Steven Watson: Larger, Freer, More Loving Readings of the Good News of Jesus

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[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Gravity Podcast where we host conversations on developing a Christian spirituality rooted in love that fosters resilient faith in everyday life.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yep, once again, one more, one more week of podcasting at least one more week.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We'll take, we're taking this, it's touching go, no, I'm just kidding.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's, you know, we've got, we've got a few loaded up here in the queue.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Do you want to guess Matt what, you know, I keep track of how many episodes we've done on the little spreadsheet here that I'm looking at?
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[SPEAKER_03]: which episode do you think this is this this current episode that we're recording right now episode number what of the chain becomes podcast two eighty seven no am I close your way off this episode this is episode episode four hundred and forty eight that is crazy yeah they really well let anybody do a podcast
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, that's just the internet.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Anybody can upload anything they want to it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm actually right now I'm listening to a podcast, old episodes of a podcast that came out 10 years ago.
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[SPEAKER_02]: There's like three comedians that I enjoy and they had a podcast 10 years ago, and I'm listening to them when I work out or when I drive on this podcast.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And it's an interesting time capsule, not just for their careers, but also like,
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[SPEAKER_02]: What we were concerned with in 2016, the dialogue, the discussion, there are predictions about things like there.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's right before the election of 2016, even.
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[SPEAKER_02]: That I'm listening to now.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And sometimes there's something interesting about that to me.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So simpler times, Ben, simpler times.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, they will just let anybody do a podcast.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We didn't even have to ask anybody for permission.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We just figured out how to do it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So we're recording this before the U.S. Belgium game.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But you'll be listening this the day after that game.
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[SPEAKER_02]: If you listen to the day, it comes out.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm just curious in the time capsule.
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[SPEAKER_02]: What are your thoughts, Ben?
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[SPEAKER_02]: This will be good.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We'll talk about the future, but people will listen to it as after it happens.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Just like your podcast.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, let's give the listeners what they don't want.
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[SPEAKER_02]: What are your thoughts?
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[SPEAKER_02]: on U.S.'s chance against Bell, John, without Baylegan.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Because he's suspended, I was trying to remember the rules, but because of the red card, he's suspended, right?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and presently, we're recording this a few days before the match on Monday, the day after the game against Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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[SPEAKER_02]: There's so much chatter on the socials about how the red card was criminal.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It was a harsh red card, but there's no, there's no appeal process with FIFA.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So it seems like it's he's going to sit out the game against Belgium because he got a red card in the previous game.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And it's there's no appeal process, meaning there's no way to appeal a red card in the world cup or that the US does not seem to be pursuing that route.
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[SPEAKER_02]: No, the U.S. is keen to appeal, but there's no mechanism whereby they can do it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So it would have to be, I'm holding out a sliver of hope because there's some of the chatter I've seen is all these pictures and video clips of other players fouling in the same way that balligan did, who either didn't get
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[SPEAKER_02]: uh, penalized or just got a yellow card.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Nobody else who's come, who's been running and in a normal running sort of movement has stepped down on somebody else's foot.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Uh-huh.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Has gotten a red card.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm holding out a sliver of hope that there'll be enough pressure on FIFA that they will change it to a yellow card.
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[SPEAKER_03]: yeah retroactively.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'm good because we still won the game.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, so I think I mean in my in my realistic mind about the U.S. as chances, I think if they could beat a team like Belgium, if they could beat a top 10 team, that would be a huge step of progress for the U.S.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But I think I like the US's chances, I mean Belgium came back against Senegal, but they had to come back against Senegal, and they have not played that well in this tournament together.
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[SPEAKER_03]: They have a ton of talent, but they haven't played that well together, and so, you know, as I think about the various top 10 teams out there, I like the US's chances against Belgium.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think they, so I'll take the contrary position.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think that I think that the U.S. really hasn't won, they beat in Bosnia twice in the last five years, but that's the only European team they've beaten in five years.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And Bosnia was ranked in like somewhere in the 60s.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So they, they really haven't played and beaten a good team.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's true in the world cup and I really do think a guy like Balagan who just seems to find ways to put the ball on the goal.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And he seems to be the only one who can do that consistently.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I have a hard time seeing how they're going to win against Belgium without
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[SPEAKER_02]: him because the guys they would have to replace him I think it's way uh uh and I forget the other guy's name that they just haven't seen much time and when they've seen time they haven't looked great.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But well there you have it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Our predictions about a game that has already happened.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But um I will say that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: One of the things I think a team like the U.S. can benefit from is feeling like their backstrik and so all up against the world.
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[SPEAKER_02]: No one's giving us a shot against Belgium.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to come out and shock the world.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Listen, if you're not interested in the World Cup, I apologize about the intro, but it's every four years, and it's here in the United States, as well as Mexico and Canada, and it's loads of fun.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's loads of fun.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's a lot of fun.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I did hear one other thing about the US is that our soccer chant game is very bad.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I noticed that yesterday yeah we need we need some better chance and I heard so that the guy who plays the assistant coach in Ted Lasso I can't remember his his name and real life but the actor that plays that assistant coach yeah he is actually a very big soccer fan and watches soccer knows a lot about soccer and he suggested I fell love to this suggestion he was like
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[SPEAKER_03]: He was like, why has the songs from Hamilton, the musical?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Why have those not made their way into U.S. soccer champs?
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[SPEAKER_03]: He's like, I'm not throwing away my shot.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That is like on a plate for chanting.
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[SPEAKER_03]: You know, why are we chanting these banal?
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[SPEAKER_03]: You know, like we believe that we will win.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Like why are we saying stuff like that?
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[SPEAKER_03]: When we have, I'm not throwing away my shot.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe we'll hear a we got spare yes video.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We got spirit.
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[SPEAKER_02]: How about you?
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[SPEAKER_02]: How about you?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's Anyway, but I was like that's that's perfect.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That's a great, you know Can you imagine that?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, stadium.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I am not throwing away my shop.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Well, this is incredible.
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[SPEAKER_02]: If you're into the world cup
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[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we've already given more substantial commentary on the World Cup than a Lexi Laws.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And if you're not into the World Cup, tune in.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Watch it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's a interesting...
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's a great tournament.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I've grown in my appreciation for soccer, a great deal.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And even if you don't, I mean, it does help to be into the sport a little bit, understand what's going on.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, we're into the knockout rounds, and it's one of the most interesting sporting events I think in the world.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Just because it only happens every four years, all these teams, like most of these soccer players, are not playing with each other, on their national teams.
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[SPEAKER_03]: most of their life is spent playing for their club teams.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's like the Premier League and the different MLS and things like that.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And so they only come together for these kinds of occasions.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Occasionally, they come together to play on their national team for different tournaments and stuff throughout the year.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But every four years, they come together to play in this world cup.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And so it's just sort of like, even the top teams like anything can happen because
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[SPEAKER_03]: these teams are not like as locked in as as normal soccer teams are.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And so it's just it provides a level of unpredictability that makes it very exciting.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So anyway, March Madness, like the basketball tournament, is a comparable kind of atmosphere as World Cup and so tune into a game.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's probably the only other tournament that I, that rivals, sort of, the stakes.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it, except this one happens every four years and instead of, you know, colleges, it's nations.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So, any, any, any, the whole world comes together.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it's, you know, I went to a World Cup game.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We got like really inexpensive, comparably inexpensive tickets, like way back in March.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Um, to this game that I went to last week.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Um, and the environment is so fun.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's so cool.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Like we, we sat near Libyans who are rooting for Tunisia.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, it's the next door neighbor there in North Africa.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, and then we actually sat right next to people from Indianapolis.
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[SPEAKER_03]: who own a sushi restaurant that we go to all the time.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That was so crazy for a gaming Kansas City.
