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Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that

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Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become

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Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.

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Speaker 2: I'm Dr. James Spencer.

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Speaker 1: Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways

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Speaker 1: God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural,

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Speaker 1: and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now,

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Speaker 1: on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey everyone, welcome

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Speaker 1: to this episode of Thinking Christian. We're joined today by

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Speaker 1: Michael Rhodes. Michael is a lecturer in Old Testament from

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Speaker 1: Cary Baptist College in New Zealand. And he's also been

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Speaker 1: a pastor and involved in community development. He's the author

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Speaker 1: of a new book, We've actually had Michael on the

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Speaker 1: show talking about his previous book, Reimagining Biblical Politics, Just Discipleship,

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Speaker 1: and then Formative Feasting and Practicing the King's Economy. But

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Speaker 1: this book that we're talking about today is Reimagining Biblical Politics,

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Speaker 1: What Scripture Says and about public life and why it matters.

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Speaker 1: And so, Michael, welcome back to the show. I know

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Speaker 1: you're going to be doing some other stuff with this.

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Speaker 1: You have a sub stack that you write on regularly,

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Speaker 1: and then there's a podcast coming out. So why don't

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Speaker 1: we just start giving people that information, and then we'll

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Speaker 1: roll into the book and the topic and see where

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Speaker 1: this goes.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks, guys. It's great to be on the Thinking

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Speaker 3: Christian podcast. Great to be back. That's fun. So yeah,

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Speaker 3: the book is Reimagining Biblical Politics. It's out Um, it's

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Speaker 3: hopefully an accessible resource for people who read books. Um,

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Speaker 3: but there's also, uh, a companion podcast. Um, that's, uh,

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Speaker 3: the first season of the crossroads podcast. So if you

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Speaker 3: look up crossroad podcast, which is cross and then R

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Speaker 3: H O D E S my last name, it's a

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Speaker 3: terrible pun, but the first season of the crossroads podcast

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Speaker 3: is called re-imagining biblical politics. And if you search for

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Speaker 3: that on your podcast thing, you'll probably find it as well. Um,

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Speaker 3: And then, yeah, you can follow me on Substack if

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Speaker 3: you're interested. The book and the podcast, we can maybe

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Speaker 3: talk about this, are– I've tried to create resources for

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Speaker 3: thinking about politics in the Bible that intentionally do not

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Speaker 3: address contemporary American political issues. And that's to give the

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Speaker 3: church a resource, a partisan divided church, a resource that

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Speaker 3: they can use together. If you follow me on Substack,

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Speaker 3: you will discover that I have lots of opinions and

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Speaker 3: I'm happy to tell you about those things. you know,

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Speaker 3: sort of like buyer beware. But yeah, that's where I

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Speaker 3: am on the internet.

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Speaker 2: Very cool. Well, no, it's good to have you back on.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, I thought the structure of the book was

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Speaker 1: really cool. You're basically, and if you want to re-describe this,

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Speaker 1: but you're basically walking through a series of biblical passages

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Speaker 1: to help people frame out what scripture says about politics

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Speaker 1: or what biblical texts would have some sort of implications

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Speaker 1: for politics maybe.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. So, I mean, in my church, I know not

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Speaker 3: everyone's the same. In American life, there are some churches

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Speaker 3: that are obsessed with politics and there's some churches that

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Speaker 3: like never want to touch it with a 10-foot pole.

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Speaker 3: In my circles, it was very common if you were

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Speaker 3: thinking about like electoral politics or state national politics, you know,

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Speaker 3: If you ask what the Bible says, you basically immediately

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Speaker 3: quote Romans 13, and then you're basically done and move on.

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Speaker 3: As we say in New Zealand, done and dusted. Not

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Speaker 3: much more to say. And so part of the thing

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Speaker 3: I wanted to do in this book is say, what

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Speaker 3: does the whole of Scripture, how might the whole of

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Speaker 3: Scripture shape our political imagination for faithful political discipleship? And

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Speaker 3: there's sort of two huge things that I discovered in

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Speaker 3: the process of doing the research for this book. One

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Speaker 3: is the Bible says all sorts of stuff about politics.

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Speaker 3: And what it says, it says in many different voices.

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Speaker 3: So if you think about scripture as like a choir

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Speaker 3: of voices, they might all be singing the same song,

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Speaker 3: but there's some dissonant harmonies in the bunch. Or if

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Speaker 3: you think about the Bible as like a photo mosaic,

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Speaker 3: if you step back and see the whole, there is

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Speaker 3: a big picture. But if you zoom in, there's a

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Speaker 3: bunch of little snapshot images that are all quite diverse

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Speaker 3: that make up this big photo mosaic. And so in

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Speaker 3: the Bible, you've got people like John in Revelation who

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Speaker 3: basically says, hey, Babylon is a beast. No collaboration. Get

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Speaker 3: out of there. And you've got voices like Jeremiah that

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Speaker 3: are saying, you're in Babylon. Pray for the flourishing of

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Speaker 3: Babylon and seek the flourishing of Babylon while you're there.

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Speaker 3: You've got voices that say, like Paul does, you know,

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Speaker 3: submit to the governing authorities. You've also got Paul's example

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Speaker 3: of not submitting to the governing authorities, but fleeing an

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Speaker 3: official trial, which he thought was unjust, which he talks

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Speaker 3: about and Acts talks about. But even if you get

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Speaker 3: beyond Paul, you've got characters like the midwives in Exodus

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Speaker 3: who openly disobeyed the Pharaoh, lied to him about it,

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Speaker 3: and God rewards them. So you have this great diversity

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Speaker 3: of political witnesses, and I think every biblical voice is

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Speaker 3: a gift. It is a great cloud of political witnesses

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Speaker 3: that can help foster a deep Christian political posture capable

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Speaker 3: of more faithfully navigating our complicated, complex world. On the

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Speaker 3: other hand, amidst all this diversity, I think there is

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Speaker 3: one big message that comes through again and again, which

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Speaker 3: is that the Lord reigns, that God is King, that

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Speaker 3: God is on the throne. And that runs all the

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Speaker 3: way through Scripture, from the first chapter, which portrays the

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Speaker 3: Creator as a sort of royal king who creates creation

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Speaker 3: and then inhabits it, to Exodus, when they come through

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Speaker 3: the waters of the Red Sea and they sing, the

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Speaker 3: Lord reigns on the shores of the Red Sea, to

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Speaker 3: the Psalms, where the Lord reigns as the center point

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Speaker 3: of Israel's worship, to Jesus' preaching, preaching the good news

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Speaker 3: of the kingdom of God, all the way to Paul

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Speaker 3: in Rome at the end of Acts, declaring the good

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Speaker 3: news of the kingdom of God, to Revelation where what

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Speaker 3: the saints are singing, you know, that great crowd of

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Speaker 3: witnesses from every tongue and tribe and nation and people,

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Speaker 3: what are they doing? They're praising the King of Kings

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Speaker 3: and Lord of Lords. So God reigns gives this unifying

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Speaker 3: structure to scripture politics. But then how you flesh that out,

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Speaker 3: both among the people of God, which is a political question,

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Speaker 3: and in relationship to cultures and peoples and nations that

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Speaker 3: don't recognize God's allegiance, which is another political question, those

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Speaker 3: things are quite diverse, and I think it's all a gift.

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Speaker 3: And so in the book, the structure of the book

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Speaker 3: is trying to help readers encounter that unity and diversity

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Speaker 3: in a useful way for their discipleship.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's helpful.

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Speaker 1: I'm glad you talked a little bit about the unifying

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Speaker 1: aspect of it, because it does seem to me that

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Speaker 1: when I was just looking through the book, it's like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: all of these are somehow fitted into faithful testimony, faithful

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Speaker 1: action within the world. Even though you have different political arrangements,

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Speaker 1: even though you have different, you know, different actions, you know,

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Speaker 1: am I submitting to government? Am I obeying government? Am

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Speaker 1: I rejecting government? Am I lying about it? Am I doing,

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Speaker 1: you know, all of these.

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Speaker 2: Are classified as faithful actions.

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Speaker 1: Ashish and I have talked about this on the podcast

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Speaker 1: in the past about the tensions involved in sort of

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Speaker 1: lying being, you know, part of the range of faithfulness

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Speaker 1: and how that relates to, you know, a virtue perspective

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Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff. And so I felt like

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Speaker 1: some of the chapters that dealt with that were actually

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Speaker 1: really helpful. The midwives in Egypt were a great example.

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Speaker 1: Rahab would probably be another, you know, she does something

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Speaker 1: very similar there. And so, yeah, just really interesting.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. And what's interesting is, there's also ambiguity in the

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Speaker 3: text in certain places. So the midwives lie and, and

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Speaker 3: hustle the Pharaoh. And it says explicitly, and God saw

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Speaker 3: that they feared him and bless them, gave them houses,

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Speaker 3: probably families of their own is the idea there. But

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Speaker 3: when you get to a book like Esther, I mean,

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Speaker 3: if you read Esther afresh, like you pretend like you

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Speaker 3: haven't read it before. And like, it's not supposed to

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Speaker 3: give you easy answers at every point. You're going like, wait, what?

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Speaker 3: And oftentimes they're going, should they really have done that?

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Speaker 3: And the book never settles that question. So whereas some

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Speaker 3: texts sort of say, hey, look, let's put some other

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Speaker 3: options on the menu of faithful political discipleship, other texts

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Speaker 3: as narratives, as ambiguous narratives, force us to have a

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Speaker 3: certain kind of humility and skepticism about even our own

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Speaker 3: political practice because we're kind of going, oh, man, I

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Speaker 3: wonder what God thinks about that. I wonder what God

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Speaker 3: thinks about us. And we can't get to the answers

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Speaker 3: too quickly in a book like Esther. So I just found,

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Speaker 3: you know, like I've sort of been reflecting. I've written

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Speaker 3: a few books, three of them, this being the third,

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Speaker 3: I realize now are part of an informal trilogy, Practicing

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Speaker 3: the King's Economy, Just Discipleship, Reimagining Biblical Politics. They're not

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Speaker 3: written that way. I didn't know that at the time.

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Speaker 3: They're written at different sort of levels. This is a

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Speaker 3: much more accessible book in some ways than Just Discipleship.

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Speaker 3: But really the trio is aspects of Rhodes' discipleship that

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Speaker 3: were weak that he wanted to know more about from

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Speaker 3: the Bible. That was sort of the driving. So economic life,

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Speaker 3: justice life, politics. Obviously those are related. But so this

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Speaker 3: was a genuine research project. What does the Bible say?

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Speaker 3: And I just was delighted to discover how challenging, rewarding, helpful,

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Speaker 3: I found scripture to be, in my political thinking, when

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Speaker 3: I asked these questions and lingered in these texts.

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Speaker 4: Thanks for all that. I really appreciate the way that

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Speaker 4: you're setting up your projects. It sort of flows into

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Speaker 4: what I wanted to ask you, so I'll just get

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Speaker 4: right into that. Early on in your newer book, you

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Speaker 4: You do a good job of delineating the difference between

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Speaker 4: what you're doing when you're saying a political being, political disciples,

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Speaker 4: those sorts of things. And the way that I think

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Speaker 4: on a general basis, people tend to think of in

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Speaker 4: our current age, what is a political being?

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Speaker 2: Do you mind talking a little bit about that?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think what you're getting at here is

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Speaker 3: sort of hidden in the title, you know, Reimagining Biblical Politics,

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Speaker 3: what Scripture says about public life. So in sort of

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Speaker 3: the popular language, when we say politics, we mean government stuff,

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Speaker 3: you know, statecraft. We mean elections. We mean running for

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Speaker 3: political office. We might mean protest. And often, tragically, in

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Speaker 3: an American context, at least if your circles are like mine,

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Speaker 3: we We mainly hyper focus on like the news hour

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Speaker 3: and national federal kind of electoral stuff. And part of

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Speaker 3: what I want to say is throughout scripture, the Bible

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Speaker 3: not only says that the Lord is king, but it

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Speaker 3: describes the people of God as an outpost of that kingdom,

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Speaker 3: you know, a city on a hill to use Jesus's language, right? Like,

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Speaker 3: and so the life of God's people in public is political, right?

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Speaker 3: when God's people live out God's reign and way, when

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Speaker 3: we live out our king's agenda, when we embrace our

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Speaker 3: king's political agenda as a people and as individuals, this

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Speaker 3: is political. So when churches foster children, when we welcome

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Speaker 3: the immigrant, when we love our neighbor, when we forgive

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Speaker 3: our enemies, this is a public action. And you see

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Speaker 3: this occasionally in obvious ways, like a few years ago,

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Speaker 3: the white supremacist shooting at the black church in, I

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Speaker 3: think it was Charleston, or the shooting at the Amish school,

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Speaker 3: both occasions where the faith community as a faith community

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Speaker 3: responds to horrific violence with the loving forgiveness of Jesus.

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Speaker 3: And that is a public political act. It has public

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Speaker 3: political significance. And on those occasions, that political significance was

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Speaker 3: noted by People who have no interest in church otherwise.

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Speaker 3: So I think all of that stuff is political and

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Speaker 3: part of seeking the good of the city in that

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Speaker 3: Jeremiah 29 way. That is political, even when that involves more,

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Speaker 3: as it does in Jeremiah 29, raising families, getting involved

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Speaker 3: with agriculture and that kind of stuff, rather than running

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Speaker 3: for office or whatever else. So in the book, I

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Speaker 3: often talk about the politics of God's people as a

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Speaker 3: community that recognizes God as king. As outpost politics, right?

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Speaker 3: City on a hill, a people living out allegiance to God.

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Speaker 3: And then I talk about another kind of politics, our

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Speaker 3: pilgrim politics, which is how people who recognize God as

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Speaker 3: king get involved with the nations and places and cultures

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Speaker 3: and communities that do not necessarily recognize God as king.

