turning for me. So I have to thank you. I tell people this all the time.

Marc Schelske 7:24
Thank you. What’s interesting is now that it’s out, and I’ve had the opportunity to interact with it, I quite love it. You did something really unique that I’ve not experienced in this type of daily devotional. You know, it’s the daily devotional format, right? You get a scripture. You get a block of text to think about. And you know, you use that as your little spiritual nugget for the day, right? That’s not my spiritual practice. That’s not how I normally do things. But you did something quite interesting that I think you spent a lot of time and heart on. And that is in… in taking, both in curating the selection of texts over the course of a year, and then in thinking through what you could say that would be meaningful in just a handful of sentences, you’ve created a narrative arc that walks through a theology of God who loves humanity so deeply, that that God would focus entirely on everything it takes, through the the path of sacrifice, to bring that love to life in humanity, and the individual person. It’s just, it’s very moving to me.

Jonathan Puddle 8:39
That means a lot. And that is… honestly my heart is really warmed to hear that because that is exactly what I did. I essentially was like, okay, if I’m going to do this, this is what it has to be. The limit of text is so short, in order to do any kind of justice to Scripture, I’m going to have to tell a long story or maybe a sequence of long stories. And so in my Excel sheet, there is something like six or seven different narratives that I’m telling. And in my head, there’s one big overarching story that I’m telling. And so there’s a number of stories and meta stories that I’m working through.

As I got more and more into it, a number of things happened in me that I wasn’t necessarily expecting. One, I actually really started to care for men. I have a tenuous relationship with men, especially men I don’t know. I have I have great, long lasting friendships with men. But when I walk into a party or a new space, I gravitate to women. I find it easier to connect with women quickly and deeply in a way that I often find men take a few times going around the mountain before we can actually have what doesn’t feel to me like a superfluous fluffy conversation. Let alone the kind of machismo and competition that can accompany so many male of spaces.

But I feel like, honestly, I guess God softened my heart. And I think it also pushed me to reflect on my own journey as a man because it’s weird. Like, it’s a weird time to be a man, I think. In a moment where we are… Okay, the way I put it in the introduction is that when I was a child, my heroes were guys like Sly Stallone. But today, the picture of manhood that’s held up as sexy and good is Paul Rudd. And so, how do you pivot from Sly Stallone to Paul Rudd in 20 or 30 years, with no guide, no process? And that impacts your view of God, your understanding of the story that scripture has been telling. I didn’t know Scripture was telling a good big story until four or five, maybe maximum 10 years ago. 15 years ago, I put the Bible down in a rage. I was just like, “I know God is loving. I know God is actually love itself. I’ve experienced it. I’ve encountered it, it’s changed me. And I can’t find it in this book!” So basically, it was like, “God, if this is if this book has any significance, it’s on you to teach me how to read it.” And I put it down probably for five years. And I had a heart reconfiguration in that time with God. And when I did eventually pick the Bible back up, it was a totally different book.

I get right what why people would put the Bible down. I get why people walk away from church. I get why men honestly have the worst reputation, and Christian men, and church men. We’re looking at the fallout from purity culture, and celebrity Christian culture, and Christian nationalism, and all these different things. And woven through each part of it is patriarchal religion. And like, there’s 101 reasons why I wouldn’t want anything to do with that. And yet my heart breaks when every single school shooting is perpetrated by a male, and that for whatever reason, God incarnated Himself in a male body. And Jesus shows us this completely different kind of strength, and kindness and compassion, and safety.

Marc Schelske 12:23
It’s such a marked contrast, right? So many Christian voices and Christian communities right now seem to be highly invested in the vision that Christianity that is on track is strong, and in control, and setting the pace for culture. And all of that also then aligns with a kind of a cultural sense of what the job of a good man is. So there’s this tension between our desire… I think, you know, any group, any people has that sort of survival desire. We want to be in charge. We want to control the uncertain. And this model that we have, both in the life and story of Jesus, and in many places in the Christian story historically, where the model is different. It’s “give yourself away,” the model is other-centered, and co-suffering, and willing to bear the burdens of other people. And that’s really who we’re called to be.

Jonathan Puddle 13:23
Absolutely.

Marc Schelske 13:24
So now, what happens for you in in these questions on the other side of that project? What did this project do for you?

Jonathan Puddle 13:33
Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, it showed me a lot of different things. And I love the Bible, and I love and care for men. And I’m not sure I would have told you either of those things. They might have been true, but they certainly wouldn’t have been things that shuffled to the top of the stack. One that was really great as a writer and pastor is to come to peace to this, this thing that not all scripture gets treated equally.

Marc Schelske 13:59
Yeah.

Jonathan Puddle 14:00
Jesus doesn’t quote randomly or equally from the Hebrew Scriptures. He is precise. And there’s entire books we have no record of him quoting. There’s books that he hammers over and over and over again. Growing up in a very Bible culture, there has been a pressure to–you know–balance all the seeming contradictions in scripture, right? And I lost the need to do that. And I’ve had one or two reviews of people who didn’t like what I did with certain scriptures, or they say, you know, he’s only picked the nice ones or he’s only picked the ones that make God seem loving. I’m like, Uh huh. Yeah, like Jesus Christ, who did the same thing. So it’s on him. But I’ve come to a great sense of peace with pulling verses out that I believe reflect the overarching narrative of God’s relationship with humanity. I didn’t have that piece before. But I have that piece now. And part of that pieces come from spending more and more time in scripture and actually finding those blueprints and those fingerprints and those whispers everywhere, all through Scripture.

Just on Sunday at our church, one of our team was preaching about grace. And she ends up reading from the book of Isaiah. I forget which chapter, I wasn’t taking notes. But it’s this long rant from God about how he is furious with the Israelites. And he hates their festivals. He despises their offerings. And I’m kind of I’m sitting there getting a little nervous, because I’m thinking, oh, man, I hope this ends up nice. I don’t know how she’s gonna land the plane on this, because right now, this is just rage God, which I just think needs a lot of context and exposition to be treated gently. But she let the text speak. And what happens at the end of that chapter? Why is God so mad? Because you have forgotten to care for the widow, and the alien living among you, and the orphan. And all of your religious performance is worthless to me until you care for the people I care for. And so all of a sudden, this scary, angry, God gets recapitulated into the literally the world’s biggest advocate for the poor and suffering.

Marc Schelske 16:28
Right, right. Exactly right. Yeah,

Jonathan Puddle 16:30
I think the spirit will do that for each one of us. In our pictures of God, if we’ll let the Spirit. Our fathers, our parents, all the authority figures that we grew up with, everybody shaped our view of God, of the Divine, of our self worth, all those kinds of things, right? It’s a process of having some of those things dismantled, sometimes destroyed, in order to get a fresh vision of what God has actually always been like. And I think Scripture is also going through that exact same journey, right? The Israelites are like, “Well, we know the gods are like this. And maybe our God is a 15% improvement upon the local gods.” You know, it’s like, don’t kill everybody, just kill these people. But we gradually get to this point, right, where Jesus is not only saying do good to everybody, including your enemies, especially your enemies, then he then he goes and dies to rescue and redeem the very people killing him. And honestly, I think we’re invited as men, as humans, but contextually as men, to look at that and go, “Okay, well, that’s a kind of masculinity. That’s a kind of strength. That’s a kind of passion. That’s a kind of peace.”

Marc Schelske 17:43
Right.

Jonathan Puddle 17:44
And I don’t see Jesus as strong and in control. I mean, the man is sobbing, and begging the father to take this cup from him. But he’s also trusting the father and saying, “If this is what needs to happen, I’ll do it.”

Marc Schelske 17:57
Yeah…

Jonathan Puddle 17:58
I mean, that alone, that moment in Gethsemene alone, surely shatters all of our preconceived notions of what masculinity is and isn’t allowed to be.

Marc Schelske 18:07
Right! There’s a kind of strength that is not about control. Right? We just can’t imagine that. For us, if you’re not… it’s a binary, you’re in control or you’re out of control. And yet, for God’s infinite heart, to release control to humanity, and still be God and still be ultimate love, and still be capable of bringing all things together for the good? It rattles the brain!

Jonathan Puddle 18:33
Absolutely.

Marc Schelske 18:34
We don’t have a model for that. And then if that’s a call for us, as humans… if I sacrifice to the point of death, I’m going to be dead, right? I don’t get to come back three days later to saying to everybody, “Hey, see, I was right all along.” You know, that’s not probably going to happen for me and yet, what would it be like to be formed and shaped by that vision of love, rather than this sort of power-centered kind of love, where I can be generous to others once I’ve secured myself?

Jonathan Puddle 19:09
So it’s a scarcity mentality, among many other different issues there, right? One of them is simply the fact that we view significance, safety, life as scarce.

Marc Schelske 19:19
Yeah.

Jonathan Puddle 19:20
And so there’s only so much going around. There’s only so much strength, there’s only so much courage. I’ve got to look out for number one, and I’ve been told that that’s righteous, and now I’ve got family and children, so I need to look out for them and to protect them from perceived threats. I understand that for some men… being told to sit down and shut up and listen to women–We’re being told that white men have had long enough with a microphone and it’s time for people of color to have their say–I understand that some men feel very threatened by that and feel very scared and I have compassion for anybody who feels afraid. It’s not comforting to have your worldview yanked out from under you. It’s not a pleasant experience to have your assumptions about the way the world works, and about the way you occupy space in the world, called into question.

I preached a couple of weeks ago to church in my city. I just made this throwaway comment that Jesus was a brown skinned Jewish man. He was not a Christian, a white Christian, like me standing here on the stage preaching to you today about the church. And there was some some nods and smiles and laughter around the room. Someone came up to me afterwards and said, “What where’s that written? That was just interesting to me. Where is that written that Jesus has brown skin?”

Marc Schelske 20:31
Where is it written?

Jonathan Puddle 20:32
Yeah. She had never had cause to consider this ever. And I said to her, “Oh, I don’t know if it’s written. But I mean, everyone from that part of the world has dark skin.” And she’s like, “oh, yeah, I guess that’s true.” And then I said, “You know, f we believe that God made Adam out of dust and dirt, what color is that?” And she’s like, “Brown, blackish, even.”

Marc Schelske 20:57
Very, very, very white. Wery, very white dirt, Jonathan.

Jonathan Puddle 21:02
God specifically went and ground up marble into a powder and used that to create Adam Smith.

Marc Schelske 21:11
That’s right, yeah, exactly!

Jonathan Puddle 21:14
Right. That’s exactly right. She wasn’t snarky at all. She was sincere. And she was like, “Oh, I’ve never I’ve never thought about that.” I guess that there are many people, and men especially, who I think if they’re honest, could say “I’ve never had cause to think about this, never had cause to really acknowledge that. I’ve been fed a sack of lies about what it means to be a man, and what power means, and what control means, and what strength means. And that maybe I have been, at best naive, maybe ignorant. And maybe for some parts of my life willfully ignorant.” Yes. Because it’s a fear. So be a man and deal with the things that scare you.

Marc Schelske 21:58
Yes, yes. That’s, that’s part of mature humanhood. That’s right, facing those difficult things. Learning to accept the truth for what it is. Yes. All right. I’d like to hear a little bit about on the other side of this project, maybe what’s been surprising to you.

Jonathan Puddle 22:17
The very first piece that makes me smile and surprised is the number of reviewers I’m seeing on Amazon and elsewhere who are saying, “Oh, yeah, this is so helpful. It’s a perfect length. Thanks, man.” Like I don’t… clearly, the publisher knew what they were talking about with busy men needing something quick and simple. Like you said, I’m not that kind of guy. I like to sit for half an hour or an hour in contemplative silence and explore the mysteries within. Turns out, we’re perhaps not typical, Marc.

Marc Schelske 22:48
We’re the weirdos! What?

Jonathan Puddle 22:50
That’s been really amusing. I think the thing that really blesses me is a number of men and women, some of whom are in full-time ministry roles, or who have been in full-time ministry roles have written to me and said, “This feels like a way that I could get back into the Bible. This feels like I could feel safe in the pages of Scripture again.” And I think “safe” is a loaded word. Before I kind of began to learn about trauma… You know, we always laughed and bragged about how God isn’t safe. You know, like, there’s a line in Narnia, I think in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, where he’s like, he’s not a tame lion, or he’s not a safe line, but he’s a good lion. So Safe is a loaded word, in the sense that God is certainly not safe for the long-term survival of our false identities.

Marc Schelske 23:46
Mmm, yes.

Jonathan Puddle 23:47
God will gleefully provoke our false self into dissolution. But in terms of whether God is safe, I can come to God and I’m not going to be shamed. I’m not going to be yelled at. I’m not going to be abused. I can comes in with all of my garbage and offer it up before him. And like the father in the prodigal son, before I can even finish my tale of unworthiness and woe, God says, “Sorry, I’m just gonna pause you there, because we’re going to have a party because this is where you belong.” So in that sense, God is profoundly safe. And, and what some people are saying to me is that they feel safe coming back to Scripture, because of the way I’ve offered some of it. So that’s really special. That’s a real honor.

Marc Schelske 24:39
A conversation you and I had back when this was just a concept that you were knocking around, was, wouldn’t it be interesting if the weird algorithmic formula that led to this invitation to write this book was in some way a tool in the hands of the Holy Spirit to get life and truth and light and freedom to people that might not find it otherwise.

Jonathan Puddle 25:12
Totally! I mean, I start with the presupposition that God is real. I follow that with the presupposition that God is good, and that God is present in all things. And if those three are true, then we can trust God to just draw us to God’s self through anything and everything. I was raised being taught those three things, in word, but in deed and culture, the space that I grew up in communicated a fragility to God’s tolerance of us.

Marc Schelske 25:53
Yes.

Jonathan Puddle 25:54
And because of his everywhereness that kind of was terrifying. You couldn’t really escape him. And he was sort of at any given time about to be unhappy with you. But the more that I dig into Scripture, we find the terrible burning wrath of the Lord is against injustice, real injustice…

Marc Schelske 26:16
Right, and offering an invitation to extend that reality to others.

Jonathan Puddle 26:21
Yes!

Marc Schelske 26:22
…to be less of a participant in the injustices of the world. And to be more a participant in the liberation of the world.

Jonathan Puddle 26:30
Yeah, like that’s… everything I think we’ve just said is already bonkers in terms of generosity and risk, that God would offer us this, all of this! And then, to go a step further, and say, “Yeah, and you get to give it away, too. You get to be just like me.” We get to expand the community of love on this earth. We get to expand the pool of kindness, and healing, and redemption. And this story of these crazy Israelites–you know, who God chooses to bless the nations so that the nations would know what God is like–is this wild, messy adventure, and eventually Jesus turns up and says, “Okay, well, I am God. And this is how we do it. And now you’re all free from your bondages. And go and do likewise.”

REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 27:31

Go and do likewise. That’s what I want to be able to do. To go and engage life like Jesus, in the way of Jesus. That’s what I think you want, too. I mean, why else would you be listening to or watching this podcast? But that invitation implies that we have a clear vision of who God is. That’s why what Jonathan did with this strange opportunity, this 365 day daily Bible Devotional for men, it moves me.

In this opportunity, Jonathan wrestled with how to see the never-failing, never-giving-up always-and-forever love of God in the pages of Scripture, and how to present that–what is the biggest idea in human metaphysics and religion–in simple terms that anyone could follow. When we see the nature of God’s other-centered, co-suffering love, it has to change the way we see the world. It’s got to change how we think of gender roles and power dynamics. It’s got to change how we think about privilege and wealth and seeking security. It’s got to change what we imagine the church ought to be up to, and how we are going to interact with people who are not like us, even people we disagree with. When we see that God is good, that God is with us, and that God is inviting us to be part of this ongoing project of freeing people from bondage, it’s got to change the way we imagine the life of faith.

Now, a 365-day daily Bible Devotional for men may not be your thing. That’s not the point. What inspires me about Jonathan’s journey with this book, and what I hope will inspire you, is that he took an opportunity that was placed before him, and chose to use that opportunity to pursue and share the other-centered co-suffering way of Jesus. I think that’s the calling for each of us. What will it look like for you and I to think about our lives in this way, to think of every opportunity that we’re given as a way to demonstrate and share the most generous love in the universe?

There are so many voices today that want to paint God as narrow, exclusionary, demanding, belonging only to people like us. And so the church becomes a reflection of that, guarding the narrow path, judging and excluding, and believing that honors God. But you don’t believe that. I don’t believe that. That’s why we’re here. You wouldn’t be watching or listening to this podcast otherwise. Those voices of judgment, condemnation, exclusion and fear are so loud. Let that volume be an invitation. It is vital for people like you and me and Jonathan to do what we can to share more beautiful vision. May you have the courage and faith to see each opportunity before you as a way to embody and share the beauty of God’s other-centered co-suffering love.

Thanks for listening.

Notes for today’s episode and any links mentioned can be found at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW050. That’s right 50 episodes! I’d like to invite you to join my email list. I’m emailing about once a month these days, I’ll never share or sell your info. You’ll get links to my writing, next podcast episode, books that I recommend and more. And if you opt in now you’ll get a free little book that I wrote called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. In this little book, I teach a spiritual practice that has continued to be powerfully helpful to me, as I face the anxiety and uncertainty of the world we find ourselves in. So subscribe, get that book: www.MarcOptIn.com.

And until next time, remember: in this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Why would anyone bother to go to church? I don’t mean why would Christians bother. I mean, if someone outside of the church was thinking about getting involved, why would they? What might it look like to build a church that people attend because it’s meaningful to them, not out of obligation or habit? What would a church look like that was truly loved by its neighborhood?