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[SPEAKER_03]: People behind us were from Guatemala.
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[SPEAKER_03]: People in front of us were from another country that I can't remember.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But just people come from all over the world to gather to, yeah, just be at the world cup.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's fun.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Speaking of the world, you know who lives in the world?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Who's that?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Steve Watson.
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[SPEAKER_02]: He's our guest today.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: He's been a singer pastor of Reservoir Church since July 2013, part of that he was a high school and middle school English teacher, which we talk about a little bit on the podcast.
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[SPEAKER_02]: He's an active leader in the Interfaith community organizing for public justice and on the integration of healthy faith and mental health.
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[SPEAKER_02]: He serves on the board of greater Boston Interfaith organization.
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[SPEAKER_02]: He's a regional area developer with the post-even joke collective and is a passport member of
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[SPEAKER_02]: He is a B.A.
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[SPEAKER_02]: in music from Brandeis University, a master's in education from UMass Boston and a doctorate in theology and ministry through the Center for Open and Relational Theology at North Wind Seminary.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Today we're chatting with Steve about his new book, All Flush Shalom, larger, freer, more loving readings of the good news of Jesus.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Let's get into it with Steve.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Steve, welcome to the Gravity Commons podcast.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks, it's great to be with you all.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's good to have you.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to be with you by way of introduction, maybe of who you are to our audience.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Would you tell us a bit a little bit about yourself in particular, like your, you know, we call spiritual journey, you know, what key moments in your life.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe as a Christian, do you think contributed to who you are today?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, appreciate that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, my life-long Bostonian, that's probably the trickest thing about me.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I love my city, I never really went anywhere, so I'm still here.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I grew up in kind of a church going to family, a parent who had kind of found themselves at Christian College and then toned down their whole enterprise for a long era while they're raising children kind of bouncing around low congregational churches and but the thing kind of took to heart for me and some pretty sweet ways when as a teenager.
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[SPEAKER_01]: the words of some Sunday school teachers, I used to mock.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Just kind of like hit my heart in a really special way.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I needed.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I had like many of us, I had my own version of some childhood trauma and some kind of hurt and lonelyness, the teen.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And those middle school Sunday school teachers that my parents dragged me to like go hang out with and listen to them sing old corny songs and guitar before I'd sneak out of church and hang out and drink some of my grandparents.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They used to say stuff like, you know, Jesus will,
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[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus loves you, and God always happy to live in your heart.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If you just welcome in, welcome in there as your personal savior.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like just kind of can't be old, evangelical lines.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And as kind of a lonely, hurting teenager that most people don't know is very lonely or hurting.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's just start to really speak into me.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I thought like,
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[SPEAKER_01]: if the god of the universe most me like that like that that's that's good news like let's let's try and um and it's just been kind of interesting journey since then since my my like introduction to Christian faith was just like super evangelical right just this kind of like kind of evangelical lines kind of personal faith faith awakening and and um
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then my life experience taught me that there's like a lot of interesting questions to ask and a lot of interesting experience to have that the kind of evangelical container so I was given for the faith and didn't hold very well.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so I would say a lot of my life story, my faith story, has been trying to stick curious about my experience, like all the creations experience and trying to keep asking
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[SPEAKER_01]: better questions, or at least the questions I had at the moment, and kind of people want to go where they fall and go where they lead.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I want to I want to press in a little bit to that is that that's okay because I think your your story your journey is resonates with our audience.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's a story we hear over and over and over again.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And a lot of people have like these liminal moments or these.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Seminole moments where they find that the, you know, the phrases you made fun of, they became a comfort that they no longer were sufficient to describe their faith or contain their faith.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Can you remember maybe came moments in that journey for you and like the shifts that they, you know, catalyzed for you?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, yeah, so many.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'll just go with the one that's coming to mind.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like in the book I wrote or anything, but I was kind of a burned out like very, very young campus missionary, Christian Minister, my early 20s, who kind of went into public education.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If I myself was a career as a school teacher and a high school principal before we came up past her.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember during those years that I was a high school English teacher and a high school principal.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I remember that my experiences of what seemed like really matter most.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And particularly as my experience with what love looked like didn't really match very well.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like some of the intellectual and spiritual grids I've been given to like make decisions.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So a for instance of that was that um
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[SPEAKER_01]: when I was a high school principal and I had taken that job in many ways out of this kind of like sense of spiritual yearning or call.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, maybe like a little.
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[SPEAKER_01]: ambition or here I'll complex or you know other stuff too but but also like what feeling like you know high school principles like a pretty cool secular pastor cut a job it's like a community trust you to like take care of and bless its kids and kind of build a safe formative community and like one of its most important institutions you know it's public high school and some here think of myself as kind of a secular pastor like young high school principal trying to do the job well
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[SPEAKER_01]: and of course like when you're like pastoring a kid principal in a high school like you don't get a bunch of like
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[SPEAKER_01]: Christian kids that read the Bible and see the world you do.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It turns out when you pass to a church, you don't get that either.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But you definitely don't get that when you principle high school.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember learning, for instance, like in these youth-risk behavior surveys that we would run.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I remember learning like things that kids would say about what troubled them in life and what they had their lives say for dangerous and like what they were kind of up to.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember learning, for instance, that like,
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[SPEAKER_01]: youth who identify as LGPTQ had at least in the time, had all kinds of really challenging public health directional outcomes, not because they were queer, but because they were queer, and they weren't loved and blessed in a firmness as who they were.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And remember thinking like, my tradition gave me this question to ask, what is the Bible teach about them and what's best for them?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, how is that question any way useful right now?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Because it's not a question that they are the parents, share in many cases.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a question of interest them.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a question that seems to actually be like, have any like straight lines to what a safer life has teens in a flourishing future looks like.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I found myself asking like, what does love look like?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Which, like,
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[SPEAKER_01]: My Jesus taught me that's like a pretty good central question, but my faith formation didn't really pass me that as like the main question I should I should be asking about a group of people as called to love and serve like what does love look like what does love look like and I just found like what does love look like was a really different for me a really better question.
19:27.436 --> 19:29.337
[SPEAKER_01]: then like, what is the Bible have to say?
19:29.897 --> 19:36.920
[SPEAKER_01]: And like I love the Bible, I read all time, I'm like a professional Bible teacher, but I just found like the order of your questions, they really had to change for me.
19:37.500 --> 19:42.722
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't know, lots of experience like that, but that was a really interesting, like, hinge moment, both kind of in my faith and in my career.
19:43.482 --> 19:47.864
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I really appreciate you sharing that.
19:48.064 --> 19:55.988
[SPEAKER_02]: I think Ben, I'm noticing some resonances in our own story, first of, you know.
19:58.888 --> 20:13.295
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, what comes to mind for me is just, you know, I like you're phrasing of the difference of those two questions, because what does the Bible have to say, like you don't realize that you are actually, there is a rubric you're reading the Bible through, right?
20:13.975 --> 20:16.817
[SPEAKER_03]: Because what does the Bible have to, I mean, Bible says all kinds of stuff.
20:16.877 --> 20:17.617
[SPEAKER_03]: You know what I mean?
20:17.637 --> 20:22.900
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, it's all kinds of stuff in the Bible, you know, like, bring, hey, when you come, bring my cloak.
20:23.720 --> 20:25.383
[SPEAKER_03]: because I'm cold here in prison.
20:25.823 --> 20:28.527
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, like, we don't execute that one a lot, but that's in the Bible.
20:28.708 --> 20:36.079
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, and so what's the rubric we're using to sort of say, that's not so important, you know, but other things are more important.