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Speaker 3: And that I'm calling pilgrim politics at the risk of

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Speaker 3: making you think about the guys with the buckles on

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Speaker 3: their hats, you know? I'm not giving you like Thanksgiving

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Speaker 3: imagery or something. But what I mean by pilgrims, like

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Speaker 3: the sort of like that sojourner image, you know, and

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Speaker 3: if Jesus says you're the city on the hill, he

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Speaker 3: also says you're the salt of the earth. You got

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Speaker 3: to get out there. And so Christians are called to engage,

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Speaker 3: I think, politically in a variety of ways in that

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Speaker 3: second sense, you know, but I want to broaden the

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Speaker 3: range of things we see as political and therefore involved

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Speaker 3: in our political discipleship.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, that's great. Can I ask a follow-up?

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Speaker 3: Is that the question you were asking, Ashish?

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Speaker 4: It very much is. Very much is.

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Speaker 2: Okay, cool.

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Speaker 4: Actually, the way you responded leads into a follow-up I

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Speaker 4: was already thinking about, so I'll just jump into that

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Speaker 4: as well. For better or for worse, I would probably

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Speaker 4: argue for worse, especially in the American climate, we tend

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Speaker 4: to think in terms of very clearly delineated lines between

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Speaker 4: political identities. Yes. And as a result, as you hinted

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Speaker 4: to with your comments about the distinction between your book

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Speaker 4: versus your sub-stack, that creates very clearly delineated lines in

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Speaker 4: church politics and church identity. And then the further result

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Speaker 4: is that it can become too easy, unfortunately, to begin

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Speaker 4: to see the church as a political animal in that

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Speaker 4: first sense you talked about, rather than as an outpost.

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Speaker 4: for something else, right?

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Speaker 3: Yes.

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Speaker 4: But I appreciate the image you give of a photo mosaic.

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Speaker 4: Because I think what you're describing in that photo mosaic

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Speaker 4: is the fact that inherently, even the way that the

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Speaker 4: Bible talks about political identity in your second sense, requires

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Speaker 4: blurred lines already, right? There's no clear answer that's universal,

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Speaker 4: that's good for here, there, and everywhere, and never mind

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Speaker 4: for here versus, say, in New Zealand. Can you talk

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Speaker 4: a little bit Yeah, so could you talk a little

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Speaker 4: bit about why maybe the blurred lines is a good

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Speaker 4: thing as opposed to maybe the boogeyman that modern Western

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Speaker 4: Christians can often think, well, blurred lines means lack of

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Speaker 4: definitiveness and therefore something to be scared of.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's such a great question. So

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Speaker 3: let me say a couple things about that. One is...

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Speaker 3: It's helpful to know that the Bible itself doesn't give

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Speaker 3: one answer to many political questions because it helps give

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Speaker 3: us permission to accept that there will be no one

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Speaker 3: right answer on many political questions in our own context.

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Speaker 3: That doesn't mean there'll never be a right answer, a

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Speaker 3: right answer. It just means in many political contexts, there'll

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Speaker 3: be a diversity of possible approaches. And Part of the reason,

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Speaker 3: if you look in Scripture, I think that you see

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Speaker 3: a diversity of approaches is simply that the situation changes.

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Speaker 3: So even if you had a group of people who

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Speaker 3: did agree on everything, right, your political discipleship would still

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Speaker 3: have to be nimble and flexible because the situation changes, right?

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Speaker 3: The midwives do what they do in part because of

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Speaker 3: the options that are open to them, right? Daniel... who

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Speaker 3: gets kidnapped, put through the Babylon, you know, Future Leaders

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Speaker 3: of Babylon training program, he has different options. And he

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Speaker 3: navigates those options differently. And we, again, have different options

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Speaker 3: than Paul or Peter or, you know. And so part

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Speaker 3: of the thing is just the situation is always changing.

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Speaker 3: And so we have to have discernment how to figure

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Speaker 3: out how the stable convictions that we have get fleshed

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Speaker 3: out you know, in the messy world that we live in.

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Speaker 3: And we have different callings and gifts. And so I

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Speaker 3: think there's a lot of room for like blurred lines.

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Speaker 3: What should we be doing now? Because part of what

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Speaker 3: we're trying to figure out is how to read our

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Speaker 3: current moment, you know? And that's a really crucial part

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Speaker 3: of political discipleship is learning together to read our current moment.

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Speaker 3: What's going on and what are the possibilities in front

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Speaker 3: of us? And then how does Scripture shape us to

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Speaker 3: navigate those faithfully? As we do that, we're going to

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Speaker 3: have all sorts of discernment disagreements because we're going to

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Speaker 3: read the situation differently. And we are going to disagree

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Speaker 3: about how exactly to live out Scripture's vision in our messy,

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Speaker 3: muddled world. and part of that is, this is kind

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Speaker 3: of the other side of it. There's just a lot

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Speaker 3: of stuff that the Bible doesn't tell us. The Bible

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Speaker 3: does not tell us how to navigate a democracy because

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Speaker 3: it does not ever write to people who were living

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Speaker 3: in one. Like, obviously the Bible does not give us

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Speaker 3: a blueprint on AI or gerrymandering or, you know, two

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Speaker 3: party political system. Like we don't have, the Bible does

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Speaker 3: not give us a blueprint on, And once you recognize

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Speaker 3: that you don't have blueprints on those things, you realize

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Speaker 3: you actually don't have blueprints on much at all. Right.

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Speaker 3: You do have some blueprints. And I think among God's people,

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Speaker 3: we have more clear demands. But for instance, my opinion

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Speaker 3: is that like the Bible demands in unequivocal terms, no ifs, ands,

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Speaker 3: buts about it, that we love God. and care for

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Speaker 3: vulnerable immigrants. Like Deuteronomy 10 says that. The Lord loves

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Speaker 3: the immigrant, so you shall love the immigrant. And frankly,

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Speaker 3: it doesn't say, it doesn't put any asterisks beside that.

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Speaker 3: Like this kind, that kind, etc. Right? On the other hand,

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Speaker 3: that doesn't mean the Bible tells us exactly what number

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Speaker 3: of immigrants should be welcomed into America's pluralistic society. It

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Speaker 3: doesn't tell us exactly how to handle situations where that doesn't.

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Speaker 3: It gives us some values, right? But it doesn't tell

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Speaker 3: us exactly how to navigate that. And so it is

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Speaker 3: possible that for Christians to disagree about some of the details,

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Speaker 3: but they need to be called to the costly center

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Speaker 3: of that commitment. And that's why I feel like sometimes

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Speaker 3: in the church, we sort of waffle. You've got pastors

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Speaker 3: right now in this country who are afraid to say

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Speaker 3: what the Bible says about immigration because it will be

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Speaker 3: perceived in a certain political way. And unfortunately, if you're

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Speaker 3: a preacher of the gospel, you're just not allowed to

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Speaker 3: pick and choose, you know? You're just not allowed to

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Speaker 3: pick and choose. The same is true for like sexual sin.

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Speaker 3: You're not allowed to pick and choose talking about sexual

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Speaker 3: sin because that might trigger certain assumptions about how that

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Speaker 3: gets fleshed out in the way we vote or something.

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Speaker 3: You're just not allowed. On the other hand, especially in

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Speaker 3: sort of like a preaching moment, the pastor has neither

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Speaker 3: the expertise nor the authority to say, and this is

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Speaker 3: exactly how you tease out this commitment to love the refugee,

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Speaker 3: the immigrant, in the public square. The priesthood of all

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Speaker 3: believers have to hear the word of God and then

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Speaker 3: go out and discern together how they're going to do that.

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Speaker 3: And there will be inevitable ambiguity in that discernment process.

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Speaker 3: And that discernment process can be a gift because the

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Speaker 3: members of the body of Christ see different things and

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Speaker 3: we can help each other see what we're missing. And so, yeah,

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Speaker 3: part of what the book is trying to do is

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Speaker 3: give us resources to come together around the mandate and

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Speaker 3: then release us For the work of discerning how to

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Speaker 3: live that mandate out in a messy, complicated world, right?

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Speaker 3: So I don't know if that gets into what you're asking, Ashish,

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Speaker 3: but I think that's sort of how I would say it. Again,

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Speaker 3: even if you go, oh, I know we're supposed to

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Speaker 3: welcome immigrants, and I'm convinced that we are not doing that,

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Speaker 3: and that what we're doing is wrong towards immigrants, I

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Speaker 3: want to do something about that. Well, think about all

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Speaker 3: the options the Bible puts on the map. Your church could,

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Speaker 3: as a church, get involved in caring for immigrants. Some

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Speaker 3: of you could go out and advocate. People could run

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Speaker 3: for office. People could change the way they do business.

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Speaker 3: The Bible would give you lots of different avenues for

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Speaker 3: potential action in line with this commitment. And that's just

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Speaker 3: one thing Christians are called to care about. And part

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Speaker 3: of the problem in our current partisan sort of state-national-city

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Speaker 3: politics is our two-party-by-design system forces us to pick, at

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Speaker 3: different moments, teams that have opinions on all sorts of issues.

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Speaker 3: So even if we knew what God cared about with

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Speaker 3: one issue, we have to think about and discern, well,

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Speaker 3: how does that play out when I've only got a

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Speaker 3: couple options? So it's very complicated.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: A lot of things raised there. So let me start

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Speaker 1: with this one first. You mentioned, you know, sort of

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Speaker 1: picking one side or the other during an election. And

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Speaker 1: I've often thought about this when I go to the

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Speaker 1: store around Thanksgiving.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 1: Because you go through the checkout line and you get

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Speaker 1: to you can say they ask you if you want

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Speaker 1: to round up to help feed a family for Thanksgiving.

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Speaker 3: Right. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I don't care whether you round up or not.

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Speaker 1: But my concern is that sometimes when we round up,

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Speaker 1: we go, okay, I'm done.

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Speaker 2: I gave it the office. Now I don't have to

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Speaker 2: do anything else.

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Speaker 1: There's a sort of a minimum standard that we set

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Speaker 1: that becomes a maximum standard for what we should do.

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Speaker 1: And oftentimes I think voting ends up being that. We

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Speaker 1: spend a lot of emotional energy and intellectual energy trying

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Speaker 1: to figure out who to vote for between one of

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Speaker 1: two quasi-identical candidates in a lot of ways. And also

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Speaker 1: just the recognition that let's say we're voting for president, right?

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Speaker 1: We know that there's a system, at least in the

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Speaker 1: United States, of checks and balances, things that this person

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Speaker 1: is going to have to navigate, negotiate, compromise, like all

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Speaker 1: of those different aspects. So even when they're promising to

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Speaker 1: do something, we know they can't really promise it. Like

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Speaker 1: there's a whole mechanism that has to be taking place there.

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Speaker 1: So On some level, we just spend an awful lot

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Speaker 1: of time figuring out who to vote for when, in reality,

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Speaker 1: there are a lot of other ways that we can

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Speaker 1: participate in.

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Speaker 2: Yes.

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Speaker 1: I'll let you either agree or disagree with that or

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Speaker 1: nuance it, but then sort of the following up there

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Speaker 1: is I think the expanded view of politics that you

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Speaker 1: talked through is actually really helpful because my guess is

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Speaker 1: a lot of times pastors are struggling to convey something like, hey,

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Speaker 1: we're supposed to love immigrants.

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Speaker 3: Yes.

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Speaker 1: Because people are defaulting to the wrong understanding of what

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Speaker 1: it means to have what it means to participate in

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Speaker 1: politics in the first place.

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Speaker 3: Yes.

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Speaker 1: And so there's a lot there that just I think

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Speaker 1: when we say we, you know, we need to care

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Speaker 1: for the immigrants.

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Speaker 2: We need to clarify who the we is. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: You know, sometimes that we may very well just be

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Speaker 1: the church. And, you know, the country does what the

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Speaker 1: country is going to do. We can't control it, but

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Speaker 1: we can. testify within it.

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Speaker 3: So, man, that's great thoughts, James, and I have a

432
00:25:27,619 --> 00:25:30,240
Speaker 3: number of kind of things I'd want to say about that.

433
00:25:32,180 --> 00:25:35,670
Speaker 3: So maybe one response to just clarify. When I say

434
00:25:35,710 --> 00:25:38,709
Speaker 3: the church has this ambiguity and this discernment and so

435
00:25:38,730 --> 00:25:42,090
Speaker 3: the pastor's not telling you how to do these things,

436
00:25:42,590 --> 00:25:45,080
Speaker 3: that could be read as saying Christians should not be

437
00:25:45,180 --> 00:25:49,590
Speaker 3: aggressively involved, wholeheartedly involved. That's not what I mean. I

438
00:25:49,609 --> 00:25:51,950
Speaker 3: think Christians should walk out of the doors of the church.

439
00:25:52,230 --> 00:25:55,590
Speaker 3: They should collaborate with other Christians of like mind, and

440
00:25:55,630 --> 00:25:59,669
Speaker 3: they should get involved. And we should have strong opinions.

441
00:25:59,710 --> 00:26:02,220
Speaker 3: So I'm not arguing for like, well, we're kind of

442
00:26:02,240 --> 00:26:06,659
Speaker 3: all in the middle, so whatever. I'm saying the local church,

443
00:26:06,800 --> 00:26:10,520
Speaker 3: the preaching task, gathers around Scripture and then sends people

444
00:26:10,600 --> 00:26:14,879
Speaker 3: out for the risky, complicated, messy work that will always

445
00:26:14,940 --> 00:26:17,659
Speaker 3: leave us like an Esther going, I'm not sure we

446
00:26:17,680 --> 00:26:22,180
Speaker 3: got that all right. But like in Esther, we have

447
00:26:22,220 --> 00:26:24,960
Speaker 3: to act because they had to act. They had to respond.

