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Decolonial Theology and the Holy Spirit: Is God Moving Outside Our Gates? (Oscar Garcia-Johnson) · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

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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 1: I'm doctor James Spencer, and through calm, thoughtful theological discussions,
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  Speaker 1: Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the
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  Speaker 1: world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions
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  Speaker 1: that hinder Christian's from becoming more like Christ. Now onto
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  Speaker 1: today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone, welcome to this
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  Speaker 1: episode of Thinking Christian. I'm doctor James Spencer and I'm
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  Speaker 1: joined today by my co host Ashish Varma, but also
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  Speaker 1: our special guest oxer Oscar Garcia Johnson. And he's the
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  Speaker 1: author of Spirit Outside the Gate Decolonial Numatologies of the
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  Speaker 1: American Global South. He's also a professor of theology and
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  Speaker 1: Decolonial Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, and so we're excited
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  Speaker 1: to have him here today to discuss this book. I
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  Speaker 1: was able to read through it before the interview and
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  Speaker 1: really enjoyed it. I thought it was just fantastic and
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  Speaker 1: resonates with a lot of what Ashish and I have
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  Speaker 1: talked about. So We're excited to have you here today,
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  Speaker 1: So thanks for being on the show.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you, uh, Doctor Spencer and Ashish. It's a pleasure
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  Speaker 2: to be here and join you in what you are
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  Speaker 2: doing through the through these podcasts. So it's a it's
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  Speaker 2: a great space.
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  Speaker 1: Well, maybe to start out, why don't you give us
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  Speaker 1: a sense of what led you to write Spirit Outside
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  Speaker 1: the Gates and and maybe even how it plays plays
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  Speaker 1: against Christ Outside the Gates, you know, as a as
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  Speaker 1: sort of a title.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's you know we. Usually when I
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  Speaker 2: say that we, I'm talking about usually Latina Latino. I
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  Speaker 2: asked for a scholars and teach us. Uh. Usually begin
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  Speaker 2: with a journey of ourselves. So when I think of myself,
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  Speaker 2: even in retrospect, and I present myself, I think of
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  Speaker 2: three three pieces of identity. One, I'm an ordained minister
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  Speaker 2: of the Christian Church. So I think I write, I
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  Speaker 2: believe I do where I am, and where I am
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  Speaker 2: is the Church. The church is my primary epistemic location,
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  Speaker 2: the place where I where I learn and and and
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  Speaker 2: relearn and unlearned, and also where I teach. But that's
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  Speaker 2: not my only epistemic location. So I think my first
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  Speaker 2: book sort of registers that and the mestista community of
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  Speaker 2: the spirit. When i'm I'm I'm leading a denomination with
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  Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty churches of all kinds of uh
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  Speaker 2: uh you know, ethnic diversities and languages and styles. So
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  Speaker 2: that was that was quite an experience for me. Piece
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  Speaker 2: number one, so to speak. Then the way I got
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  Speaker 2: into this book out of that is being a commuter.
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  Speaker 2: I call myself from the church to the academy, always traveling.
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  Speaker 2: My day job was working with the church with the nomination,
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  Speaker 2: with pastors, litership, formation, new church planting missions, and also
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  Speaker 2: the classroom, the classroom where I would see pastors from
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  Speaker 2: other arm or leaders from other denominations and traditions, uh
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  Speaker 2: and asking questions and bringing the questions from the church
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  Speaker 2: to the classroom, and also bringing the questions from the
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  Speaker 2: classroom to the church. That commuting in a way generated
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  Speaker 2: sort of a research agenda. How do we talk about
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  Speaker 2: issues that are expressed in the Bible in particular conitectural
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  Speaker 2: ways in their time, historical time that have some of
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  Speaker 2: them have been carried by different traditions in the West
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  Speaker 2: and outside the West, and are part of our daily
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  Speaker 2: lives today. The Christian witness. How do we coexist live
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  Speaker 2: together as the body of Christ in a nation state
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  Speaker 2: and under certain laws that are not necessarily favoring everybody
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  Speaker 2: but have a preferential space for others. So how do
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  Speaker 2: we respond with some level of theological coherence and responsible ethics.
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  Speaker 2: So that was part of a motivation. So my activity
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  Speaker 2: as a as a minister and as a teacher in
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  Speaker 2: the church, in the academy and clearly passing through the
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  Speaker 2: city the public space, it is that activity that generated
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  Speaker 2: the desire for more conversations, for more research oriented to
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  Speaker 2: to asking what is this spirit doing in places that
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  Speaker 2: and with people that sometimes we're not looking at and
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  Speaker 2: necessarily together with, and and so that that conversation is
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  Speaker 2: clearly not just happening in my mind, is happening with
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  Speaker 2: people along the way, all kinds of individuals, you know, leaders, uh,
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  Speaker 2: millennial p KSh colleagues and the institution pastors that have
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  Speaker 2: just migrated a year, two years ago, those who have
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  Speaker 2: grown in in in the context of the US and Canada,
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  Speaker 2: and and so those conversations I think we're the ones
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  Speaker 2: triggering a research in which the Spirit can teaches to
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  Speaker 2: look at places and people that were not just looking
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  Speaker 2: at or when we think of Christian theology.
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  Speaker 3: Very good, that's great, I think sorry, go ahead.