Kevin Makins is a writer, speaker, and maker of things, who is also just a regular pastor, serving at Eucharist Church, in downtown Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Marc Schelske  0:00  

Hey friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske and this is The Apprenticeship Way, A podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 49. Church stop acting like a hot topic! Or maybe a better title is “Building a church people actually want to go to.”

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is made possible by My Summer Inflation Sale. You heard me! Life has gotten expensive, hasn’t it? Gas, groceries, it’s all a bit much. Now, Christina, my wife, is a teacher. And so the normal gig is that our family is without a second paycheck for a couple of months every summer. In past years, we’ve budgeted to cover that. But this year, the dramatic increase in prices of essential things has just outpaced our budget. So I’m looking for some extra income. So if you’ve ever thought about buying something I make, now is an excellent time. So what could you get? Any and all of my books, my online courses, and of course for some people, there’s the work that I do to support writers. See it all with special summer inflation sale prices at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/ Summer-Inflation-Sale. Those prices will be available until August 1. So act fast, I’ve got some bills to pay.

INTRODUCTION

I grew up in Ohio, the American Midwest, in the 1980s. And in that place and time, everyone went to church, everyone I knew. The only question was how into it were you, but everyone went to church. Fast forward through two recessions (maybe three now), the 9-11 attacks, a pointless 20 Year War, a housing bubble (or two), and a global pandemic that shut down in-person gatherings for, in some cases, a year or more, and the world has changed. The assumption that everyone goes to church is just no longer true, especially where I live here in the Pacific Northwest.

Ryan Burge wrote a book called “The Nones” about that category of people who identify themselves as spiritual but not religious. In an article he wrote, looking at the most recent data from the General Social Survey, he pointed out that in a 30-year time period, the share of Baby Boomers who believe in God dropped 3%. In that same time period, but just the last 20 years, the share of Millennials who believe in God dropped 10%. And in that same period of time, just the last five years, the share of Gen Z who believe in God has dropped by 18%. 18%! In that same time period, every single cohort has shown a significant increase in people who don’t attend church and don’t consider themselves affiliated with any religion at all. In concluding his analysis, Burge wrote, “I think it’s entirely fair to say that Generation X (my generation!) represents the last generation raised with traditional American religion.”

He’s saying that everyone younger than me is experiencing a different culture and expectation when it comes to church than what was considered normal by people my age and older. The question of churches is one a lot of people are wrestling with right now. Especially after the pandemic sort of broke the habit of church attendance for a lot of people. People are wondering if church even matters to them? Does church contribute anything worthwhile to the world? You might jump in and say yes, but then that probably means you’re one of the deep insiders. Consider the question from the outside. Apart from religious obligation, why would anyone make the commitment to be part of this kind of community?

Today, we’re gonna dig into those questions. I’ll be chatting with Kevin Makins. He wrote a book called “Why Would Anyone Go To Church.” More importantly, he’s wrestled with this in a real community with real people. He’s a founding pastor of Eucharist Church in downtown Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. This is a guy who has spent a lot of time thinking about this very question. And so I started by asking Kevin why he thinks so many people right now just aren’t interested in church at all.

INTERVIEW

Kevin Makins 4:07
It’s probably in part because church just isn’t that interesting anymore. Sorry, church! Not that it’s not, it is. If you believe unto the Lord Jesus Christ, it’s quite an amazing place. However, if you haven’t had a lived encounter with the sort of transcendence that church is pointing to, if you haven’t walked the way, the good road of Christ, long enough to see how it works and what it produces, in and of its own way, then church just to you looks like the strangest social club for people that have nothing better to do or are just struggling with guilt over their dead grandma who prayed for them every day.

You know, there was a time when I imagine church was good. Like in air quotes, “good.” You know, there was a time when there just wasn’t that much entertainment. You know, it’s like 1750 and you’re a cobbler, and you cobble shoes and your father cobbled shoes. Maybe there’s one wedding a year where people get together and celebrate, but what do you have going on? One person in town has a lute and occasionally they play a song? There’s not much going on. But on Sunday, on Sabbath, the whole town shuts down. Everyone gets together at the four or five buildings nearby, there’s music, there’s singing, there are hymns, there’s a sense of transcendence, belonging, and connection. Your whole life is wrapped up in a singular moment where everyone you know looks to something beyond them, beyond the economy, beyond what they’re doing that week, their stresses, their worries. Very intelligent, well read, people are bringing these intellectual philosophical questions. Very simple people are bringing their daily concerns and their daily needs. And everyone gets together and looks at something beyond them. It’s not only the height of the collective psyche of that town. It’s also the only thing that’s going on. Church–It’s amazing. 300 years ago.

Marc Schelske 6:10
Right? Right. So it seems like there are two things in that description that are going on that we have to contend with. One is that for a long time, and it’s not just 300 years, it’s the last probably 1300 or 1400 years, the church was the cultural center of the community. That is no longer true. And then the second thing is that, in some way, the church is associated with a transcendent experience, and that doesn’t feel true now for many people.

Kevin Makins 6:39
Yes, absolutely. And you know, I’d see it fitting in with broader themes of the secularization of the West. It’s not just that people don’t believe in the Christian God, but we don’t even know if we believe in a God. And if we do believe in a god, he’s not a transcendent God, or they’re not a transcendent God, it’s a kind of hobbyist God. I do yoga, but if I fall out of yoga, the god of yoga is not going to come and wake me up in the night with a haunting message of transcendence.

Marc Schelske 7:07
Right, right. Yeah, there’s no, there’s no attached judgment.

Kevin Makins 7:10
No. Which I understand because also at the same time as what we’re talking about, the church got a little too powerful for her own bridges, and started to make a lot of strong declarations about what God was saying, and who God was that weren’t necessarily about God at all. They were about Christendom, the power of Christianity, the church, the institution, the pastor, the voice. So you know, I understand why people balk and push away at that idea of a transcendent God. You know, I totally understand that because, well, the church is often said that transcendent God is a mouthpiece and He sounds just like me, your white middle age Baptist pastor. And so I understand why people push against that. Makes perfect sense.

But we haven’t yet known what to put in its place. And so we have these little buffet-style religions where we’ll pick up things that we find interesting, transcendent, and meaningful, but they don’t give shape to our life. They’re something that we pick up and put down as we desire. And that’s very different from a transcendent force–God–who picks you up when you are down. And so that direction of things! If you’re in AA, you’ve probably encountered the transcendent God, or this transcendent reality–whatever language people put to it–but if you haven’t experienced that transcendence, you haven’t experienced that sense that there is something beyond you greater than you. If you haven’t put that to the test to some degree or relied on it, If you have the privilege to buffer yourself from the suffering of life, the privilege to have insurance, to have food on the table, to have a Netflix subscription on your phone whenever you want it, if you have all that, you may have never needed to encounter that transcendent God.

This rise of secularism has also come with a rise in wealth. Not that we’re rich. Right now we have a lot of wealth inequality, but our basic needs are provided for. Our lives are sort of safe; the air in our houses is usually conditioned. So we’ve been guarded from some of what might have naturally led other generations towards spirituality. So there’s what church means to me as an individual who perhaps has encountered a sense of transcendence. But then there’s also the question of what does church mean to us at a cultural or sociological collective psyche level? For us, Church used to be this–Not in all places, not all times, of course. There’s a lot of colonization and other factors, so don’t take this too far–but I think we could probably say that in many settings, if not most settings, the church was also a place of collective unity, where we set aside our little tribal identities, whether we were rich or poor, people had different intellectual beliefs–but we’d all go to church and we’d all surrendered to one thing. And so what used to function as a gathering point for diverse people has also become, in our culture and our cultural understanding, a tribal space for a particular group of religious people who are de facto in opposition to other people.

And so I think those two realities are intertwined: the lack of personal transcendence, and the fact that it has become now not a collective place of unity, but a tribal place of disunity, or of loyalty to your religious cause. I think those two things make church very unappealing for someone looking in from the outside who’s trying to figure out how to be a human in 2021.

Marc Schelske 10:45
Well, that last part there, that question that they’re asking feels really helpful to me. If this outside person is looking at the church and saying, “How does this group or belief system or community help me be a human?” and they’re not getting clear answers. They’re seeing the church as a group that actually (some of them) spends a lot of time denying what it means to be human. They’re not going to talk about emotions. They’re not trauma aware. They’re not going to talk about struggles with mental health. So that’s not helpful. Some of these groups are centering a particular very narrow kind of humanity. And you can tell, whether it’s on the billboard or not, that this church is only for this kind of person, this group of people, this political persuasion. And (they say to themselves) I don’t want to be a part of that. They’re also saying, “Hey, I have this intuitive sense of compassion toward people around me. There are people that are hurting and this group of people is contributing to that hurt or excluding people.” And so that person that’s saying, “How do you help me be human?” is looking at the church and not seeing a helpful answer.

Kevin Makins 11:54
No. And I mean, I don’t even know where we begin on that one. Because the truth is that a lot of what we’re describing is not necessarily a reflection of the historic Christian church or the historic Christian faith. But we have this sort of elephant in the room, or maybe a donkey in the room—I don’t even know all your metaphors. But…

Marc Schelske 12:12
…both of those, the elephants and the donkeys…

Kevin Makins 12:15
I think it’s a bit both… America (I say this as a Canadian—you know, love you all) but you make a lot of noise. We all watch your shows. You’ve exported your media around the world. So there’s a sort of hijacking of the collective imagination at a larger scale, both in America and even beyond, around the stories we tell ourselves about church and religion. And those stories are in part reflecting a truthful reality. As you said, there is loyalty, tribalism, nationalism, and white supremacy that has snuck into, in particular the evangelical church in America. The problem is then that people who don’t know that much about church think the Evangelical Church in America, that must be every Christian…

Marc Schelske 12:54
Right?

Kevin Makins 12:55
…That must be what Christianity teaches, right? And it actually just might be a 200-year heresy. And, if not heresy, it might be a 200-year misstep. Looking at church history, we find a lot of couple-hundred-year missteps. That’s part of the evolution of the spiritual life of the church. When we’re in it, and we are so ill-equipped to know our own story–for those of us who are part of the church–and when those who aren’t a part of the church haven’t been given a place to hear the story, and we’re used to quick sound bites… Well, what are we going to get fed? We’re gonna get fed the worst stories about the church.

Now, I think that the church is in a moment of reckoning, a well-overdue moment of reckoning, because so much of our theology and our structures, come with this colonialist mindset, especially in North America–Turtle Island. We started our experiment here using religious language and violence and oppression against indigenous people. So this is a necessary reckoning for us. We shouldn’t be crying that we’re oppressed.

But also, it’s not the whole story. We need to look at the global church, we need to look at the story of the Christian faith in the Orthodox tradition, in the healthy expressions within the Catholic tradition, and the healthy examples of Protestant churches. In every city where there’s a billboard by some very ignorant, big brother church of ours that’s going, “Come to our church, Get this, Vote for this person” –For every one of those, I bet there are ten people faithfully loving their neighbors or 10 congregations in an inner city faithfully serving. I think part of what we have to do as we tell the story, is to try to see the story clearly enough that we who are followers of the way don’t get spun by the spin of anger and bitterness…

Marc Schelske 14:39
Right.

Kevin Makins 14:39
…but also at the same time, we need to read the times and say this is the church’s judgment for her sin of white supremacy, nationalism and getting into bed with the powers. Both those things can be true at the same time. And I think the rebirthing of the church that we’re experiencing, as sort of all the fields starts to die off here in Canada… the field is fallow. We’re gathering the seeds from what had been grown here… You know, we’re losing… more than a third of our church buildings will be closed in the next five or seven years! If we can gather the seeds and say, “What was the Spirit of God doing in this mess?” That, I think, gives us a good opportunity to plant the future of the church that is going to hopefully reflect much more clearly and beautifully the gospel, the good news, the good road that we’re trying to witness to.

Marc Schelske 15:29
It seems like when I look at the church landscape, there are sort of two umbrella responses that churches are making. Some churches are seeing everything you’ve described and their response is, “These changes in the culture we have to stand against, we have to resist these things, we have to use our influence and our resources to hold on to the culture that is slipping away from us.” And then there’s another group that is saying, “Look, culture is what it is, the cultural changes have happened, we have to figure out how to be the church in new ways in the culture we find ourselves in. Holding on to some of our culturally determined responses from the past are going to get in the way of our mission of being the people of God.” Two kinds of responses: Can we, on the one hand, bring back, hold on to, and conserve the culture that feels like it’s slipping out of our grasp? Or is that change out of our control and we need to adapt, adopt and improve?

Kevin Makins 16:38
I think those are two of the responses that we’re seeing, the two predominant responses, I might even say of that second response, there is a group that says we need to stop this change from happening (as you said, that first group) by using force, and there’s a second group of us, who are more likely to say, “We need to improve, pivot, do things with our force to make things better.” And I think that both of those are ways of being the church that have blind spots. The blind spot is that they both include us doing things. I’m really starting to wonder if perhaps our goal isn’t to do a bit less. To say, “What is happening in the culture around us? And how do I not fight that with all my might, as if this is a culture war?” But also, “How do I not try to make that culture happy and run really hard and work really hard to look like I’m the church that’s keeping up with the times?”

Because, you know, I look around at the times we’re in, it’s not like people are particularly happy, Marc. They’re not having a great time. The times we’re in are making people miserable, too. And so, yes… I’m all for queer belonging in the church. 100%. I’m all for talking about critical race theory and reckoning with the sins of the past. So, if people are calling those cultural changes, I would say those are cultural changes that seem to be in many ways fruitful. But if I run out and start trying to do a bunch of things, I’m actually just as likely to get things wrong from the opposite side as I used to get things wrong from. So, there’s a certain amount of attentiveness, I think, that is called for. Life on the vine, you know? An abiding in Christ that says, “How do we pay attention to what the Spirit’s doing” and come alongside what the Spirit is naturally doing, without trying to then pick up our power, and then saying, “Good, thanks for leading us here, God. We’ve got it from here.”

Marc Schelske 18:28
Yeah, yeah. Right.

Kevin Makins 18:28
Because I think that is such a temptation for all of us. I’m preaching to myself here. I love doing stuff, you know, but this, just doesn’t seem to be fruitful.

Marc Schelske 18:37
When you surface the word power as a troubling word in either a kind of response we might have, it leads me to think back to where we started in the conversation about why people are not finding church helpful or meaningful. I’m wondering if one of the significant reasons is the many, many poor ways the church has handled power. When you think about all the different modes of power, whether its influence in society, whether it’s that we own a lot of property and take up space in the community and asked not to be taxed on top of that, or whether its influence through the media, whether it’s religious figures getting connected to political figures and lobbying for political solutions to things–those are all misuses of power. So then I look at that questioning person who’s observing the church from the outside. Is part of the reason why they’re saying “I don’t want to be a part of this group” because the power dynamic feels unsafe?

Kevin Makins 19:40
I absolutely am sure that part of why people don’t want to be a part of the church is the history of how this institution uses power. I get that and I’ll also say at the same time, I also don’t know an institution that hasn’t gotten into bed a bit with power. I expect better from the church because we know the story. We know the Christ story; we have no excuse. At the same time, I expect corruption in the church, because there are sinners in the church. Just like there are sinners in the banks and there are sinners in local politics and national politics. So, I don’t want to be so naive as to say I can only participate in something that’s pure. That’s something I’m noticing among my generation and in myself. I want to say, “Well, I’m a Christian, but I’m not that kind of Christian.” Because I want to be pure!

When I went to youth group it was sexual purity. That’s how you got status in that setting. You followed the rules perfectly. Thankfully, we’re coming to a bit of a reckoning on the ways that we’ve used that kind of language. But we have not yet dealt with our desire to be pure ethically, that we want to be associated with no one who’s less than us. If you’re pro-vaccination, you don’t want to be associated with anyone who’s an anti-vaxxer. If you are a liberal in America, you certainly would not want to even be associated with a conservative, never mind at church or in your own family. And I really get why people feel this way. I just can’t shake the feeling that one of the best things about church is that you’re stuck with losers. And you’re one of them!

Marc Schelske 21:23
Right. You’re doing if we’re doing it, right, yes.

Kevin Makins 21:26
Yeah. Like maybe this is the only place where you’re gonna run into these people that you wouldn’t choose. And I feel that that is inversely sort of this jujitsu move–using this impulse for purity against itself–is the gospel saying, “Yeah, of course, you don’t want to be associated with all these annoying people, and you want to be the good kind of Christian. But look, what a beautiful thing: that the entrance into the way of life that Christ talks about is that you have to be associated with people you don’t like, and they don’t like you. If we’re going to try to love everyone… People are telling me, “I love everyone?” BS! No, you don’t. I don’t like everyone; I certainly don’t love everyone! But if I can learn to do it with a hundred and fifty people to begin, that’s a pretty good training ground. And then if I can be associated with a religion that’s going to be full of people I don’t like, and I don’t get to remove myself from my own purity or my own appearance on social media or in the eyes of my friends? That’s a pretty good place to begin loving your enemy.

Marc Schelske 22:26
That’s really compelling. Kevin. I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it from that perspective. If we start by saying, “Hey, God is love, and being a part of the church is about learning how to live that kind of other-centered, co-suffering love, if that’s what this is really about.” And a lot of people will say, “Yeah, that’s great…”

Kevin Makins 22:43
We cheer! Yay! I want that. Who doesn’t want the whole world to come together? Let’s sing, “Imagine!”