448
00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:27,280
Speaker 3: And it is true that inaction is a choice as well.

449
00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:29,600
Speaker 3: So just to clarify that on my end, because as

450
00:26:29,619 --> 00:26:31,600
Speaker 3: you're talking, I was realizing you could hear me saying

451
00:26:31,619 --> 00:26:37,240
Speaker 3: something I'm not saying. I do agree that we need

452
00:26:37,350 --> 00:26:40,970
Speaker 3: to do both of those things that you described. We

453
00:26:40,990 --> 00:26:46,810
Speaker 3: need to expand our understanding of political action to include

454
00:26:46,850 --> 00:26:51,050
Speaker 3: the public work of God's people. In our churches, in

455
00:26:51,130 --> 00:26:54,430
Speaker 3: our workplaces, in our neighborhoods, in every area of life.

456
00:26:54,770 --> 00:26:57,950
Speaker 3: We need to see that as a properly political thing.

457
00:26:58,550 --> 00:27:01,650
Speaker 3: And I would also say we need to expand our

458
00:27:02,330 --> 00:27:04,750
Speaker 3: pilgrim political action. It's like the way we engage the

459
00:27:04,810 --> 00:27:10,170
Speaker 3: state to include far more than federal and national elections. And,

460
00:27:10,390 --> 00:27:12,760
Speaker 3: you know, just like I'm not a political scientist, but

461
00:27:12,780 --> 00:27:16,280
Speaker 3: it doesn't take a brainiac to see in a huge

462
00:27:16,340 --> 00:27:20,480
Speaker 3: number of the states in our country. your presidential vote

463
00:27:20,520 --> 00:27:24,940
Speaker 3: means nothing. Like I'm in Tennessee, like my, I, it

464
00:27:24,960 --> 00:27:28,180
Speaker 3: doesn't matter who I vote for, right? Like Tennessee is

465
00:27:28,940 --> 00:27:31,750
Speaker 3: going red for the predictable future, you know? And if

466
00:27:31,810 --> 00:27:33,350
Speaker 3: I like that, I like that. If I don't, I don't,

467
00:27:33,410 --> 00:27:35,830
Speaker 3: but that's what it is. On the other hand, like

468
00:27:36,230 --> 00:27:41,109
Speaker 3: your city council meeting is open to everybody. And in

469
00:27:41,270 --> 00:27:44,210
Speaker 3: Memphis city council, anybody can talk to the city council

470
00:27:44,410 --> 00:27:47,000
Speaker 3: about anything for two minutes at the end of the meeting.

471
00:27:47,940 --> 00:27:51,530
Speaker 3: And it's, Your local police chief has to pay attention

472
00:27:51,570 --> 00:27:55,170
Speaker 3: to you if you walk in, right? And if you

473
00:27:55,250 --> 00:27:59,030
Speaker 3: call your council member or maybe your local state senator

474
00:27:59,050 --> 00:28:00,869
Speaker 3: or whatever, they have to listen to you in a

475
00:28:00,910 --> 00:28:03,990
Speaker 3: different way. Now, that doesn't mean I don't think we

476
00:28:04,020 --> 00:28:07,780
Speaker 3: should be involved in national politics, especially if your read

477
00:28:07,859 --> 00:28:10,080
Speaker 3: on the national political situation is that there's a lot

478
00:28:10,100 --> 00:28:12,580
Speaker 3: at stake at any one point in time. I would

479
00:28:12,619 --> 00:28:14,500
Speaker 3: tend to agree that there's a lot at stake currently.

480
00:28:15,320 --> 00:28:18,010
Speaker 3: But I do think in general... We should be a

481
00:28:18,070 --> 00:28:23,250
Speaker 3: lot more involved in school boards and residence associations, city councils,

482
00:28:23,430 --> 00:28:28,619
Speaker 3: local protests, local– you can rant on Facebook. But if

483
00:28:28,700 --> 00:28:32,020
Speaker 3: you write the editor of your local newspaper, as I

484
00:28:32,040 --> 00:28:35,100
Speaker 3: did last week, they'll usually take a pitch for you

485
00:28:35,359 --> 00:28:38,850
Speaker 3: for an editorial. So you have more options even in

486
00:28:38,880 --> 00:28:41,590
Speaker 3: your pilgrim politics locally that I would love to see

487
00:28:41,650 --> 00:28:44,360
Speaker 3: Christians take. And, you know, like I'm a Bible scholar, right?

488
00:28:44,380 --> 00:28:46,700
Speaker 3: Like I've been involved with community development, which is usually

489
00:28:46,800 --> 00:28:50,840
Speaker 3: not involved with partisan politics very much. And I've been

490
00:28:50,880 --> 00:28:55,550
Speaker 3: a pastor and a Bible scholar. So my pilgrim political

491
00:28:55,710 --> 00:28:59,530
Speaker 3: action is as a lay person. But as a lay person,

492
00:28:59,550 --> 00:29:05,930
Speaker 3: you know, I've been involved with local advocacy and protests.

493
00:29:05,970 --> 00:29:09,300
Speaker 3: I've been involved with res associations that have fought for

494
00:29:09,680 --> 00:29:13,170
Speaker 3: speed bumps. You know, I've been involved with trying to

495
00:29:13,630 --> 00:29:16,130
Speaker 3: take care of slumlords on my street. And you have

496
00:29:16,170 --> 00:29:19,320
Speaker 3: a much more direct line there. So yes, I want

497
00:29:19,340 --> 00:29:24,219
Speaker 3: to expand the range of possibilities. And I agree. Sorry,

498
00:29:24,280 --> 00:29:27,220
Speaker 3: one more thing I want to say. I do agree

499
00:29:27,280 --> 00:29:32,850
Speaker 3: with you, James, that sometimes our primary public action is

500
00:29:32,870 --> 00:29:34,710
Speaker 3: going to be in the church. And I actually think

501
00:29:37,050 --> 00:29:39,700
Speaker 3: if you're thinking about the whole body of Christ, I

502
00:29:39,720 --> 00:29:41,720
Speaker 3: want to be really careful how I nuance this, but

503
00:29:41,760 --> 00:29:46,700
Speaker 3: there is a certain theological priority to our response in

504
00:29:46,720 --> 00:29:49,739
Speaker 3: the church. So I don't believe Christians can contribute to

505
00:29:49,770 --> 00:29:53,670
Speaker 3: the common good unless we've received the uncommonly good news

506
00:29:53,710 --> 00:29:56,890
Speaker 3: of Jesus and are living it out in uncommonly good

507
00:29:56,930 --> 00:29:59,080
Speaker 3: ways in our lives. So I don't think we have

508
00:29:59,120 --> 00:30:04,220
Speaker 3: anything to offer the state that we aren't already stumbling

509
00:30:04,280 --> 00:30:06,020
Speaker 3: towards our own life. So I think there's a certain

510
00:30:06,080 --> 00:30:10,070
Speaker 3: logical priority. But I will also say that there is

511
00:30:10,110 --> 00:30:16,710
Speaker 3: this rumor going around among conservative Christians in particular that

512
00:30:17,150 --> 00:30:21,060
Speaker 3: justice work, poverty work, that kind of thing is the

513
00:30:21,100 --> 00:30:24,300
Speaker 3: church's job and not the state's job. And one thing

514
00:30:24,400 --> 00:30:28,070
Speaker 3: I show very clearly in this book is that on

515
00:30:28,090 --> 00:30:31,580
Speaker 3: the few occasions where we get glimpses into how we

516
00:30:31,600 --> 00:30:34,980
Speaker 3: should engage the political authorities, it's people like Daniel saying,

517
00:30:35,360 --> 00:30:39,000
Speaker 3: break off your sins with justice and show mercy to

518
00:30:39,040 --> 00:30:43,320
Speaker 3: the oppressed. It's the non-Israelite king at the end of

519
00:30:43,340 --> 00:30:46,900
Speaker 3: the book of Proverbs telling you what the non-Israelite mom

520
00:30:46,940 --> 00:30:50,990
Speaker 3: said to him, open your mouth not to guzzle down

521
00:30:51,090 --> 00:30:54,210
Speaker 3: food and wine and self-indulgence, but speak up for the

522
00:30:54,270 --> 00:30:57,410
Speaker 3: rights of the poor. That's what political power is for. So,

523
00:30:58,320 --> 00:31:01,340
Speaker 3: I don't think you're saying this, but I'm, you know, I,

524
00:31:01,420 --> 00:31:04,110
Speaker 3: why I'm so angry. I get actually angry that so

525
00:31:04,120 --> 00:31:07,430
Speaker 3: many Bible thumpers keep saying, uh, well, you know, that's

526
00:31:07,450 --> 00:31:09,870
Speaker 3: the church job. Cause like, it's like the text literally

527
00:31:09,910 --> 00:31:12,530
Speaker 3: says the opposite. So that's another thing I'm trying to

528
00:31:12,550 --> 00:31:14,330
Speaker 3: get people to do is, is wrestle with that. But

529
00:31:14,350 --> 00:31:17,380
Speaker 3: you're right. You're right. The church response. And that's political.

530
00:31:17,720 --> 00:31:20,300
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a great clarification. I was not

531
00:31:20,640 --> 00:31:22,239
Speaker 1: I was not meaning to say that. What I was

532
00:31:22,280 --> 00:31:25,969
Speaker 1: meaning to say is when the when non-Christians, when the

533
00:31:26,010 --> 00:31:29,469
Speaker 1: government isn't doing what they should be doing, the church

534
00:31:29,490 --> 00:31:32,670
Speaker 1: still has a responsibility to do what they should be doing.

535
00:31:32,770 --> 00:31:33,310
Speaker 3: Absolutely.

536
00:31:33,370 --> 00:31:35,970
Speaker 1: And so it's not that we would never participate with

537
00:31:36,030 --> 00:31:39,260
Speaker 1: them to the extent that people are doing things that

538
00:31:39,300 --> 00:31:41,320
Speaker 1: promote the true, the good and the beautiful. We should

539
00:31:41,380 --> 00:31:43,760
Speaker 1: recognize those things and plug in with them and do

540
00:31:43,820 --> 00:31:47,250
Speaker 1: those things with them. But we have a responsibility that

541
00:31:47,290 --> 00:31:48,990
Speaker 1: sets apart from the political winds.

542
00:31:49,030 --> 00:31:49,290
Speaker 3: Yes.

543
00:31:49,850 --> 00:31:52,810
Speaker 1: And so we've got to feed in there. But that's

544
00:31:52,850 --> 00:31:54,150
Speaker 1: a great clarification, Michael.

545
00:31:54,170 --> 00:31:57,090
Speaker 3: I really appreciate that. Let me say that about that, James.

546
00:31:57,190 --> 00:32:00,560
Speaker 3: I think so often we as Americans have such a

547
00:32:00,740 --> 00:32:05,380
Speaker 3: hard time reading the truth of our situation. So you

548
00:32:05,420 --> 00:32:07,280
Speaker 3: look about the text and we say, oh, you know, Paul,

549
00:32:07,320 --> 00:32:09,200
Speaker 3: he didn't run for office. He didn't care about. And

550
00:32:09,220 --> 00:32:12,610
Speaker 3: you think, Paul didn't have that option. That was not

551
00:32:12,710 --> 00:32:13,210
Speaker 3: on the table.

552
00:32:13,450 --> 00:32:15,150
Speaker 2: It's going to run for Caesar.

553
00:32:15,790 --> 00:32:18,970
Speaker 3: Exactly. Every single person in the Bible, I think, would

554
00:32:18,990 --> 00:32:21,170
Speaker 3: look at us and go, oh my gosh, do you

555
00:32:21,370 --> 00:32:24,810
Speaker 3: see the freedoms and opportunities you have? Like Jeremiah said

556
00:32:24,830 --> 00:32:28,210
Speaker 3: to seek the shalom of the city when they had nothing,

557
00:32:28,490 --> 00:32:31,760
Speaker 3: when they were exiled victims, when they were like, and

558
00:32:31,890 --> 00:32:36,060
Speaker 3: you're enfranchised voters who have the right to assembly and

559
00:32:37,200 --> 00:32:40,060
Speaker 3: use what you got, you know? And so I think

560
00:32:40,080 --> 00:32:44,060
Speaker 3: they'd be amazed by how some of us are reluctant

561
00:32:44,100 --> 00:32:46,380
Speaker 3: to do that. But I love what you're saying about

562
00:32:46,400 --> 00:32:48,960
Speaker 3: the church. The church is God's people are called to

563
00:32:48,990 --> 00:32:52,290
Speaker 3: do what God's people do no matter what. And one

564
00:32:52,310 --> 00:32:54,130
Speaker 3: of the things I do in this book and in

565
00:32:54,170 --> 00:32:57,510
Speaker 3: the podcast to try to put flesh on the bones

566
00:32:58,090 --> 00:33:01,320
Speaker 3: of biblical discipleship, I don't go into the American political

567
00:33:01,360 --> 00:33:04,820
Speaker 3: scene because I wanted to give a gift to a

568
00:33:04,960 --> 00:33:08,520
Speaker 3: partisan divided church. But to put flesh on the bones,

569
00:33:09,090 --> 00:33:12,450
Speaker 3: I tell stories from church history and from around the

570
00:33:12,530 --> 00:33:16,810
Speaker 3: world of how Christians are practicing political discipleship. And that

571
00:33:16,870 --> 00:33:19,590
Speaker 3: led me to go on something of a deep dive

572
00:33:20,230 --> 00:33:25,780
Speaker 3: on the contemporary house church in China, particularly Wang Yi,

573
00:33:25,800 --> 00:33:31,210
Speaker 3: a currently incarcerated pastor and leader in the house church. And, and,