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  Speaker 1: Jae, no, go ahead, go ahead.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, I was thinking in the way that you were
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  Speaker 3: describing what raised the questions to you? This desire to
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  Speaker 3: move back and forth between the church and the academy
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  Speaker 3: fluidly very much goes against the ways that people generally
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  Speaker 3: tend to see the relationship.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 3: We hear, of course that the academy should be ministering
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  Speaker 3: to the church, and we hear that the church should
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  Speaker 3: care about the conversations going on the academy, but often
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  Speaker 3: there's a big wall between them. Have you found in
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  Speaker 3: that process, as you've done that that there are barriers
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  Speaker 3: you have to overcome in order for your work to
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  Speaker 3: be meaningful in the church on one side, but then
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  Speaker 3: also your questions brought back to the academy to be
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  Speaker 3: seen as sufficiently scholarly.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're you're naming it. You're spelling it out for me.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you very much. I mean, you're right on. You
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  Speaker 2: know that. That is the question that I begin with
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  Speaker 2: in my journey as a scholar in Mestisto community of
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  Speaker 2: this period eight post a post modern ecclesiology uh and
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  Speaker 2: and and because I'm particularly in that transit and that commuting,
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  Speaker 2: I name and the very prolo what you were saying.
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  Speaker 2: And I just so we're talking about two thousand and
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  Speaker 2: nine year imagine, So in two thousand and nine, I'm
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  Speaker 2: describing that as a participant in the and and you
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  Speaker 2: know the metaphor of southern California. The traffic here, heavy
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  Speaker 2: traffic was the word that I use. I faced heavy
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  Speaker 2: traffic in terms of ideology, in terms of of UH
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  Speaker 2: mission or preferences, in terms in terms of liturgy, in
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  Speaker 2: terms of what kind of doctrine I want, heavy traffic
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  Speaker 2: And and when you're in heavy traffic and and driving,
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  Speaker 2: you just want to get home. You don't have time
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  Speaker 2: to really talk to anybody, and you don't want to
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  Speaker 2: talk to anybody. Well, nowadays we have a phone. We're
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  Speaker 2: talking to some people, but but your neighbors are are
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  Speaker 2: are not necessarily the most hospitable colleagues. You just wanna
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  Speaker 2: you just want to get home in that traffic heated journey.
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  Speaker 2: And sometimes it's like the movie Crash. I mean, the
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  Speaker 2: argument right there is we crash in a way because
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  Speaker 2: we don't have time to get in contact and to
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  Speaker 2: know each other, so we have to crash and then
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  Speaker 2: negotiate that. I think in a way that that heavy traffic,
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  Speaker 2: that metropolitan individualism, the pressure of the city, and the
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  Speaker 2: competition to make it. You know, we have to do
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  Speaker 2: better ministry, we have to do better, appreciate and always
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  Speaker 2: this competition doesn't and fragmentation doesn't necessarily help us to
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  Speaker 2: see each other as partners of ministries and and and
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  Speaker 2: and also uh, in a way, we have to become
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  Speaker 2: very selective and what is it that we need to
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  Speaker 2: train ourselves. What is it that we need to know
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  Speaker 2: in order to communicate and gain and of uh you know, uh,
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  Speaker 2: and of attention from particular audiences. Because we have to
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  Speaker 2: run a church, we have to run an organization, we
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  Speaker 2: have to run a seminary. Uh. Sometimes theological education is
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  Speaker 2: in decline. So the wather you're talking about the church
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  Speaker 2: in a way saying, well, where am I learning what
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  Speaker 2: I need to be a church and not necessarily finding
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  Speaker 2: it in the academy and the academy saying what's going
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  Speaker 2: on with the church? Why is that going that way?
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  Speaker 2: You know, looking looking back and and and and learning
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  Speaker 2: from the wealth of wisdom that we have to be
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  Speaker 2: better witnesses today. So yeah, that is that is part
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  Speaker 2: of the whole of the whole ecology where we are
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  Speaker 2: sometimes operating from. And and yet I would say that
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  Speaker 2: there's some of us, several of us actually that are
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  Speaker 2: trying to breach one with the other because we believe
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  Speaker 2: that there are different There is an ecology of knowledge
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  Speaker 2: that the church has particular wisdom that the academy needs
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  Speaker 2: to learn. The academy has particular wealth of wisdom that
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  Speaker 2: the church needs. And the city, so to speak, even
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  Speaker 2: if we build the city as a modern project, but
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  Speaker 2: the community, the community that is in a way not
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  Speaker 2: self identified either as a church or US academy, has
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  Speaker 2: also a wealth of knowledge that we all need. And
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  Speaker 2: that is That's all part of an intersectionality and inter
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  Speaker 2: relationship that I think the spirit does abide. That's why
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  Speaker 2: the outside the gates of our preferential you know, our freeway,
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  Speaker 2: we're going that way now, well sometimes this perit is
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  Speaker 2: going through the through the backstreet and we're not looking.
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  Speaker 1: You know, in your book, when you talk about numatology,
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  Speaker 1: it comes off as a method. It's not it isn't
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  Speaker 1: like a systematic theology topic. It's something you're doing like
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  Speaker 1: you're doing numatology, and I found it really compelling the
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  Speaker 1: way you talk about the spirit in the book. And
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  Speaker 1: I'm wondering if you can just kind of give listeners
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  Speaker 1: a little bit of a sense of that, because I
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  Speaker 1: think that part of the genius of using the Spirit
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  Speaker 1: is that unlike Christ or theology proper, or even ecclesiology
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  Speaker 1: or something like that, which sort of lend themselves to
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  Speaker 1: a much more static image. Whether they are or not,
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  Speaker 1: I think is arguable, but they do lend themselves to
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  Speaker 1: that It's easier to box Christ in, for instance, than
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  Speaker 1: it is to box the Spirit in. And so I
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  Speaker 1: think it's just interesting that you choose the spirit. And
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  Speaker 1: I'm wondering how you think through discerning the spirit while
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  Speaker 1: and allowing the Spirit to guide us into new areas,
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  Speaker 1: while also avoiding that any new agenda that I want
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  Speaker 1: to pursue I can now justify by saying, well, the Spirit,
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  Speaker 1: let me to it. Talk a little bit about that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you allow me, I'd love to present what
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  Speaker 2: I think, because you know, once it's written, is written,
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  Speaker 2: and it's the handle is like a piece of art,
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  Speaker 2: I mean, the beholders. So I think I think I'm
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  Speaker 2: saying this, I think I'm saying that it is very
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  Speaker 2: important to learn to discern the Holy Spirit beyond the
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  Speaker 2: boundaries of Western Christianity, not without, but beyond so Western Christianity,
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  Speaker 2: Christendom and colonial modernity. This is a this is a
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  Speaker 2: sort of a the colonial term, right, is the idea
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  Speaker 2: that the great the greatness of modernity didn't happen independently.