20:36.099 --> 20:38.923
[SPEAKER_03]: So I like the fact that you've centered love
20:39.919 --> 20:45.929
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, which isn't necessarily an anti, it's not like, oh, I don't care about the Bible.
20:45.949 --> 20:53.281
[SPEAKER_03]: I care about love now, right, but love, I think taking love seriously and centering love.
20:54.305 --> 21:03.028
[SPEAKER_03]: I think is a way of taking, at least the gospel seriously, because so many of the New Testament writers, especially have so much to say about love.
21:04.068 --> 21:12.851
[SPEAKER_03]: And Jesus says that love of God, love of neighbor, this is the law and the prophets.
21:12.911 --> 21:14.771
[SPEAKER_03]: And Paul says love fulfills the law.
21:14.871 --> 21:18.713
[SPEAKER_03]: And John says that God is love.
21:24.351 --> 21:35.118
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, it helps us read the Bible, I think, you know, because I think what, you know, in the best forms of it, that question, what is the Bible say, what we're trying to get at is, well, what does God say?
21:35.718 --> 21:37.439
[SPEAKER_03]: How do we live according to God's will?
21:38.780 --> 21:42.702
[SPEAKER_03]: And love is a great place to start if you're going to ask that question.
21:43.483 --> 21:46.785
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I don't know, that's what I'm resonance and I'm feeling there.
21:47.040 --> 21:59.084
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think I resonate with that too, and then I resonate also with the, you know, as we started gravity commons and we were like, we had been a part of some environments for Christian environments that did not prioritize or value love.
22:01.882 --> 22:16.923
[SPEAKER_02]: and we sort of experience in our bodies, the cost of that, we set up to build a formational and theological project that would center love as the ground of being for our Christian faith.
22:17.985 --> 22:18.145
[SPEAKER_02]: And
22:19.834 --> 22:31.698
[SPEAKER_02]: I noticed how that made that broad hostility or dissentress or suspicion from people.
22:34.620 --> 22:45.844
[SPEAKER_02]: And I didn't, I was naive at the time, I didn't understand why, I didn't, it was kind of incomprehensible to me, you know, quite, yeah.
22:46.763 --> 22:49.586
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I hear your Matt, I kind of feel the same way.
22:49.606 --> 23:09.143
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I found myself thinking as you talk, I'm like, oh, it helps me to remember, though, that if I took like the half my age version of myself, like mid 20s, version of me, I think he might have been a little dumbfounded by some of the things I think and some of the compasses that got me today.
23:09.203 --> 23:12.045
[SPEAKER_01]: So maybe that helps me excavate my own,
23:13.068 --> 23:15.311
[SPEAKER_01]: my own dumbfounded, so how other people react?
23:15.351 --> 23:20.458
[SPEAKER_01]: Are they always a version of me in the past that wouldn't understand where I am today, they're right.
23:21.500 --> 23:21.660
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
23:26.318 --> 23:34.081
[SPEAKER_02]: your book, Offless Shalom actually has the running theme of love in it and I want to return to that in a little bit.
23:34.881 --> 23:52.927
[SPEAKER_02]: But I wonder if you could frame for us like what I know this was part of a dissertation project that you wrote, but maybe going beneath, you could have written about anything for your dissertation, what would problem or question or need prompted this book
23:56.272 --> 23:59.634
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm kind of sure we're at started.
23:59.694 --> 24:02.896
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I think eventually some other things hold it together.
24:02.977 --> 24:05.198
[SPEAKER_01]: So like in the introduction of the book, I don't quite describe it this way.
24:05.218 --> 24:18.027
[SPEAKER_01]: But where this project started is, yeah, I went back to graduate school because really this is like incredible theologian that either chance to meet and you kind of sold me in this program to work with him in his name's Tom Award.
24:18.467 --> 24:19.528
[SPEAKER_01]: And I gave him this chance to,
24:20.573 --> 24:30.099
[SPEAKER_01]: As someone who had been kind of an accidental pastor, I was called out of the principleship into the pastor at my late 30s, having not finished my formal theological education in my 20s.
24:30.139 --> 24:33.881
[SPEAKER_01]: I just found myself wanting to read and I've been doing it for 10 years, more or less at that point.
24:33.901 --> 24:37.883
[SPEAKER_01]: I found myself wanting to ask some questions in a deeper way at a time to recently.
24:37.903 --> 24:38.784
[SPEAKER_01]: So I joined this program.
24:39.244 --> 24:45.288
[SPEAKER_01]: And the first question I found myself thinking about was something that ends up showing up in the second chapter of the book.
24:45.308 --> 24:46.208
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's kind of where I started.
24:50.299 --> 24:55.145
[SPEAKER_01]: the kind of legacy of fathering and grandfathering in my life.
24:55.205 --> 25:01.192
[SPEAKER_01]: And in so many other, in particular, like white guys that have a kind of northern European Protestant heritage.
25:01.913 --> 25:09.102
[SPEAKER_01]: I found myself thinking about how many stories I knew in some ways, I'm at my own story, of kind of distant,
25:10.137 --> 25:16.102
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm emotionally distant, kind of aloof, but somehow, like, kind of stern and demanding father figure types.
25:16.762 --> 25:35.036
[SPEAKER_01]: And as I was thinking about that, I found myself kind of curious, like, is that something that has shaped the image of God in these kind of, like, Western Protestant and Catholic culture is that in some ways, like defined what global Christianity looks like today, is like, is there experience of, kind of,
25:39.358 --> 25:43.300
[SPEAKER_01]: somewhat stern demanding, but often emotionally distant, a Lou Father figures.
25:43.320 --> 25:45.281
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that shape of version of God or is it go the other way?
25:45.621 --> 25:55.846
[SPEAKER_01]: Did like a vision of God, it was sort of somewhat mean and displeased and perfectionist, and yet like loving you despite yourself and I'm trying to include you in God's project, despite your unworthiness of it.
25:55.866 --> 25:56.687
[SPEAKER_01]: Like did that shape?
25:57.407 --> 26:15.477
[SPEAKER_01]: the image of fathering like in the image of God, and if I'm just something probably both, probably both, so it's just kind of intuitively curious around how our image of like the patriarch of God, shape parenting, how our image of cultural image of parenting shaped like the version of God that we put upon the Bible and exported to the whole world in the modern era.
26:15.557 --> 26:15.778
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm
26:16.698 --> 26:24.428
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know that question just felt like worth my time, because it mattered to me as a son, mattered to me as a dad, as a friend.
26:24.929 --> 26:28.073
[SPEAKER_01]: I expect there's probably some stuff in there that wasn't just about men and father-in, right?
26:28.093 --> 26:30.376
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was like, that was a kernel for me.
26:30.396 --> 26:31.457
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to chase that down a bit.
26:32.313 --> 26:50.113
[SPEAKER_01]: And figure out why it is that the God Jesus talks about and loves doesn't really fit those images very well, but like there we have that's a thing at shape plus I kind of started there and then the project got like a lot wider and grew it as a place I didn't see it going at first, but yeah, that's for a beginning.
26:51.383 --> 27:05.646
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you know, speaking of those lenses that you didn't have in your 20s that you have now, you're, you name in this book kind of two lenses that you're using or places that you're writing from very consciously.
27:05.666 --> 27:08.387
[SPEAKER_03]: And one is, you name as post-colonial.
27:08.767 --> 27:09.107
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
27:09.347 --> 27:18.789
[SPEAKER_03]: And the other one is open and relational theological perspectives, which you know, learning from Tom Ward, who's been on this podcast a few times, doesn't surprise me.
27:18.809 --> 27:20.390
[SPEAKER_03]: But I wonder if you can just share briefly,
27:21.950 --> 27:29.795
[SPEAKER_03]: What those lenses are, what that perspective means and why they're compelling for you is frameworks for interpreting the gospels.