Marc Schelske 22:51
Yeah, that’s good, but the only way you really know that you’re loving someone is when you’re interacting with someone that you wouldn’t choose to be benevolent toward…

Kevin Makins 23:03
Preach!

Marc Schelske 23:04
That’s how you know that you really love. Jesus said something similar, right? Even the tax collectors will do good things for each other. How do you know you really love someone? Well, it’s your enemy that will tell you. Your enemy is the one who knows if you’re loving or not.

Kevin Makins 23:20
Also, loving your enemy doesn’t mean that you need to be in close proximity to your enemy. You don’t need to be close to abusers. If you’re a person of color, you do not need to be in a church with people who are acting racistly. Let’s just be clear that this doesn’t mean you have to be associated with all these other people all the time.

But maybe there’s something worthwhile, even if in stepping into a broader faith tradition that includes those you would disagree with very strongly or even those you would find quite despicable. They may even be false Christians, but some people who hold those views may be real followers of the Way. So, there’s some nuance here. I hope people are intelligent enough to tease out on their own with their own community and context.

Marc Schelske 23:59
Well, that nuance is part of it, right? Because the thing about purity culture is there’s no need for nuance. I’ve got a line. You’re on one side of it or the other. I can apply that methodology to any belief system or any particular stream in Christian heritage. Nuance isn’t just saying the whole world is gray. Nuance is saying that love requires me to have empathy for people anywhere in relationship to the line I’ve drawn. Maybe even to the question of if that line is necessary. That empathy is where the nuance comes from. So yes, a church that’s built on love doesn’t mean it’s a church where abusers get a free pass. In fact, that is not loving, right? It’s the nuance to have empathy for everyone in the conversation and to think carefully through what it looks like to bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ in those many particulars. Bearing the burden of an abuser is going to look one way. And that’s going to be different than bearing the burden of the person who has been abused.

Kevin Makins 25:15
And each local community is going to have to discern how that is faithfully lived out. Which cares, which people are going to… even if you say we want to lean towards victims, great, but you can have also different groups of victims that overlap. For example, where somebody who’s a refugee from another culture and someone who’s a sexual minority may not see things eye to eye, even though they have both suffered. This is the wisdom of Christ that we need. Every community has to discern this in its own local context.

Even if these congregations are doing a good and faithful job… if I look at a church in the Deep South, I’m gonna think they’re crazy, no matter what they believe. The world they inherit is so different from mine. The powers and principalities that have shaped them are so different than mine, and we each are going to have blind spots. And so you know, we need to allow ourselves to relax a bit and say, “I’m just such shaped by my culture as anyone else is.” How are we going to get through this, if we’re all shaped by our own cultures? The only way is, as you said, the rule of love. These are schools of love, where we learn to love those who are just different from us so that we can be in contact with them. And in that relationship, bridge the gap.

Marc Schelske 26:25
That is so interesting to me if I think about the fact that real love requires me to pay attention to particularities. I parent my two children differently, because they’re different human beings, and they have different needs. If I expand that principle, which we intuitively agree with, all of a sudden, I can see that the sort of franchising of Christian culture across the globe–this sort of declaration that the way church looks, the way we articulate theology, the way we do Christianity is what needs to happen everywhere. That a church in Nashville needs to look like a church in Portland. That assumption, which has implications for church practice, ecclesiology, applications of theology, and even the metaphors that we use to articulate theology—that assumption is, maybe on the face of it, a denial of the nature of love.

Kevin Makins 27:24
Yeah, man! Or at least the nature of incarnation.

You know, how does the spiritual church manifest physically? I talked about this in my book in a much less wordy way. In one of the chapters about trying to plant a church in the city that I was born and raised in and love, and how it had to grow up like an organic seed from the soil, and we needed to give it space. We didn’t church plant with a big budget, not because we didn’t have the money (although we didn’t have the money). But we also church planted the way that we did simply because we didn’t know what it was yet. We bought a building a couple of years ago and I thought I knew what to do with it, and my congregation graciously said, “We don’t think we should do anything for at least a year. We don’t even know what it is.”

And as you were talking about earlier, about force and the church saying we either need to stop this cultural thing or we need to rush it ahead. No, no, no! Just see what it wants to be and look for the spirit. Yeah, the spiritual church is going to be universal, loving your enemies, down is the way up, a life that is lived in secret, letting things come to you–all these beautiful truths that are in the Gospel–these are all going to be a part of the spiritual landscape of every congregation everywhere. The Creeds are probably a good spiritual starting place for a confession, as that tries to manifest, but almost everything else is going to be as unique as the place that it is and that maybe that’s a gift.

Maybe that’s actually necessary. And maybe the thing that scares me most about what we’ve done with the church is this photocopying reproducing a particular manifestation of church. And we all know what happens if you photocopy a photocopy. Or if you photocopy a photocopy of a photocopy. Maybe part of our quest to master church, make it look the same way, maybe that’s actually what’s backfiring on us right now, as you were talking about Mark. That we actually photocopied one vision of the church so many times that it became unappealing. It was no longer able to be seen for what it was. Maybe there was a particular kind of church that worked in a particular kind of context, but now that church is being sent everywhere. And when that’s all over the news, all over social media, and all the bad fruit of that’s being revealed, and there are no other kinds of visions of church, then maybe it’s no surprise that that bad photocopy is going to start falling apart.

Marc Schelske 29:46
I think about how in our world, globalization and constant access through social media homogenizes things in a way that at first is really exciting, but then at some point starts to feel hollow. We’ve got a local pan-Asian fast food chain called Panda Express. That’s not…

Kevin Makins 30:12
I’ve had Panda Express!

Marc Schelske 30:13
Okay, so it’s fine.

Kevin Makins 30:16
Yea, it’s like a nice photocopy of a photocopy.

Marc Schelske 30:18
People love it, but it’s not anything in particular. It’s not a particular Asian culture’s cuisine. It’s sort of Asian themes that have sort of been filtered through this corporate lens. You get it and it’s fine. It’s not great. It’s not expensive. It’s available. But what’s happened is that the particularity of Thai cuisine and Japanese cuisine and Indian cuisine, the particularities have been filtered out and it’s been made very, very sort of what they would probably call accessible, as a good thing, but the uniqueness of the location has been stripped away. And I think that’s a part of the struggle the church is facing.

Here in Portland, one of our current biggest things that people are so excited about and proud of is food carts. What makes a food cart exciting in comparison to a chain restaurant is its particularity. It’s a couple of people making one thing they’re really good at making. They love making it and they make it the best that can be, and they just made it thirty seconds before you got it and you eat it. And it’s so much better than going to the chain restaurant where everything came out of a freezer pack.

Kevin Makins 31:36
It’s completely true. You know, in Hamilton, a lot of my friends run small businesses, small food stuff. And you know, if half the city doesn’t like what they’re making, they don’t care, right? Because they’re not making it to keep people happy. They’re making it because they think it’s really good. And those that love it, it, love it. It’s the highlight of their week if they get to go out and eat there. And so you can see how particularity… you can’t recreate it in any other place. You have to go to it. It’s a unique manifestation of something true. And that’s gorgeous.

The only problem is everyone I know that runs a local restaurant is nearly broke and tired all the time and that raises questions about business culture. The culture we’re in does not want them to do that. You know, it doesn’t it doesn’t work. We’re too dehumanizing of a culture. And I’d say the same thing is true with church.

Why, why are all of these churches singing the same songs? What the hell are you doing? They’re not even good ones! If you’re gonna sing all the same songs, make them old! Or pick up one or two classics, don’t pick whatever’s new this week, like you’re a hot topic!

Marc Schelske 32:46
Right.

Kevin Makins 32:48
I don’t mean to poo-poo on churches. Everyone’s just trying their best. But…

Marc Schelske 32:55
Let me interrupt, though. I think we’re on to an important question here. Because the issue is this. It’s easy in a system where the engine of the system is that we got another service this week. We’ve got to go, we have to keep moving forward. We have a certain amount of income we need to make to pay our bills and pay our staff. Let’s keep cruising. In that system, it’s easy to take the top 25 songs from CCLI and just drop them into the Planning Center. Your musicians get the charts, and boom, you go. Sitting down with your local musicians and saying, “Let’s write a song that speaks to the moment we’re in, that talks about what God is doing in this community among these faces” That takes way more time and effort and pain than pulling number four off the CCLI list and having your musicians do a great cover of it.

Kevin Makins 33:44
But it’s not just the songs. It’s the whole model. If you’re in that large church model, if you’re in that kind of setting, just sit for 20 minutes and ask God, “Is this okay?” Ask your soul, “Is this okay by me?” and just see what you think. If you’re finding that that system is fruitful and that system is actually serving and honoring God and creating a church that is more and more, over time, becoming a unique manifestation of the kingdom, then keep going. And if you know there are things you could do to slightly shift the culture in a different direction, away from becoming more homogenized and towards becoming a unique manifestation, then just take the next step. You don’t need to do everything; just take the next step. After that happens, take a look and see what you got.

For people then who are maybe in smaller congregations or looking to church plant, I would say just then do as little as possible, Force-wise. Make as few big decisions as possible right away. Let things grow slowly and organically. It probably means that your three-year plan with the budget dropping 33% every year from the grant, that’s done. Just get rid of it. Don’t take money from anyone for the church plant. Don’t take any money. If you’re going to church plant and you need a salary raise some money like a missionary. Get people to give to you because they believe in you. But don’t let the church take a dime. Let the church grow into what it’s meant to be. That might be 15 people in a living room. That might be a thousand people on a Sunday. I don’t know. That’s God’s business in your place. Just don’t decide what it is in advance. I really think we’ve just got to shift from trying to pay for churches to start to just paying our missionaries to be missionaries, and letting churches become the churches that they’re meant to be so that we don’t have to try to make them something they’re not.

Marc Schelske 35:29
Yes. Right. So I want to tie some threads together. This plea that you’ve made, which is just so intriguing, countercultural, and intuitively feels right to me–I want to tie that back to our starting conversation about the person who’s saying, “Why should I go to church?” One of the threads that surfaces for me is this idea of a church being able to be particular to its location, to where people are at, to what’s going on in that neighborhood. If the church was more responsive to that, more open to that, would more people say, “I’m intrigued, I’m interested?”

Let’s push into that space. How might that model of church begin to speak more meaningfully to the folk who are asking the question, “Should I go to church or not?”

Kevin Makins 36:22
So, let me give you another metaphor here that I think will speak to your Portland heart: Coffee shops. We’ve always had Tim Hortons in our neighborhoods, which is a very affordable, cheap coffee shop chain. The people that love it, love it, then there was Starbucks. They come into town and people go, “Ooh, Starbucks!” It’s exciting. There’s a lot of energy and hype around Starbucks. People were lining up in the early days, but then you just start realizing is Starbucks isn’t actually unique at all. Every one of their sites looks the same. All their Christmas decor looks like it’s been a photocopy of a photocopy. It feels produced, too produced.

And then you’ve got the neighborhood coffee shop. In Hamilton is a spot called The Canon. I mentioned it in my book a bunch because it was started by a woman from our church. We were starting the church around the same time. This coffee shop paralleled our church so beautifully. We were both broke and scrappy. When they opened, they had a pew from the church building that they had painted. The floors were beat up. Not everyone went, but everyone appreciated that it was there, because it was a genuine reflection of that neighborhood.

I suspect if the church is going to see itself through that metaphoric lens, we should be asking, “What kind of coffee shop are we called to become?” And are we able to be clear about that? If we’re gonna make a church that is going to be able to speak in a secular post-Christian culture, it’s going to need to be one where the people don’t just go to church, but they are the church. It’s about more than just the coffee. And then those who don’t go to that church are really glad it’s in the neighborhood because it makes the neighborhood better for everybody.

REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 38:01

I recorded this interview with Kevin almost nine months ago, and the troubles that he and I talked about have only gotten worse. Political polarization, and the way that Christian Nationalism has become an explicit part of many Christian conversations and even churches, has pushed even more people out of desiring to be part of the church. There’s a real tension right now about whether Christianity in America will double down on power and control at any cost, or whether we will set that temptation down in favor of the humble, other-centered co-suffering path of Jesus. The outcome, at least for the next few years, is by no means certain. So the question of why church matters and what it looks like, is even more crucial.

As I listened back to our conversation, I gathered together some of our ideas and insights into a picture of what a future church might look like that is winsome, engages people where they are and aligns with Jesus’ other-centered co-suffering way. What could church look like in the culture we find ourselves in today? What would it take for church to matter to people who aren’t deep on the inside? Now, these ideas are not about doctrine, at least not on the surface. They’re about practice. But make no mistake, our practice, our church structures, and the way we do things, all grow out of our beliefs and principles. So see if some of these ideas resonate with you.

The Church of the future needs to let go of operating by force and power, and instead, choose a way that is marked by love and consent.

This church would do less. It would be less driven to produce programs and instead spend more time listening–listening to God, listening to its members and participants, and listening to the world around it.

This church would be willing to be honest about the past, willing to admit when it’s done harm or contributed to harm. Most importantly, this church would rush toward making things right rather than rushing to circle the wagons to protect an image or an institution or a leader.

This church would feel less like it’s trying to build a new “cool kids table,” instead opting for radical and generous inclusivity.

This church would focus less on building big crowds where many people listen to the voices of a few and opt for nurturing smaller community spaces where everyone’s voice can be heard. The expectation would be that God speaks through the community, not just through a couple of elevated leaders.

This church would double down on loving service, letting go of programs and outreach that come with strings attached or some expectation of conversion or contribution.

This church would set aside rigid purity culture, where people’s value and even their ability to participate are measured on some scale of proper behavior or even uniform belief, choosing instead a path of generous welcome where nuance is expected and people don’t have to hide who they are.

This church would let go of its addiction to looking like the latest, biggest, famous, franchised expression of Christianity and instead prefer local in particular, following the Spirit into authentic manifestations of community. More food cart, less chain restaurant.

This church would set aside the model of religious content programming and move toward being a practical school of love.

At the end of our conversation, Kevin talked about an incredible possibility. A church like this would make such a positive difference in the community that even the people who don’t go there would be glad it’s in the neighborhood because it makes the neighborhood better for everybody.

That’s a vision that moves me. Does it move you? If it does, understand that this vision comes with a homework assignment. That assignment? If you and I wish that church was more like what I just described, then you and I have to consider what we might do to bring that about. How will we serve? What kind of leaders will we support? Are we willing to be less comfortable as the church becomes less about us and our preferences? Will we invest time and heart and even cash In churches that look like this? The way God seems to have chosen to do things in our world means that God’s work in the world happens only as people respond to the nudge of the Holy Spirit. And that means you and me getting involved.

May you see your role in bringing this kind of vibrant church community to life and may all of us have the courage to follow Jesus into this kind of other-centered co-suffering community. Thanks for listening.

Notes for today’s episode and any links mentioned can be found at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW049. There you’ll find Kevin’s website, a link to his book, “Why Would Anyone Go To Church,” and links to some of his other creative work: some short films on being human, and a 60-minute one-man show called Holy Shift.

If you found today’s conversation helpful, then subscribe to my email list. I usually email about once a month. This amazing email includes links to my writing, the next podcast episode, books I recommend for your spiritual journey, and a little bit of a catch-up with what’s going on in my life. Opt in and you’ll get a free little book called “The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World.” That sounds useful, doesn’t it? This short read will teach you a spiritual practice that has been so helpful to me as I have faced the anxiety and uncertainty of our time. Subscribe and get that book at www.MarcOptIn.com.

Until next time, remember: In this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Recently a number of Christian leaders and teachers have been making waves saying that empathy is a sin–or at least something that good Christians need to be very careful with. Why would they say this? What do they get out of it? And why should you be concerned if you hear this line of thinking?

Becky Castle Miller writes and speaks on emotional, mental, and spiritual health in the church. She recently graduated from Northern Seminary with a master’s in New Testament Context, studying with Dr. Scot McKnight. Her discipleship workbook with Dr. McKnight is called Following King Jesus. She is working on a new book about Jesus’s emotions. She, her husband, their five kids, and cat returned to the US after living in the Netherlands for eight years, where she worked at an international church. She is presently the Program Manager for Seminary Now.

Marc Schelske  0:00  

Hey friends, I’m Marc Alen Schelske and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 48. Empathy is not a sin–and anyone who tells you so is trying to control you.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is made possible by The Wisdom of Your Heart. We’re talking about empathy today and that means we’re going to touch on the world of our emotions. This is a subject close to my heart. I spent a lot of my life deeply disconnected from my emotions and it costs me gravely. You can hear the story of my recovery in my book, The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-given Power and Purpose of Your Emotions. In this book, I also debunk several myths about emotions that are often taught in church, I present a theology of emotions, and I talk about our best current understanding of what emotions mean when we have them and how we can learn to hear wisdom in them. So, if today’s conversation is helpful, or if you’re unpacking difficult emotions from your past, or bad emotional teaching from the church, I invite you to check out The Wisdom of Your Heart. It’s available in all the book places. Learn more at www.TheWisdomOfYourHeart.com.

INTRODUCTION

In the past couple of years, the strangest controversy has emerged and it’s only getting worse. It turns out that a number of pastors and theologians have been teaching that empathy is a sin. Empathy, you know, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person, that? Yeah, empathy is a sin. Now, the idea that empathy is a sin strikes me as patently absurd and dismissible. This whole podcast could boil down to me saying, “No, guys. No, it’s not.”