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  Speaker 2: There were some colonial you know, projects that were funding
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  Speaker 2: and were interconnected to a colonial modernity. I mean Europe
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  Speaker 2: westerransform and also other places like Africa. The Americas worked
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  Speaker 2: on form at the time of the uh discovery of
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  Speaker 2: the Atlantic, of the route to the Atlantic, and that
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  Speaker 2: is transformation has a colonial relationship with modernity. So that's
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  Speaker 2: what we call colonial modernity. So I think, uh, the
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  Speaker 2: Spirit is operating and is and is and is UH
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  Speaker 2: walking with different communities beyond the boundaries of Western Christianity,
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  Speaker 2: colonial modernity, and UH regretfully, within the tradition of the West,
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  Speaker 2: Western culture, Western Christianity, we have treated knowledge with UH
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  Speaker 2: uh more uh the interest is more uh to to
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  Speaker 2: to emphasize the limits than the possibilities.
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  Speaker 1: Mhm.
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  Speaker 2: The limits. So in a way, this book is and
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  Speaker 2: and I think, let me connect with what you're saying.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah in in Unfortunately, I mean, I don't know how
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  Speaker 2: we've gotten here because part of I mean my education
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  Speaker 2: is in the modern university, suspect and the western modern university.
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  Speaker 2: I don't know why we have come to use Jesus
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  Speaker 2: as a as a gating, you know, a mechanism, because
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  Speaker 2: when we use when when when you see the Gospel,
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  Speaker 2: you see a generous Jesus of napaith that that in
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  Speaker 2: a way challenges most of the tendencies that we have.
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  Speaker 2: Now I can understand we got to is the to
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  Speaker 2: the history of Christianity. There are many things happening we
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  Speaker 2: really need to understand. What is it actually what makes
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  Speaker 2: us a Christianity and identity and all that thing. But
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  Speaker 2: the insistence on limits and on borders in knowledge. I
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  Speaker 2: think that has been an obsession in the West, and
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  Speaker 2: that is easier to achieve with Christology, not necessarily with
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  Speaker 2: Jesus of naturer but with Christology, with neumatology and the spirit.
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  Speaker 2: To your point, so I'm asking what happens in that book,
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  Speaker 2: I'm asking what happens when the church takes Pentecost seriously,
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  Speaker 2: not as a miracle of language or an exotic subjective experience,
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  Speaker 2: but as a re ordering and theological imagination for ecclesial
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  Speaker 2: coexistence what happens. So the book argues really that this
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  Speaker 2: spirit is not the possession or the accessory of any
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  Speaker 2: center or any power. The spirit leads the church outside
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  Speaker 2: the gate, to the crucified, to the displaced, to the
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  Speaker 2: rationalize as indigenous and I particularly put example sort of
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  Speaker 2: an ethnographic word Afro Latin X. I also work with
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  Speaker 2: immigrant women and children and the borderline communities where God's
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  Speaker 2: mission is already taking place and we are not necessarily
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  Speaker 2: looking at least not looking for wisdom, not looking for
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  Speaker 2: what God is doing. We're looking to probably do ministry service,
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  Speaker 2: and you know, we're doing something for the people right
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  Speaker 2: in that sense, you know, the book is not really
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  Speaker 2: a rejection I mean the book, I mean, I don't
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  Speaker 2: think people have seen it that way. But there are
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  Speaker 2: some people that say this book is very critical of
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  Speaker 2: Christian theology. Not necessarily. I don't think it's critical of
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  Speaker 2: the project of Christian theology and the activity of Christian theology,
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  Speaker 2: even Western or Otherwhile I think the whole idea is
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  Speaker 2: to be able to reroute the theological imagination and the
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  Speaker 2: theological project, because theology in very very serious ways have
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  Speaker 2: been trapped by one dominant theological imagination, what I call
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  Speaker 2: the canonical imagination of the West, which leads to a
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  Speaker 2: monocultural type of Christianity. So this rerouting, I think it's
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  Speaker 2: a reviving from this colonial imagination to a more spirit
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  Speaker 2: led witness in the global space from what some you know,
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  Speaker 2: indigenous in Africa, they call it terminal knowledges, some knowledges
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  Speaker 2: that in a way decide that you are incompetent. And
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: in theory that's we call it terminal knowledge, when terminal
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  Speaker 2: degree is when we go to a PhD. But in
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  Speaker 2: some places that terminal knowledge is a wounding knowledge. It's
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  Speaker 2: a knowledge that will tell you you cannot do this,
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  Speaker 2: you cannot be this, you cannot achieve this terminal knowledge.
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  Speaker 2: In that sense, it's a discipleship and no to say
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  Speaker 2: that there is a dicolonial epistemic. Healing this spirit is
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  Speaker 2: healing this spirit, the teacher is healing those who otherwise
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  Speaker 2: feel incompetent and sometimes left behind by more formal mission structures.
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  Speaker 2: So in that sense, it's moving beyond monocultural nationalist Christianity.