27:29.955 --> 27:30.655
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
27:31.095 --> 27:31.696
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thanks Ben.
27:31.716 --> 27:32.276
[SPEAKER_01]: Great question.
27:33.236 --> 27:34.257
[SPEAKER_01]: Open a relational theology.
27:34.277 --> 27:35.338
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of umbrella term.
27:35.558 --> 27:42.942
[SPEAKER_01]: It's actually coined, like in scholarship by Tom Orbeur, but it's kind of umbrella term to hold together ways of seeing God and all life and God.
27:47.604 --> 27:51.206
[SPEAKER_01]: like modern and post-modern, like science philosophy and experience of taught us.
27:51.226 --> 27:56.549
[SPEAKER_01]: So we've kind of learned over the past century that everything's relational.
27:56.569 --> 28:00.171
[SPEAKER_01]: Like science is learning that theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, everything.
28:00.191 --> 28:07.754
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just like all of matter is fundamentally in relationship that everything is defined if nothing else by change, more than substance.
28:07.775 --> 28:10.136
[SPEAKER_01]: Like none of us are just like a block of unchanging anything.
28:10.156 --> 28:14.138
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like the atoms that make up our bodies are pretty different.
28:14.178 --> 28:15.118
[SPEAKER_01]: They were 10, 20 years ago.
28:16.860 --> 28:24.385
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and uh, and so open and relational theology is kind of like the, um, open part.
28:24.465 --> 28:40.574
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just curious about it means that like the future is open and undetermined, um, that change is a constant in the life of all matter, all humans, all culture, all blocks of wood eventually, um, and that change is probably relevant to the concept of God.
28:40.614 --> 28:44.357
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if there are some ways in which God doesn't change, if God is to participate,
28:45.560 --> 28:47.161
[SPEAKER_01]: with creatures in relationship.
28:47.181 --> 28:49.142
[SPEAKER_01]: God at least is subject to certain forms of change.
28:49.182 --> 28:53.225
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got change and experience changing dynamics in the heart and the life of God.
28:53.245 --> 28:54.305
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's kind of the open part.
28:54.365 --> 29:04.391
[SPEAKER_01]: And the relational part is just this sense of trying to take seriously what it means that everything everything is relational and that our highest aspirations for relationship are love.
29:05.452 --> 29:10.395
[SPEAKER_01]: And so open a relational theology is just like a, for me, it's a really compelling way of,
29:11.969 --> 29:18.354
[SPEAKER_01]: like engaging thoughts and experience a God that doesn't ask us to gaslight our own experience, but to take our experience seriously.
29:18.374 --> 29:24.438
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like science and the human heart, both teach us that love matters, that changes real.
29:25.314 --> 29:30.736
[SPEAKER_01]: that the future is uncertain, that our interactions with each other make a big difference.
29:30.856 --> 29:35.237
[SPEAKER_01]: And certain forms of theology in religion ask us to pretend like that stuff's not true.
29:36.557 --> 29:42.879
[SPEAKER_01]: And so when the tradition and our experience in a diverge just ignore your own experience, gaslight it, like trust the theory, right?
29:42.899 --> 29:47.640
[SPEAKER_01]: So over-relational theology, I'll just take a ways of engaging God on different terms like that.
29:48.381 --> 29:52.322
[SPEAKER_01]: So this has been super helpful for me, even for a million reasons.
29:53.495 --> 30:16.307
[SPEAKER_01]: post-colonial theologians is another umbrella term for kind of currently and formally oppressed people groups who have been thinking about God and scriptures and in the case of Christian post-colonial theologians like the Christian faith and either separate far more in resistance from the kind of dominant narratives and experience that white Christendom has passed down over the centuries.
30:17.088 --> 30:29.765
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I think post-colonally theology is most classically for people informally colonized countries that are doing theology, like from their own indigenous perspective.
30:29.785 --> 30:30.346
[SPEAKER_01]: So, like, uh...
30:30.992 --> 30:36.954
[SPEAKER_01]: the Korean working class theology that I referenced in the book that develops in the 60s and 70s and beyond.
30:36.994 --> 30:44.256
[SPEAKER_01]: That's like interested in doing theology from the bottom up, from like a Korean working class experience, not from the Western missionaries, you know, grids.
30:44.676 --> 30:53.679
[SPEAKER_01]: But a lot of people would argue, you know, like American Indigenous theologians, like black experience in America, like all that is kind of fundamentally post-colonial in many ways, like just,
30:54.980 --> 31:01.865
[SPEAKER_01]: in resistance to a part from asking different questions, chasing different answers, then with the like white, Chris and them passed on.
31:02.686 --> 31:14.595
[SPEAKER_01]: And so two big fields and theology that like, I don't know, maybe I like some incredibly compelling intersections, but don't at least in like formal scholarship interact super often.
31:15.296 --> 31:19.079
[SPEAKER_01]: And it felt like that was the intellectual project I was interested in because
31:20.803 --> 31:28.708
[SPEAKER_01]: because in ways that would take a lot of explain that they both kind of fit my life narrative, my interests, the stuff I want to explore in the book.
31:28.748 --> 31:36.172
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's kind of like a project of synthesis, like bringing these two groups together, read the gospels a little differently, how does it take us to like a more liberating life giving faith?
31:37.901 --> 31:38.721
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's great.
31:38.741 --> 31:45.523
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, this is this is a side note, but I remember Matt and I went to theology beer camp a couple years ago.
31:45.563 --> 31:48.104
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it was what was out in Colorado.
31:48.264 --> 31:50.605
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and that was kind of the conversation.
31:50.725 --> 31:53.306
[SPEAKER_03]: I noticed there was a lot of theologians from that open and relational.
31:53.595 --> 32:00.177
[SPEAKER_03]: yeah, uh, perspective, but then there was also these theologians from a very justus oriented post-colonial perspective.
32:00.257 --> 32:00.617
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
32:00.937 --> 32:10.159
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was fascinated by that because that that does feel like a conversation that it doesn't happen a lot, you know, those those are both perspectives that I resonate with.
32:10.259 --> 32:10.679
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
32:10.819 --> 32:16.440
[SPEAKER_03]: But like integrating them into some sort of holistic vision, um, I love the work.
32:16.600 --> 32:17.421
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah.
32:17.701 --> 32:19.241
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks, glad you wrote this book.
32:19.585 --> 32:35.744
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I was gifted to have like one of the three people on my dissertation committee and some of that I side a lot in the work Randy Woodley is a really fascinating important American indigenous, theologian, and just kind of leader and integrating indigenous and Christian experience.
32:35.824 --> 32:35.884
[SPEAKER_01]: And
32:37.045 --> 32:38.786
[SPEAKER_01]: Randy is elected to find himself for good reasons.
32:38.826 --> 32:41.947
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to respect his self identification on like the terms the Western Academy.
32:42.647 --> 32:44.408
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, that's not, that's not my language.
32:44.428 --> 32:55.692
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, that's not, but I would say like, Randy is fundamentally like also an open and relational theologian and friends and colleagues, my mentor Tom Orrid and so he's kind of important voice to the work and uh,
32:56.500 --> 33:01.463
[SPEAKER_01]: and it was a really powerful and interesting presence in my dissertation committee as well, so yeah.
33:02.584 --> 33:22.637
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, I'm noticing that like, you know, the way that encountering the stories and needs and questions of the LGBTQ population when you are a high school principal, like provoked change in you, because they have different needs and questions than you did.
33:23.058 --> 33:23.298
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
33:23.878 --> 33:34.452
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the strengths of using those two frameworks, then is you kind of work through the book and you work through different broad topics like incarnation and the cross and resurrection and so teriology, et cetera.