574
00:33:31,560 --> 00:33:35,820
Speaker 3: and mainly through the work of my friend Hannah Nation, who, um,

575
00:33:36,820 --> 00:33:39,100
Speaker 3: is involved in a house church theology project where they're

576
00:33:39,180 --> 00:33:42,400
Speaker 3: translating writings coming out of the house church in China

577
00:33:42,800 --> 00:33:45,739
Speaker 3: into English so we can learn from them. And I

578
00:33:45,860 --> 00:33:49,200
Speaker 3: highly commend those books and her podcasts and whatever. But

579
00:33:49,330 --> 00:33:50,720
Speaker 3: one thing she was pointing out to me in a

580
00:33:50,740 --> 00:33:55,530
Speaker 3: recent conversation is right now, some of what's happening is

581
00:33:57,370 --> 00:34:01,330
Speaker 3: Chinese Christians in the house church are facing persecution because

582
00:34:01,430 --> 00:34:08,170
Speaker 3: they refuse to stop caring for abandoned children, ministering to

583
00:34:08,230 --> 00:34:12,049
Speaker 3: sex workers, feeding the hungry. Like they are willing to

584
00:34:12,130 --> 00:34:18,489
Speaker 3: be jailed for showing love and mercy and kindness in

585
00:34:18,550 --> 00:34:21,009
Speaker 3: ways that run afoul of the party. And I think

586
00:34:21,070 --> 00:34:24,660
Speaker 3: that too, in America, we just have lost that sense

587
00:34:24,719 --> 00:34:27,279
Speaker 3: that yes, we seek the good of the city. Yes,

588
00:34:27,320 --> 00:34:30,600
Speaker 3: we try to make, leave our states and nations better

589
00:34:30,620 --> 00:34:32,700
Speaker 3: than we found them. But at the end of the day,

590
00:34:32,860 --> 00:34:36,270
Speaker 3: God's the one who tells us to care for the

591
00:34:36,310 --> 00:34:38,810
Speaker 3: poor and live holy lives and welcome refugees. And we're

592
00:34:38,830 --> 00:34:41,150
Speaker 3: not allowed to fudge on that stuff. That's our mandate.

593
00:34:41,469 --> 00:34:43,930
Speaker 3: Whoever's in charge. I love that point you're bringing up.

594
00:34:47,130 --> 00:34:48,990
Speaker 4: The word that keeps popping in my head is lines.

595
00:34:49,380 --> 00:34:52,460
Speaker 4: Now bear with me for a moment here. I've had

596
00:34:52,480 --> 00:34:54,820
Speaker 4: a fascination with lines for a long time and it

597
00:34:55,120 --> 00:34:57,719
Speaker 4: roots back to being in college and listening to this

598
00:34:57,780 --> 00:35:01,510
Speaker 4: Coldplay song called Yellow. And the singer says, I drew

599
00:35:01,570 --> 00:35:04,270
Speaker 4: a line for you. And I just, I got stuck

600
00:35:04,310 --> 00:35:06,850
Speaker 4: on that one at the This is a love song.

601
00:35:06,890 --> 00:35:10,549
Speaker 4: He drew a line for her. And I actually think

602
00:35:10,570 --> 00:35:13,860
Speaker 4: that's an incredibly profound thing to say. And let me

603
00:35:13,880 --> 00:35:18,200
Speaker 4: explain real quick why to get to our conversation. There

604
00:35:18,239 --> 00:35:21,700
Speaker 4: are lines all around us. Our language creates lines. Our

605
00:35:21,719 --> 00:35:24,960
Speaker 4: institutions create lines. And if I'm hearing you correctly, and

606
00:35:25,900 --> 00:35:29,090
Speaker 4: I think I am, you're sort of challenging the idea

607
00:35:29,140 --> 00:35:34,250
Speaker 4: that churches should honor those lines in some absolutist way. Now,

608
00:35:34,290 --> 00:35:38,540
Speaker 4: what I mean by that is that I'll give a

609
00:35:38,560 --> 00:35:42,230
Speaker 4: quick story and then work to Paul, who you just mentioned,

610
00:35:43,230 --> 00:35:46,910
Speaker 4: as I sing sort of breaking lines rather than affirming lines.

611
00:35:47,870 --> 00:35:51,569
Speaker 4: I was at a church for a long time, just

612
00:35:51,590 --> 00:35:54,000
Speaker 4: to be blunt, a very white church in a very

613
00:35:54,620 --> 00:35:58,259
Speaker 4: white community, but not a totally white community. And I

614
00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:02,319
Speaker 4: went to the pastor and I just said, why is

615
00:36:02,360 --> 00:36:04,859
Speaker 4: this church white? Why is it that I can look

616
00:36:04,910 --> 00:36:07,120
Speaker 4: around me and I can count in one hand people

617
00:36:07,140 --> 00:36:10,000
Speaker 4: who look like me? And he said, well, that's just

618
00:36:10,060 --> 00:36:11,040
Speaker 4: the community that we're in.

619
00:36:11,100 --> 00:36:11,650
Speaker 2: I said, is it?

620
00:36:11,680 --> 00:36:13,780
Speaker 4: Because when I come into this church, for other reasons,

621
00:36:13,840 --> 00:36:18,060
Speaker 4: on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I see people from various countries

622
00:36:18,100 --> 00:36:21,219
Speaker 4: in Africa here learning English as a second language. And

623
00:36:21,239 --> 00:36:22,880
Speaker 4: yet they're nowhere to be found on a Sunday.

624
00:36:23,540 --> 00:36:27,320
Speaker 2: Why is that? I said, well, I don't know. Good question.

625
00:36:28,200 --> 00:36:29,819
Speaker 4: He said, I think it is a good question. You're

626
00:36:29,840 --> 00:36:31,459
Speaker 4: the pastor. Isn't that something you should think about?

627
00:36:32,360 --> 00:36:32,780
Speaker 3: Lines.

628
00:36:33,670 --> 00:36:38,469
Speaker 4: The church, and I take this to be a systemic

629
00:36:38,510 --> 00:36:43,739
Speaker 4: problem for churches in the U.S., that we operate and

630
00:36:43,760 --> 00:36:46,680
Speaker 4: we build churches according to lines that have been drawn

631
00:36:46,760 --> 00:36:51,580
Speaker 4: for us. And those lines say, these people in, those

632
00:36:51,660 --> 00:36:55,550
Speaker 4: people out. These policies in, those policies out. These issues

633
00:36:55,610 --> 00:36:58,770
Speaker 4: that matter, those issues that don't matter. And when the

634
00:36:58,810 --> 00:37:04,740
Speaker 4: church begins to draw... to locate itself within those lines,

635
00:37:05,739 --> 00:37:09,520
Speaker 4: I see it doing something remarkably different than Paul, even

636
00:37:09,560 --> 00:37:13,320
Speaker 4: though ironically often appealing to Paul. To the point of Paul,

637
00:37:13,520 --> 00:37:18,550
Speaker 4: Paul is, he's a marginalized member of a marginalized community

638
00:37:19,310 --> 00:37:22,029
Speaker 4: in an empire, right? He's a Jewish person who has

639
00:37:22,090 --> 00:37:25,330
Speaker 4: rejected the sort of religious substrata that would give him

640
00:37:25,489 --> 00:37:30,629
Speaker 4: some level of significance within that minority marginalized group. So he's,

641
00:37:32,000 --> 00:37:35,239
Speaker 4: Following this guy, Jesus, who even his own people, not

642
00:37:35,280 --> 00:37:37,700
Speaker 4: in totality, but in large part, have rejected. At least

643
00:37:38,800 --> 00:37:43,140
Speaker 4: the elite of the group have largely rejected. And now

644
00:37:43,180 --> 00:37:47,510
Speaker 4: he's meant to address issues, right? Whether it be practices

645
00:37:47,550 --> 00:37:49,370
Speaker 4: that are going on in Ephesus in the midst of

646
00:37:49,410 --> 00:37:54,270
Speaker 4: the Temple of Artemis, right? Or practices of slavery that

647
00:37:54,330 --> 00:37:57,090
Speaker 4: now claim people who are believers on both sides of

648
00:37:57,110 --> 00:37:58,310
Speaker 4: the line of slave and master.

649
00:37:58,330 --> 00:37:58,650
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.

650
00:37:59,360 --> 00:38:00,819
Speaker 4: And what have you. And he has, as you say,

651
00:38:00,840 --> 00:38:04,900
Speaker 4: no ability to politically make any changes there. And yet

652
00:38:04,960 --> 00:38:07,399
Speaker 4: he situates himself, I see it, as someone who says,

653
00:38:07,960 --> 00:38:09,819
Speaker 4: I see those lines and I'm going to build right

654
00:38:09,880 --> 00:38:13,020
Speaker 4: on top of it rather than within those lines. And

655
00:38:13,060 --> 00:38:15,660
Speaker 4: now we've got the question, precisely because of that, of

656
00:38:15,739 --> 00:38:18,989
Speaker 4: Christians who are both the slaves and the masters that

657
00:38:19,030 --> 00:38:22,270
Speaker 4: he has to now address. I don't see our churches

658
00:38:22,350 --> 00:38:25,330
Speaker 4: doing that. And to me, that's concerning and that's why,

659
00:38:25,350 --> 00:38:28,469
Speaker 4: to get back to an earlier conversation that we were

660
00:38:28,489 --> 00:38:35,500
Speaker 4: working through, that we end up with overly clear lines

661
00:38:35,540 --> 00:38:38,740
Speaker 4: than when we look at Scripture, rather than hazy lines

662
00:38:38,820 --> 00:38:42,000
Speaker 4: with photo mosaics. Do you have thoughts on that?

663
00:38:44,440 --> 00:38:47,980
Speaker 3: So many thoughts, Ashish. How long you got? Yeah, I mean,

664
00:38:48,100 --> 00:38:48,439
Speaker 3: I think.

665
00:38:49,180 --> 00:38:49,640
Speaker 2: All day.

666
00:38:50,540 --> 00:38:54,400
Speaker 3: Just to say, I agree with you that, and I

667
00:38:54,660 --> 00:38:56,600
Speaker 3: think this is part of what we were saying, that

668
00:38:57,590 --> 00:39:07,719
Speaker 3: churches in America, um, have a huge problem gathering in congregations,

669
00:39:08,680 --> 00:39:12,920
Speaker 3: the ideological diversity and experiential diversity that's represented in the

670
00:39:12,960 --> 00:39:18,170
Speaker 3: body of Christ. So, uh, our local churches tend to

671
00:39:18,210 --> 00:39:25,620
Speaker 3: be way more ethnically homogenous, class homogenous. Um, And I

672
00:39:26,160 --> 00:39:30,660
Speaker 3: think probably increasingly politically homogenous in a partisan sense. than

673
00:39:30,739 --> 00:39:34,460
Speaker 3: our neighborhoods or schools are, right? Than the Christians in

674
00:39:34,500 --> 00:39:38,960
Speaker 3: those neighborhoods and schools, right? And so our local congregations

675
00:39:39,719 --> 00:39:44,940
Speaker 3: at our worst become gathered around Jesus, but also a

676
00:39:45,700 --> 00:39:50,310
Speaker 3: set of perspectives that are deeply influenced by our social location,

677
00:39:50,390 --> 00:39:55,790
Speaker 3: our level of affluence, our ethnicity, our background, our immigration,

678
00:39:55,870 --> 00:39:59,210
Speaker 3: citizenship status, all that stuff. Is that resonating with what

679
00:39:59,590 --> 00:40:00,570
Speaker 3: you're saying, Ashish?

680
00:40:01,190 --> 00:40:01,650
Speaker 2: Definitely.

681
00:40:02,530 --> 00:40:05,510
Speaker 3: You know, I think, I mean, I've been involved with

682
00:40:06,930 --> 00:40:12,839
Speaker 3: sort of intentionally multicultural churches since 2008, I would say.

683
00:40:14,320 --> 00:40:18,560
Speaker 3: First in Kenya in a congregation that sang six languages

684
00:40:18,660 --> 00:40:22,590
Speaker 3: and for 12 years in Memphis in a congregation in

685
00:40:22,650 --> 00:40:25,890
Speaker 3: South Memphis that was trying to primarily reconcile across the

686
00:40:25,930 --> 00:40:29,660
Speaker 3: black-white divide. And now in South Auckland where, you know,

687
00:40:29,680 --> 00:40:33,100
Speaker 3: my church is about a third Pacific Island or Cook Island.

688
00:40:34,480 --> 00:40:42,890
Speaker 3: And there's so much to say there. Two things I'll

689
00:40:42,910 --> 00:40:47,410
Speaker 3: say is one is that often one culture is sort

690
00:40:47,430 --> 00:40:50,670
Speaker 3: of arranging the chairs in the room, sort of setting

691
00:40:51,750 --> 00:40:55,469
Speaker 3: the kind of shape. And they often don't realize they're

692
00:40:55,510 --> 00:40:58,820
Speaker 3: doing that. And so even when you have people who's

693
00:40:59,680 --> 00:41:02,780
Speaker 3: from a different culture, different class, different immigrant or whatever,

694
00:41:03,160 --> 00:41:07,120
Speaker 3: they may be welcomed in, but it's subtly demanded that

695
00:41:07,160 --> 00:41:11,480
Speaker 3: they adopt the perspective of the majority group, whatever the

696
00:41:11,520 --> 00:41:16,480
Speaker 3: case that is. And often people if your church leadership

697
00:41:16,640 --> 00:41:18,799
Speaker 3: is from that majority group, they just don't see that.