But as I’ve reflected more on this and talked with people and watched the discourse on social media, I think this idea is not just wrong, I think it’s dangerous. And some big name people, pastors, theologians, church leaders are pushing this idea. So today, I’m going to talk about empathy with Becky Castle Miller. What is it? Why is it necessary for human flourishing? What role does it play in our faith? And why on earth would somebody say having it is sinful?

Becky Castle Miller writes and speaks on emotional, mental and spiritual health in the church. She recently graduated from Northern seminary with a Masters in New Testament studying with Dr. Scott McKnight. Her discipleship workbook with Dr. McKnight is called Following King Jesus. She’s working on a new book about Jesus’ emotions, she, her husband, their five kids, and their cat recently returned to living in the U.S. after living in the Netherlands for eight years, where she worked at an international church. She’s presently the program manager for Seminary Now. She thinks about this stuff a lot, and so I asked Becky to start by laying out exactly what empathy is, and the role that it plays in human emotions.

INTERVIEW

Becky Castle Miller 2:59
So, empathy is primarily understood as feeling with someone, entering into their feelings, and trying to understand where they’re coming from what their experience has been like. And to feel that with them, or alongside them, involves a deep knowing of the other person and a willingness to know them, a willingness to get uncomfortable with them. There are two types of empathy, cognitive empathy and affective empathy. Affective empathy is emotion-based where we’re really trying to enter into their feelings, and cognitive empathy is trying to understand the situation that led to what they’re feeling with our thoughts, trying to understand what they’re feeling.

I think both of those are important. A cold, hard, cognitive empathy that’s missing the affective component isn’t actually going to feel very comforting to someone, and yet just entering into their feelings but not questioning what led to it might also feel flat for someone. So I think we need both of those types of empathy. They’re important in our relationships, because empathy, I think, is a key component to validating people’s emotions. And emotional validation is one of the most healing aspects of therapeutic relationships and of healing relationships in general. So I don’t think that we can have safe trusting healing relationships without the aspect of empathy.

Marc Schelske 4:23
It’s really the thing that we’re probably talking about when we talk about the need to listen well, right? That if I’m really hearing you, what that means when I say, “Are you hearing me?” is “Do you get me? Do you feel me?” The tool we have that’s a part of our brain and limbic system is what we we identify as empathy. Does that seem right?

Becky Castle Miller 4:45
Yes.

Marc Schelske 4:45
Okay. So just to draw this in then, you said… the two kinds, this affective and cognitive empathy… so is affective empathy that thing that happens to me when I am at my kids music recital? I’m sitting in the audience and they’re up on stage by themselves about to do their thing, and I just… am feeling every moment of it and when a note goes wrong… no one’s looking at me, but I feel something deep in me about the anxiety of that moment. Is that what affective empathy is?

Becky Castle Miller 5:22
Yes. You know your child, you know your child closely and you know your own experience as a human. So it’s a combining of our emotion concepts from our own experiences, and, in a sense, perceiving the other person’s emotions, and feeling that along with them. I know what it feels like when I’m nervous, or I might flub a performance. Our child who has learned to mirror our emotion concepts is probably feeling very similar. And so we have this shared emotional experience where we understand, to the best of our individual limits, what they’re feeling, but we’re remembering our emotional experiences, and we’re perceiving their emotions. We are really participating in that moment with them with our whole body.

Marc Schelske 6:09
And then the cognitive part is that sequence that you’ve talked coming to mind. I’m understanding it, I’m thinking about, “Oh, they didn’t really practice this piece as much as they should have.” And I understand there’s some cost because there’s people watching them. And so I’m interpreting the way that I’m feeling and the way that I think they’re feeling and that’s then the cognitive story about it.

Becky Castle Miller 6:34
Right. And emotions are cognitive. So I don’t like to separate affect from cognition, because they’re all part of the same process. But cognitive empathy is what else you know about the situation or learning about the situation. You know that the person sitting next to them in the orchestra has just been bullying them all year, and they were afraid that person was going to poke them with their violin bow, and you’re seeing it happen. You know the backstory of what’s going on there and so you’re indignant on their behalf Why isn’t the teacher stepping in? Yeah, sometimes we need to know the story so that we can cognitively understand what’s going on as well.

Marc Schelske 7:11
So this thing that we’re talking about, I mean, this is essential for human relationships. It’s essential for any kind of collaborative human endeavor, whether community, church, business. We can’t do relationships effectively without this, am I right?

Becky Castle Miller 7:28
I think that that’s true. If it were, it would be a very sterile, non-intimate relationship, if there was no sharing of emotion going on. So, it would be possible, but I don’t think that’s what most of us want. I think we want emotional relationships. There are people who have emotional injuries that haven’t been tended to might might not want that kind of close relationship, sure. But generally, when we’re healthy, we long for intimate, emotional relationships.

Marc Schelske 8:01
Empathy, then is part of our capacity to connect emotionally with other people. And that’s what we’re longing for. That’s what we want. I think you and I are both saying that healthy relationships, healthy families, healthy communities have some measure of that. Why would that be a sin? Why would that be bad? Or maybe before we even go into the conversation of why would somebody claim that it’s a sin, maybe we should talk about… is there, just objectively speaking, outside the realm of spirituality, Is there trouble that empathy can get us into?

Becky Castle Miller 8:37
I can’t think of any. When someone is experiencing uncomfortable emotions–usually white western culture is not okay with that. Generally speaking, white Americans–that’s the culture I come from, so that’s the culture I can speak to–don’t like to see people experiencing uncomfortable emotions. So we don’t like to see people grieving. We don’t like to see people upset and hurting and suffering. So we either try to stay away from them or avoid them, or we try to shut them down. We don’t mean it to be hurtful. We just subconsciously don’t like it. And so we either avoid it or we try to make them feel better, fast. “There, there… it’s going to be okay. You don’t need to cry.” We bypass people’s grief because it’s so uncomfortable for us to see it, because we really haven’t learned how to grieve as a culture.

The point I’m working around to is this: If you are not okay with people’s uncomfortable emotions because they make you feel uncomfortable emotions, empathy seems problematic because empathy invites you to step into discomfort instead of avoiding it or bypassing it or shutting it down. So, I think that people who don’t have healthy emotions, and don’t understand how to handle those in themselves or in other people, think of empathy as a bad thing because it makes them uncomfortable. They don’t know what to do about that. So I think that there can be a perception that empathy is bad, because discomfort is bad. And empathy can be uncomfortable.

Marc Schelske 10:22
Okay, that makes total sense. We don’t like feeling negative emotions. We have lots of structures in our society to make it so that we don’t have to feel them. If something is going to cause that kind of reaction, a lot of times we want to avoid it. So that totally makes sense. Empathy could lead me into a place of feeling uncomfortable emotions that I don’t want to feel.

Okay, so maybe here’s another possible angle. In my own work on emotion, one of the things that seemed significant to me was that emotions function in the human person as a way to get us to move, to take action, to get us to respond to something in our environment that needs to be attended to or to be different, right.

Becky Castle Miller 11:09
Yes.

Marc Schelske 11:09
So if I’m feeling an emotion that I don’t like, that’s uncomfortable for me, that I might want to avoid, or if the emotions I’m connecting with through empath, are trying to stir up something in me to act in a certain way–Now, we have the question on the table of whether I am being moved to act in a way that is something I don’t like or something I disagree with, or something that my community has said I shouldn’t do. And now empathy–which we were talking about is just a conduit of understanding between human beings–that empathy is actually serving to stir within me a motivation to act. Now I’ve got to think about whether or not I’m okay with that,

Becky Castle Miller 11:57
I think that empathy can move us toward the more specific emotion of compassion, and compassion motivates us to take action on behalf of someone that we feel sorry for, pity for, compassion for. When we feel that–being deeply moved in our bowels, like the Greek sense of Jesus’s kind of compassion, we want to take action–that emotion is a motivating force. So I think there’s a progression of empathy toward compassion toward taking action.

Marc Schelske 12:34
If this conduit of empathy is raising compassion in me, and I’m being stirred to act, what then is coming into view is whether or not I’m coming from a place where I think I have to evaluate the reason why the other person is feeling what they’re feeling. So, why are they feeling what they’re feeling because they did a bad thing?

Becky Castle Miller 12:57
Yes.

Marc Schelske 12:57
Are they feeling what they’re feeling because this is a consequence of some sinful behavior and now they’re feeling that way. And if I enter into that feeling with them, if I acknowledge it, or even like you’d said earlier, if I affirm that feeling in them, does that mean I’m affirming the bad thing that I think they did?

Becky Castle Miller 13:19
Yes. So, it’s very much a viewpoint that I have the right to judge the reasons that someone is hurting.

Marc Schelske 13:27
Okay.

Becky Castle Miller 13:28
And if I think their reasons for hurting are deficient, then why would I be empathetic? It’s only going to encourage them to continue in sin and pull me down with them.

Marc Schelske 13:38
Okay. All right. So, then now this conversation about empathy then opens up into a broader conversation that’s really about how I see other people, and issues of judgment and control.

Becky Castle Miller 13:53
Yes.

Marc Schelske 13:54
All right. So when this sort of blew up, and I began to see it happening online, one of the things that I observed is that the folks who seem to be loudly talking about empathy being a sin–or a softer version of that would be the idea that empathy is a risk you’ve got to be really careful with–those folks have a couple things in common, as far as I can tell. They are spiritual leaders, pastors, theologians, that are all sort of within the Venn diagram of patriarchalist (maybe softer language–male headship, or maybe strong complementarian.) They’re all folks who are coming from a place where their theological viewpoint is hierarchical.

Becky Castle Miller 14:43
Yeah.

Marc Schelske 14:43
I think also… all or most are coming from a theological stream that’s either Reformed, for sure, or Reformed-adjacent.…

Becky Castle Miller 14:58
Yeah, it’s the overlapping circles of Reformed theology, and Patriarchal, and also high-control religious environments. I think it’s those three. It’s the center of those three if you’re making a Venn diagram,

Marc Schelske 15:12
Okay, so if those are the folks who are saying that empathy is a sin or empathy is at least a risk to be very careful about, if those are the folks that are saying it, what’s the payoff for them?

Becky Castle Miller 15:24
I think it’s gatekeeping. It’s keeping that high control of doctrine and practice, and keeping people in line. And I think there’s a real fear that people will sin. There’s a lot of fear about sin in those overlapping circles. This anti-empathy strain is simply the most recent head of the hydra. Right? That is, the bigger picture of emotion control and anti-emotionalism that has been part of the church for centuries… I’ve seen in my research that in this anti-emotionalism there’s so much fear about sin. Don’t follow your emotions, because they’ll lead you to sin. don’t follow your desires, because they’ll lead you to sin. So this current iteration of it is simply, “Don’t empathize with people who are hurting because they might sin or you might sin.” There’s so much fear about sin.

Marc Schelske 16:23
Yes, right.

Becky Castle Miller 16:24
And I think that there can be two different streams that end up at the same point, but they come from different places. And one of those may be truly a sincere, pastoral desire to care for people. Having been a pastor, I know that I care for people and I don’t want them to hurt and I don’t want them to cause damage in their relationships with God and other people. And so there can be that sincere pastoral desire that I think is misguided in these cases, because it pushes people against their own God-given emotions. But there might be true desire to protect the people that you’re tasked with caring for and shepherd, and I can understand and honor that motivation, even though I think this outworking of it is not healthy.

But, I think on the other hand, there are those who truly are seeking power and control. They’re using anti-emotionalism, and specifically anti-empathy, to maintain their control over what people believe and do and even to maintain control over what people feel.

Marc Schelske 17:20
Right! Because in that system, in that… what was the word that you used? The high control religious environment?

Becky Castle Miller 17:26
High control religious system.

Marc Schelske 17:27
Yeah, in that system, we, we want–either out of love, as you’ve acknowledged, or perhaps out of control–we want people to not fall off the rails, we want them to not enter into sin. And so we’re trying to provide guidance for that. And if everyone was just obeying with their brains, everything will be fine. But there’s this insidious culprit inside of us, our emotions, and empathy allows the emotions of somebody else, that’s even outside of us to, sort of evoke that emotion in us, and that thing is outside the bounds of the control.

Becky Castle Miller 18:02
Mhm.

Marc Schelske 18:02
Okay, so when, when this all came up, and I started reading and listening to folks talking about this, I was also at the same time doing a lot of reading in church history. I came upon a letter that John Calvin wrote in 1554. He was writing it to justify his position that people, in this case a particular somebody that he disagreed with theologically–so a heretic, but I want to put a very strong emphasis on “a person he disagreed with” because “heretic” sounds so crazy and other and weird and really all we’re talking about is someone who had a different view of a couple points of theology–So Calvin ends up being on the side that this guy needs to be executed and that indeed happens, and John Calvin writes this letter to justify his position.

I read this in the middle of this conversation about empathy being a sin, and just like… the lights went on for me. SoI’m going to read this and tell me what you think when you hear this. This is John Calvin speaking: “Whoever shall now contend that it is unjust to put heretics and blasphemers to death, will knowingly and willingly incur their very guilt. This is not laid down on human authority. It is God who speaks and prescribes a perpetual rule for His church.”

That’s pretty serious. Now, here’s why. “It is not in vain that God banishes all those human affections which soften our hearts, that he commands paternal love and all the benevolent feelings between brothers, relations, and friends to cease. In a word, he almost deprives men of their nature in order that nothing may hinder their holy zeal. Why is it so implacable a severity exacted, but that we may know that God is defrauded of his honor unless the piety that is due Him be preferred to all Human duties, and that which his glory is to be asserted, humanity itself must almost be obliterated from our memories.”2One source for the text of this letter: https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc8.iv.xvi.xxii.html

Becky Castle Miller 18:57
Wow.

Marc Schelske 18:58
Yeah. So “it is not in vain that God banishes human affections which soften our hearts.” So, I’m hearing John Calvin say that, in fact, sometimes for us to do the right thing–and in this case, right thing is execute a heretic…

Becky Castle Miller 20:26
Executing people.

Marc Schelske 20:28
Right?!

Becky Castle Miller 20:28
Outright Murder!

Marc Schelske 20:30
Right? That the thing that would stop us from doing that, like… here’s the thing we gotta do, we’ve got to execute the heretics. And the thing that would stop us from executing them would, in fact, be benevolent feelings. human affection.

Unknown Speaker 20:45
Human. Human affection. Yeah.

Marc Schelske 20:47
Right? And so then he says, “Well, God wants us to be holy so much that God is going to actually cause us to have to step away from that. Okay. So, thinking back to that Venn diagram that we talked through, this is John Calvin talking, how does this fit into the conversation?

Becky Castle Miller 21:05
The scripture says that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, but I think right here we see John Calvin hardening his own heart. God didn’t have to do it, he hardened his own… he seared his own conscience to justify murder, by telling himself that God is okay with it. He’s searing his own conscience, he’s hardening his own heart, and shutting off the humanity and conscience that God gave him. I think that we see, to a lesser degree because we’re not talking about murdering heretics right now in the current climate, but I think we’re seeing a similar hardening of the heart so that we do not have to hear what God is saying, on behalf of the weak and hurting.

I think we see similar wording or similar reasoning in more modern language from people like Joe Rigney of Bethlehem Baptist, who said, “Rightly used, empathy is a power tool in the hands of the weak and suffering. By it we can so weaponized victims, that they are indulged at every turn, without regard for whether such indulgences wise or prudent or good for them.” So, this stance is explicitly an anti-victim stance, because then the moment someone says, “Hey, I’ve been a victim of XYZ abuse,” people who’ve been taught this about this anti-empathy teaching, their radar goes off, and they say, “Oh, you’re gonna try to weaponize that victimhood to make me feel sorry for you. And I’m not supposed to feel sorry for you, because you’re just using…, you want me to be empathetic. And that’s a power tool, you’re trying to retake power by making me be empathetic. But you don’t deserve to be indulged.”

Marc Schelske 22:44
So the person that is objectively in power is saying to the person who’s been injured at the hands of the power system, “You, sir, are manipulating me.”

Becky Castle Miller 22:56
“And you’re trying to take power,” because they see power, they live for power, and they can’t help but to see someone else as trying to take what they want, which is more power. So they are projecting, they’re viewing people through their own lens, and assuming that person’s motivation must be power, because that’s the thing that’s motivating themselves.

Marc Schelske 23:16
Right? So any claim by anybody, any marginalized person who stands up and says, “I’ve been injured by you, in particular, or by the system that you’re a part of,” is immediately able to be discounted and ignored, because the very fact that they’re saying, “I was hurt” and demonstrating that is a power play on their part.

Becky Castle Miller 23:36
Yes, it preemptively prevents victims from being able to come forward out of abusive systems. You know that you have generated a ton of abuse, and you have many victims within your system, in your organization, and you want to make sure that when they come forward, no one will believe them. So, you preemptively teach people not to believe them or care about them, so that when they come forward, everyone who could help them has been conditioned not to. That is a classic abuse tactic.

Marc Schelske 24:03
That conditioning is actually trying to override–you know, what you are saying from the very beginning–what is a natural God-built part of who we are. When somebody speaks up, when a victim speaks up and says “I have been injured,” they are asking for validation that they’ve been hurt, but they’re also making a bid that you will feel their hurt with them. They’re saying “Do you notice this? Does this seem right to you? Will you come alongside me in redressing this?” And I would argue that empathy is a crucial part in our capacity to, in fact, do that. As Paul instructs us, “Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.” If you speak up and say, “I’ve been hurt,” part of me bearing the burden is entering into that with you to understand it, and then determine if there a way that I can be a part of reconciliation or restoration or reparation?