33:35.694 --> 33:41.020
[SPEAKER_02]: And you bring those two perspectives or frames to like, what kind of questions would they have?
33:41.621 --> 33:44.522
[SPEAKER_02]: what would they be interested in as we talk about these topics?
33:45.422 --> 33:58.607
[SPEAKER_02]: And so obviously we can't go chapter by chapter, but in one of the chapters on incarnation, you talk about, this is my language, you talk about how our cosmology matters.
33:59.287 --> 34:08.150
[SPEAKER_02]: And I wonder if you could share a bit about why cosmology matters and what it is because it's kind of a big word that gets thrown out but sometimes
34:11.905 --> 34:15.607
[SPEAKER_01]: I tried, I was kind of one of my two favorite chapters, so I'm happy to start there.
34:15.687 --> 34:29.895
[SPEAKER_01]: I tried to use some, like, I kind of toyed around with some really simple language, maybe even simplistic, but it's kind of helped for me in that chapter about cosmology, where I think like, if we think like what's the spiritual nature of the universe?
34:29.915 --> 34:33.837
[SPEAKER_01]: Like one question might be asked is like, I call it the geography of God, but like where is God?
34:34.758 --> 34:36.659
[SPEAKER_01]: Like where does God live?
34:36.699 --> 34:37.479
[SPEAKER_01]: Like where's God's home?
34:38.801 --> 34:45.850
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think like religious cosmology, traditionally, and certainly in ancient times, has tended to have this sort of notion of godsic up there.
34:47.913 --> 34:53.640
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, I don't know, I think we mostly read it as metaphor, but I think it's still part of us, one of us of us literally true.
34:53.660 --> 34:57.365
[SPEAKER_01]: I think our ancestors thought it was literally true, that you could, you know?
34:58.523 --> 35:20.221
[SPEAKER_01]: If you follow the birds up above Jerusalem and kind of went a little higher, then they're able to get like there'd be a throne up there, and that's where God would live, and, you know, God would have the ability to kind of visit the earth or kind of interact with the earth or keep an eye on it, but there was like, you know, God was up there, and I don't mean like mock the ancestors, like I think, kind of a beautiful motion for it's time and nothing wrong with that if that's your understanding of the world.
35:28.235 --> 35:39.240
[SPEAKER_01]: a lot of wheels came off that butt, so to speak, like when we kind of learn to scientifically, like, oh, you kind of keep going up, and you know, like, find heaven, like you just, you find other stuff.
35:39.560 --> 35:44.903
[SPEAKER_01]: And you just keep going and building as a light years, there's like still more stuff, and it's like still universe, right?
35:45.423 --> 35:51.766
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's kind of made it hard to hold a lot of those kind of up there cosmologies.
35:51.846 --> 35:55.988
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm saying with the down there cosmologies, like if you think it's the underworld or hell, or whatever, like another turns out,
35:57.068 --> 36:16.578
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not what's there and I think at the same time as some of that science was undoing that stuff This notion that God is kind of somewhat God is either up there or God is like maybe to the extent that God is on earth God is like with us like a lot of Tristan Christian theology would teach like well the way God is on earth is God is like present
36:17.772 --> 36:22.935
[SPEAKER_01]: in the buildings and people and cultures of the baptized believers of your faith, right?
36:22.955 --> 36:37.024
[SPEAKER_01]: So, God's like within your culture and team and life and sphere and that enabled people who thought they were like on God's team, they were God's home to just like terrible, terrible violent things to best of their earth, right?
36:37.044 --> 36:43.748
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, church giving official license to in the age of exploration for people to like in slave
36:44.388 --> 36:58.923
[SPEAKER_01]: conquer, brutalize, steal from, whoever they would encounter, there was like outside Christendom, because fundamentally, there was, you know, this Willie James Jennings uses this, like, it's just great language about this, and I'll talk about the chapter.
36:58.963 --> 37:00.724
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's kind of just profound hubris.
37:01.580 --> 37:04.983
[SPEAKER_01]: to like, about this big mistake rather geography of God.
37:05.003 --> 37:10.967
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've just been like, well, God's with us on our team, we are bringing God there because God is not in these people and lands.
37:11.007 --> 37:12.969
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, we'll try our best to convert him.
37:12.989 --> 37:17.012
[SPEAKER_01]: But meanwhile, we'll just steal, kill, destroy, like, do whatever we want, right?
37:17.032 --> 37:18.733
[SPEAKER_01]: Because God is like not there.
37:19.373 --> 37:22.736
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think scientifically historically, this is just like a men's import.
37:23.377 --> 37:27.380
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, if you have any concept of God, like where God is and where God isn't,
37:28.158 --> 37:31.339
[SPEAKER_01]: has just like huge societal religious ethical implications.
37:31.419 --> 37:33.980
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it matters like personally, too, right?
37:34.000 --> 37:43.884
[SPEAKER_01]: Because how I relate to myself and you Matt and you Ben and this room, I'm in, which happens to be a worship space.
37:43.924 --> 37:49.987
[SPEAKER_01]: But then like the room I'm going to be in when I'm talking to my kid and his room tonight and all the place I go in between.
37:50.007 --> 37:52.768
[SPEAKER_01]: And to the extent, I think that God is
37:54.416 --> 37:55.418
[SPEAKER_01]: there or not.
37:55.678 --> 37:59.163
[SPEAKER_01]: And what way God is there, that makes a big difference.
38:00.225 --> 38:01.667
[SPEAKER_01]: It makes the biggest difference, right?
38:02.147 --> 38:02.468
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
38:04.271 --> 38:08.213
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we have an axiom that says, God is always present and it work.
38:08.953 --> 38:24.359
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's really trying to do some of this post-colonial work that you're describing of, you know, Jennings talks about it as, you know, he says in his ax commentary that Gentiles need to relearn how to be guests.
38:24.439 --> 38:25.239
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, amen.
38:25.520 --> 38:26.160
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
38:26.640 --> 38:40.071
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think there's something about being a guest, trusting, trusting that the God of the universe is before you and without you in some ways too.
38:40.891 --> 38:48.057
[SPEAKER_02]: And that you go then as a guest, not as a not as the the major D. Yeah.
38:50.238 --> 38:50.519
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
38:50.539 --> 38:51.880
[SPEAKER_01]: I use some of the like, um,
38:52.868 --> 39:02.713
[SPEAKER_01]: I used like a fair bit of sort of scholarly language that mode of thinking in the first chapter, but I've been trying to sit with it repeatedly, including since the book came out.
39:02.753 --> 39:08.796
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, in simple everyday language in my day to day, I think about like the radical everywhere in this of God.
39:09.216 --> 39:11.937
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just try to, I try to sit with that.
39:12.518 --> 39:15.299
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess often as I can throughout the day, you know, I go a little ticker of that.
39:16.059 --> 39:16.940
[SPEAKER_01]: And see where it takes me in.
39:17.540 --> 39:19.341
[SPEAKER_01]: I love, it's never disappointed, not yet.
39:20.954 --> 39:22.075
[SPEAKER_01]: always takes me somewhere better.
39:22.135 --> 39:22.736
[SPEAKER_01]: Always always.
39:22.756 --> 39:23.017
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
39:23.577 --> 39:23.837
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
39:25.279 --> 39:25.439
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
39:25.479 --> 39:34.110
[SPEAKER_03]: It strikes me as a, you know, a form of contemplation in a way, you know, the mystics and the contemplatives have, have always said this about God.
39:34.190 --> 39:36.753
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, they've always said that we are...
39:38.383 --> 39:55.530
[SPEAKER_03]: We are already immersed in God and the process of learning to pray is a process of learning to realize that and just, it's a process of shedding the illusion of our separateness from God.
