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From Ivy League to Faith: Carol Swain on Countercultural Living · Real Life Theology Podcast

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  Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Real Life Theology Podcast.
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  This episode features Carol Swain, who talks about outer cultural living, a very important
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  topic in today's day.
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  I hope you guys enjoy this episode.
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  Good morning.
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  I'm not a pastor.
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  I'm just a sinner saved by grace.
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  I spent most of my life in academia, almost 30 years in academia.
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  I came to Christ late in my life, and it's been quite a journey.
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  My book is Counter-Cultural Living, what Jesus has to say about life, marriage, race, gender,
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  and materialism, and I use my life to illustrate what not to do.
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  I've made a lot of mistakes over the course of my life, and coming to Christ late in life
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  means that I didn't get saved when I was three, or four, or five, or six.
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  I frequently run into people that have those stories of being saved as an infant, but that's
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  not my story.
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  My life is a life that I feel like I've lived several lives.
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  Those of you who may be familiar with my background will know that I was one of 12 children born
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  and raised in rural poverty in southwestern Virginia.
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  I dropped out of school after completing the eighth grade.
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  I married at 16.
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  By the time I was 21, I had three small children.
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  People came into my life and encouraged me.
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  I got a high school equivalency.
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  I went to a community college and got the first of five college and university degrees.
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  I was very successful in academia.
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  I was hired by Princeton University.
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  I earned early tenure there by, I got in three years, I went up in the third year.
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  It normally takes seven if you get it.
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  Most people don't get it, and I won the highest prize in my profession.
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  I've been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.
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  All of these things happened, and I was miserable.
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  Always suffered with depression.
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  I was always shy and just shy, terrified.
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  Someone would ask me my name, and I'd actually forget my name.
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  As a professor, I would try to write out everything I was going to say because I was so afraid,
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  but I had my Christian conversion experience when I became a devout believer and knew what
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  it was like, what it meant to follow Jesus in 1999, but my spiritual journey started
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  much earlier.
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  My journey took me through New Age religions, Eastern.
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  I was always a seeker.
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  I was someone that was sincere, and so God, it was like coming full circle because like
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  most black people, you're born black, you're born Democrat, and you're born Christian.
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  Normally you're all Christians, right?
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  My life was a journey that I found Christ late in life where he found me, and then he
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  sort of took me backwards and showed me where he was at different points in my life, and
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  I can tell you that as a child, I knew I was different, that I didn't fit into my family,
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  and so I've always seen the world different, but then when I became a Christian, I realized
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  that we are peculiar people, and so all of a sudden life made sense in a way that it
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  didn't make sense before.
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  But as a child, I had a sense of urgency.
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  I always felt like there was something I was supposed to do, and my mother said that I
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  was not like her other children.
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  I was so serious, and at any rate, and I had experiences like late teens, went through
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  a lot of depression, suicide gestures, all of this stuff, but I had strangers come up
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  to me at different points in my life, and they said, you're going to be famous someday.
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  You know you're going to be famous?
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  There was nothing about my circumstances that any of that made sense, and then a person
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  like, I don't know, with different church backgrounds, I know people believe different
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  things, but I've had people come up to me and prophesy all of these things are going
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  to happen.
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  Well, fast forward, a lot of this stuff did not start happening until maybe 10, 15, some
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  of it in the last five years.
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  So that's a little bit about who I am.
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  Came to Christ late in life, and I came very serious, and my background is political science
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  and law, and I marvel sometimes at what God did in my life, and what he did was he took
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  this high school dropout, sent them to the Ivy League with a signing bonus.
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  I got early tenure, and they put their good housekeeping seal of approval on me.
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  They gave me all the awards and all of those things, and then he called me into the kingdom,
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  and so people like to say Christians are stupid, and all of these things that they want to
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  say about us, but it's a little bit more difficult when you've given someone the good
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  housekeeping seal of approval, right?
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  And I think, and that's not the only thing that God did.
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  I left Princeton, I was tenured there, Vanderbilt recruited me with a full professorship, and
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  I was going through my spiritual journey in 1998 when they recruited me, but when you're
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  going through a spiritual journey, you don't have a sign on you going through a spiritual
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  journey, so they didn't know.
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  And so they assumed they were getting this hotshot Princeton professor, but God has a
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  sense of humor.
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  I took my sabbatical up front.
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  I took my sabbatical before I actually moved to Nashville.
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  I was a good negotiator.
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  And while I was at New Haven getting my fifth degree, I got a law degree at Yale, master's
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  at Yale, after I'd gotten my PhD, that's when I became a devout believer, and so I showed
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  up in Nashville as a new Christian, but on the own fire for the Lord, and anyone who's
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  gotten saved late in life know that you're very serious, and you want to make up for
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  all that lost time.
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  I tried to make up for it financially.
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  God has plenty of money, and he doesn't tell us that we have to catch up for the last 60
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  years or whatever point you get saved, but you're very serious when you get saved late
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  in life.
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  And I kept thinking that the Lord was going to call me from academia, and I was going
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  to be traveling around the world speaking, and all of those things were going to happen,
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  and I stayed in the university 18 years longer before I took early retirement, and the circumstances
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  arose for me to leave, and what's so amazing to me is that God delivered me from my shyness.
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  I mean, just almost immediately, he took it away just like that, and he impressed on my
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  mind that he had given me a message bigger than me, and I was to focus on the message.