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  Speaker 2: In what I call a church without borders, because nation
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  Speaker 2: state have borders, but the church, the church has the
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  Speaker 2: Spirit and the Gospel, and with the Spirit and the Gospel,
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  Speaker 2: the church travels without a pasport around the earth. So
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  Speaker 2: in a way, U, that is what I'm trying to
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  Speaker 2: do in the book. And the colonial numatology is UH,
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  Speaker 2: the UH discipline, if you will, the set of UH
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  Speaker 2: cold Christian and principles of the Guide. This conversation that
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  Speaker 2: I just mentioned to you.
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  Speaker 1: So, so what I thought was interesting as I was
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  Speaker 1: reading your book, I two texts came to mind. One
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  Speaker 1: was when Stephen gave his speech to the Jews who
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: had accused him of, you know, defaming Moses in the
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  Speaker 1: Temple in Act seven, and then the deliberation of the
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  Speaker 1: Church in Jerusalem after the salvation of the Gentiles and
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  Speaker 1: the coming of the Spirit on the Gentiles. And what
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: I found was as I was reflecting on those two texts,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: is you know, what I felt like your book was
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: doing is resisting closure. It's like, let's not close this down.
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  Speaker 1: And you get a different tone of that in Act
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  Speaker 1: seven than you do in the Deliberations in Jerusalem. Act
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  Speaker 1: seven is a clear prophetic critique. It's it's saying, you've
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  Speaker 1: perverted this, you've closed it down so much, and now
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  Speaker 1: you're denying and rejecting. You know, you've killed the Messiah.
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  Speaker 1: You refuse to see in Jerusalem, you see something very
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  Speaker 1: different happening. They're trying to be sensitive to what the
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  Speaker 1: Spirit is doing and ultimately yielding to the movement of
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  Speaker 1: the Spirit amongst the gentiles and recognizing that they shouldn't
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  Speaker 1: be putting more requirements on the gentiles, that they should
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  Speaker 1: just let this happen as an expansion of their understanding,
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  Speaker 1: as opposed to as a requirement that the Gentiles be
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: pulled back into a box that they understood. And I
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  Speaker 1: don't know what you think about those two texts, but
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  Speaker 1: that as I was reading through it, that's where my
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  Speaker 1: mind went. It's you have this sort of interesting opening
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  Speaker 1: up by the Spirit that oftentimes I think we're just
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  Speaker 1: closed off too, because we get too enamored with our
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  Speaker 1: own sort of settled understandings. And I would use settles
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  Speaker 1: I suppose in air quotes.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, thank you, thank you for that, games, I mean,
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  Speaker 2: I appreciate that. And if this the reading of the
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  Speaker 2: book suggests the same kind of biblical narratives to people
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  Speaker 2: written and I think I've done my job. I think
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  Speaker 2: I've done my job. Thank you, I mean honestly, and
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  Speaker 2: you are absolutely right. Just think about what you just said.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, on the one hand, is dealing with those
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  Speaker 2: who holds, you know, quote unquote holds the keys of
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: of of authority. I mean they have the authority, they
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: have a keys of truth. Yeah, and saying I mean,
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  Speaker 2: how dare you? How dare your kid dis close when
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: it's not even yours with Jesus in a way, it
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  Speaker 2: was such a challenge. And on the other hand, you
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  Speaker 2: see a community which is part of creation of God
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: saying that you know the God of creation, and this
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: is Paul all over the place. The God of Creation
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  Speaker 2: is also your God. And this is the way to
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: relate to this God in a way that is affirming
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  Speaker 2: to your humanity, to who you are and who you
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  Speaker 2: can become in Jesus. So in that sense, I want
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: to suggest that this book is deeply evangelical in the
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: sense of the evangel it is and bringing the Pentecost
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: because I put the Pentecosts on and Babel the Tower
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: Babel side by side to say there are two logics
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: here and we see it in the scripture. One tries
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: to control, tries to monopolize, tries to you know, put
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: together here and put borders and all that things, that
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: gaining thing. And on the other you have a pentecost. Now,
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: the pentacost is not I mean the way I presaid it.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: How that is, It's clear, it's not cosmetic diversity. For me,
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: it is not cosmetic labor. It is about re ordering
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: communal life and the power of the spirit. And that
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: reordering is fell as disruptive if even when you read
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: the text is disruptive because we're used to this. We
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: have the perspective of elite Jerusalem theologians, so to speak.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: And you have the Roman coloniality and and the Hellenistic
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: holders of tradition and and and the second century Judaism
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: you have, you have all that, and yet when you
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: when the spirit comes, like like the prophet Joel says,
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: upon every fledg, no matter who you are, oh, that
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: is disruptive because in a way, you know, re orders
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: the possibility of living together as the body of Christ.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: And that's the story across the the New Testament.
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: I would say, yeah, I think it's interesting when we
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: look at a line share of the Gospel's counts that
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: Jesus is often pushing on the religious leaders. He's pushing
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: against the Pharisees, pushing against the Sadducees. Arguably, the entire
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: Sermon on the Mount is his way of saying to
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: a group of marginalized Jewish people, these things that you've
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: been bound to by the Pharisees, by the Sadducees are false.
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: They're false boundaries. And then at the same time he's
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: talking to those people when he says, Okay, you guys
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: want to exclude these people who have had various problems,
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: perhaps perhaps one of them is even murder, right, a
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: horrific thing, But I want to remind you that you've
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: also hated, right. And I see and God sees these
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: as in the sense not in the sense of actions
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: being equal under consequences, but actions cool in the sense
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: of both setting themselves in opposition to a way that
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: God is trying to commend to people. Right, So he's
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: pushing against things and people that have set themselves up
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: as gates. So then we take Jesus and we make
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: him into that sort of a gate. Very ironic, I think, right,
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: very very antithetical to who Jesus is. What is it
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: specifically do you think about the spirit that prevents us
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: from doing that? Is is it something about the spirit?
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: Is it something just about traditions? Is it something about
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: us as people?
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: What do you see?