39:55.670 --> 39:56.731
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
39:57.371 --> 39:57.631
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
39:58.071 --> 40:00.032
[SPEAKER_01]: And if it's true for us, it's got to be true.
40:00.052 --> 40:01.072
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
40:01.253 --> 40:01.393
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
40:01.413 --> 40:02.713
[SPEAKER_01]: And when else, too, right?
40:02.733 --> 40:02.953
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
40:03.233 --> 40:04.194
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
40:04.334 --> 40:05.594
[SPEAKER_03]: It's true for everyone.
40:07.962 --> 40:08.162
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
40:09.623 --> 40:16.329
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, maybe we can return to the theme of love that we talked about a little earlier.
40:17.130 --> 40:28.719
[SPEAKER_03]: And you talked about how a lot of the colonial readings of Scripture and the mechanistic readings, they get love quite wrong.
40:29.880 --> 40:34.044
[SPEAKER_03]: And I wonder if you can, you know, it's almost like
40:35.848 --> 40:45.259
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, the story you told about the beginnings of this book where does this picture of God did that pre-exist and then we mapped it onto the scriptures that come from the scriptures?
40:45.940 --> 40:55.431
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think there's differing versions of love, even, right, that we can, you know, is like, did that come from the scriptures or did we map something onto the scriptures?
40:56.432 --> 40:58.214
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, and so I don't know.
40:58.234 --> 40:59.735
[SPEAKER_03]: I wonder if you can talk a little bit about love.
41:01.037 --> 41:02.418
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, what's so great about love.
41:02.498 --> 41:06.722
[SPEAKER_03]: Why does it matter so much in our readings of Scripture and of Christian faith?
41:06.782 --> 41:10.365
[SPEAKER_03]: And how do we, how do we learn what it really is?
41:22.009 --> 41:23.434
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I want to know what love is.
41:23.454 --> 41:27.108
[SPEAKER_03]: I want you to show me this so many song lyrics come through.
41:27.128 --> 41:28.051
[SPEAKER_02]: What a field with love.
41:30.631 --> 41:43.654
[SPEAKER_01]: on Steve, you know, where I think it takes me right now, it's a little bit, it's a little bit, some material I explore in the third chapter of the book on like the cross and the tone and it's a little bit autobiographical too.
41:44.334 --> 41:51.116
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know a lot of shame when I was like a young man, not an unusual dynamic.
41:51.816 --> 41:55.197
[SPEAKER_01]: And I used to think that the good news of Jesus was
42:01.118 --> 42:08.182
[SPEAKER_01]: a pretty classic, like kind of certain kind of Calvinist frame that God really, God loved me.
42:08.202 --> 42:11.664
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like included in the story of God because when God looked at me, God didn't see me anymore.
42:11.724 --> 42:14.106
[SPEAKER_01]: God saw his son Jesus who died for me.
42:14.746 --> 42:18.068
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't want to like mock that form of faith because like there was time in life that was liberating.
42:18.088 --> 42:25.332
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I was just, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,
42:26.076 --> 42:42.954
[SPEAKER_01]: I internalized a lot of negative things about myself and I had, and I carried a lot of shame and that helped me believe for a time that I was loved and that I had like a really good and hopeful future for my life and so there was a time that that like served as good news.
42:44.496 --> 43:00.768
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but eventually like I describe it on those terms now and I think like it is not good news to think like you are really valuable and We're the and beautiful because when someone looks at you, they think they're seeing someone else like it is like like that is how so horrible like once you see it, right?
43:01.969 --> 43:08.955
[SPEAKER_01]: Shame the shame stays Yeah, it's like Like welcome to the party as long as I can like fake it
43:09.635 --> 43:27.233
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, as I was like a pretend I'm like the other guest that was meant to be terrible and so I just think like it's so again like I think Experience gets there before a theology a lot of time for like a religious person like you kind of like realize that in my experience
43:28.605 --> 43:47.623
[SPEAKER_01]: But I thought, oh, but my faith teaches, my faith, my former Christianity had taught that what made you like forgiven and kind of in right relationship with God is that, you know, you need to be like punish the death, but God did that to someone else, and now kind of like, you know, maps that other person, that God-man Jesus is sort of life onto yours, and so you're good.
43:47.643 --> 43:48.384
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like a costume.
43:48.925 --> 43:49.225
[SPEAKER_01]: And, and,
43:52.346 --> 43:56.027
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, wow, I need like that, that can't work anymore.
43:56.167 --> 43:57.687
[SPEAKER_01]: If I think God actually just loves me as me.
43:58.347 --> 44:03.269
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think actually the center of God's story was love, like long before any Romans were crucifying people.
44:03.309 --> 44:11.390
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the, I mean, my mentor Tom was, say the most important word in the Hebrew scriptures, has had, it just means like, you know, a bounding ever flowing faithful love, right?
44:11.410 --> 44:15.651
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just like, that's not like, it's a great book called Judyism is about love, right, from a Jewish perspective.
44:15.691 --> 44:18.312
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually have the whole story of Judyism's always centered love too, which is,
44:18.732 --> 44:26.293
[SPEAKER_01]: Christians use the word a lot and Jews had to like use other stuff because you know their enemy took that word right it's like um so do all to say like uh
44:27.519 --> 44:31.840
[SPEAKER_01]: I think, you know, I end up maybe I'm like losing grip in your question, so I'm just kind of riffing here.
44:31.880 --> 44:49.305
[SPEAKER_01]: But I end up in the chapter on like a tone-in of just getting curious of like, if love is in violent, and if love doesn't need to like punish someone to genuinely love, like if love just genuinely loves, you have to like explore on different things about like what might have happened in the cross and what the death meant.
44:49.385 --> 44:52.566
[SPEAKER_01]: And so anyway, like the chapter,
44:53.786 --> 44:55.568
[SPEAKER_01]: the cross, just ask all bunch of questions.
44:55.648 --> 45:02.373
[SPEAKER_01]: And in some ways, everyone out of this faith, this experience belief that actually might be loved as I am, not in spite of who I am.
45:03.214 --> 45:06.376
[SPEAKER_01]: Because that's my best experiences of loving someone, all look like that, right?
45:06.396 --> 45:08.958
[SPEAKER_01]: They're like me, me setting aside, like,
45:09.845 --> 45:15.927
[SPEAKER_01]: like some kind of like, um, to use the religious language, like kind of idolatrous, unhelpful, great upon my kid, but I want them to be.
45:16.227 --> 45:19.908
[SPEAKER_01]: And just being like, oh, what if my kid as they are, is like the best?
45:20.228 --> 45:21.008
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just beautiful.
45:21.789 --> 45:24.109
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and like, my best experience to love look like that.
45:24.229 --> 45:28.891
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not like me, fake of myself out to want someone to be different than they are, and then loving that, right?
45:28.911 --> 45:33.892
[SPEAKER_01]: So, so I think all of that, if God's better than me, like, you know, where does that take me?
45:33.972 --> 45:34.172
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
45:40.433 --> 45:58.635
[SPEAKER_03]: that's been so helpful for me as well, just to kind of get out, get out of the realm of trying to theologically conceptualize love and just beginning to feel in my body, the transforming effects of
45:59.612 --> 46:00.814
[SPEAKER_03]: certain kinds of, you know what I mean?
46:00.854 --> 46:07.766
[SPEAKER_03]: Like when I times that I have been loved and feeling like, what a liberating experience that was for me.
46:07.826 --> 46:10.511
[SPEAKER_03]: This is better than the shame I used to live with.
46:14.003 --> 46:22.911
[SPEAKER_03]: And then that thought of, you know, if God is better than me, or the way that I sometimes put it is, God is at least as good as the best person you know.