698
00:41:19,020 --> 00:41:21,700
Speaker 3: They don't recognize that, in part because we often just

699
00:41:21,719 --> 00:41:25,410
Speaker 3: think that what we see is Christian, is biblical. And

700
00:41:25,469 --> 00:41:30,350
Speaker 3: that's why, like, coming back to politics, when you see

701
00:41:30,390 --> 00:41:33,109
Speaker 3: statistics that show things like, and I don't have these

702
00:41:33,150 --> 00:41:37,590
Speaker 3: in front of me, but like white evangelicals by belief,

703
00:41:37,850 --> 00:41:43,299
Speaker 3: so not just identifying, but white evangelicals by belief, Black

704
00:41:43,430 --> 00:41:50,010
Speaker 3: evangelicals by belief are almost completely opposite on a number

705
00:41:50,050 --> 00:41:58,310
Speaker 3: of political issues. I think in general, in America, for instance,

706
00:41:58,350 --> 00:42:00,770
Speaker 3: people who aren't white are much more aware of diversity

707
00:42:00,870 --> 00:42:04,540
Speaker 3: and viewpoint diversity because they have to be because they

708
00:42:04,620 --> 00:42:10,040
Speaker 3: are navigating a culture in which white people are mostly

709
00:42:10,080 --> 00:42:13,910
Speaker 3: in charge of the cultural dynamics. the white folks on that,

710
00:42:14,090 --> 00:42:16,069
Speaker 3: on this side of the spectrum often think of their

711
00:42:16,140 --> 00:42:20,540
Speaker 3: political views as just Christian, you know, it is obvious

712
00:42:20,580 --> 00:42:25,200
Speaker 3: to them. And so you have these yawning chasms of

713
00:42:25,300 --> 00:42:31,270
Speaker 3: perspective and that, that go unacknowledged often, or that in

714
00:42:31,410 --> 00:42:34,330
Speaker 3: leave us in different churches, or, and this is a

715
00:42:34,410 --> 00:42:37,870
Speaker 3: third option. You have a church that brings together political

716
00:42:37,910 --> 00:42:40,560
Speaker 3: diversity and, And you keep the peace like you and

717
00:42:40,680 --> 00:42:43,640
Speaker 3: I do probably at some of certain family gatherings. We

718
00:42:43,700 --> 00:42:45,060
Speaker 3: just don't talk about.

719
00:42:44,820 --> 00:42:45,440
Speaker 2: It, you know?

720
00:42:46,040 --> 00:42:49,540
Speaker 3: And so part of what I am trying to do

721
00:42:49,600 --> 00:42:52,279
Speaker 3: in this book, especially at the end, where in the

722
00:42:52,340 --> 00:42:56,300
Speaker 3: last chapter, I basically name and draw on some statistics

723
00:42:56,320 --> 00:42:59,489
Speaker 3: that show just how divided we are in terms of

724
00:42:59,550 --> 00:43:04,230
Speaker 3: our partisan allegiance and how that partisan allegiance distorts what

725
00:43:04,250 --> 00:43:08,910
Speaker 3: we see. Let me give you one quick example. because

726
00:43:08,950 --> 00:43:11,500
Speaker 3: it's just amazing and it'll kind of put flesh on

727
00:43:11,520 --> 00:43:13,819
Speaker 3: the pants for me. We're talking about, they've done like

728
00:43:13,860 --> 00:43:19,060
Speaker 3: a study where you can show people a video clip

729
00:43:19,860 --> 00:43:25,069
Speaker 3: of police officers interacting with protesters. And when, if you,

730
00:43:25,410 --> 00:43:30,850
Speaker 3: if people who identify as politically liberal see that video clip, they,

731
00:43:32,739 --> 00:43:37,549
Speaker 3: they describe the violence of the protesters differently than if

732
00:43:37,590 --> 00:43:41,779
Speaker 3: they think the protest is a pro-life protest versus a

733
00:43:42,380 --> 00:43:47,680
Speaker 3: LGBTQ protest. So for a progressive, if they think they're

734
00:43:47,700 --> 00:43:50,819
Speaker 3: LGBTQ protesters, they're not as violent as they describe them

735
00:43:51,000 --> 00:43:53,700
Speaker 3: if they think they're pro-life protesters. People who identify as

736
00:43:53,719 --> 00:43:57,200
Speaker 3: politically conservative do the exact opposite. They're looking at the

737
00:43:57,400 --> 00:44:05,280
Speaker 3: same data, same stuff, and they're seeing it differently because

738
00:44:05,320 --> 00:44:09,530
Speaker 3: of their partisan sort of And so in the last

739
00:44:09,590 --> 00:44:10,730
Speaker 3: chapter of the book, what I kind of say is

740
00:44:11,050 --> 00:44:14,009
Speaker 3: this is the world we're living in. And the algorithms

741
00:44:14,070 --> 00:44:19,930
Speaker 3: make it worse. And the increasingly strident identity connections with

742
00:44:19,969 --> 00:44:22,219
Speaker 3: the parties make it worse. What are we going to do?

743
00:44:22,540 --> 00:44:24,500
Speaker 3: And I kind of lay out a process for what

744
00:44:24,520 --> 00:44:26,839
Speaker 3: would it look like for a church to not only

745
00:44:26,900 --> 00:44:29,960
Speaker 3: announce what needs to be announced politically from Scripture, but

746
00:44:29,980 --> 00:44:34,890
Speaker 3: then to intentionally gather members of a congregation together to

747
00:44:34,950 --> 00:44:38,969
Speaker 3: discern in light of Scripture. how to respond to specific situations.

748
00:44:39,350 --> 00:44:43,630
Speaker 3: And my hope is that if we can do that,

749
00:44:44,570 --> 00:44:50,950
Speaker 3: then our churches will begin not only to actually send

750
00:44:51,050 --> 00:44:54,489
Speaker 3: out people to do stuff more faithfully, but by creating

751
00:44:54,550 --> 00:44:58,580
Speaker 3: spaces where genuine disagreement can be surfaced, we actually will

752
00:44:58,620 --> 00:45:04,620
Speaker 3: make our churches better places for diverse communities. Because I

753
00:45:04,660 --> 00:45:07,530
Speaker 3: can tell you firsthand from my experience in South Memphis,

754
00:45:08,469 --> 00:45:15,070
Speaker 3: listening to my black brothers and sisters, the news lands

755
00:45:15,130 --> 00:45:22,049
Speaker 3: differently based on our racial experiences. And if you were

756
00:45:22,070 --> 00:45:25,520
Speaker 3: in a black church and what's in the news is

757
00:45:25,640 --> 00:45:31,419
Speaker 3: the death of black men, right? And police encounters gone

758
00:45:31,460 --> 00:45:33,910
Speaker 3: wrong or a vigilante gone wrong. if you're in a

759
00:45:33,910 --> 00:45:37,230
Speaker 3: black church, that stuff's being talked about, right? There's space

760
00:45:37,270 --> 00:45:41,970
Speaker 3: for grief and pain and lament. And in many multi-ethnic churches,

761
00:45:42,739 --> 00:45:47,360
Speaker 3: if somebody names that as a grief, people get very agitated.

762
00:45:47,719 --> 00:45:49,640
Speaker 3: White folks can get very agitated. They think that's political,

763
00:45:49,700 --> 00:45:53,700
Speaker 3: that's whatever. And in my experience, black folks are going, hey,

764
00:45:53,739 --> 00:45:57,600
Speaker 3: this is, worship is a space where we lament things

765
00:45:57,640 --> 00:46:00,120
Speaker 3: that grieve us and we're grieving. And, you know, so

766
00:46:00,550 --> 00:46:04,720
Speaker 3: often in the room, our differences in experiences and political

767
00:46:04,760 --> 00:46:12,259
Speaker 3: experiences are leading us to make our congregations spaces that

768
00:46:12,340 --> 00:46:16,040
Speaker 3: aren't nearly as life-giving for one group of people, the other.

769
00:46:16,100 --> 00:46:18,830
Speaker 3: And of course the tragedy of course is that it

770
00:46:18,890 --> 00:46:23,029
Speaker 3: is often those who've been most marginalized in society who

771
00:46:23,090 --> 00:46:26,489
Speaker 3: suffer the worst in that. Cause we don't meet on, on,

772
00:46:26,750 --> 00:46:29,870
Speaker 3: on equal footing in terms of our social and economic power.

773
00:46:30,210 --> 00:46:33,440
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's a huge issue. And this book is

774
00:46:35,000 --> 00:46:38,239
Speaker 3: only hopefully contributing to a small part of that. But

775
00:46:38,520 --> 00:46:41,510
Speaker 3: I do think it's a significant part of that. Yeah.

776
00:46:42,320 --> 00:46:42,910
Speaker 2: It's interesting.

777
00:46:42,930 --> 00:46:45,339
Speaker 1: I mean, when you talk about these kind of biases,

778
00:46:45,610 --> 00:46:50,689
Speaker 1: I think sometimes people can kind of go blank or just,

779
00:46:51,030 --> 00:46:52,589
Speaker 1: you know, kind of sit back and go, ah, that

780
00:46:52,690 --> 00:46:55,230
Speaker 1: can't be true. But I remember one time going out

781
00:46:55,290 --> 00:46:58,750
Speaker 1: with a young woman who I used to work with.

782
00:46:59,239 --> 00:47:01,160
Speaker 1: and she was Ethiopian, and she took me to an

783
00:47:01,180 --> 00:47:06,450
Speaker 1: Ethiopian restaurant. And I had this impression, I'm like, oh,

784
00:47:06,489 --> 00:47:08,509
Speaker 1: they've set the table differently than I would have.

785
00:47:09,410 --> 00:47:09,609
Speaker 3: Yeah.

786
00:47:09,770 --> 00:47:13,690
Speaker 1: And that made the eating experience completely different for me, right?

787
00:47:13,710 --> 00:47:16,370
Speaker 1: There was a lot more use of hands. There weren't utensils.

788
00:47:16,390 --> 00:47:19,549
Speaker 1: You're tearing things off. You're dipping things, right?

789
00:47:19,590 --> 00:47:23,250
Speaker 2: That little spongy stuff. The spongy stuff, exactly. Yeah, right?

790
00:47:23,590 --> 00:47:25,390
Speaker 1: Like you've got all that different thing, but it's like,

791
00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:29,450
Speaker 1: the people who set the table largely control the experience.

792
00:47:30,810 --> 00:47:35,250
Speaker 1: And now I'm being sat at this sort of, for me,

793
00:47:35,410 --> 00:47:37,730
Speaker 1: it was a strange table, a different table that I'm

794
00:47:37,810 --> 00:47:40,609
Speaker 1: used to, but this is now the environment that I'm

795
00:47:40,690 --> 00:47:42,840
Speaker 1: in and I get to sort of interact with it.

796
00:47:43,410 --> 00:47:46,050
Speaker 1: But I think that idea of the people who set

797
00:47:46,100 --> 00:47:50,000
Speaker 1: the table really do control the experience is essentially what

798
00:47:50,020 --> 00:47:54,819
Speaker 1: you're getting at. It's like these biases, these challenges, these frustrations,

799
00:47:55,739 --> 00:47:58,620
Speaker 1: Part of what we're seeing there is there are aspects of,

800
00:47:59,440 --> 00:48:02,080
Speaker 1: and there's an interesting study, I think it's from Campbell University.

801
00:48:02,880 --> 00:48:06,339
Speaker 1: They talk about the people who watch more progressive news

802
00:48:06,400 --> 00:48:12,350
Speaker 1: channels versus more conservative news channels have different fears than

803
00:48:12,390 --> 00:48:15,910
Speaker 1: the opposing groups. And so it flip-flops. But the inversion

804
00:48:16,190 --> 00:48:21,049
Speaker 1: is interesting and significant. And so I think part of

805
00:48:21,110 --> 00:48:23,290
Speaker 1: what we probably as a church ought to watch out

806
00:48:23,330 --> 00:48:26,810
Speaker 1: for is asking the question, who's setting our tables?

807
00:48:27,630 --> 00:48:28,950
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.

808
00:48:29,350 --> 00:48:32,109
Speaker 1: Like who's setting the table? Who's serving up the experience

809
00:48:32,150 --> 00:48:35,969
Speaker 1: for us? And how much can we really, it's not

810
00:48:36,010 --> 00:48:39,569
Speaker 1: even to me, trust, right? Trust is part of it.

811
00:48:40,370 --> 00:48:43,810
Speaker 1: But it's also like, we have to know that these

812
00:48:43,890 --> 00:48:46,610
Speaker 1: people who are providing the experiences to us have blind

813
00:48:46,650 --> 00:48:51,480
Speaker 1: spots as well. They're engaged in motivated action. They're you know,

814
00:48:51,580 --> 00:48:54,339
Speaker 1: they're doing things for various purposes as well. It's not

815
00:48:54,380 --> 00:48:56,560
Speaker 1: like they're sitting in the back room, twisting their mustache

816
00:48:56,580 --> 00:48:59,560
Speaker 1: and going, Oh, how can I manipulate the masses today? Like,

817
00:48:59,640 --> 00:49:02,299
Speaker 1: I don't think that people are really doing that. I

818
00:49:02,340 --> 00:49:04,970
Speaker 1: think we've just got a fundamental problem that we're all

819
00:49:05,050 --> 00:49:08,009
Speaker 1: limited beings and we have constraints of what we can understand.

820
00:49:08,050 --> 00:49:11,049
Speaker 1: And so we're sort of, we're sort of prime to

821
00:49:11,110 --> 00:49:12,850
Speaker 1: put out what we're already thinking.

822
00:49:13,810 --> 00:49:14,850
Speaker 3: Yeah.

823
00:49:14,890 --> 00:49:16,650
Speaker 1: Sort of the way I think about it, but I

824
00:49:16,790 --> 00:49:18,489
Speaker 1: really appreciate the thought process there.