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Okay, let me first probably tag piggyback on the
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: gate on the Gate conversation. Clearly, that's like James mentioned
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: of the big very beginning, and this is not something
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: I made up. I mean, we have a beautiful book
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: called Christ Outside the Gate by Orlando Costas, and that
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: book grew out of a sermon he was pretty because
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: it was an evangelist, wasn't it was a missiologist, theologian
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: and evangelist, and he was preachy on Hebrews. Uh. You
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: know that Christ died outside the gate and and and
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: and outside the gate of the city, so you know
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: that's that place where the damned of society were living.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: You know, he joined that crowd, and that's where salvation
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: happened in this such a reological you know way, that's
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: that's the sermon that he preached, and then the book
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: grew up. I think I'm I'm adding only that. And
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: he was part of a of a time where Christology
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: was so important for liberation, so to speak. But I
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: think that many pneumatologists of our time, like thinking of
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: Veali Matic Arcanaan my my, my colleague at Fuller Seminar,
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: and even Amos John another Asian American, uh Pentacostal theologian,
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: have have clearly said whatever Christ was was in the spirit.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: We cannot separate Jesus and the Spirit. And we have
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: James Donn from from New Testament studies, you know, helping
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: us do that. And so I think it is important
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: to see actually the Trinity, and we have a lot
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: of work in in in that since Augustine and and
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: others you know, and the Trinity, uh, Jesus, I mean
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are are a family,
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: are a whole. They are an incarnational of Divine presence,
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: that is a month us. But particularly in the realm
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: of in our own realm of mission the earth, I mean,
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: Jesus and the Spirit have have an activity. And whatever
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: Jesus is doing, the Spirit is enabling Jesus and is
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: with Jesus, and is Jesus is true the Spirit that
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: is continuing his ministry on earth. If even after a sansion,
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: Acts Chapter one, then Act chapter two, all the way
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: through our time. So in that sense, outside the gate
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: is not outside of God. I just want to make
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: that clear. When I use outside the gate, I'm trying
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: to point out where the spirit exposes false security of
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: the center uh and sometimes the distortions of truth, which
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: is what Jesus in a way was saying. In a way,
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: when you're talking about Matthew five, you've heard, but that
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: is not that that what you heard is completely wrong,
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: It is insufficient, it's not the whole story. There's more
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: to it than what you've heard and being concealed by tradition,
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: rabbinic tradition, and in those cases, and on the one hand,
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: rabbinic traditions, and on the other hand, people listening to
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: those rabbinic traditions saying I cannot do it that way,
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: so I'll do it my own way. You have popular traditions,
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: you have a rabbinic tradition on the one hand, and
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: popular tradition, and both of them are generating ways of
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: seeing God using God and and and the law the Torah.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: And so Jesus comes and say, well, let me, let me,
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: let me, let me say that you've heard. But I
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: tell you, and and and they tell you, is not
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: how we're going to do it individually. How we're going
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: to do it in community, in community with God, my Father,
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: and the Spirit, in community with each other, and in
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: community with people that are looking at us and will
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: become part of that. Is that the prisonly prayer of
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: John seventeen. The people that will belong to our own community.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: So in that say, in that sense that outside the gate,
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: it's more a signal to where God and the Spirit
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: particularly is is is doing great things when we're not looking. Uh.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: The Gospel repeatedly move us to our rejected places. Jesus
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: suffers outside the gate, Penticos scatters linguistic control, and mission
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: crosses boundaries constantly. We see that, uh in the in
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: the scripture. So I think you used to go back
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: a little bit to the former question. The colonial pneumatology
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: is really about discernment, not relativism. I'm not a relativist.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: I think that is in a when you when you
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: become a relativist, you you're not only affect the other,
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: you affect yourself because you can become highly tribal. And
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: that's a problem. So it does not mean that the
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: spirit is the only is. It does not mean that
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: every spirit, so to speak, is the holy spirit of life.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: It doesn't mean that. It means that the Church must
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: continue to learn to discern the spirit without assuming that
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: the wist that particularly communities that are in the located
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: in certain privilege and power, that colonial legacies and particularly
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: forms of Christianity, have the monopoly of faithful perception. It
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: is about perception. It is that we still need to
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: be opened to learning pretty much who God is time
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: by time, moment by moment. We have data, we have
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: information that leaders to that, but we have to remain
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: open and wonder two to quote card Park and wonder,
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: to be surprised and to be responsive and responsible. Responsive
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: to God is responsible to our neighbor and our creation.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: I would say that in that sense, UH, the colony
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: aneumatology is an effort to UH to UH to help
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: us walk with dispirite in places and in ways of
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: knowing that are not necessarily the ones emphasized in Western Christianity.
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: I think, let me, let me give you a suggestion
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: and tell me what you think about it, because I
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: think some people what you've hit on it's the heart
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: of their fear. It's the fear of relativism. Right that
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: once we lose the sort of careful controls, then people
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: say whatever they want.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: My hunch is that when we have that inclination first,
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: there's an element of fear tied into that. I want
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: to set that fear aside for a moment. Feel free
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: to bring it back if you want to, But I
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: want to say that there's a second element, and that
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: second element is there's a method, and that method. While
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: methods are helpful, they're also deeply bound to peoples and
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: traditions and places, and so that when we create certain
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: kinds of boundaries that we find non negotiable, we find
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: them as the hard lines that we use to protect.