46:23.211 --> 46:24.032
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
46:24.072 --> 46:31.398
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, then God's love must be that plus, you know, it must be at least as good as that.
46:31.838 --> 46:32.559
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
46:32.799 --> 46:34.501
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think there is a trusting of our own,
46:36.073 --> 46:41.895
[SPEAKER_03]: like our own experience of goodness and our own experience of love that we have to learn a lot of us.
46:41.915 --> 46:45.236
[SPEAKER_03]: A lot of us have been taught, you mentioned the term gaslighting ourselves earlier.
46:45.876 --> 46:50.058
[SPEAKER_03]: Like a lot of us been taught to gaslight ourselves and say, well, that's not actually good.
46:52.318 --> 46:59.101
[SPEAKER_03]: When it's like, I think with enough guidance and training, like all of us eventually come to these conclusions.
46:59.321 --> 47:00.581
[SPEAKER_03]: We know what's good, you know?
47:01.141 --> 47:01.381
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
47:02.302 --> 47:02.562
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
47:03.653 --> 47:23.078
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, I think the reason, you know, one of the reasons I am, I stick with the, I try to sort of submit my thinking and learning to the experience of post-colonate theologians, like logic, people of color who've kind of found their way into these same questions and not just my own, is like as spiritually and psychological enriches this is for me.
47:23.843 --> 47:40.106
[SPEAKER_01]: like as a white man, it's just really helpful to kind of follow the trail of people who have had existentially, like more even more at stake in me than these kind of mistake and theological grids, you know, I tell the story and the,
47:41.261 --> 47:50.432
[SPEAKER_01]: in the introduction of one of the kind of shaking experiences in early 2001 that got me to really like kind of shape the book I wrote in the way I wrote it.
47:50.452 --> 47:54.056
[SPEAKER_01]: I was just, there was just a series of very public events in 2001 that were just,
47:55.773 --> 48:01.758
[SPEAKER_01]: in very kind of overt way is put it on display it's just some of the terrible bitter fruits of like the worst of white Christianity.
48:01.979 --> 48:11.267
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's this like baptized Christian guy who shoots up like these women and men and Asian massage parlors and in Georgia.
48:12.508 --> 48:19.014
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think like what, what, what, story stories like that that
48:22.658 --> 48:49.528
[SPEAKER_01]: that aren't just like some sort of weird exception to our faith, but maybe there's like certain elements of the faith that in their most kind of bitter, extreme, unfiltered versions could actually become an event like that, like the kind of hatred of the other, the ability to kind of not see the face of God in someone that you fear or resent or think should be different or somehow characterizes the enemy or the source of blame for your problems.
48:50.691 --> 49:06.123
[SPEAKER_01]: And so following the work of people who have had, frankly, like a lot more, the Christian religion has put a lot more hurdles and obstacles in their path and it has for me, and kind of following the trail.
49:07.244 --> 49:09.646
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the Baldwin quote, there's a subtitle for the book.
49:09.706 --> 49:14.770
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the fire next time he says, any concept of God that doesn't make you larger.
49:15.730 --> 49:20.113
[SPEAKER_01]: If our concept of God is to make us larger free and more loving, it's time we got rid of him.
49:20.794 --> 49:23.176
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember I think I first heard that quote as young evangelical.
49:23.196 --> 49:24.136
[SPEAKER_01]: I found a super threatening.
49:24.156 --> 49:26.118
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, why would I just say that about God?
49:26.158 --> 49:26.798
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, that's horrible.
49:26.858 --> 49:27.118
[SPEAKER_01]: It's me.
49:27.359 --> 49:28.259
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I don't like that.
49:28.279 --> 49:30.921
[SPEAKER_01]: I just felt like the longer life has gone.
49:30.961 --> 49:32.903
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, thank you, brother, brother Baldwin.
49:32.923 --> 49:34.324
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what an important thing to say.
49:34.384 --> 49:38.446
[SPEAKER_01]: But anything we have to say and do about God that is to make us larger free and more loving.
49:38.466 --> 49:40.048
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, we, that can't be the way.
49:40.268 --> 49:40.808
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't be the way.
49:41.409 --> 49:41.609
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
49:43.892 --> 50:08.761
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, if I could just name maybe by way of, I want to return to the chapter on the cross because I think I do think the cross is maybe one of the fullest expressions of God's love and the way we commonly understand it, it makes love and comprehensible almost, but I just want to name and see if I got this right Steve like,
50:11.120 --> 50:26.866
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the ways that you grew in your understanding of God is that God actually loves you, not Jesus, not you cause playing as Jesus, not in a Jesus costume.
50:28.946 --> 50:32.968
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's a logic, I think, in that that is love.
50:33.028 --> 50:37.089
[SPEAKER_02]: So one of the things I realized about love recently,
50:39.819 --> 51:00.556
[SPEAKER_02]: For many of us, the best we can do with our shame is to repress it and deny it, to ignore it, to distract ourselves from it, by putting our fingers in our ears and repeating an atonement theory that reminds us that we shouldn't think about ourselves.
51:02.798 --> 51:05.480
[SPEAKER_02]: And what you're naming is that love actually doesn't
51:08.647 --> 51:32.637
[SPEAKER_02]: any parts of who we are, that love, love penetrates and includes and heals and redeems and restores and even abides with shame that remains, even entrusted self to those who doubt even gives when there's no capacity to receive.
51:35.216 --> 51:45.078
[SPEAKER_02]: And I wonder, maybe turning towards, you know, you sort of referenced kind of a, what you call penal substitutionary toolment in your chapter on the cross.
51:45.538 --> 51:45.758
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
51:46.538 --> 51:50.639
[SPEAKER_02]: And I know that for a lot of us, that's like, as such as an app, that's like part of the hard drive.
51:50.919 --> 51:51.299
[SPEAKER_02]: That's great.
51:51.639 --> 51:55.920
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so hard to conceptualize forgiveness, salvation, faith.
51:56.300 --> 51:56.980
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
51:57.440 --> 52:01.141
[SPEAKER_02]: Why Jesus came, a part from that.
52:03.761 --> 52:14.993
[SPEAKER_02]: require a penal substitutionary death in order to love me or be identified with me.
52:15.914 --> 52:17.916
[SPEAKER_02]: Then why does Jesus die?
52:23.535 --> 52:33.439
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'm tempted to give a snarky answer and beneath the snarky answer, I may have not still yet, but hasn't been said yet is, uh, so it's been a snarky on here all the time.
52:33.760 --> 52:36.781
[SPEAKER_02]: He's is like, we've prepped our audience.
52:36.821 --> 52:38.222
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there one answer to that question?
52:39.122 --> 52:40.443
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know the whole answer to that question?
52:41.063 --> 52:41.663
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, I don't know.
52:42.563 --> 52:45.265
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus died because like someone killed him, right?
52:45.285 --> 52:45.425
[SPEAKER_01]: Like,
52:46.330 --> 52:50.915
[SPEAKER_01]: Rumpen Empire couldn't stand him, he was upsetting and threatening, didn't suit their purposes.
52:51.235 --> 52:52.016
[SPEAKER_01]: They killed a lot of people.
52:52.036 --> 52:52.977
[SPEAKER_01]: They crucified a lot of people.
52:53.017 --> 52:54.039
[SPEAKER_01]: So Jesus, one of them.
52:54.099 --> 52:54.759
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't know.
52:54.799 --> 52:55.380
[SPEAKER_01]: That's one answer.
52:55.420 --> 52:56.221
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not the only answer.
52:56.782 --> 52:57.362
[SPEAKER_01]: There's an answer.
52:58.744 --> 53:02.588
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus, just seemed to know or think, he was going to die.