825
00:49:18,510 --> 00:49:21,719
Speaker 3: Yeah. I, I, do think there are more people in

826
00:49:21,760 --> 00:49:24,160
Speaker 3: back rooms twisting the mustaches than I used to think

827
00:49:24,200 --> 00:49:27,480
Speaker 3: there were. But in general, I think you're right. And,

828
00:49:27,500 --> 00:49:30,080
Speaker 3: you know, in my book, Just Discipleship, I have a

829
00:49:30,120 --> 00:49:34,350
Speaker 3: chapter called Arranging the Chairs in the Beloved Community. And

830
00:49:34,390 --> 00:49:37,230
Speaker 3: the book is looking at the Lord's Supper, but in

831
00:49:37,290 --> 00:49:41,239
Speaker 3: dialogue with research that shows that multiracial churches like the

832
00:49:41,300 --> 00:49:44,520
Speaker 3: one that I was in, if you compare on a

833
00:49:44,580 --> 00:49:48,620
Speaker 3: series of metrics, all majority white churches, majority black churches,

834
00:49:49,140 --> 00:49:53,240
Speaker 3: and then you compare multiracial churches on like six metrics.

835
00:49:53,260 --> 00:49:56,660
Speaker 3: This is research done by Corey Edwards, a black Christian sociologist.

836
00:49:57,560 --> 00:49:59,940
Speaker 3: In general, the multiracial churches just act like the white

837
00:49:59,980 --> 00:50:03,400
Speaker 3: churches on those six areas. So there's black and white

838
00:50:03,420 --> 00:50:07,259
Speaker 3: people in the room, but it's the majority culture that's

839
00:50:07,360 --> 00:50:12,400
Speaker 3: arranging the chairs. And so the experience you're describing in Ethiopia,

840
00:50:13,080 --> 00:50:19,140
Speaker 3: any cross-cultural experience is disruptive. Any. Right. The added factor

841
00:50:19,580 --> 00:50:24,650
Speaker 3: that we face is that our cross-cultural moment is shot

842
00:50:24,730 --> 00:50:31,330
Speaker 3: through with a history of injustice and oppression and pain. And,

843
00:50:31,830 --> 00:50:33,509
Speaker 3: you know, this is why I think it's significant. We've

844
00:50:33,530 --> 00:50:35,150
Speaker 3: kind of gotten off track, but I think this is

845
00:50:35,330 --> 00:50:37,330
Speaker 3: not off track. We've gone in a different direction, but

846
00:50:37,610 --> 00:50:39,640
Speaker 3: I think it's significant that Paul says, in the body

847
00:50:39,660 --> 00:50:42,739
Speaker 3: of Christ, Christ has arranged his body so as to

848
00:50:42,800 --> 00:50:46,480
Speaker 3: give greater honor to the parts of the body that

849
00:50:46,520 --> 00:50:50,739
Speaker 3: lacked it. Or calls us to consider others' interests before

850
00:50:50,940 --> 00:50:53,970
Speaker 3: our own. He's saying, you're going to have a hard

851
00:50:54,110 --> 00:50:59,150
Speaker 3: time doing this, but you've got to. It's vital to

852
00:50:59,190 --> 00:51:03,470
Speaker 3: the outpost of King Jesus, being an outpost of King Jesus,

853
00:51:04,030 --> 00:51:04,630
Speaker 3: and not.

854
00:51:07,010 --> 00:51:12,890
Speaker 3: Giving its actual allegiance to some other ideology or party

855
00:51:13,110 --> 00:51:18,090
Speaker 3: or political thing, you know? And I did want to

856
00:51:18,150 --> 00:51:22,170
Speaker 3: give a shout out to Miranda Cruz's book. I think

857
00:51:22,190 --> 00:51:25,279
Speaker 3: it's called Faithful Politics, maybe is the name of it.

858
00:51:25,320 --> 00:51:27,540
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really fantastic. I've had her on the show, too.

859
00:51:27,600 --> 00:51:28,140
Speaker 2: She was great.

860
00:51:28,520 --> 00:51:28,860
Speaker 3: Okay.

861
00:51:28,940 --> 00:51:29,380
Speaker 2: Excellent.

862
00:51:29,400 --> 00:51:31,360
Speaker 3: She's great. And she does it sort of from a

863
00:51:31,400 --> 00:51:37,620
Speaker 3: historical perspective. But I like the fact that she just names. Actually,

864
00:51:37,640 --> 00:51:40,400
Speaker 3: in a two-party system, if you're going to engage politically,

865
00:51:40,780 --> 00:51:45,120
Speaker 3: we have to affiliate with parties under some circumstances, right?

866
00:51:45,420 --> 00:51:47,660
Speaker 3: That's if you want to get involved. But we have

867
00:51:47,700 --> 00:51:52,050
Speaker 3: to be hyper aware of the way when we affiliate

868
00:51:52,090 --> 00:51:56,549
Speaker 3: with a party, there is enormous pressure to assimilate our

869
00:51:56,790 --> 00:52:00,410
Speaker 3: views to the full basket of goods in that party.

870
00:52:00,710 --> 00:52:03,730
Speaker 3: And that's where political discipleship is so important. And that's

871
00:52:03,750 --> 00:52:08,790
Speaker 3: where political community is. A cross-party affiliation is so important

872
00:52:09,050 --> 00:52:13,049
Speaker 3: to help us realize the dangers. And I just want

873
00:52:13,070 --> 00:52:15,610
Speaker 3: to say here, I keep coming back to Daniel. I

874
00:52:15,650 --> 00:52:19,670
Speaker 3: can't shake Daniel. In the book of Daniel, Daniel refuses

875
00:52:19,750 --> 00:52:23,950
Speaker 3: to work for some rulers. He will not work for

876
00:52:23,989 --> 00:52:26,390
Speaker 3: some of them. He does go to work for Nebuchadnezzar.

877
00:52:26,790 --> 00:52:30,870
Speaker 3: He's willing to work for Nebuchadnezzar. But he criticizes the

878
00:52:31,010 --> 00:52:34,850
Speaker 3: hell out of Nebuchadnezzar. And I mean that theologically. And

879
00:52:34,910 --> 00:52:37,969
Speaker 3: the principle I take from that is faithful politics is

880
00:52:38,030 --> 00:52:40,800
Speaker 3: willing to criticize the hell out of its own political team.

881
00:52:41,280 --> 00:52:44,140
Speaker 3: And that is really hard. That's not something we want

882
00:52:44,180 --> 00:52:47,360
Speaker 3: to do. I don't want to do that. I struggle

883
00:52:47,380 --> 00:52:47,700
Speaker 3: with that.

884
00:52:47,960 --> 00:52:53,259
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Ashish, I'm going to ask a question, man. Sorry,

885
00:52:53,300 --> 00:52:54,100
Speaker 2: go ahead.

886
00:52:54,560 --> 00:52:57,100
Speaker 4: Well, in light of that, how would you recommend going

887
00:52:57,180 --> 00:53:00,910
Speaker 4: about the process of self-elimination? And what I mean by

888
00:53:00,950 --> 00:53:04,210
Speaker 4: that is that it's one thing to criticize the hell

889
00:53:04,430 --> 00:53:08,850
Speaker 4: out of someone or something. It's another thing to recognize

890
00:53:08,870 --> 00:53:14,230
Speaker 4: that you need to. Sarah Ahmed writes this piece on

891
00:53:14,250 --> 00:53:18,259
Speaker 4: a phenomenology of the body where she speaks of one

892
00:53:18,280 --> 00:53:21,940
Speaker 4: of the things that people of color tend to grow

893
00:53:22,000 --> 00:53:26,860
Speaker 4: up with in majority white cultures is this strong sense

894
00:53:26,920 --> 00:53:30,640
Speaker 4: of a line between their bodies and their environment versus

895
00:53:31,260 --> 00:53:33,360
Speaker 4: those who grew up as a white person in a

896
00:53:33,400 --> 00:53:36,220
Speaker 4: white body or identify themselves as white and implicit ways,

897
00:53:36,880 --> 00:53:38,880
Speaker 4: there's a blurred line. So now we're going the opposite

898
00:53:38,900 --> 00:53:41,880
Speaker 4: direction of the line and sort of dynamic. But the

899
00:53:41,920 --> 00:53:44,259
Speaker 4: result is, is that a lot there, there does seem

900
00:53:44,280 --> 00:53:46,600
Speaker 4: to be a lack of a sense of understanding of

901
00:53:46,640 --> 00:53:49,560
Speaker 4: just how deeply they're formed to their environment, as opposed

902
00:53:49,640 --> 00:53:53,810
Speaker 4: to those of us who have a keen sense very

903
00:53:53,870 --> 00:53:57,890
Speaker 4: early on. Oh, something's different. Now, the way I'd flesh

904
00:53:57,910 --> 00:54:01,279
Speaker 4: that out is like, it's very easy to, to eat

905
00:54:01,340 --> 00:54:04,080
Speaker 4: Indian food or listen to Indian music or Ethiopian food

906
00:54:04,120 --> 00:54:05,160
Speaker 4: or Ethiopian music and.

907
00:54:05,120 --> 00:54:05,779
Speaker 2: Say, that's cool.

908
00:54:05,840 --> 00:54:08,860
Speaker 4: I like that. Because it doesn't create any sort of

909
00:54:08,980 --> 00:54:09,960
Speaker 4: challenge upon us.

910
00:54:10,560 --> 00:54:10,920
Speaker 3: That's right.

911
00:54:10,940 --> 00:54:13,480
Speaker 4: There's not a direct conflict. It's more, that's cool. It

912
00:54:13,500 --> 00:54:16,060
Speaker 4: can be complimentary to what I do. But the rub

913
00:54:16,140 --> 00:54:24,380
Speaker 4: comes in when ways of envisioning, organizing, operating start to

914
00:54:24,420 --> 00:54:26,989
Speaker 4: come up, come in to a point of clash. And

915
00:54:27,030 --> 00:54:30,670
Speaker 4: then that's where those sharp distinctions between body and environment

916
00:54:30,690 --> 00:54:37,110
Speaker 4: start to come in. And in my experience, the church,

917
00:54:37,410 --> 00:54:40,580
Speaker 4: especially in a majority culture, a church that belongs to it,

918
00:54:40,600 --> 00:54:43,000
Speaker 4: that honors the lines of a society, has a hard

919
00:54:43,100 --> 00:54:48,680
Speaker 4: time being able to recognize those distinctions. And so they

920
00:54:48,719 --> 00:54:52,279
Speaker 4: sort of fall into it. But how do you start

921
00:54:53,340 --> 00:54:56,589
Speaker 4: to attune yourself to be more attentive to to hear

922
00:54:56,660 --> 00:55:00,790
Speaker 4: difference and not react automatically, but begin to say, maybe

923
00:55:00,870 --> 00:55:02,989
Speaker 4: I should question why I have the view or the

924
00:55:03,050 --> 00:55:03,830
Speaker 4: position that I do.

925
00:55:03,850 --> 00:55:06,430
Speaker 2: Does that make sense? Yeah.

926
00:55:06,550 --> 00:55:10,989
Speaker 3: I mean, this is such an important and in-depth question and,

927
00:55:11,330 --> 00:55:16,010
Speaker 3: and one that in many ways is probably more located

928
00:55:16,070 --> 00:55:20,239
Speaker 3: in just discipleship than in, in re-imagining biblical politics in

929
00:55:20,280 --> 00:55:26,930
Speaker 3: terms of a direct address to it. But, just to

930
00:55:26,969 --> 00:55:32,590
Speaker 3: share a story and again even using a specific example

931
00:55:32,890 --> 00:55:36,969
Speaker 3: I recognize will alienate some listeners but I think it's

932
00:55:37,010 --> 00:55:39,750
Speaker 3: important and I won't name my friend because I haven't

933
00:55:39,800 --> 00:55:44,440
Speaker 3: asked her permission in this context but when Trayvon Martin

934
00:55:44,500 --> 00:55:49,379
Speaker 3: was murdered and I grew up an upper middle class

935
00:55:49,420 --> 00:55:52,180
Speaker 3: white kid on the all white side of town at

936
00:55:52,340 --> 00:55:54,739
Speaker 3: a Christian school that was started during busing and in

937
00:55:54,780 --> 00:55:57,230
Speaker 3: a church that hadn't almost no black people in it.

938
00:55:57,230 --> 00:55:59,290
Speaker 3: So that was my upbringing. And then I moved back

939
00:55:59,330 --> 00:56:01,570
Speaker 3: to Memphis and I was involved with sort of Christian

940
00:56:01,590 --> 00:56:05,569
Speaker 3: Community Development Association oriented ministry and church. So I was

941
00:56:05,610 --> 00:56:08,180
Speaker 3: living in an overwhelmingly black neighborhood and just sort of

942
00:56:08,219 --> 00:56:12,560
Speaker 3: finding my feet, you know, and then this national tragedy happens.

943
00:56:13,560 --> 00:56:16,500
Speaker 3: And I was in really close relationships with black people

944
00:56:16,540 --> 00:56:18,080
Speaker 3: for the first time. And I was talking to this

945
00:56:19,400 --> 00:56:21,920
Speaker 3: black woman who was really, was sort of becoming a

946
00:56:21,940 --> 00:56:24,320
Speaker 3: kind of mentor of mine. We were working on a

947
00:56:24,340 --> 00:56:30,620
Speaker 3: project together. I respected her a lot. And, you know,

948
00:56:30,660 --> 00:56:35,180
Speaker 3: she mentioned, I think she mentioned how painful it was

949
00:56:35,239 --> 00:56:38,630
Speaker 3: to her that the multi-ethnic church that she was in

950
00:56:38,680 --> 00:56:42,730
Speaker 3: had said nothing about this national tragedy, you know? And,

951
00:56:44,770 --> 00:56:46,370
Speaker 3: and I sort of, we were emailing and I, I

952
00:56:46,410 --> 00:56:52,730
Speaker 3: sort of, I, I, I resonated with her stance, right?