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: We're deeply tying any talk about the work of God
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: in this world, not actually to Jesus, but rather to
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: that method that's bound to a people in a place
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: and a time. It's just that that aspect is invisible
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: to us. But conversely, what I hear you saying is
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: that what we need to do is grab a hold
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: of the person of Jesus. And we do that precisely
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: by grabbing a hold of the person of the very
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: Holy Spirit of this Jesus, and that spirit can confound
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: the ways that we think, right, it can surprise us
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: because that spirit doesn't bound to the same traditional and
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: mental and thought structures that we sometimes don't realize that
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: we are. Is that fair to what you're saying? And
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: if not, please correct it, you.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: Know, in a way I mean, I mean one of
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: the things that is clear. I mean Christ is the
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: mediator between God and us. Nobody can call Jesus Lord
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: without spirit. So there is a mediation even between us
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: and Christ. And I think somebody like Augustine too, you know,
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: to call some some some of the of the sources
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: of of of different traditions in the West. Uh clearly
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: understood that the that the spirit is the is the
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: is the relating agent of love, God, love, Jesus, Who's
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: love in the spirit, the loving connections I speak in
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: a way, yes, I think, and I'm going back to
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: James again. It is uh easier to build a boxed
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: Christology than a boxed New mythology. There is a reason why.
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: For for several centuries, even the Christian in in in
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: the history of the Christian of Christian in the West,
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: there was no allusion to the spirit.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: There was sort of a how do we put our
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: hands around that? That's complicated, it's it's not what I'm
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: going to say. On the other hand, in the modern era,
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: we've said, oh, but we've got to say something because
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: all and we've said some some some good things, some
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: of the things are not necessarily as good, like like
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: theology is that way. That's why you need discernment, and
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: you need practice, you need you need orthodoxy, but you
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: need autopractice, and you need autopathos the way to fill
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: also a god and sense God the way. So I
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: think it is it is appropriate it said to say that,
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: and you mentioned fear and method. I even wrote a
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: book lately twenty sixteen called Embracing Fear was more my
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: public telogy book, by the way, and we don't need
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: to get into that book because that book is more
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: into our current set of events. But the part of
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: the arguments of that book is we need to reclaim
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: the tradition of fear the Lord more than the tradition
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: of fear Empire. And that calls to Martyrian the witness.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: So yes, we all need to deal with our fears.
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: And I would suggest in a spiritual posture with desert Christianity.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: And that's our spirituality. That not just surrendering our personal fears,
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: even our cultural fears, even our religious fears. It's important
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: but also to embrace the fear of the Lord and
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: let the fear of the Lord guide us to and
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: let me use the word method that you use to waste,
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: because method is away to weighs of recognizing the cloud
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: of witnesses, the traditions that we have received. We canna
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: simply trash them. That would be another form of suicide,
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: that would be ridiculous. But carrying those traditions walk as
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: disciples attentive to God here and now and moving forward.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: That attentiveness is the very method of being a disciple
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: of Jesus. Is not certain knowledge, is not accumulated data.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: It is a posture of learning from God, with God,
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: and because of God, how to move forward. Sometimes our
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: witness today may look like even heretical to people fifty
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: years ago, but it is our generational call today as
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: long as we do it in deep discernment and and
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: you know, really having in our hearts that we're trying
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: to be as faithful as we can with whatever we
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: have right now. We need to be able to defend
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: and not individually, that will have to be defended collectively
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: as the body of jesuscribe. So that's in a way
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: the the pressure and and and if I'm mistaken, I'm
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: always open to be corrects, you know.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: No, it's interesting when I was so when I was
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: reading through the book and just thinking about it, and
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: I used to work with a gentleman who is a Taoist,
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: and so he had kind of challenged me. I was
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: in seminary at the time. He challenged me to read
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: the dow Dejing, and I became sort of fascinated with
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: the image of water that is in the two de Jing,
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: this notion that water is fluid and that it moves
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: and it's not captive. It sort of adapts to whatever
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: container it's in, whatever you know, space it's in. It
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: tends to erode the rocks. I mean, all this stuff
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: was in you know, the sort of Eastern Chinese philosophy,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: and it's much more prominent there than it is in
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of the Western philosophy that we read. But
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: it just struck me when I was thinking about the
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: Holy Spirit, that the Holy Spirit is far more like
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: the Eastern understanding of the Tauadajing and the water and
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: this fluidness and this posture that those traditions are asking
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: us to have, which is to be more mobile and
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: flexible and malleable to context, not to be I understand
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: the fear toward relativism, but that's not the call. The
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: call is to be sort of in the pocket while
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: still be being malleable within the pocket, right, And so
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: I just found that imagery to fit really really well
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: with the Holy Spirit and something that we don't do
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: particularly well, I think, especially in the West, of being
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: that sort of malleable character, having that adaptability, being willing
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: and open to consider even that something else faithful is
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: going on in this community over here when it doesn't
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: look like us. And so there is a radical openness
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: I think that you're calling for in the book. But
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: I never took it as a relativism. I took it
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: as a let's recognize our limitations, let's recognize our inability
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: to understand all things, and let's also recognize that God
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: is a is way smarter than we are. Right, we
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: just read the back half of the Book of Job.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: When we start to understand that God has it on
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: us right, And so there's a sense in which thinking
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: that we have God pinned down is. I wrote to
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: unpublished essay at one point, just reflecting on some of
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: my employment experiences, and I titled that God's cubicles in
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: the basement and we've stolen a stapler, And so anybody
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: who's watched the office Space will understand that reference. But
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: the idea was that we tend to take God and
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: put him in this sort of small space and expect
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: him to serve our agendas, serve our needs, and act
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: the way we anticipate he's supposed to act. But that's
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: not really what God does. God's the one who does
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: the surprising. God's the one who determines how God acts,
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: and God is going to do that in a multitude
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: of different ways outside of us, And so we just
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: have to be really open to that, not open to anything,
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: which I think sort of is probably more what people
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: are concerned with when we think about relativism. But I
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: would just I wonder what I wonder if you'd agree
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: with it. So all that preamble just to say this,
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: my tendency is to think that we have a maturity problem.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: I would go to something like Hebrews five fourteen. Right,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: you've reached this mature state, and from this mature state
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: now you can discern good and evil. Discernment requires maturity.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: And if we're not even willing to engage in discernment,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: I think it doesn't necessarily draw in to question the
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: method or the perspective. It draws into question our own maturity.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: That just sort of was ringing in my head as
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: I was reading.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great way to put it. I mean,
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: that's a way to really have a conversation on daily
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: life about about these kind of materials. And thank you
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: for that. I'm preaching this Sunday, so that's anthing gone it.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: All yours.