Becky Castle Miller 24:59
Right. And in the pastoral care work I’ve done with abuse survivors, one of the most healing steps for them is to be believed and validated and empathized with. It’s so important that the first response to someone’s abuse disclosure be, “I believe you, I hear you, I’m with you. And that should never have been done to you. What that person did was objectively wrong. Yes, I validate your perception that was abusive, it shouldn’t have happened. Now I’m going to work with you to get justice.” That’s what people need to heal. If people don’t receive that it’s very, very, very hard for them to heal.

Marc Schelske 25:39
Right.

Becky Castle Miller 25:40
So this whole setup of anti-empathy is creating a world that abuses people and then doesn’t give them a path for healing.

Marc Schelske 25:42
This is why it’s dangerous, not just wrong.

Becky Castle Miller 25:43
Yes

Marc Schelske 25:43
Right? That the teaching that empathy is a sin is actually trying to remove the circuit that God put in place in our emotional and relational systems that empowers healing. It’s what empowers real community. It’s what empowers intimacy. It’s what enables us to actually do the things we’ve been invited to do as followers of Jesus.

Becky Castle Miller 26:13
Mhm. And I think that black liberation theologians, like James Cone, deeply understand and explain to us what it means for Jesus to empathize with us, what it means for Jesus to have participated fully in the life of the marginalized and the poor. Jesus not only became human, but he became poor, and he became part of an oppressed people, so that from the inside, he could transform of oppression into liberation. Those who say that Christians shouldn’t empathize are denying one of the most powerful aspects of Jesus’ life and existence, which is to be in the pain and hurt and experience and alongside us.

Marc Schelske 26:42
Yeah… In a social system, whether it’s a church or a community, there are people who are hurting. And the way that we make a difference in that is to enter into that with them to understand–which is a part of entering in, understanding–but then being with them in it. And if empathy is a sin, then you can’t do that. And so then what else is happening is if the people that are hurting happened to be people that are on the bottom of a particular social structure, if you take away empathy, you take away any possibility of changing the social structure,

Becky Castle Miller 27:36
Yes. Because you take away any channel people have to try to explain and seek redress for the abuses perpetuated on them.

Marc Schelske 27:45
So then that’s where you said this is a control issue, right? If I can convince you that empathy is to be avoided as a Christian, I’ve just made it so that we don’t have to deal with changing the system. If there’s marginalization that’s happening, and women are being injured, or people of color are being injured, or our LGBT kids are being injured with, higher rate of suicide and homelessness, I don’t even have to think about those things. The system, as it is, is safe because the thing that would enable me to question those injuries is empathy.

Becky Castle Miller 28:20
Yes. And it puts the one holding the power also into the judgment seat of what is deserving of empathy. So for example, James White says this explicitly, he said, “We are told to weep with those who weep, but that assumes that those who weep have a reason for weeping that is in line with God’s revelation…”

Marc Schelske 28:44
Oh yea, that’s the next verse.

Becky Castle Miller 28:45
Right?! “We’re not to weep with the drug dealer who accidentally drops his stash down the storm drain in New York City. We are to exercise control even in our sympathy, we are not to sympathize with sin, or rebellion, or evil.” So his whole thing is that we can’t empathize with someone because what if the reason that they’re hurting is because of their own mistake or sin so they don’t deserve to be empathized with. They don’t deserve to be hurting in the first place.

So that’s problematic in itself, but also he uses these extreme absurdist examples so that we agree with him like, “Oh, yes, of course, I shouldn’t empathize with a drug dealer.” This is very very specific and extreme, he drops his stash down a storm drain in New York City. It’s just it’s just as really extreme specific example. But we say “Yes, oh, of course, he’s sad because he lost drugs. I shouldn’t feel sorry for him.” But what that does is that get me to agree with him so that when I meet someone who was sexually abused in a Southern Baptist Church, and is seeking to bring her abuser to justice, I will say, “Well, what did she do wrong? There’s probably a reason that she’s hurting and I shouldn’t empathize with her because it probably was her sin.”

Marc Schelske 30:00
Right. And until I know, until I have enough of the situation sorted out for me to be able to judge whether or not the sadness that she has is valuable holy sadness, then I get to withhold my empathy.

Becky Castle Miller 30:14
Because I don’t want to support someone in their sin.

Marc Schelske 30:15
Right. That means that I have to, in order to have this human connection with anybody, I have to pre-qualify them as worthy. And that means my relationship to them is always a hierarchical relationship. I’m the one that’s judging whether or not their sadness and loss is worth grieving.

Becky Castle Miller 30:33
And generally, it’s going to say, “No, it’s not.”

Marc Schelske 30:36
That example itself kind of shows part of this thinking. Let’s just imagine that there is a drug dealer in New York City who dropped his stash down the storm drain. Is it possible to ask questions about that guy? Is it possible to ask questions about why that guy is selling drugs? Does he feel like he needs to sell drugs? Is selling drugs what is supporting his family? You know?

Becky Castle Miller 31:01
Right. What is it about systemic poverty in our country that needs to be addressed? Was he not able to get health care, and he has a million dollars in medical bills, and he’s trying to put food on the table for his kids, because we have no social safety net in the U.S.? But if we just say, “Well, he did something wrong,” then we don’t need to empathize and we don’t have to hear the hurt that led to this place. We don’t have to fix the systemic issues, because he’s just wrong. So we don’t have to feel sad.

Marc Schelske 31:31
Right. He did it. He committed a crime, he made the choice, it’s his fault. These are his consequences. And he should just buck up and take them and it’s not our problem. So then when when we remove empathy from the equation, basically, what we’re saying is whatever is happening to other people is not our problem.

Becky Castle Miller 31:51
Yes. And it’s so explicitly rooted in undermining the whole anti-abuse advocacy movement that’s happening in the church world. They see it coming for them. These men who are speaking out against empathy are having abuse cases brought to light in their own organizations, and even against themselves. And so in order to protect themselves and their institutions, they’re trying to preemptively keep the public from listening to those who bring their stories of spiritual trauma.

James White is explicit. He went on to say, “When I see a brother or sister who’s experiencing what they call trauma, and I first inquire as to the source of the trauma, and I discover it’s rooted in rebellion, or sin or ignorance of God’s truth, they don’t need me to validate their emotional responses.” So he’s poisoned people against listening to those who say, “I have spiritual trauma,” right. And shame doesn’t change anyone. Shame is not the way that we help people and support their growth and change. If you shame someone, they’re only more likely to withdraw from relationship and to withdraw into themselves. And that’s not how we call people to growth and to change. Jesus never shamed anyone, he invited them and let them choose to follow. He didn’t browbeat them.

Marc Schelske 33:17
Okay. So then let’s turn this corner, then. If empathy is not only a normal, natural part of a healthy, functioning human person and human relationships, if it’s not only that, but then also a constructive and needful part of our faith life, what does that look like? How do you see empathy playing a constructive role in the life of a faithful Christian?

Becky Castle Miller 33:45
Jesus’s empathy needs to be the model for our empathy. The way that Jesus entered into human existence and knows what we feel like… to know that we have a great high priest who’s experienced everything we have and prays for us out of that intimate knowledge of suffering and the human experience. Jesus is our model of empathy. We should enter into the experience of the poor and the marginalized and the hurting, and be with them as Jesus is with us.

Marc Schelske 34:23
Yeah. I mean, you think of some of the key guiding principles or passages ion our Christian faith. How do you do these things without empathy? How do you bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ without empathy? You don’t even know what their burdens are, if you can’t empathize. How do you love your neighbor as yourself? The the underlying software behind that injunction is that you know about what you need, you know about your internal landscape, you know about the things that make you hurt. So love your neighbor in keeping with what you know about what it mean for you to be loved. Love your neighbor as yourself. How do you do that without empathy? How can we be Christians after the way of Jesus without empathy?

Becky Castle Miller 35:09
I don’t think we can be. And I’d like to try to take on some empathy for the men who are saying these things against empathy. You know, to love them as I would want to be loved. Maybe they don’t know have to love themselves. Maybe they have unhealed wounds that no one has empathized with. And the way of self-protection is to say, “Well, who needs empathy anyway?”

Marc Schelske 35:34
Augh… I didn’t want to end feeling sorry for those guys, Becky. That wasn’t where I wanted to end the conversation.

Becky Castle Miller 35:41
Sorry for making you feel empathy!

Marc Schelske 35:47
Okay, all right. So on the one hand, I can stand up and boldly say that gaslighting around empathy is a method of control. But on the other hand, that I have to think about whether I am participating in that? And why would somebody be in that position? What would make you feel so desperate, (John Calvin!) as to say that you don’t want anybody thinking about the choices you’ve made according to their emotional sense of empathy? You don’t want them using that standard to judge you. Okay, love your neighbor as yourself. That’s gotta take empathy.

REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 36:46

Are you kidding me? Did you see what Becky did there at the end? She asked me to have empathy for these preachers who are using emotional manipulation to control other people. Was she wrong to do that? Is this some weird both sides perspective? No. Becky was simply asking me to live up to the calling of Jesus. She’s asking me not to abandon empathy as I relate to people, even people I disagree with. If I buy into the message that empathy is a sin, then I get to write people like this off. I get to dehumanize them, I get to stand in judgment over them without any nuance or concern. But if I engage my God-given empathy, then I have to wonder about their story and why empathy is so frightening to them, and what it is about their worldview that leaves them in so much fear.

If I happen to have a relationship with someone like this, that gives me a basis for interacting with them in a compassionate way, perhaps even an angle from which I can invite them to something better. And if I don’t have a relationship with someone like this, thinking empathically about them enables me to be better prepared to love the people in my own life and ministry. It shows me why it’s important to listen first, why it’s important to believe victims when they share their hurt. It shows me why it’s important that we think not only about individual sin and struggle, but also about the sin embedded in our systems and in our organizations.

I don’t think it’s possible for us to follow Jesus well without empathy. If someone tells you different, pay close attention. They may be trying to distract or control how you feel. And that may be an effort to keep you from hearing the voice of Spirit, calling you to greater love, more inclusive hospitality as you follow the way of Jesus. May you see the world through Spirit-inspired empathy, so that you can love more and more like Jesus. Thanks for listening.

Notes for today’s episode, and any links mentioned you’ll find at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW048. If you found today’s conversation helpful, then subscribe to my email list. Usually just one email a month that includes links to my writing, the next podcast episode, books I recommend and more. You’ll get a free ebook PDF when you do. It’s called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. In that I teach a spiritual practice that has been so helpful to me as I face the anxiety and uncertainty of the time we find ourselves in. So subscribe, get my email and get this little book at www.MarcOptIn.com.

Until next time, remember: In this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Does our faith enable us to be “a good gift” to our neighbors, even the neighbors we disagree with? Many Christians, it seems, are living in ways that contradict the core ethic of our faith loving our neighbors as ourselves. What is going on? It seems like we are witnessing a mass failure of discipleship. Why is this happening and what can be done about it?

Rich Villodas is the Brooklyn-born lead pastor of New Life Fellowship, a large multiracial church with more than seventy-five countries represented in Elmhurst, Queens. Rich holds a Master of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary. He enjoys reading widely, preaching, and writing on contemplative spirituality, justice-related matters, and the art of preaching. He’s been married to Rosie since 2006 and they have two beautiful children, Karis and Nathan.

Marc Schelske  0:00  

Does our faith enable us to be a good gift to our neighbors? Even the neighbors we disagree with? Hey friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is the Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 47. Don’t choose shallow formation.

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INTRODUCTION

Recently, I was chatting with a small group of local pastors. They were from churches that were really different–small, very large, urban, rural, different denominations. It was the first time I had seen any other pastors in person since the start of the COVID pandemic. And we were talking about everything that we’ve been through as a result. Basically, we were telling war stories.

Even though our churches were so different, our stories were very similar. Church members were angry because of the way their church was handling COVID. Angry if the church was online, angry if the church was in person, angry if they weren’t enforcing masks, angry if they were. And then there was tension over the pastor’s perceived political position. Even the most general call for compassion and care for vulnerable people would get you labeled as too liberal for the denomination or one guy even got called a socialist. I know these pastors, all of them, all of them desire to protect vulnerable people, you know–like Jesus did. And almost all of them had church members who took offense at that. I’ve heard the same kinds of reports from pastors across the country.

It seems like there’s something happening in the wider Christian church right now that is not good–by not good. I mean, not like Jesus at all. Now, I know, I know there are good Christians and good churches and good pastors. Maybe you have one of those great churches or you are one of those great pastors. That’s all true. And yet, can’t you see that there is a sickness bubbling to the surface in the modern Christian church? Among Christians, we’re seeing increasing science denial, COVID denial, dogmatic refusal to take the vaccine or wear masks or do anything to protect vulnerable people in our communities. We’re seeing wide support for intentionally cruel immigration policies, and an almost rabid pursuit of getting anti-abortion laws on the books regardless of the cost or who gets hurt, with a very little parallel concern for sustaining the life of already born people. There’s also a weird, deep resistance to talking about the historical reality of racial oppression and exploitation in our countries. Even an unwillingness to take seriously the issue of sexual abuse of women and children in church communities and by church leaders.

Come on, Christians are ostensibly people who’ve been taught to love their neighbors as themselves. These are people who’ve heard Paul’s words in church that to bear one another’s burdens is to fulfill the law of Christ. These are people who’ve been taught about God’s grace and forgiveness, people who read Jesus’ words, “Whatsoever you do for the least of these, you’ve done for me.” So what is going on? Now, of course, I’ll grant that there are great churches and great pastors, and great Christians out there doing good gospel things. But even so, I think we’re witnessing across the nation, and even the world, a massive failure of discipleship. Discipleship is that old word we use in church to talk about the process of learning to follow Jesus. And this process is not meant just to teach us churchy skills like how to study the Bible or pray more. It’s supposed to change our essential values. But it seems in too many cases, that is just not happening.

Early in the pandemic, my church and I read a book that offered an intervention on this front, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformational Values to Root us in the Way of Jesus. This book isn’t written by some ivory-tower theorist. It’s written by a pastor, Rich Vellodas.

He’s the pastor of New Life Fellowship in Queens, New York, New Life is a multiracial, multi-class, multi-generational urban immigrant church that has had to walk through some of these very difficult issues. In The Deeply Formed Life, Vellodas offers five values that he suggests we are missing in the church right now, five values that the church needs in this particular moment. The book was really helpful to me and to my church.

And so I asked Rich to sit down with me and chat about this crisis of discipleship. And I started out by asking him, “Why is this happening?”

INTERVIEW

Rich Vellodas 7:11

We’re living in a CPR world. That’s how I’ve tried to explain what’s going on in our day, Marc. In a world that is marked by COVID, Political Hostility, Racial Injustice, and the convergence of those things, CPR is leading us to have ailing hearts and difficulty breathing. And I think the past year and a half has revealed to us the complexity, the stress, the anxiety, the particular moment that we’re in is so fragmented. And the call to discipleship in this particular moment requires a vision that’s large enough, and deep enough to encompass the particular moment that we find ourselves in. Yes, we need the classic practices of discipleship, of prayer, and reading the Bible, and bearing witness to Christ, and church and all the rest, but discipleship–for it to truly impact people in ways that goes beyond the surface–It’s one that resists the pull of formational compartmentalization that we find ourselves in. And we require a new really paradigm or a fresh paradigm, at least.

Marc Schelske 8:36

In the book, you talk about how we’ve experienced a shallow formation. Can you talk about, a little bit of what that means? And maybe how that shallow formation is what we are seeing fall down right now?

Rich Vellodas 8:48

Yeah, by shallow formation, I’m talking about a way of life that leaves very little space for interiority, a formation that often doesn’t go beyond behavior modification, doctrinal affirmations, political associations. It’s a very thin approach. And so to go beneath the surface, you know, when I think about the various traditions, that I’ve been shaped by, traditions that I love, traditions that have helped me, what I often find is that there tends to have a particular accent. So for example, in the evangelical tradition–I use that in the theological sense of the word, not in the political sense of that word–And the theology in the evangelical tradition is often about right thinking. That as long as you have the right thinking, and you believe certain things about the divinity of Jesus, and about the way of salvation and about something related to the Bible, then you’re good to go. I mean, you got the right thinking, or it’s right–in the Pentecostal tradition, where I have spent many years as well, It’s the right experiences. Do you have the right experience? Whether it’s mainline traditions or progressive traditions or traditions that are oriented by justice? Is there a right action? Are we giving ourselves to the right action in the world? And so it’s often right thinking, right experiences, right action. There’s often in light of that very little interiority, where we’re not examining some of the larger issues from a deeper center.

Marc Schelske 10:23

It sounds like you’re talking about the, I mean, kind of the iceberg metaphor that, you know, I first saw in the Emotionally Healthy Spirituality material, talking about how we have so much of our interior life beneath the surface. That metaphor was talking about our emotional reality. And it sounds like you’re taking the same metaphor and expanding it to the rest of our inner life, political identity, racial identity, culture, all that stuff.

Rich Vellodas 10:52

That’s absolutely right. I mean, we…there are no icebergs in Queens, but we made that image the logo of our church. And it is, in many respects, the primary image that we come back to talk about–whether it’s our emotional life, whether it’s our political identification–the ways that we navigate and so absolutely right.