53:02.768 --> 53:05.691
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's an answer that and it was maybe part of his vocation.
53:06.813 --> 53:08.274
[SPEAKER_01]: What Faithfulness required that?
53:08.475 --> 53:09.596
[SPEAKER_01]: Faithfulness was going to lead to that.
53:10.036 --> 53:12.859
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, and did things that were going to take him to the end.
53:13.399 --> 53:21.747
[SPEAKER_01]: He seemed, if we take the story seriously, he seems quite clear that fulfilling his vocation and being the person who's called to be was going to lead to that end.
53:24.209 --> 53:26.972
[SPEAKER_01]: I think, as you said, Matt, it's a beautiful image what love looks like.
53:27.853 --> 53:30.714
[SPEAKER_01]: what Jesus say, no one is great to love and they lay down their life for their friends.
53:30.794 --> 53:33.596
[SPEAKER_01]: And he didn't seem to just be like, bragging about himself.
53:33.976 --> 53:35.537
[SPEAKER_01]: He seems to be like, teach us something bigger there.
53:36.237 --> 53:44.561
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm actually like, a little bit haunting, but as we talk, like in the corner of my eye, there's some very traditional art of white Jesus getting crucified.
53:45.081 --> 53:52.165
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't love that he's like white, but on Jesus, I worship and teach at a old French Catholic church, beautiful, stained glass.
53:52.365 --> 53:54.426
[SPEAKER_01]: But I found myself gazing at this image all the time.
53:55.126 --> 53:56.667
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just think, I don't know, love looks like that.
53:57.863 --> 54:05.619
[SPEAKER_01]: just as bleeding, just as like two women and one guy left at his feet, and
54:07.455 --> 54:09.256
[SPEAKER_01]: and just as, you know, level, level do this.
54:09.816 --> 54:11.476
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm resisting the theories.
54:11.537 --> 54:20.660
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I find the theories interesting, but I'm trying to answer your question with that theory, because I feel like once we buy in a theory, again, we can get real separated from our experience.
54:21.280 --> 54:26.702
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, I write a chapter about this, which doesn't land anywhere, and I love to deliver it.
54:27.162 --> 54:29.723
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think other of my chapters land somewhere more.
54:29.903 --> 54:31.504
[SPEAKER_01]: And this chapter lands like,
54:32.353 --> 54:43.543
[SPEAKER_01]: In more lands with a clarity about a no and a curiosity about yeses, you know, I think why I don't think Jesus died because God couldn't love people if he didn't like punish someone perfect.
54:44.344 --> 54:47.547
[SPEAKER_01]: So I say a hard note of that and I say like, um,
54:49.883 --> 54:55.026
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there's a reason that historically, the good news of Jesus wasn't a theory about someone's death.
54:55.146 --> 54:58.808
[SPEAKER_01]: It was the whole life and story of Jesus, which included death and resurrection.
54:59.608 --> 55:01.149
[SPEAKER_01]: So the good news of Jesus really the whole deal.
55:01.209 --> 55:03.050
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not just how we got killed.
55:04.411 --> 55:18.239
[SPEAKER_01]: And I invite a kind of curiosity about all kinds of nonviolent theories of Atonement, which is there are many and they interest me and I'm resisting trying to get on a bar stool and talk about any one of them because like, you know, you can read my book and then get on it.
55:19.650 --> 55:20.731
[SPEAKER_01]: But you got to be curious first.
55:20.751 --> 55:25.996
[SPEAKER_01]: You got to believe like possible that the cross being something other than God's pension for killing.
55:26.707 --> 55:31.370
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think when you put it, you know, on those terms, I'm like, it's got to, it's got to.
55:32.271 --> 55:34.112
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I mentioned this about what I don't remember, I do.
55:34.432 --> 55:47.962
[SPEAKER_01]: I travel to like the Holy Land once, Palestine is real, and I met a Palestinian Christian bishop who's like, his, his line, his stick is basically like, though the one thing we know about God is God does not kill.
55:52.738 --> 55:56.260
[SPEAKER_01]: ancestors, we're killed and disposed of their land.
55:56.780 --> 55:59.982
[SPEAKER_01]: I complicated story, not here to blame anyone who ever do it.
56:02.643 --> 56:06.705
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just so true when you hear it from his mouth, because you're going to just gotta be true that God does not kill.
56:07.225 --> 56:12.448
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you go back to the Bible and you're like, actually, I'm just as God does kill.
56:12.468 --> 56:13.008
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes not.
56:13.348 --> 56:15.029
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm like, oh, if I'm on team, God does not kill.
56:15.089 --> 56:15.830
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, like that.
56:16.910 --> 56:18.611
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, the questions you ask.
56:20.491 --> 56:23.534
[SPEAKER_01]: no matter where you are, like they frame your answer.
56:23.594 --> 56:28.800
[SPEAKER_01]: So, and you're lying, if you say it's not true, so the questions you ask in your read the Bible will frame your answers.
56:28.820 --> 56:32.084
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I think if I'm curious, what's the story of the cross?
56:32.124 --> 56:40.213
[SPEAKER_01]: If it's not about God's need to kill somebody or something, then there's just like a lot of interesting, beautiful places that can go, but I know what it's not.
56:45.595 --> 56:50.779
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll see, we could chat about this longer, but we've kept you enough time.
56:51.219 --> 57:04.388
[SPEAKER_02]: And maybe by way of closing, could you give a story or draw a picture for us, verbally of like, what kind of, what do you hope this book accomplishes?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what kind of Christian life,
57:09.198 --> 57:16.984
[SPEAKER_02]: would be the result of somebody who was who took what you wrote to heart and decided to to do something about it.
57:17.604 --> 57:17.865
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Honestly, like what I hope most is that in my grandkids generation, I mean that literally metaphorically, I do not have grandchildren.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if I ever well, but if I do and whether or not I do like the generations to come,
57:37.202 --> 57:48.222
[SPEAKER_01]: beautiful and win some stories about Jesus being told and help their communities of faith in the name of Jesus that are beautiful and loving and win some and that their experience.
57:49.505 --> 58:04.040
[SPEAKER_01]: of the whole jam, like their experience of God and worship and how they read and teach the Bible and what they share with their kids and how they interact with their neighbors will be beautiful and will be like good for themselves and good for the neighbor and good for the land and good for the future.
58:04.060 --> 58:10.046
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't get to say in whether that's true, like I'm not a single person, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: None of us can change the world.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm interested in being part of a movement of Christian reformers that find some ways to disentangle like centuries of kind of toxic, violent, world-hating theology that's gotten tied up with their faith and trying disentangle some of that and say like there's a way that is larger and freer and more loving for us, for us to practice.
58:37.493 --> 59:00.974
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, Randy Woodley, a lot of Indigenous folks seek like think back seven generations think forward seven generations with anything that you do and I'm like, hey, if my life has like any even kernel of fruit seven generations forward, I'm like, I don't know, after life may or whatever version of me exists in any form seven generations from now, I'm like, if I had like the the tiniest
59:02.920 --> 59:08.841
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, if the way I think and talk about Jesus can just even lunge that the tiniest bit, I feel like, oh, that's worth it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's beautiful.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I can try and try and speutiful.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So that's that's what I'm about.
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[SPEAKER_02]: The book again is called All-Flesh Shalom, larger, freer, more loving readings of the good news of Jesus.
59:21.704 --> 59:23.244
[SPEAKER_02]: Steve, it was a pleasure to have you today.
59:23.284 --> 59:24.024
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for being with us.
59:25.025 --> 59:26.065
[SPEAKER_01]: Sweet to be with you all as well.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
59:32.674 --> 59:35.578
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59:36.379 --> 59:38.963
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[UNKNOWN]: You