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: And by the way, in my church you have clinical
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: psychologists and things like that, so they will really top
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: that that that topic. Let me react to the first
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: thing to the question now I'm asking. I think if
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: I even wrote a chapter because I really wanted to
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: be I know, I acknowledged that spiritsiday Is is technical
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: and and it's introducing disciplines for theologians that are are
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: sort of a I mean, I've never been exposed, so
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: I try to be as a front as I could,
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: as pedagogical as I could. I put a glossary. I
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: even wrote a chapter, chapter eleven that color disclaiming UH
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: theology meaning this is what I'm not. I'm not saying this,
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: and I'm saying this so that to clarify that. And
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: I think that is important at least UH and and
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: so one of the and that chapter, I I just
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: try to help the reader to say, look, traditionally since
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: the color time, since fourteen nine into where we had
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: the Christian missions arriving at at the America's tortile island
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: or the different communities aren't calling it. The question was
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: really not so much about God, but was about the other.
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, who are these folks? Who are this? Who
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: are this this I won't even call it people who
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: are these? And and then because they look so different
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: than us, we really need to ask, I mean, what's
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: going on? Then we saw the ritual that we saw
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: their whatever we could understand I'm talking about I'm talking
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: about five centuries ago, right in the moment where Ivarian
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: I mean Spanish and Portuguese. Later on it's going to
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: be British and Dodge, are you know, bringing this this
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: helenic heleness their own framework and say, well, but this
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: is so different. And the same time some of the
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: things that they believe is very similar. But they don't
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: even have a language how to call God. So all
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: this happened, and the question was, Okay, they're so different
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: because because because because the devil is with them. So
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: the question is where is the devil in what they do?
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: It was never where is God? So what I'm doing
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: in this book is I'm not denying that the devil
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: is in different rituals, but I'm saying that God is
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: all suppressing in the form of the spirit of life
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: in those places.
• 47:47
  Speaker 5: To how can we discern what the spirit is doing there,
• 47:52
  Speaker 5: just like what we're discerning and what Spirit was doing
• 47:54
  Speaker 5: and the and the pre Socratic uh, you know communities,
• 47:59
  Speaker 5: So we we we have a more easy way to say, oh,
• 48:02
  Speaker 5: God may be operating through Plato and Socrates that we
• 48:05
  Speaker 5: have through some of the ancient.
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: You know, wisdom tellers of the indigenous community. And that
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: is in part because we've been codified. We've been trained
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: to ask certain questions and not ask other questions. So
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: that I'm opening to your point, I'm opening the conversation
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: to say, let's look for God. Also I'm saying that
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: we should not ask the other question, but are saying
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: I wanted to add this other question, and you may
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: be surprised that you may find God operating, the Spirit
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: operating there in ways that you never thought possible. And
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: I think that's a generous theological posture that we need
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: in our time because in a way, this this opens
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: up the possibility of cold humanity, of living together with
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: other people without pre judging and assassinating the character, and
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: the possibility of all these people's futures among ourselves.
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I hear in that way of you describing
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: it sort of implicitly, that there needs to be a
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: letting go of this hierarchical dimension of I have I'm teacher.
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: You don't have I give to you your student, right,
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: and maybe even in the teacher the actual teacher relationship
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: that needs to be loosened. Because the example you gave,
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: I think was a really helpful one with just the
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: poor question. Instead of asking just where's the devil, ask
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: where's God? Where's the spirit at work? Because the flip
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: side of that is that oftentimes in those same colonial works,
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: these people who ostensibly were doing what they were doing
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: as divine mandate, as they saw it, to give people
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: God through giving them maturity, were themselves doing some pretty
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: despicable things, right, su that one could easily ask in return,
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: where's where's the devil.
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: In what you're doing?
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: Which should give us a moment to pause. I think, right,
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: if it's if it's unilaterally one directional, that's where we're
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: starting to allow certain gatekeeping to prevent us from seeing
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: that the spirits at work outside the gate of what
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: we were doing, right, and that we too are learners,
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: We too are teacher, not just teachers, but receiving. Is
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: that fair?
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah? And also I think now you made me think
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: about the proposition of games about maturity, and I'm meaning
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: any study that you do in enlightenment, uh, you know,
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: philosophy and enlightenment theology is the sense that within the
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: Western European imagination, social imagination, you know, we've become mature
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: humans right here in this particular okay, geopolitical too, this
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: particular location, because we have this tradition, we have these
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: religious legacies, we have these are industrial and we can
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: call it today technological advances that demonstrate that are human
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: and this is a civilizational thing that we are mature
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: civilization versus these other places that are underdeveloped in a
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: way sub humans. They need They're like kids that need development.
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: Once that posture is adopted. Uh, this is a very
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: self referential posture. And I think there's a there's a
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: biblical you know principle there have you seen people all.
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: Uh?
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: I know it more in Spanish English? Actually have you
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: seen people that believe their wives.
• 52:12
  Speaker 5: Is?
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: There? Is there not more hope in a foolige, those
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: who think that they don't know God than in somebody
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: who thinks they are wise in their own ways. This
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: is very dangerous, you know, assuming maturity in that way,
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: because I would argue from I'm I'm a I'm a
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: fan of this spirituality. I mean the fathers and the
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: mother the maturity that they show through humility, through openness,
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: through service, to acknowledgement that they were so little in
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: comparison to who God is and what God does that
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: there there are. Their posture is always a pasture of
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: what is it Lord? What is it? Have mercy? And
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: me I'm not understanding. So it's a learn ignorance so
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: to speak, that enabled you to be to act because maturity,
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: I want to suggest I want to take it even further.