Marc Schelske 11:13

Right, because we want, we want life transformation and that’s not going to be the surface things you’ve talked about. It’s not just, “Do you understand and articulate your doctrine in the right way? Do you have you added the right set of behaviors to your life?” Those are fruit, that’s Jesus metaphor, right? Fruit on the tree. So something about the tree, something about the roots is what needs to be changed. That’s where we’re headed. And right now in this world, it feels like the roots are missing.

Rich Vellodas 11:37

In the world that we live in, the pace is just nonstop. And this is not just that I’m from New York, I’m in the city that never sleeps. And so we’re accustomed to this. But this is not just a New York phenomenon. There’s just a chaotic, frenzied, hurried pace that we live. And because of this chaotic pace, there’s very little time to actually take inventory of our own souls, let alone some of the deeper ways that we are to be thinking about some of the more challenging and important issues of our day.

Marc Schelske 12:10

In the book, you pick out five particular themes that you’re suggesting are kind of the intervention to this to this problem that we’re facing.

Rich Vellodas 12:21

That’s the first time I’ve heard it that way and I like it, Marc. That’s the first time I’ve heard it that way.

Marc Schelske 12:26

We want to get down into the roots or down into the iceberg. Talk us through what these values are and what they’re intervening about.

Rich Vellodas 12:35

Yeah, so the five values that I write about, and those values are Contemplative Rhythms, Racial Reconciliation, Interior Examination, Sexual Wholeness, and Missional presence.

For contemplative rhythms, the intervention is we are living often at a pace that is exhausting and leaves no room for us to catch up to God. And so in order to catch up to God, we need to slow down our lives. That’s the paradox of the way of Jesus.

The intervention for that Racial Reconciliation chapter is that we live in a world that’s so increasingly fragmented around racial, ethnic lines, and we often don’t have the formational language to help us navigate this. You know, to talk about race. We have to talk about it on so many levels theologically, historically, sociologically, ecclesiologically, politically. I thought I need to…the intervention is we need is to talk formationally.

Interior Examination, the intervention is that we are living often on the surface of our own lives. And we’re not taking inventory on what’s happening. And so the intervention is that Jesus wants to transform all of our lives, especially our interior lives.

Sexual Wholeness is we live in a culture–this is within the church and outside the church–that splits souls from bodies, as opposed to seeing the dynamic interplay between the two. And we are to hold these things together.

And that Missional Presence value, really the intervention is we are called to make something of the world. We’re not just called to be consumers of the world, we’re called to participate with God in the creation of something that has yet to be seen in its fullness. That’s how I tried to in essence articulate what I think we need individually and collectively.

Marc Schelske 14:28

I think the book came out in 2020. That means that you were writing it, working on it, for two or three years prior to that. So now, here we are a year and a half, more than a year and a half, into this weird CPR world that you’ve talked about. It seems like these five values are maybe even more urgent than they were when you were working on the book.

Rich Vellodas 14:53

I knew there were problems! That’s why I wrote I wrote it, but it does seem like a deepening and an acceleration of the problems in the past year and a half.

Marc Schelske 15:03

You know, we’re so wired up to avoid discomfort. And, and when it comes to church, honestly, what people want from church is to go to church and feel encouraged and hopeful and leave church carrying that encouragement into the world that they’re in.

Rich Vellodas 15:23

Right.

Marc Schelske 15:23

Right. That’s the thing that they–that may not be what they need, but it’s the thing they want.

Rich Vellodas 15:29

Yeah.

Marc Schelske 15:29

And so this acceleration that you speak of, I think part of what has happened is it has accelerated or made more plain, the discomfort! All of us, all of us that are pastors in the last year and a half have had to rethink how we even do church like, like the church…

Rich Vellodas 15:44

Or if I wanna do it!

Marc Schelske 15:48

Exactly, you know, and the expectations that church members have of what church is like that has changed. How we expect the election to go, that is changed, and how we expect our politicians to talk to each other, that is changed, you know, our expectations of the racial conversation, that is changed. And so all of a sudden it’s like there’s this rawness, this open discomfort, and that emotional immaturity, or emotional unhealth– we just run into all kinds of places to avoid facing that interior discomfort,

Rich Vellodas 16:22

What the pandemic has revealed, in many ways, as you mentioned, beyond just the crisis of discipleship, but particularly related to the crisis of discipleship, is the ways that we have not navigated our own interior life in such a way that leads us to be a good gift to our neighbors, even our neighbors that we profoundly disagree with. And so, the church, instead of the church being a place that demonstrates what is possible when Jesus gets a hold of a community, and the kind of compassion and justice and love and humility, what we’ve seen in the church and our discipleship is in many ways, a sad reflection of the world.

Marc Schelske 17:11

Right, right.

Rich Vellodas 17:11

And so what this has most certainly revealed is, yes, that immaturity, as my predecessor would say, that spiritual maturity and emotional maturity are inseparable.

Marc Schelske 17:23

One of the things that you say in this book is that the deeply formed life is not possible without an intentional reordering of our lives. So, what I take you to mean by that is that this is not just a change of perspective. This is not like a new list of five values that I should adopt for my church. There’s something more tangible, that has to happen if this is going to be real.

Rich Vellodas 17:50

Yeah, what I’m trying to get at is the shifts that need to take place in our lives are not just rational shifts, doctrinal shifts, theological shifts. I mean, we can make all the different shifts in our lives mentally, theologically, and not bear any difference in our lives. Yes, we need theological frameworks to think through and rethink how we understand the world. But if we just have frameworks without formation, we are still in the same place. What does it mean to reorder our lives around contemplative rhythms of slowing down to be with God? What does it mean to reorder our lives around taking inventory of the ways that I’ve been shaped racially, and the invitation to live a more just, reconciled, life? The invitation to take inventory of what’s happening within my emotional life? There, it’s a reordering. And so it’s not just here, check this box. Have you read this book? Have you read this article? It’s no… can we begin to talk about the foundational changes that need to be made.

This is why–Marc, you know, I love what you said–most people come to church to hear good news, to be encouraged. I mean, I try to preach encouragement every Sunday. At the same time, I tell our congregation that we should have a sign in the front of our church that says, “Enter at your own risk.” Because we are going to invite you to go places and to consider a reordering of our lives. That might not feel good. But when has following Jesus been about feeling good? I mean, he said, if you’re gonna follow me, take up, take up your cross. That doesn’t feel good. And I think what I’m trying to do in this reordering is, again, trying to contextualize in some ways, what it means to take up our cross and follow Jesus.

Marc Schelske 19:48

Okay, so let’s, let’s take one of these values, just as an example. So the last one you talked about racial reconciliation. Let’s just go with that one because that one is troubling for many of us. So when you say that we need to reorder our lives, and that’s not just, you know, reading a book or hearing a podcast nodding your head and saying, “Yep, things were bad.” Like, you’re talking about something practical. So unpack that. What does a reordering actually look like in regard to that value?

Rich Vellodas 20:17

It means a number of things. One of the ways, that what it means is for us to actually take a conscious, intentional prayerful inventory of the ways that we have been formed. And so for example, there’s a tool that I’ve developed called Race and Racism In Our Families. In that, my attempt was to help the congregation begin to identify–and not just identify, that’s the first step–begin to now resist the messages, the scripts that we have inherited, related to people who don’t look like us. And so for example, how did your family consciously or unconsciously talk about black people? What were the messages that you received? About black people, about white people, about East Asian people, South Asian people, Middle Eastern people, Hispanic people, Native American people? What are those messages? Who were you taught to fear? Who were you taught were beneath you? Who were you taught was competent and who was incompetent? Who’s dangerous, who’s safe?

Unless we are doing that hard work and naming the ways that we’ve been formed, we’re going to have a really hard time imagining something different. And so part of our own formation is taking radical inventory: How have I been shaped in ways that are not in step with the kingdom of God, not instead with the gospel of Jesus Christ, not in step with the way of love? You’re not going to get that by just reading a book. It’s going to take community and intentionality. And, Marc, here’s what I’ve discovered. I’ve led many people in our congregation and outside of it with that simple tool. And to name the messages that we’ve received is such a difficult, often shameful–it feels shameful, because if people really admit how their family gave them messages about black people, or Asian people, Hispanic people, across the board, it’s embarrassing, and so no one wants to do it! And yet, this is the way of the cross. We are actually facing, we’re living in truth. And we’re asking the hard questions. And so that’s one of the ways, Marc, that I think reordering our lives pertains to something like racial justice and reconciliation.

Marc Schelske 22:38

So then, I’m, I’m going to think… in this example, I’m going to think about my family, people that I care about. I have an example of that. I spent a summer when I was 12, I spent a summer living with my grandmother who lived in northern Arkansas. My pictures, my memories, my associations of my grandma, are wonderful Christmases, you know, the way that she, you know, the specific things that she made, the special dishes that she made, you know, going into… going to her house for holidays, feeling really warm and loved and cared for. I have all those associations.

So then I spent the summer with her and in the course of that summer, what I learned was that she–in a very, sort of non-spiteful way–just authentically thought Black people weren’t as smart as she was. She didn’t curse because she was a good church lady. She didn’t use foul language, because she was a teacher at the local Christian school. But just in a way that was very matter of fact, like how I would talk about the sky being blue, she just believed black people weren’t that smart. And so now I have this tension in my gut over this person that I love, that I have all these wonderful associations with, that I think was a good Godly person, AND also was racist. And now I have to look at both sides of that picture. That process is painful, it is painful, right? I want my people to be good people.

Rich Vellodas 24:06

Right? And that’s part A. Then Part B becomes “How am I perpetuating that in ways that I might not be totally aware of, in subtle ways…”

Marc Schelske 24:20

Right.

Rich Vellodas 24:20

So now it becomes grandma, my grandma or you know, aunt So-and-so in Arkansas. Now the question is, “That’s really sad, now, how are the ways that I’m now participating in that? That’s the hard work and then what are the counter-instinctual acts that I need to now begin to grow into to begin to re-narrate and reorder my life in light of how I’ve been shaped racially by my family.

Marc Schelske 24:49

So now I’m moving past thinking about this and reflecting on it. Now you’re saying, Okay, Marc, you also have to do something with it.” What is the… what’s the reordering practices? What is the thing I’m going to do differently if I’m really engaging in this conversation?

Rich Vellodas 25:04

Yeah, in your, in your example, let’s go with that example. First of all, I think it requires some level of confession. There is something about externalizing our sins. I mean, this is good Christian tradition stuff here, you know. Confession is good for our soul and confession roots us in love. And if we’re able to name certain things that have been strongholds in our lives, we begin to free those things from the power it’s had over us. You know, whatever we cannot name, we’re a slave to. And so I think it begins with confession.

This is what I have been living with, carrying. And then in that case there, you know, I do think part of it now–in this case, we’re just taking a very individualistic approach to address something. And so I think to talk about racism needs to be talked about in individual, interpersonal, and institutional ways, but let’s just stick with the individual lens for a second…

How much do I need to pay attention to the various faulty messages that arise on a given day? Marc, you’re at the doctor’s office and someone walks in. And you see it’s a black woman who walks into the doctor’s office, and your first thought (or the hospital, wherever you’re at) your first thought is, “This can’t be the doctor.” Because, you know, black people, black women can’t be doctors… whatever faulty message we have, or Black people can’t be a good director. So this can’t be the doctor. And now you’re asking yourself, you’re taking inventory? What is that about? Your confessing that. You’re praying. You’re asking the Lord to forgive, and then by God’s grace, you’re opening yourself up and moving towards someone that in the past, you might have regarded as some intellectually inferior or whatever it might be?

Marc Schelske 26:57

Right.

Rich Vellodas 26:57

I think that’s one of the ways that we if we play out a scenario like that, but this is a lifelong journey, requiring us to take note on notes on ourselves, and subsequently identifying what are the counter-instinctual habits, actions, that are required of me and it differs from scenario to scenario.

Marc Schelske 27:17

You mentioned, you know, that we were talking about an individualized example and that this also needs to be sort of a larger conversation about communities and systems. Okay. Your book is about values that I think you’re not just proposing for individual Christians. They’re coming out of your church community. And I think you’re proposing that this needs to be a community conversation. So what does that look like in a church community?

Rich Vellodas 27:42
Number one, understanding the power dynamics. We want to be more than just what we call “a sanctified subway car,” in which we get a group of anonymous, diverse people in close proximity to each other. And, you know, as someone said, plantations were diverse as well, you know? So we’re not trying to be just the sanctified subway car. Part of that is who’s making decisions? Who shaping the community, whose fears are we paying attention to? Which values are we highlighting? And I don’t know if that happens unless there are diverse people in the room at various levels of power and influence and authority.

And so in our church, for example, you know, every level, it’s–now granted, it’s a very diverse church–at the same time, we have worked hard and intentionally to ensure that at every level of our community, there is diversity and shared power. And who stories are we listening to? What are the fears that we’re paying attention to? What are the values that we’re prioritizing? And so that’s really related to identity, you know? Who we are, what we look like, but then on another level, it’s a mission, what are we giving ourselves to? As a congregation, we have worked hard over 30 years, to pay attention to the racialized world that we live in. And to try to be a witness that in the name of Jesus, a new possibility, a new racial possibility, is before us.

And so what does this look like? Our engagement with our local community. Right? And you know, what, we were not just involved in evangelism, we’re not just trying to preach the gospel and get people to make an individual decision. We’re asking ourselves, what are, where are their points of inequity? Where are the points of disproportionate resources? So for example, right now, you know, our church is involved with a group of other communities within our neighborhood, addressing affordable housing in a community in which gentrification is taking over. For us, this is an issue of justice, of racial justice. This is part of our discipleship. This is part… you know, does God care about our souls or our bodies? The answer is yes. We’re saying this is a holistic gospel that we’re trying to live out. And so whether it’s individually, interpersonally, institutionally as a congregation, we have tried to work through all this. And it’s hard because these are massive issues before us. And we realize we’re not going to solve most of these problems, but by God’s grace, maybe we can touch a few. And as we work together, try to see something of the kingdom of God become more of a reality, within our local spaces.

Marc Schelske 30:35

In the book, you have a chapter for each of these values. And that chapter is followed by a chapter that is practices. That structure by itself says something because it says it’s not enough to think these thoughts. It’s not enough to agree with a perspective. It’s not enough for Mark to just acknowledge that his grandmother was racist, right? There’s a deeper thing that needs to happen. That thing involves personal reflection, community reflection, but also has to show up in tangible actions.

Rich Vellodas 31:12

I just didn’t want to give theological frameworks for people to say, “Well, I believe that,” or “That’s insightful, and I read the book, and you know what, maybe I’ll read it again if I have to teach on it.” For me, it was, How can this be a resource to guide people into a new way of being in the world? And it was very intentional to offer–I love theology, it’s not that I’m anti-theology. I love theology. I want theology to have flesh on it. I want it to be livable. I want you know… Jesus prays, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done” that there is… I just don’t want to think about it. I want to be about it. And so the practices are really trying to orient our hearts, our minds, our bodies, our relationships into a new way of being.

Marc Schelske 32:04

Yeah, ’cause it’s very often that in doing things, our minds become conscious of and aware of the implications. We very often live our way into theology.

Rich Vellodas 32:18

Yes!

Marc Schelske 32:19

Even though we like to think we thought our way into it! It’s the practices that actually shaped us. And maybe that’s part of the crisis of this moment, that we’re seeing the church engaged in practices, that when you look at these practices pastorally, you’re like, “That practice isn’t taking you closer to Jesus! That is headed off a cliff, that practice has to shift.

Rich Vellodas 32:40

And you’re right. I mean, it comes to a point where I think, the more… the more I give myself to contemplative prayer, the more now my body starts…. And so it’s not… my body starts craving it…

Marc Schelske 32:52

Yes. Oh, man. Yeah, that’s such a big deal. I–a couple of times a year–go down to a Benedictine Abbey that’s about an hour from where I live. And I just did this last week, actually, for two days, to go down and just disconnect from all the obligations, spend some time in silence, you know. Follow the hours, be in a place where the focus is interiority. And what I noticed as I drive onto the campus is I can feel in my body a shift, I can feel… I’ve done it enough times now, that just driving onto the campus, I feel the tone of my muscles and the presence of my mind shift, like some of that pressure, some of those obligations, some of the performance that I constantly live in, and all the other areas of my life, doesn’t belong here. And I feel it, I feel it in me in a way that’s not intellectual at all. It’s in my body.

Rich Vellodas 33:48

Now, this is music to my ears, Marc, because I mean, I go to a Benedictine monastery in the Boston area, usually every year. And that’s exactly my experience. I’m there, as I’m driving up, first of all, it feels like a pilgrimage every time I’m going there like I’m going to meet God. I’m not just going on a little trip here, a little vacation, I am going to meet the living God, and something in my body adjusts to it.

The question that I wrestle with, and this is why I’ve needed rhythms of this, is how do I carry this with me, when I’m back into the day-to-day operations of the world. And taking the kids to school and getting dinner and grocery shopping, I have to, by God’s grace, I need time to go up the mountain. And for me going up the mountain is the monastery, is silence, is retreats, and then I come back down and then realize soon enough, I better go back up again. Because it is so easy to be dragged down by the pace and the priorities and the values of this world

Marc Schelske 34:53

Well, it’s almost like that what happens on the mountain is that you get to practice something that your normal life structure would mediate against. And the more you practice it, the more you can bring it into your normal life structure.

Rich Vellodas 35:05

Yes!