953
00:56:52,830 --> 00:56:56,029
Speaker 3: Like I, I felt like I'd seen enough to, to

954
00:56:56,140 --> 00:56:59,950
Speaker 3: feel that a grievous injustice had occurred. But I sort

955
00:56:59,989 --> 00:57:02,690
Speaker 3: of tentatively said, well, I think, you know, most churches

956
00:57:02,710 --> 00:57:06,770
Speaker 3: know we aren't supposed to be like political in that way.

957
00:57:06,830 --> 00:57:08,810
Speaker 3: And so, you know, they don't, you know, they're trying

958
00:57:08,830 --> 00:57:12,850
Speaker 3: to avoid being political. And she responded, she said, Michael,

959
00:57:13,030 --> 00:57:18,550
Speaker 3: I don't want partisan churches either, but every church in

960
00:57:18,590 --> 00:57:22,060
Speaker 3: this country lamented after 9-11. And this is like our 9-11.

961
00:57:25,970 --> 00:57:29,490
Speaker 3: And that conversation was like a turning point for me.

962
00:57:29,490 --> 00:57:31,670
Speaker 3: It was like a fork in the road because I

963
00:57:31,770 --> 00:57:37,740
Speaker 3: realized that the problem wasn't so much with my theology,

964
00:57:38,010 --> 00:57:39,500
Speaker 3: you know, that there are certain things the church shouldn't

965
00:57:39,540 --> 00:57:42,020
Speaker 3: do and certain things the church should do. The problem

966
00:57:42,060 --> 00:57:46,620
Speaker 3: was with my perspective and that my perspective was completely

967
00:57:46,780 --> 00:57:52,140
Speaker 3: out of touch with the actual experience of black brothers

968
00:57:52,180 --> 00:57:55,840
Speaker 3: and sisters of Jesus. And so, you know, This idea

969
00:57:56,030 --> 00:57:59,050
Speaker 3: of proximity, which, you know, someone like Bryan Stevenson talks

970
00:57:59,070 --> 00:58:02,490
Speaker 3: a lot about, or relocation, which John Perkins, who was

971
00:58:02,530 --> 00:58:06,410
Speaker 3: my mentor and hero from afar, talked about. I don't

972
00:58:06,570 --> 00:58:11,990
Speaker 3: think you can really begin to see, begin to see

973
00:58:12,050 --> 00:58:17,250
Speaker 3: what you're not seeing without shared life together. And it

974
00:58:17,330 --> 00:58:19,770
Speaker 3: has to be a certain kind of shared life together.

975
00:58:19,790 --> 00:58:22,470
Speaker 3: You know, I've often told people in some ways every

976
00:58:22,530 --> 00:58:25,680
Speaker 3: marriage is a cross-cultural marriage, right? Because even though my

977
00:58:25,840 --> 00:58:27,530
Speaker 3: wife is white and I'm white, we were both raised

978
00:58:27,550 --> 00:58:29,520
Speaker 3: as Christians and she spent a lot of time in

979
00:58:29,540 --> 00:58:31,840
Speaker 3: the South. You know, that first Christmas, all of a

980
00:58:31,860 --> 00:58:33,680
Speaker 3: sudden I'm looking around at what we're doing from her

981
00:58:33,780 --> 00:58:37,000
Speaker 3: perspective and I'm going, ooh, I didn't know that not

982
00:58:37,020 --> 00:58:39,840
Speaker 3: everybody did it this way, but now I do. Now

983
00:58:39,900 --> 00:58:42,780
Speaker 3: I see that this is weird and I'm uncomfortable. All

984
00:58:42,800 --> 00:58:45,080
Speaker 3: of a sudden I'm uncomfortable. And the way I respond

985
00:58:45,100 --> 00:58:49,200
Speaker 3: to that is different because I love Rebecca and I

986
00:58:49,320 --> 00:58:56,910
Speaker 3: want to not simply rebuild my home. childhood home, or

987
00:58:57,030 --> 00:58:59,830
Speaker 3: her childhood home, what I want to build is a

988
00:58:59,870 --> 00:59:04,780
Speaker 3: home together. And that's going to involve the painful work

989
00:59:04,980 --> 00:59:08,500
Speaker 3: of realizing just how much difference there is in our

990
00:59:08,540 --> 00:59:12,640
Speaker 3: family cultures. And so it's not just proximity, it's proximity

991
00:59:13,200 --> 00:59:17,710
Speaker 3: out of love, out of love and out of commitment

992
00:59:18,450 --> 00:59:22,090
Speaker 3: to go with each other and to walk alongside each other.

993
00:59:23,010 --> 00:59:29,460
Speaker 3: And so, I mean, that is inadequate. And this is

994
00:59:29,500 --> 00:59:32,820
Speaker 3: why books are written and conferences are held and church

995
00:59:32,900 --> 00:59:38,080
Speaker 3: plants and everybody continues to struggle along. But at heart,

996
00:59:39,600 --> 00:59:43,450
Speaker 3: we have to love one another closely enough and longingly

997
00:59:43,490 --> 00:59:48,970
Speaker 3: enough to begin to at least understand their other ways

998
00:59:49,010 --> 00:59:52,450
Speaker 3: of seeing the world and why people might see them

999
00:59:52,490 --> 00:59:58,250
Speaker 3: that way. I've been talking about that. mainly in, in

1000
00:59:58,310 --> 01:00:00,950
Speaker 3: racial terms right now, but I absolutely think it's true

1001
01:00:00,990 --> 01:00:06,720
Speaker 3: in political terms as well. And, um, I just think

1002
01:00:11,420 --> 01:00:19,480
Speaker 3: we have no idea. Um, another side of this that

1003
01:00:19,540 --> 01:00:25,170
Speaker 3: does come up in the book is that, um, uh,

1004
01:00:25,880 --> 01:00:29,960
Speaker 3: We are prone to over-identify our political community with the

1005
01:00:30,000 --> 01:00:34,070
Speaker 3: kingdom of God. And that's true in Israel. When Amos

1006
01:00:34,110 --> 01:00:37,050
Speaker 3: has to show up and tell the Israelites they think

1007
01:00:37,230 --> 01:00:40,630
Speaker 3: that God's on their side, but actually he's not. And

1008
01:00:40,690 --> 01:00:43,250
Speaker 3: they think that they're chosen and they're right about that.

1009
01:00:43,530 --> 01:00:45,890
Speaker 3: But that means that they're going to be especially judged

1010
01:00:46,350 --> 01:00:51,400
Speaker 3: for trying to combine injustice with worship. That happens among

1011
01:00:51,440 --> 01:00:54,480
Speaker 3: God's people. where we take challenges to the failures of

1012
01:00:54,500 --> 01:00:57,310
Speaker 3: the church as assaults on God's kingdom rather than the

1013
01:00:57,370 --> 01:01:00,930
Speaker 3: chastening of God. It also happens in our nations where

1014
01:01:01,770 --> 01:01:04,770
Speaker 3: throughout history, Christians have wanted to claim that God was

1015
01:01:04,830 --> 01:01:08,820
Speaker 3: on the side of their political community. And honestly, a

1016
01:01:09,070 --> 01:01:14,980
Speaker 3: lot of the stuff that I think keeps us from understanding,

1017
01:01:15,800 --> 01:01:19,540
Speaker 3: someone like me kept me from understanding some of how

1018
01:01:19,780 --> 01:01:24,990
Speaker 3: my neighbors from other experiences thought politically was that I

1019
01:01:25,030 --> 01:01:29,730
Speaker 3: came from a community. That's not true. I came up

1020
01:01:29,990 --> 01:01:33,380
Speaker 3: in swimming in waters where it was quite comfortable for

1021
01:01:33,410 --> 01:01:36,300
Speaker 3: people to say, you know, America is on God's side.

1022
01:01:36,740 --> 01:01:40,140
Speaker 3: And the one place where I do bring in American

1023
01:01:40,180 --> 01:01:43,160
Speaker 3: politics is to show that every single one of our

1024
01:01:43,200 --> 01:01:47,300
Speaker 3: American presidents, last four at least, and their vice presidents

1025
01:01:47,400 --> 01:01:50,940
Speaker 3: on both sides of the aisle have all idolatrously basically

1026
01:01:51,040 --> 01:01:54,070
Speaker 3: quoted scripture and and put America in the place of

1027
01:01:54,150 --> 01:02:00,310
Speaker 3: God's people or Jesus, right? So, like, you know, Hillary

1028
01:02:00,350 --> 01:02:04,340
Speaker 3: Clinton called, or maybe it was Barack Obama called America

1029
01:02:04,360 --> 01:02:08,820
Speaker 3: the last great hope of the world. Okay, that's idolatrous,

1030
01:02:09,540 --> 01:02:12,600
Speaker 3: you know? Hillary Clinton called America a shining city on

1031
01:02:12,640 --> 01:02:16,600
Speaker 3: a hill. Jesus said that about the church. You know,

1032
01:02:16,820 --> 01:02:21,060
Speaker 3: Mike Pence said, let's fix our eyes. That's Hebrews. Where

1033
01:02:21,080 --> 01:02:23,860
Speaker 3: does it end? on Jesus. Where did Mike Pence go?

1034
01:02:24,060 --> 01:02:27,260
Speaker 3: Let us fix our eyes on old glory. The flag

1035
01:02:27,740 --> 01:02:31,720
Speaker 3: literally substituting, right? George Bush talked about the hard work

1036
01:02:32,340 --> 01:02:34,500
Speaker 3: of the American people and then said, and the light

1037
01:02:34,600 --> 01:02:38,360
Speaker 3: shines in the darkness. That's Jesus, not the heart. So

1038
01:02:38,920 --> 01:02:41,640
Speaker 3: there is a history on both sides of our political

1039
01:02:41,840 --> 01:02:46,260
Speaker 3: aisle of claiming that God was on America's side in

1040
01:02:46,300 --> 01:02:47,800
Speaker 3: a unique way, that we were a shining city on

1041
01:02:47,820 --> 01:02:51,940
Speaker 3: a hill. And that's wrong. It's idolatrous. And if you

1042
01:02:51,960 --> 01:02:55,540
Speaker 3: believe that you go down the wrong track and, but

1043
01:02:55,640 --> 01:02:58,160
Speaker 3: it's easy for those of us whose communities have had

1044
01:02:58,200 --> 01:03:01,270
Speaker 3: a good time in America to believe that it's impossible

1045
01:03:01,590 --> 01:03:04,650
Speaker 3: for people who've been victims, their grandparents and parents. And,

1046
01:03:05,170 --> 01:03:09,430
Speaker 3: and so this is another place where diverse viewpoints help

1047
01:03:09,490 --> 01:03:12,970
Speaker 3: us to go, no, there's beautiful things about this place

1048
01:03:13,140 --> 01:03:16,620
Speaker 3: and there's hideous things about this place. And so I

1049
01:03:16,640 --> 01:03:20,640
Speaker 3: think that's another way that our, our sort of, when

1050
01:03:20,660 --> 01:03:24,880
Speaker 3: we get together people across races and classes, we're looking

1051
01:03:24,900 --> 01:03:27,660
Speaker 3: at two different countries and two different histories in a sense.

1052
01:03:28,160 --> 01:03:31,660
Speaker 3: And until we reckon with that, until we unwind the

1053
01:03:31,720 --> 01:03:37,090
Speaker 3: theology that justifies that bad theology, like we're in really

1054
01:03:37,280 --> 01:03:38,610
Speaker 3: deep trouble, you know?

1055
01:03:40,270 --> 01:03:40,590
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1056
01:03:40,710 --> 01:03:42,270
Speaker 4: Well, and I think, I think the way that you're

1057
01:03:42,310 --> 01:03:50,160
Speaker 4: describing things shows us just how how specifically the political

1058
01:03:50,240 --> 01:03:53,560
Speaker 4: conscience has to be local, right? That it's not just

1059
01:03:53,640 --> 01:03:58,340
Speaker 4: on some national election. Because this becomes, this isn't just

1060
01:03:58,400 --> 01:04:01,650
Speaker 4: some moral ethical issue. It's an issue that creates the

1061
01:04:01,690 --> 01:04:05,190
Speaker 4: boundaries between communities, creates the boundaries that churches honor, creates

1062
01:04:05,230 --> 01:04:09,890
Speaker 4: the boundaries where houses are built and how much they cost, right?

1063
01:04:10,750 --> 01:04:13,780
Speaker 4: And you think about someone like Trayvon Martin, the boundary

1064
01:04:13,860 --> 01:04:17,110
Speaker 4: by which he's judged as someone who according to some,

1065
01:04:17,170 --> 01:04:20,940
Speaker 4: ought to have been shot. These are political dynamics that

1066
01:04:20,960 --> 01:04:22,740
Speaker 4: the church has to wrestle with locally.