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: Maturity more than a thinking, is an acting, it's a relating.
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: You relate to others. And they will they will say,
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: this is a mature relationship, that a mature person because
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: I am built up, I am affumed, I am uplifted.
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: I become the best version of myself when I am
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: with this community or with this individual. I want to
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: suggest that that's part of maturity more than my self perception.
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: And I think that's a that's an issue that we have,
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: that's an issue that we have, James very very much.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it goes to the narrative of the I think
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: it's the religious leader. I can't remember what they call him,
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: a pharisee or saduty, but you know he praised God,
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: thank you for not making me like these sinners and
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: prostitutes and uh, and then you know the centers and
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: the tax collectors are there, you know, actually praying for
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: a pentance. And if you just looked at that narrative
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: and you sat back and said which of these is mature,
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: you're probably not picking the religious leader. There's a there's
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: a self referential sort of righteousness that he applies to
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: himself that doesn't scream maturity. These other these other people
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: who are actually confessing their sins and who are aligned
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: with what with God and God's order have a different understanding,
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: a different level of understanding of what it means to
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: be mature, and that that maturity comes in our to
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: some degree, in our agreement with God. And so yeah,
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: I think that's a really important crucial point. It isn't
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: about embodying a certain tradition. That's not what makes you mature.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: It's it's it's something deeper than that, it's something more
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: significant than that, And I think that's why it leaves
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: us open to some of these other questions. Yeah, well, man,
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: this has been a really interesting conversation. We are We
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: could probably go for another hour, but we're not going to,
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: so we'll close it out with this. But everyone, i'd
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: really encourage you to get this book, and it's really
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: a fantastic book. I think you'll enjoy it if you
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: get it, and we'll have a link to the to
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: it in the in the show notes. We're also this
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: is an IVP book and so we get a twenty
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: percent discount if you order off of the IVP website.
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: So i'd encourage you to do that again. The link
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: will be in the show notes, Oscar. Is there anywhere
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: else that people can come and find your work outside
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: of the book. You want to have a website, you
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: have a substack or anything fun like that.
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think if they go to my web page
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: and a foot seminary, but also in Facebook and Instagram
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: for example. In the land twenty twenty six, I wrote
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: a book lately called The Colonial Love in Times of
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: Hatred h and that was the tone right there is
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: particularly how can we how can we do very crystallogical
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: cost christology? It was forty ways to follow Jesus Today?
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: So I'm as a matter of fact, let me if
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: you tell me where to I'll send you a couple
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: of copies because I think that's that's what we're talking
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: about discipleship here. How do we land all this in ways?
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: And this is actually meant for individuals as well, not
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: just for communitycause I understand how life works and in
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: the city. So okay, let's begin one on one here,
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: but let's move beyond that. So that's where it begins
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: and it hits how can I really follow Jesus today
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: with all the complexities that we have in particularly with
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: an environment that I have to take a disposition or
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: disposition I forced to go beyond what even and I
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: feel it's right. But if I'm not here or there,
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: I'm out of the game. So how do we take
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: control of our lives in God and become a faithful
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: witness today and to the point that you can affect
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: and if you will, infect those who seems to be
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: disoriented in ways that are more affirmative and constructive. So
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: in that sense, for couple, I did forty videos of uh.
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: I think it was uh five minutes and and and
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: the forty forty days of length about this dicolonial love
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: in terms of hatred because it was one per day.
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: That's you can find a lot. And I did that
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: in English. Well, I write more in English and in Spanish.
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to do a series of seven volumes of
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: sort of a systematic in Spanish and volume tree right now,
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: and it's taking me a while to do that. But
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: that is available in English. I engage in Spanish, English
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: and Portuguese and and so h fuller page and I
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: can send you also my my fath uh Facebook and
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: Instagram account. You're fine, something.
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: Excellent and give the name of the Lent series again,
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: the Lent for fuller uh, the the when you were
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: just talking about the forty day.
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: One okay for on a seconds, Uh, it's called The
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: Colonial Love in Times of Hatred.
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: The Colonial Love in Times of Hatred?
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, forty Ways to follow Jesus Today. Excellent, and
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: I'm very I'm very encouraged with that book because I'm
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: talking to those of the the you know, divided divided
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: by faith and divided by public, to say, okay, well,
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: let's let's let's leave a little bit of those camps
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: and let's go let's come here. Let's let's focus on
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: Jesus for a moment. That's all I'm saying. What happened
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: after that? You know, it's out of my power, but
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: let's let's come here, am out of who you are.
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: Let's come here, Let's focus on Jesus, thank it through,
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: and then do what he do you want with it?
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: Very cool, Well, Oscar, we really appreciate you being here. Man.
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: This is a great conversation. I love the book Spirit
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: Outside the Gate. I'm going to check out some of
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: your other stuff. I actually read The Mestizo Community of
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: the Spirit and so I read that earlier when it
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: came out, so really appreciated that book as well. But
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: Spirit Outside the Gates was refreshing. I enjoyed it, and
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: so just encourage everybody to read it as well. And yeah,
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: just thanks for being here. Really appreciate you being here.
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: Well, I fell at home. Your your great host, and
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: I will say, partners and colleagues and I a mile
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: what you do and we need more of this.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: Well hopefully we'll be doing it, continue doing more of that. Yeah,
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: all right, everybody, Well, thanks, thanks everybody, and we'll catch
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. I just
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: want to take a second to thank the team at
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com, you'll
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network.
• 1:00:05
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