Marc Schelske 35:06

I think what you’re saying is, you know, contemplative rhythm shouldn’t be a special event, they should be a normal way of living. Racial reconciliation shouldn’t be an annual conference, it should be your attitude toward people around you. Interior examination shouldn’t be something that you’re doing just–you know–at your therapist’s office, it should be a daily practice, it should be your response to watching yourself live. Sexual wholeness, that’s not, you know, something that just happens in certain places. You should be thinking about the body that God made you in and the bodies that God made everyone else in and the dignity that those bodies have and how to relate to everybody’s bodies in that way, you know. Missional presence isn’t an evangelistic event. It’s a way of engaging the world. And so now we’re moving from values, which could easily be interpreted as sort of ideals that we put up on the plaque…

Rich Vellodas 35:58

Right.

Marc Schelske 35:58

…Now we’re bringing that down to the actual woven fabric of the minutes of my life.

Rich Vellodas 36:06

Mm hmm. Yeah. Marc, that’s beautiful. You should take that clip right there, And–I don’t know–put that everywhere. You distilled it beautifully. And the question, I think, when I read the Bible–I think this is Eugene Peterson’s–He believed that what the Bible said was livable, and that’s what concerned him. Is this livable? Is not just is this thinkable? But is this liveable? And for me, that’s the hope, not just that we’re just thinking about new ways of being Christian, but that we’re living into new ways of what it means to follow Jesus.

REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 36:46

The call to discipleship requires a vision that is large enough to encompass the moment we find ourselves in. Did you hear Rich say that? Whether you agree with the five values that Rich’s proposing, and the way that he articulated them, it seems like he’s really onto something. The discipleship of many Christians over the last generation is so thin, so brittle, and often exclusionary. It seems not to be able to handle much discomfort and that’s a problem. Because the gospel is just the opposite of that!

One reason I resonate with Rich’s five values is that they help us, in his words, “resist the pull of formational compartmentalization.” That’s a great phrase, right? That’s when our Christianity only impacts certain narrow compartments of our lives. These values give us practical ways to have our faith shape every part of our lives: How we see our bodies and the bodies of other people, how we relate to our community and the politics necessary to govern ourselves in a pluralistic world, how we think about race, how we think about our own identity. We’re not Christians because we believe certain abstract ideas about God and the world. We’re Christians because we follow the way of Jesus. The way, how we live, how we relate, how we engage others, all of that matters. This is the goal for spiritual maturity, that we would push beyond inflexible intellectual definitions and into a gracious love, an other-centered co-suffering love.

One more quote from Rich, “The deeply formed life is not possible without an intentional reordering of our lives.” Think about that. Do you have space for interiority? Is your faith deeper than behavioral modification, doctrinal affirmation, and political affiliation? Does the pace of your life allow for this kind of deep reflective faith? Or does the rush keep you skating on the surface? Does your faith enable you to be a good gift to your neighbors? Even the neighbors you disagree with? May you push deeper than a surface religion into the depths of interior faith that can overflow into every aspect of your life, making you more gracious, more loving, and more and more like Jesus. Thanks for listening.

Notes for today’s episode and any links that have been mentioned, you can find at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/taw047.

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Deconstruction is everywhere. People are doing it. Some leaders are fighting it. Some people are excited by it. Some people are terrified of it. Is it just a trendy new word for leaving the church? No. It’s a process that’s necessary for spiritual maturity–and how we think about it matters.

Dr. Bradley Jersak is an author of multiple books. He’s a professor of theology and the Dean of theology and culture at St. Stephen’s University, New Brunswick. He serves as a reader and monastery preacher at an orthodox monastery, and he lives in Abbotsford, British Columbia with Eden his wife. Let’s talk deconstruction.

Marc Schelske  0:00  

Is deconstruction just a trendy word for backsliding or leaving Christianity? No. deconstruction is a necessary part of faith and how we think about it matters. Hey friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske and this is the apprenticeship way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is Episode 46. A more beautiful deconstruction.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is sponsored by The Wisdom Of Your Heart. Imagine having two legs, two strong, healthy, functional legs, but then your parents and your teachers, maybe a pastor of the church who grew up in told you that in order to be a good person, a strong person, someone that really does what God wants, you need to only ever use one of those legs. Now you’re a kid, you believe what trusted people tell you. And so you do it. You try living life on just one leg, you hop around, you end up sometimes losing your balance, you get pretty bruised up, but you know that you’re doing what God wants. So you’re being strong and good, even though sometimes you get hurt pretty badly or hurt other people around you. 

This isn’t a made up story. A lot of people who grew up Christian are living like this. Maybe it’s you! Were you told that emotions are untrustworthy or immature are only capable of deception? Were you taught that good decision making, clear thinking, and even godly doctrine can never be influenced by emotion, by our feelings? Did some pastor tell you that empathy is a sin? Or maybe you experienced profound trauma that shut down your emotions or made your emotion swing wildly. Living like that is like trying to live with only one leg when you have two functional healthy legs. You’re not using the tools God gave you. You’re only going to end up hurting yourself and others. 

If you’ve been trying to live like this–avoiding painful emotions, ignoring how you feel worried that your emotions are just temptations, or that if you really let yourself feel it will hurt just too much–then you might be greatly helped by my book, The Wisdom Of Your Heart: Discovering the God-given Purpose and Power of your Emotions. Your emotions are an essential part of who you are. Your emotions aren’t bad or sinful. They’re a vital source of information you need to live well. They are a God-given source of wisdom. The Wisdom Of Your Heart is available at all the online bookstores, and you can learn more about it or check it out at my website, www.TheWisdomOfYourHeart.com.

INTRODUCTION

If you’ve been following this podcast, you already know that we’ve been talking about a sea change that is occurring in the wider Christian conversation or at least the wider Western Christian conversation. People are evaluating their faith, their theology, what they’ve been taught. Many people across all different traditions and denominations are taking their faith apart in a process that’s come to be called deconstruction. These people are asking critical questions. What is it about my faith story that’s dependable? What does it mean to say that scripture is true or trustworthy? Why does the behavior of so many Christian leaders and institutions contradict the teachings of Jesus? What do I do with the abuse or hurt that I have experienced or seen in the church and then the cover-ups? Are the lines of exclusion that I was raised with necessary? Some leaders, some pastors, think this trend is dangerous, leading people away from Christ. They see these questions as attacks on faith. Other leaders think that much of the work of deconstruction is just peeling away toxic and unhelpful interpretations and experiences. They see deconstruction is a kind of reformation. 

A lot of us are in this place, trying to imagine what to do next. Some folks use the label Exvangelical. Some consider themselves post-denominationa. Some say they’re “spiritual-but-not-religious.” Some of us have given up using the label Christian because it’s taken on certain political and cultural associations that aren’t true about who we are. And yet for many of us, Jesus still compels. His other centered co-suffering way seems good and true and beautiful and like God. 

Recently, I was reading a book called A More Christlike Way by Dr. Bradley Jersak. It lays out a vision of a Christianity where everything in our faith and practice is rooted in the co-suffering, radically forgiving, compassionate love of Jesus–not just our actions, but also our beliefs, and even how we hold those beliefs. Now, Dr. Jersak is not afraid to take on sacred cows. In a previous book, A More Christlike God, he challenged some familiar ideas about the atonement, the idea that God kills Jesus in order to save us– that’s called penal substitutionary atonement. His most recent book, A More Christlike Word, takes apart the literalistic way we often read Scripture. In these books, Dr. Jersak is contributing to this evaluation of Christian faith that’s happening.  In that way, he’s a part of the deconstruction discourse. In A More Christlike Way, Dr. Jersak talks directly about deconstruction, and suggested something that caught my eye and gave me a different way of thinking about all of this. So I asked if he would be willing to have a conversation with me about deconstruction. 

Dr. Bradley Jersak is an author of multiple books. He’s a professor of theology and the Dean of theology and culture at St. Stephen’s University, New Brunswick. He serves as a reader and monastery preacher at an orthodox monastery, and he lives in Abbotsford, British Columbia with Eden his wife. Let’s talk deconstruction. 

INTERVIEW

Marc Schelske  5:30  

So very early, in A More Christlike Way, you tackle the matter of deconstruction directly talk about it and you said something that caught my eye. I underlined it. I put a star by it, and then I came back to it months later: You said the impulse for deconstruction is necessary for spiritual survival, but the metaphor itself is fraught with violent undertones. So that’s been rattling around my noggin. Something about deconstruction is good and necessary. And something about deconstruction, or at least this language that we’re currently using, is violent and destructive. Do I have that right? 

Dr. Bradley Jersak  6:28  

Yeah, I’m not sure I have it right, though, you know, because in some ways, my heart in that book was to say, alternative metaphors actually affect how you approach your faith shift. So if you’re going to use a word like deconstruction, that brings to mind like, burn it all down, blow it all up, that affects how you do this. And our hearts deserve to be treated more tenderly than that. They often need healing, not a sledgehammer. Having said that, it’s also not violent enough. In the in the language of Jesus, he doubles down, it is not burn it all down, it is die and rise again.  If you think you’re going to come in and just reform this old wine skin, you’ve not gone far enough. And I would say that’s also true of deconstruction these days, in some ways, it’s gone too far in shattering people’s faith and lives and meaning. In other ways, it’s sort of half-assed. Yeah, we need something that completely consumes what was and so I am of two minds on it in that sense, because I see both and going on.

Marc Schelske  7:44  

This word may be new for some of us in Christian conversation. Where does this idea of deconstruction come from? What did it mean, then? How has the meaning changed?

Dr. Bradley Jersak  7:54  

Oh, very good question. And so I you know, I don’t want to be too prescriptive. I think language is descriptive. So I want to describe how it was used by Jacques Derrida, the philosopher when he coined it. And I want to be honest that it is used in a different way today but it is used, so it’s part of our language. So first of all, Jacques Derrida came along and his idea of deconstruction was this: we need to slow down and be more mindful of how power dynamics insert themselves into our language. So for him, deconstruction was observing how we talk, how we talk to each other, and how in that talking, there’s there’s these power things at play, and we need to notice them. So that’s what he was doing. 

Now it’s used in a completely different way. Today that’s actually more modernistic. It’s not even postmodern. It was more like Rene Descartes, it’s radical doubt. And I’m just going to start dismantling my belief system, dismantling my faith. It’s hard to stop then because you also end up disassembling you whole purpose of being alive. I get direct messages almost every day about that. “I started by deconstructing my toxic religious belief systems. But then I kind of found myself leaving Jesus. And now I don’t even have meaning. I’ve deconstructed myself.” Well, that’s not what they’re talking about, but it is a common occurrence these days. It’s a popular use of the word. So what I want to do is say, using Derrida’s sense, let’s slow down and think about what we mean by deconstruction, and how it doesn’t just describe what we’re doing. The metaphors we use form how we do it. They form how careful or how sloppy that we are, they form who we listen to, and why, and so I think we want to spend the next time together deconstructing deconstruction in that sense and seeing its necessity, its perils and its possibilities.

Marc Schelske  9:57  

Okay. So if we take a stance that we need to deconstruct how we use the word deconstruction, what does that mean? What are we implying, even maybe not realizing we’re implying it, when we use the word the way it’s commonly used now?

Dr. Bradley Jersak  10:13  

So deconstruction, as it’s commonly used today, tends to bring with it a kind of demolition vision, you know. For me, I see dynamite being placed at the bottom of the building and the whole thing crashing down. I see sledge hammers, smashing down walls, and so on. Now, there can be a place for that when you renovate a home, you might want to break walls down to open up space. You actually might need to remove an old building, in order to construct something that is healthier and not been condemned for habitation, right? So I don’t want to be overly harsh about the demolition side of deconstruction. In In fact, I think it’s necessary in some ways, and in some cases, but here’s where we’re too sloppy. 

So we might say, Okay, we’ve got to demolish something, well, what? Are we saying we’re demolishing the institution called church, okay. If you think we need to do that, tell me how you’re doing it. You’re probably not doing it. You’re not doing that at all. We’re just being skeptical about what the church was, and now we’re going to leave it. On the other hand, maybe we’re talking about burning down faith? Is that really what you want to do? You want to take an arsonist’s torch to your faith? That seems like a harsh thing to do to your own heart. So I’m wanting to slow down and say, okay, demolish what? If we’re going to demolish creepy belief systems and replace them with something, then let’s have some suggestions. 

So I would say Penal Substitutionary Atonement is a paganized version of atonement that actually needs demolition, it needs replacement. My suggestion is that we don’t just make up our own, that we look at the historic Christian faith and say, all right, if we’re going to deconstruct that, what shall we replace it with? I think I have a track record of being a deconstructionist In this sense, too, right? If we’re going to say, you know, actually, Eternal Conscious Torment was a toxic doctrine based in literalizing certain images from scripture that has been totally unhelpful, and in fact, harmful, let’s deconstruct i. Then I am talking about dismantling or razing something. But again, let’s say what it does mean. How do we see this idea? And so I want to be careful in that sense.

Marc Schelske  12:43  

What you just described makes me think of my experience this summer. My son and I resurfaced our deck. It was quite old. For many years, we kind of gotten it through by putting a thick coat of paint on top of it, you know, to hold everything together, but it was just starting to fall apart. And too many boards were dangerous. And so we went through the process to buy new decking, but then we had to take the old decking off. And in the process of taking the old decking off, we had to evaluate the structure underneath the decking that had been holding it up. There were structural members that were rotted out. There was a place where the deck was attached to the side of my house, where water was actually getting into the side of my house. And so we had to take it apart and evaluate what was going on under there and we discovered that some of what was in there wasn’t good. It sounds like that’s what you’re talking about. 

Dr. Bradley Jersak  13:36  

Yeah, I think that’s a magnificent example. Because I would, call that example, rather than deconstruction, maybe we would call it renovation. But here’s the thing, what you noticed was sometimes when we’re renovating our faith, as you’re renovating your deck, be careful that you don’t go too far and destroy structural members of your house that are required, but also make sure you go far enough, like don’t just take the deck off and leave the rotten footing in place. And so I think this, again, it just calls for mindfulness.

Marc Schelske  14:15  

Using a metaphor of renovation brings brings into the conversation the idea that we still have a positive destination in mind. We understand that something needs to change. We know that sometimes the changes may be surface, they may be small, we put new decking on that’s visible, but there are also changes that are more central. 

Dr. Bradley Jersak  14:43  

And costly!

Marc Schelske  14:44  

Right, exactly. We had to replace a structural member. We had to do some reconstructive surgery on the side of my house where water had been getting in for several years and that was unexpected. We didn’t know we would find that. And when I found it, I kind of wanted to just cover it up and not think about it.

Dr. Bradley Jersak  14:59  

I noticed in that, too, that what you did was to preserve your house. Right? 

Marc Schelske  15:05  

Exactly right. 

Dr. Bradley Jersak  15:06  

So let’s say with Penal Substitution or Eternal Conscious Torment, I’m wanting to say I’m addressing these things directly, in order to preserve the precious structure beneath it, which was Christian faith.

Marc Schelske  15:18  

Yeah, the house of the Christian faith means something. And behind that, I think the character of God, as we perceive it, is really the thing we’re talking about. 

Dr. Bradley Jersak  15:28  

And the person of Jesus! Is he going to be buried in the rubble? Or did we not meet him? And so if you think about your house metaphor, and your wife inside the house. This deck is rotten, so I’m going to blow up the house with my wife in it! And that’s exactly what I’m seeing people do.

Marc Schelske  15:47  

That’s a problem. All right. So talk about some of these other metaphors. And if you’re proposing alternative metaphors, I’m assuming that means you’re proposing them because they bring something to the table that you feel like is more constructive and more, more leading towards flourishing faith. So take us through some of those and talk about what that looks like.

Dr. Bradley Jersak  16:04  

Yeah, sure. And I suppose that in many ways, it was a grand, grand effort to avoid using the don’t-throw-the-baby-out-with-the bathwater. That’s so old and boring. There’s other ways to see this. And people are so complex, that we need different metaphors and where the shoe fits, wear it and where it doesn’t don’t. But even in my case, there is a difference between my theological deconstruction, which was quite joyful and liberating and my personal deconstruction, in terms of a meltdown that actually had faith repercussions. Like, in the midst of trauma, do I even trust God is good? So that’s still a theological question. But, but it’s different than my other journey. So one was a dramatic meltdown, and the other was this kind of cool awakening, right. So I’m, again, I’m already rushing into metaphors. But let me go from renovation, which is restoring and revamping existing structures to a completely different ones. 

In the world of addictions, we have detox, which may be one or two weeks long. Then we have rehabilitation, which could be months to years long. And then we have recovery, and that is the restoration of health, as we break free of our attachments, harmful habits, addictive behaviors, and then look at the pain beneath them, and bring healing to the things that drove the addictions in the first place. So if I think in terms of faith, then I understand when people need to leave church for a while, for example, or stop reading their Bible for a while, or even not pray for a while, I think of that as detox.  I had to do this with my prayer life, where I had concluded that my prayers had been reduced to me trying to control circumstances and other people’s joy, sorrow and choices by telling God what to do. And when he didn’t do it, I was angry at him for disobeying me. Right? It was really bad. 

Marc Schelske  18:13  

Yeah, that’s upside down place for sure. 