1067
01:04:22,760 --> 01:04:26,880
Speaker 3: And one thing I say in the book early on is,

1068
01:04:27,120 --> 01:04:29,720
Speaker 3: you know, Rebecca and I came out of college excited

1069
01:04:29,740 --> 01:04:32,890
Speaker 3: about the kingdom of God, excited about mission, and with

1070
01:04:32,930 --> 01:04:37,710
Speaker 3: a felt sense of call to help God's people embody

1071
01:04:37,730 --> 01:04:41,530
Speaker 3: God's good news to the poor. And since 2008, when

1072
01:04:41,550 --> 01:04:43,670
Speaker 3: we graduated from college, we've been on that journey. But

1073
01:04:43,690 --> 01:04:45,910
Speaker 3: at the beginning of the journey, we would have said,

1074
01:04:46,470 --> 01:04:49,400
Speaker 3: that that had nothing to do with politics. We wanted

1075
01:04:49,420 --> 01:04:52,700
Speaker 3: that as an alternative to politics. Like that's a politics

1076
01:04:52,760 --> 01:04:55,780
Speaker 3: is ugly and bad. This is mission and justice and

1077
01:04:55,820 --> 01:04:58,820
Speaker 3: good stuff. And it was actually the experience of living

1078
01:04:58,900 --> 01:05:02,780
Speaker 3: in South Memphis for 12 years and being forced to

1079
01:05:02,860 --> 01:05:08,140
Speaker 3: confront political issues just in the daily grind that made

1080
01:05:08,180 --> 01:05:09,980
Speaker 3: us go, oh my goodness. And then listening to the

1081
01:05:10,100 --> 01:05:11,920
Speaker 3: answers that came out of our mouths and then going,

1082
01:05:12,940 --> 01:05:14,320
Speaker 3: I don't think that whole, I don't think that's going

1083
01:05:14,340 --> 01:05:17,630
Speaker 3: to work. That's what drove me to want to do

1084
01:05:17,670 --> 01:05:22,030
Speaker 3: this book. It was like, oh my goodness, my neighbors

1085
01:05:22,170 --> 01:05:26,640
Speaker 3: are being evicted while paying rent by their slumlord. That's

1086
01:05:26,660 --> 01:05:28,720
Speaker 3: a political issue. That's going to have to be solved

1087
01:05:28,760 --> 01:05:31,020
Speaker 3: in a court with lawyers and stuff. And then it

1088
01:05:31,060 --> 01:05:33,680
Speaker 3: was going, I'd like to buy a house, but the

1089
01:05:33,720 --> 01:05:37,440
Speaker 3: house across the street is being sold for $ 19, 000. And

1090
01:05:38,300 --> 01:05:41,580
Speaker 3: if your neighborhood is so divested that you can sell

1091
01:05:41,620 --> 01:05:44,720
Speaker 3: a house for $ 19, 000, that's houses aren't worth what they

1092
01:05:44,780 --> 01:05:48,240
Speaker 3: cost to build or repair. And so the whole neighborhood

1093
01:05:48,520 --> 01:05:50,620
Speaker 3: is sliding further and further in the slum. And then

1094
01:05:50,640 --> 01:05:53,880
Speaker 3: you discover there's a history to that, that 38126 was

1095
01:05:53,920 --> 01:05:58,540
Speaker 3: the most prosperous, the first black millionaire lived in my neighborhood.

1096
01:05:59,520 --> 01:06:04,320
Speaker 3: And his home was literally taken by the state. And

1097
01:06:04,500 --> 01:06:07,500
Speaker 3: working class black owned homes were taken by the state

1098
01:06:07,890 --> 01:06:12,260
Speaker 3: and turned into large-scale government housing projects for the poor.

1099
01:06:12,520 --> 01:06:14,450
Speaker 3: So now all of a sudden you understand my community was–

1100
01:06:14,580 --> 01:06:16,180
Speaker 3: I'm not saying every community was this way. I'm saying

1101
01:06:16,480 --> 01:06:22,040
Speaker 3: this community was designed poor by– created poor by design

1102
01:06:22,640 --> 01:06:26,280
Speaker 3: in very specific ways. And it's also the place where

1103
01:06:26,780 --> 01:06:30,840
Speaker 3: the poor people's grocers were lynched, whose lynching inspired Ida B. Wells.

1104
01:06:31,180 --> 01:06:34,360
Speaker 3: And it's also the neighborhood where MLK was shot. And

1105
01:06:34,380 --> 01:06:36,689
Speaker 3: it's also the neighborhood where the I Am A Man–

1106
01:06:36,900 --> 01:06:40,200
Speaker 3: protest signs were printed in the bottom of an African

1107
01:06:40,260 --> 01:06:46,660
Speaker 3: Methodist Episcopal church to come along. So, yes, you're absolutely right.

1108
01:06:46,760 --> 01:06:52,920
Speaker 3: And so, like, we have to attend to the ground

1109
01:06:53,000 --> 01:06:58,840
Speaker 3: under our feet and the neighbors beside us. And when

1110
01:06:59,160 --> 01:07:01,750
Speaker 3: the structures of our neighborhoods and our cities have made

1111
01:07:01,770 --> 01:07:04,960
Speaker 3: it to where none of the neighbors beside us are

1112
01:07:05,220 --> 01:07:07,980
Speaker 3: from another ethnic group or economic class or whatever, then

1113
01:07:08,020 --> 01:07:10,820
Speaker 3: we've got to resist that, right? We've got to resist

1114
01:07:10,960 --> 01:07:16,660
Speaker 3: that so that we can, uh, experience a kind of

1115
01:07:16,730 --> 01:07:20,970
Speaker 3: discipleship to follow Jesus in real places with real people,

1116
01:07:21,570 --> 01:07:27,230
Speaker 3: not with sort of like fake artificial half answers, uh,

1117
01:07:27,410 --> 01:07:29,910
Speaker 3: you know, which is what I think we end up with. So, um,

1118
01:07:30,350 --> 01:07:33,120
Speaker 3: that was a bit of a rant, uh, but, uh,

1119
01:07:33,790 --> 01:07:35,830
Speaker 3: You said it. You said it. That's my story. My

1120
01:07:35,850 --> 01:07:38,760
Speaker 3: story is not being a political scientist. It's having the Bible,

1121
01:07:39,140 --> 01:07:41,750
Speaker 3: being in a place, trying to love my neighbor and going, oh,

1122
01:07:41,760 --> 01:07:43,540
Speaker 3: my gosh, I've gotten so much of this wrong. And

1123
01:07:43,580 --> 01:07:47,140
Speaker 3: there's so much I don't know. And I want to

1124
01:07:47,620 --> 01:07:47,919
Speaker 3: do better.

1125
01:07:47,940 --> 01:07:50,760
Speaker 1: Well, bro, I mean, I appreciate it.

1126
01:07:50,810 --> 01:07:53,890
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, it's really helpful. I think it gets

1127
01:07:53,910 --> 01:07:55,230
Speaker 2: to the heart of what you're trying to do in

1128
01:07:55,250 --> 01:07:55,530
Speaker 2: the book.

1129
01:07:56,450 --> 01:07:58,490
Speaker 1: I think it's a lived experience and it's a great

1130
01:07:58,530 --> 01:08:00,410
Speaker 1: illustration of what all of us need to be doing.

1131
01:08:00,590 --> 01:08:02,610
Speaker 2: We have similar stories in my area. I live down

1132
01:08:02,650 --> 01:08:03,570
Speaker 2: in near East St.

1133
01:08:03,610 --> 01:08:07,140
Speaker 1: Louis, which used to be a relatively prospered area, but

1134
01:08:08,010 --> 01:08:14,520
Speaker 1: different mechanism. But economic realities, companies coming because Missouri's laws

1135
01:08:14,660 --> 01:08:17,180
Speaker 1: for environmental dumping hadn't caught up with the rest of

1136
01:08:17,220 --> 01:08:21,260
Speaker 1: the nation. And so you have an influx of the

1137
01:08:21,340 --> 01:08:22,700
Speaker 1: urban poor in East St.

1138
01:08:22,740 --> 01:08:23,080
Speaker 3: Louis.

1139
01:08:24,040 --> 01:08:27,760
Speaker 1: There was white flight. Sometime during the early 60s. And

1140
01:08:27,820 --> 01:08:31,099
Speaker 1: now that neighborhood is a mess. And so you see

1141
01:08:31,160 --> 01:08:34,100
Speaker 1: how these different mechanisms can actually produce the sort of

1142
01:08:34,660 --> 01:08:35,639
Speaker 1: challenges we see.

1143
01:08:35,680 --> 01:08:38,620
Speaker 2: And they are political issues. And so, yeah.

1144
01:08:39,640 --> 01:08:41,690
Speaker 3: And you know what's cool about that, James? And I've

1145
01:08:41,729 --> 01:08:47,170
Speaker 3: seen this firsthand. When God's people get involved in places

1146
01:08:47,210 --> 01:08:50,390
Speaker 3: like that, and we allow the Bible to shape our politics,

1147
01:08:51,070 --> 01:08:54,110
Speaker 3: it will change the way we live. And it will

1148
01:08:54,210 --> 01:08:58,139
Speaker 3: change the way we engage the state, but it won't

1149
01:08:58,240 --> 01:09:01,820
Speaker 3: erase all of our like sort of political philosophy differences.

1150
01:09:01,939 --> 01:09:06,700
Speaker 3: And that is okay. Like I worked on political issues

1151
01:09:07,100 --> 01:09:11,160
Speaker 3: with people who voted Democrat, Republican and immigrant and independent.

1152
01:09:12,000 --> 01:09:14,160
Speaker 3: A few months ago, I talked to a pastor who's

1153
01:09:14,260 --> 01:09:18,929
Speaker 3: in Arizona and he said, we have decided that We

1154
01:09:19,120 --> 01:09:24,310
Speaker 3: share convictions about immigrants, even though we vote Democrat, Republican,

1155
01:09:24,570 --> 01:09:29,250
Speaker 3: and Libertarian. And we've actually gone to City Hall and said,

1156
01:09:30,729 --> 01:09:34,930
Speaker 3: we disagree about the details. But as Christians, Democrat, Republican,

1157
01:09:34,950 --> 01:09:38,670
Speaker 3: and Libertarian, here are some things that we insist you

1158
01:09:38,790 --> 01:09:41,309
Speaker 3: honor in the way you treat immigrants. You honor the

1159
01:09:41,350 --> 01:09:43,910
Speaker 3: image of God. You honor the integrity of the family.

1160
01:09:44,270 --> 01:09:46,740
Speaker 3: You honor religion. just process these things have to be

1161
01:09:46,760 --> 01:09:49,460
Speaker 3: true even though we disagree about exactly what you might

1162
01:09:49,500 --> 01:09:52,439
Speaker 3: be doing and so i think if we get this

1163
01:09:52,470 --> 01:09:58,470
Speaker 3: there's actually this like life-giving like uh exciting opportunity to

1164
01:09:58,590 --> 01:10:02,969
Speaker 3: break out of this thing this hyper partisan toxic political

1165
01:10:02,990 --> 01:10:06,050
Speaker 3: environment that we know is bad for us everyone is

1166
01:10:06,110 --> 01:10:08,530
Speaker 3: talking about how it's bad for us i think 80

1167
01:10:08,530 --> 01:10:12,410
Speaker 3: percent of christians in america suspense suspect that something is

1168
01:10:12,570 --> 01:10:16,260
Speaker 3: wrong you know And there is a better way. But

1169
01:10:16,439 --> 01:10:21,900
Speaker 3: from my perspective, it requires some sustained lingering in the

1170
01:10:22,000 --> 01:10:26,660
Speaker 3: strange world of scripture, letting that unsettle us, and then

1171
01:10:27,020 --> 01:10:31,970
Speaker 3: intentionally returning to these questions together with fresh eyes. And

1172
01:10:32,050 --> 01:10:35,030
Speaker 3: that's the resource that I hope the book offers.

1173
01:10:35,050 --> 01:10:41,060
Speaker 1: That's awesome, man. Your passion comes out, brother. We could

1174
01:10:41,080 --> 01:10:43,259
Speaker 1: probably do this the rest of the night and not get.

1175
01:10:43,160 --> 01:10:43,660
Speaker 2: Tired of it.

1176
01:10:43,720 --> 01:10:47,340
Speaker 1: But we got to close this out. But Michael, it's

1177
01:10:47,439 --> 01:10:51,650
Speaker 1: always a pleasure, bro. And I just recommend people reimagining

1178
01:10:51,660 --> 01:10:56,070
Speaker 1: biblical politics. It's available on Amazon. It's probably available on

1179
01:10:56,110 --> 01:10:58,890
Speaker 1: Baker's site. Put the links in the footnotes. Check out

1180
01:10:58,950 --> 01:11:06,110
Speaker 1: Michael's podcast. It is Crossroads, R-H-O-D-E-S, right? Uh, and, uh,

1181
01:11:06,180 --> 01:11:08,450
Speaker 1: and we'll put that link in the show notes as well, but, uh,

1182
01:11:08,530 --> 01:11:11,270
Speaker 1: and then check out a sub stack, um, for more, uh,

1183
01:11:11,370 --> 01:11:15,250
Speaker 1: for more commentary on, uh, politics and Bible and, uh, these,

1184
01:11:15,290 --> 01:11:18,309
Speaker 1: this sort of second way of doing politics, uh, out

1185
01:11:18,370 --> 01:11:18,850
Speaker 1: in the world.

1186
01:11:18,910 --> 01:11:21,139
Speaker 2: So Michael, just thanks again for being here, brother. Really

1187
01:11:21,150 --> 01:11:21,610
Speaker 2: appreciate you.

1188
01:11:22,640 --> 01:11:25,120
Speaker 3: James Ashish. It's been really fun. Thanks for having me on.

1189
01:11:25,860 --> 01:11:27,620
Speaker 1: All right, everybody take care and we'll catch you on

1190
01:11:27,640 --> 01:11:30,719
Speaker 1: the next episode of thinking Christians. Just want to take

1191
01:11:30,729 --> 01:11:32,760
Speaker 1: a second to thank the team at Life Audio for

1192
01:11:32,800 --> 01:11:36,040
Speaker 1: their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If

1193
01:11:36,060 --> 01:11:39,220
Speaker 1: you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered

1194
01:11:39,280 --> 01:11:43,429
Speaker 1: podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting,

1195
01:11:43,770 --> 01:11:44,070
Speaker 1: and more.