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  And so those of you all who see me out there in the political arena, wherever I am, speaking
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  and doing those things, that's really not me.
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  I'm shy.
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  I'm still shy, but I can do those things because I can do all the things through Christ which
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  strengthens me, and God has given me a much bigger platform than anything I ever imagined,
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  and I take it very seriously because the Bible says teachers are called to a greater accounting,
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  and those of you who are pastors, you know that to be the case, that God will hold us
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  accountable if we mislead people, if we don't give them the truth, and so it's a very serious
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  calling that we all have, and I know that everyone here today has a calling.
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  You're here for a reason.
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  You want to see people saved and follow Jesus.
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  This book, Countercultural Living, what Jesus has to say about life, marriage, race, gender,
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  and materialism is for regular people.
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  It's not for perfect people, so those of you all who are perfect will have no use for this
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  book, but in this book, I get real.
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  I talk about, there's a chapter, what does Jesus have to say about life?
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  Well, we know that life is sacred to God and that we were created in his image, and I share
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  I've had an abortion.
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  I mean, let's get real.
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  A lot of women in the church have had abortions, and so I share that.
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  There's a chapter on marriage.
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  I haven't been very successful at that.
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  There's a chapter on race.
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  I'm black, and I will always be black, but that's not my primary identity.
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  My identity is in Christ Jesus, and if we identified in Christ, we would not have these
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  racial problems.
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  If we practice forgiveness, if we practice love, we don't need the critical race theory
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  and all of these things.
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  Biblical justice, not social justice.
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  Biblical justice has everything that we need, and so a lot of times with race, churches
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  and pastors and guilty white people, bless your hearts.
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  I say that in the nice southern sense, but with race and ethnicity, a lot of Christian
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  churches have embraced the secular viewpoint that is rooted in Marxism, and they believe
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  that critical race theory and intersectionality can help them.
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  That's not going to bring about racial reconciliation, and you need two sides to reconcile.
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  This whole thing about race, God created one human race.
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  If you look around at everything that God has created, there's always diversity.
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  As Christians, we're called to love one another.
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  We're called to forgive one another.
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  We're called to forget those things that lie behind and press forward to the high mark
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  in Christ Jesus.
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  If we would just actually apply the things that we know, we would be an example to the
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  world when it comes to issues like race.
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  Gender, my pronoun is she and her.
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  God created two sexes, male and female, and unless you're confused by the world, you're
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  not confused by that.
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  There are gender roles.
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  As a Christian, I went through academia during a time when feminism was all around.
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  I was never a good feminist.
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  I liked the makeup too much.
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  I was never a feminist feminist.
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  I was someone that liked to look good.
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  One of the issues that's affecting the church today has to do with gender roles.
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  The Bible is very clear about gender roles.
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  The Bible has a specific guidance when it comes to males and females in relationships,
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  whether they are dating and single or whether they are married.
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  They can be partners.
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  They can be co-equal partners, but there has to be a head to make the decision.
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  If the Lord should bring another man into my life, it has to be someone that I respect
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  enough that I would submit to his authority because the Bible says I would have to submit.
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  I'm submitting, Lord, if that should happen.
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  Materialism, that's something that a lot of people may say, I'm not materialistic.
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  That doesn't apply to me.
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  It applies to us in ways other than money and acquiring things.
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  For myself, I think I've struggled with just the desire for recognition.
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  I can explain that, oh, I came from poverty and people have not listened to me and all
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  this stuff like that.
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  When I was at Princeton, I was going to get an early tenure.
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  I was going to be a full professor in six years.
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  I was going to have a cabinet position.
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  I was going to do all these things.
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  I had my whole life mapped out and then God intervened and things, it is what it is, but
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  I think pride is something that we can all struggle with.
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  We all try to be humble and sometimes I'm the most humble person I know, but I struggle.
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  I have good friends.
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  I have good friends and they keep me in check.
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  So hopefully you have good friends too.
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  But this book is number 10, Countercultural Living, what Jesus has to say about life,
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  marriage, race, gender, and materialism.
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  It is a book that I believe will be helpful to a lot of young people because you're out
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  there in the culture.
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  I've been out there in the culture.
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  I can tell you all about the culture.
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  I escaped the culture and Jesus did give us some instructions.
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  He expected us to be countercultural, I still have that Southern problem.
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  Jeremiah 29, five through seven, this is what he told the Israelites, build houses and settle
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  down, plant gardens and eat what they produce, marry and have sons and daughters, find wives
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  for your sons and give your daughters in marriage so that they too may have sons and daughters.
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  Increase in number there, do not decrease.
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  Also seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have called you into exile.
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  Pray to the Lord for it because as it prospers, you too will prosper.
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  And so we are in foreign territory.
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  We see things happening in our nation, but we have to realize that this is not our home.
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  God has a plan for us and everything is just working out perfectly according to his divine
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  plan.
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  Thank you so much for being here, Bobby.
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  Thank you for including me.
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  I'm not a pastor.
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  I'm just a sinner saved by grace.
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  Thank you.
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  Thank you guys for listening to this episode of the Real Life Theology Podcast.
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  Please comment, like, subscribe.
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  Join us at one of our upcoming events.
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  You can check out our events at renew.org forward slash events.
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  I hope to see you guys on the next episode.
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  Bye.