Dr. Bradley Jersak  18:15  

Oh, my goodness. So I saw that, thankfully, with a spiritual director who cared for me, and what we did was I detoxed from prayer, because I was so attached to that form. And then we reintroduced it slowly as the Jesus prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” And after about six months of that, then I reintroduced the Lord’s Prayer, because at least Jesus gave it to us. And it felt very bold and scary, but it’s like, “but You told me when you pray, pray this.” So I went into that. And so over time, my prayer life was rehabilitated after that period of detox. And now I believe I live in recovery, where my prayer life itself is not toxic to me or to others. 

I like that metaphor, because it’s personal to one’s body. And I think, then you can apply it both to your own soul as you do your body, but also to the body of your faith communities. Isn’t it a terrible thing when we feel the need to flee from a faith community, because it’s so toxic that it’s killing us? And I don’t want them to just feel guilted into rushing into another one. I get it, right. Yeah, take a break. But I hope you don’t live in the detox unit for the rest of your life. That’s not it’s healthy either.

Marc Schelske  19:32  

So that metaphor right now, what is intriguing to me is that by talking about those sort of phases that come from substance abuse recovery, you’re actually identifying that there’s a different medicine for different needs at the time, right? That detox is “let’s stop the damage.” But then the next steps are now talking about learning a new way of living and getting to a place where you have a flourishing life that’s not constantly fighting against what was toxic before. Those are different kind of phases of the process. Where the deconstruction metaphor is taking apart, and so you’ve done that. Now what? To what end? You know, recovery is a metaphor saying, “No, we’re going toward a sustainable, flourishing healthy life.”

Dr. Bradley Jersak  20:25  

Yeah, there are those who think, “Okay, I’ve left, I’ve left the faith now, and that’s forever. And that’s probably the healthiest thing for me.” And then they talk about, you know, “when I deconstructed,” and I’m like, you have no idea how evangelical you still sound, right? Deconstruction is just a new word you use for conversion, and then they have a testimony of their conversion. And then they treat others as less than for not having their conversion. I see this all the time. And my goodness, you’re still an evangelist. You haven’t actually changed that much. This is just conversion, a second conversion, and Okay, so be it. Maybe you need that. I think I needed it. But just be a little bit aware then, again, how the the power dynamics of our old evangelicalism that we thought was so toxic, that we may bring that in now, with a kind of toxic positivity about our great deconstruction experience. “And isn’t it for you?” And there are others who are going, Hang on, my experience was deeply traumatic, and your positivity about this does not recognize my trauma, and, and then they feel silenced and belittled. And like they feel like, “I didn’t have a good enough testimony.”

Marc Schelske  21:45  

Right, right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Well, the trap, right, I grew up in a very head oriented fundamentalist faith community. And the main thing, the most important thing was to be right. Having the right doctrine, that was what allowed you to enter the church. That was what you were measured on for baptism. People that were backslidden were people who had backslidden from the truth, right? It wasn’t even backslidden from Jesus, it was backslidden from the truth, you know. So knowing the right thing was the gold standard. Well, folks from that kind of community who deconstruct oftentimes, I think, end up in a place where it’s still about knowing the right thing. The thing that matters, that establishes your identity as being okay, is that you’re right. It’s just that you’ve changed the standard and matrix of knowledge.

Dr. Bradley Jersak  22:33  

Sure. So let’s be honest, many who talked deconstruction have simply gone from conservative to progressive, but they’re still fundamentalist, right? Like they change sides, but not spirits. And yeah, I’m not saying everyone does that. I’m just saying, slow down and check. Is fundamentalism, still part of your structure? Because if it is, then you didn’t go far enough. Using the addict metaphor, we have what’s called dry drunks. A dry drunk is someone who is abstaining now from alcohol, but they’re still active in terms of the addiction itself. So I can stop going to church. That doesn’t mean I’ve dealt with the character defects of like, let’s say, being judgmental, and condemning and condescending. I see that all the time from ex-church people. Their very condemning of evangelicals. And and I’m judgmental of people who do, you know, I’m being it right now! So it’s very infectious. And you’re like, “Oh, I see. We’ve not gone far enough.”

Marc Schelske  23:35  

Yeah, I get that. I had a conversation. My oldest child is a teenager, and a friend of hers  invited her to go into larger youth group. And so we were having a conversation about that. And I found myself saying some things about the evangelical youth pastor of this church and the kinds of things she might expect in terms of how this person would relate to her. And that evening, I realized, Oh, you know, I’ve literally been that guy. The things that he did, I have done those very things. I probably need to have that conversation with my daughter.

Dr. Bradley Jersak  24:07  

Yeah, projecting your own judgment of yourself of your past self onto this guy, even as a prejudgment. Here’s what he’ll probably do, right? Yeah, exactly. I did it and I’m ashamed. When we deal with the shame of who we were, then we’re less likely to be judgy.

Marc Schelske  24:25  

So if I recall, one of the metaphors that was in this write up was talking about art restoration. 

Dr. Bradley Jersak  24:33  

Yeah. That’s a really good one. So art restoration. I got that metaphor from Brian Zahnd. So what I mean by this is when you take a masterpiece, over the centuries, where you accumulate grime or people have tried to do touch ups, or they’ve tried to preserve it with varnish, you can you can see how very valuable masterpieces can become almost unrecognizable. So what do you do? Well, art restoration experts carefully strip away those layers of varnish and centuries of touch ups. And, and as they carefully do that with the right tools, you unveil or reveal the original masterpiece. 

So I’m assuming that the historic Christian faith, that faith Jesus gave us is actually a masterpiece. The funny illustration of this does actually involve two art images of Jesus. So in the first illustration, you have this one image of Jesus called, Ecce Homo, which means, “Behold the man.” It’s what Pilate said. And it was an icon in this Spanish monastery. But the painted cracked, there was chips out of it, and so on. And an amateur art restorationist came along, and she gave it a go, and she’s so botched it it became famous. It was unrecognizable as Jesus. And in fact, the nickname of the painting is is now Ecce Mano, which is something like, “Behold the Ape.” This is what happens when you have a deconstructionist come along who doesn’t know what they’re doing, and they start messing with this historic Christian faith.  What was damaged to begin with is now completely unrecognizable. 

Now contrast that to another masterpiece. Someone found a picture of Jesus, a painting of Jesus, and it was called Salvador Mundi, Savior of the world. This thing had passed hand to hand to hand and someone picked it up for 40 UK pounds, so let’s say 80 bucks. Over time, people became suspicious that underneath this painting might be something of value. So they sent it to an expert art restorationist who spent three years very carefully unveiling. At one point, something about the corner of Jesus mouth became completely recognizable as a DaVinci. And by the time they were done, they’re like, “this is!” And it went up for auction and I think it’s sold for something like $400 million, this thing of incredible historic value, a true masterpiece. What do you do with that? You don’t bring scissors to your deconstruction, you bring a care to it.

Now here my illustration. What if the Christian faith is not something to be trashed, or cut up or thrown out? What if the gospel of Jesus Christ is something precious and beautiful? So in that sense, I’m talking about the restoration of the content of our faith as this living person who is the Savior of the world. And with great care, we might peel back all the crap that we’ve added to it through the centuries through theological misdeeds and pastoral abuse and so on. But I also want to say, the gospel is not only a masterpiece, what if your heart is? How have we vandalized human hearts in this rush to tear up decades of growth in somebody? And so yes, my good news testimony about that is I grew up in a home that was Baptist, it was conservative, it preached hell, it preached Armageddon, it preached all this stuff. And as I’ve carefully peeled that back, what I’ve discovered is, it’s in that context that I first heard the name of Jesus and fell in love with him. It’s in that context that I fell in love with the scriptures. And now I read them in a way that’s life giving. It was in that context that I learned to share good news. And now I’m sharing it to Christians, so they’ll become Christian. It was in that context that I felt a real living connection with the person of Christ in my prayer life, and all of that has been preserved. 

I’ve deconstructed the BS. And now I have a deep appreciation for my Baptist heritage. Because it’s not just my Baptist heritage, It’s the faith of my father that was passed down to me. And then I start exploring that and I realized, oh my goodness, for all the weirdness of how our faith was distorted the amount there was a masterpiece under their worth my great uncle Wilhelm being tortured for in Czechoslovakia, my wife’s grandfather being exiled and murdered in Siberia. It’s like, What? Why would you give your life for this? Well, because it’s priceless. It’s the pearl of great price. So what am I saying? Slow down. With care invest in this because it’s either the great faith of Jesus Himself, or it’s your own precious heart that deserves to be treated kindly.

Marc Schelske  30:13  

That makes me think that in in a lot of the conversations about deconstruction, a lot of things are sort of being conflated. A lot of things are being put into a one package, when really, you’re identifying that there’s several things happening that we can evaluate. There’s my experience in a Christian community and how that worked and didn’t work. There’s my experience of how to read the Bible, and how I was taught to read the Bible that was helpful and how I was taught to read the Bible that wasn’t helpful. There’s my picture of the character of God, and parts of that imagery that were destructive or hurtful or traumatizing, and parts of that imagery that that were life giving. We can kind of just go down the list. And that that’s the thing that we’ve got to do, to carefully look at the layers like this art restorationist is doing with the varnish and all the layers, the attempts to patch it up to cover over the things we didn’t want to talk about. That requires a lot more nuance than maybe the word deconstruction leave space for.

Dr. Bradley Jersak  31:11  

Again, I believe in deconstruction, I do it in the real sense and in the popular sense, but, I want to say that there’s been this headlong glee about it. I want to be empathetic with people who’ve had a two-fold trauma. So the first trauma could be the terrible things they learned about God growing up, right, or that first trauma could be abuse by a spiritual leader, or whatever the thing they’re leaving is, had a traumatic impact on them. But there’s also the trauma of the deconstruction itself. Let’s say someone needs to leave a toxic church, but they’re also leaving the only community they’ve ever known. So the leaving itself and the loneliness and isolation and the criticism they get from those people, the sense of betrayal, and then internally, even the loss of meaning, and like panic attacks on Sunday morning, because you don’t know what to do with yourself. So there’s that secondary trauma, or even how the deconstructionists are impacting us, and so on. 

The illustration I would use for that, that’s going to be in my forthcoming book, is somebody who has to go through a mastectomy for breast cancer. So the cancer was there, right? And you have to go under the knife to save your life. Sometimes, you have to go through chemo or whatever treatments they’re using for that. And the treatment itself becomes another trauma. And so you wake up from surgery, and your breasts are gone. And you didn’t get to choose how much you lost. So it is with those who experience the deconstruction itself as trauma. They’re like, “I thought I knew there was cancer that had to go, but I didn’t realize how much of me I was going to lose. And I’m absolutely traumatized.” So then they go on Instagram, and they see all the positivity around deconstruction. And it feels like this, that the deconstruction is like a cheerleader who’s spotting for them doing a bench press. “You can do it, you can do it, you’re great, you’re great, this is exactly waht you need”. And they’re like, “I’m not doing a bench press! I’m under a bulldozer! “I really, really care about those people. That’s where I’m coming from on this. It’s like, you treat that person, they need to be treated so tenderly, so carefully. And to say, it was necessary but there are perils to this. And yet, maybe there’s possibilities too. But I don’t want to say that like Job’s counselors. I want to say it as a friend who’s walking along with them and like, “Okay, this is this is disorienting. Yes, I’ll walk with you.”

Marc Schelske  34:00  

I feel like that is a missing piece of a lot of this conversation, that there’s a there’s a pastoral element of this. And even for folks that are maybe stepping out of the church and the word “pastor” was part of the problem, there’s a coach-of-the-soul element of this, that’s necessary. Because like we said at the beginning, religion however you come to it, is ultimately a meaning-making machinery. And you have to have one of those. 

Dr. Bradley Jersak  34:29  

Yeah, if not that, you are vulnerable to any ideology that comes along, to recruit you.

Marc Schelske  34:36  

All of your books in this series, have a subtitle about…  I guess Christlike Word doesn’t, but it’s still infused, the idea of a more beautiful version. So A More Christlike God is a more beautiful gospel. A More Christlike Way is a more beautiful faith. And I would say, even though your subtitle on A More Christlike Word is “Reading scripture the Emmaus Way” that the challenge throughout is how do we read scripture in a more beautiful experience? 

Dr. Bradley Jersak  35:04  

Yes. It’s a more beautiful hermeneutic. 

Marc Schelske  35:07  

Yeah, exactly. 

Dr. Bradley Jersak  35:08  

It’s points to Jesus.

Marc Schelske  35:08  

Yeah. And that and that’s rooted in this idea that everything for us, if we’re followers of Jesus, the meaning-making machinery is the other-centered, co-suffering, radically forgiving self-giving life of Jesus. That is the lens! And so when you think about deconstruction, how do you bring this lens of a more beautiful way to deconstruction? What would a more Christlike orr a more beautiful deconstruction look like?

Dr. Bradley Jersak  35:39  

Yeah, so if we think in terms of restoration, what are we restoring here? We’re restoring the beautiful image of Christ and His Bride somehow. And so one of the metaphors I use comes from the experience of my daughter-in-law who, when she was shopping for wedding dressed. She’s really into vintage–and she had found this website where they had vintage wedding dresses, and she spotted one that was exactly her size. It was a champagne, lace wedding dress sewn in the 1920s. Wow, it was gorgeous and she was able to get it for like a hundred and sixty bucks or something crazy like that. And then she put it on. And she’s like, “I couldn’t even gain one and a half pounds or lose one and a half pounds. It was so exactly made for me.” But it had wrinkles and water stains. 

So the scriptures use this metaphor about Christ, presenting his bride without spot or wrinkle. He’s talking about the wedding dress. And so we took it down to this, this incredible, stereotypical Chinese dry cleaner. And we’re like, “please don’t destroy this,” right. And so we left it with him. And we, when we came back, it was hanging in his window and it was just radiant. And everybody who would come into the shop was commenting on it. The spots were gone, the wrinkles were gone. His focus was actually not on removing spots and wrinkles. That wasn’t his primary goal. His primary goal was preserving the fabric. And so that made him more careful about how he used an iron, more careful about what chemicals he used on the spots. His obsession with retaining the beauty enabled him to get rid of the spots and wrinkles without destroying anything. It was unbelievable. And then she wore it to her wedding and we’re just like, “you look so beautiful.” And she said, “I feel like a princess, you know, a daughter of the king.” 

I would call that a more beautiful deconstruction, right? It’s this idea of preserving the precious and unveiling the beauty. I do regard beauty as a criteria for truth. Now, in the ancient world, let’s say Plato, he’s like, God is good. God, if there is a God, that God is the good capital G. And that good subsists of beauty, truth and justice. And so the truth people, the head people, they’re like, we need a faith that’s really true, you know, and so they’ll do a literalistic, mechanical reading of Scripture to make sure they’ve got the truth. That’s the conservatives. Then the progressives are like, okay, we need the Justice side. And, and maybe they deify justice even so it doesn’t actually matter if we love all the time, as long as we’ve justice, right? But we have this third thing that sort of adjudicates the truth and the justice and that is beauty. And if it’s not–I got this from Zahnd too–if it’s not beautiful, it’s probably not true. And so whatever gospel, whatever hermeneutic, whatever way that we come to our faith, if it’s truly Christ then we’re going to see beauty as such, with a capital B. That’s what I’m doing here. That’s why I think we have a more beautiful image of God, and a more beautiful faith in the church in the way of being, and now beautiful way of approaching the scriptures, that is almost certainly more true. That’s that’s the outcome I’m looking for in my deconstruction. Not just that I’m doing it beautifully, but that I’m, but I’m drawing out the beauty of the thing that’s there and behind the grime and behind the years.

REFLECTION

Marc Schelske  39:33  

Did you catch this important idea? deconstruction isn’t just one thing. That right there is worth the price of admission. When we think about deconstruction, whether our own or someone we know or in the general culture, we’ve got to keep in mind that there may be several different things going on under that umbrella. This tangled experience might include someone having to detox from a community or a leader or a belief that has been dangerous to them. It might include facing that we were lied to by people we trusted. It might include recovering from religious addiction and perfectionism. It might include healing from trauma. It will certainly include letting go of ideas and communities that used to be a central part of our identity. And always, there’s the releasing of closely held beliefs in the process of adapting and adopting new ones. That is a complicated life experience to go through and it’s often painful. 

It serves us to keep these different elements in mind so that we can use the right tools and even the right metaphors as we untangle all of this. Because even the words we use shaped the way we act and think about ourselves and others. So when is it right and helpful to deconstruct, to really knock down some walls? When should we be renovating instead, carefully disassembling parts of our faith so that we can evaluate what is good and noble, trustworthy and true? And when do we need to detox in order to just stop the damage? And then at what point can we move on to rehabilitation? When are we ready to do the slow, gentle work of art restoration?

Learning, growing, maturing–whether spiritually or just as a human being–these all require seasons of stripping away, redefining, deconstructing what you once thought was certainly. The process is necessary, but as Dr. Jersak pointed out, it also has perils and possibilities. If we can be gentle, compassionate with ourselves and other people, if we can remember the person–the heart–in the middle of the deconstruction, the process can be healing, whether for ourselves or others. The way of Jesus is the other- centered co-suffering path of radical reconciliation. That means that even when the path you are walking is deconstruction, you’re not alone. Jesus is walking it with you. And there are others, others who’ve chosen to take the other-centered co-suffering path, who will walk along as well. 

May you have the wisdom to know when to deconstruct, when to renovate, when to detox, and when to join the Spirit in the gentle work of art restoration, so that a beautiful faith can emerge. 

Thanks for listening. Notes for today’s episode, which includes any links mentioned and a full transcript, something new that I’m doing, can be found at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW046.

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