Latest / Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture / Systems, Virtue & the Body of Christ

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Systems, Virtue & the Body of Christ · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

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  Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly propicient 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 Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now onto
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  Speaker 1: today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everybody, 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 by doctor Ashish Pharma, and today we're going to
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  Speaker 1: do a follow up episode to a conversation we had
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  Speaker 1: with David Van Dyke from Wheaton College. He runs the
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  Speaker 1: Marriage and Family Therapy or marriage and family counseling program
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  Speaker 1: there at Wheaton, and one of the things he talked
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  Speaker 1: about in the episode was this notion of systems. So
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  Speaker 1: when we think about marriage and family counseling, his argument
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  Speaker 1: was it's best to think about systems is about their
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  Speaker 1: relationships that are involved in a family and are involved
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  Speaker 1: in a marriage, and how one responds to the various
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  Speaker 1: relationships or other people within that system, the other factors
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  Speaker 1: within that system. I find it interesting just having done
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  Speaker 1: a lot of consulting over the years, you know, higher
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  Speaker 1: education consulting is largely about managing multiple different stakeholders, multiple
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  Speaker 1: different factors, and trying to help an institution understand how
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  Speaker 1: they should respond to all those different factors. I also
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  Speaker 1: find it interesting just from when we think through when
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  Speaker 1: we've had conversations about this before on the podcast Systemic Sin.
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  Speaker 1: How is it that we relate to the world differently
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  Speaker 1: depending on how we're embodied in the world, our socioeconomic status,
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  Speaker 1: various other issues. And so this system's thinking is actually
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  Speaker 1: a pretty crucial thing that we need to get our
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  Speaker 1: heads around. And I think that what we want to
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  Speaker 1: try to you today is think about what does systems
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  Speaker 1: thinking add to our understanding about what it means to
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  Speaker 1: be the Body of Christ. How does this manifest not
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  Speaker 1: only in a local congregation, although that's sort of a
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  Speaker 1: primary space for it, but also as the Body of
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  Speaker 1: Christ as a whole. And so we're going to start
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  Speaker 1: off a little bit and in one of Ashisha's wheelhouses virtue,
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  Speaker 1: and there's an interesting book equating virtue and addiction that
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  Speaker 1: we kind of want to summarize here, and so unless
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  Speaker 1: you have anything else to add I'll turn it over
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  Speaker 1: to you and we can kind of dive into that.
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  Speaker 2: No, that's good. Before I mentioned that what Kent Dunnington
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  Speaker 2: is doing in his book Virtue and Addiction, it's worth
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  Speaker 2: setting up what this is coming out of. From David
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  Speaker 2: Van Dyke's articulation. One of the things he said that
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  Speaker 2: that especially intrigued me. I think it intrigued you as well.
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  Speaker 2: And Dave Vandyck spent some time I'm responding or explaining,
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  Speaker 2: but he made a comment about how when he has
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  Speaker 2: a family in the room, he might have a child
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  Speaker 2: and parents that are coming at things from different perspectives,
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  Speaker 2: and what he's less concerned about is what the story
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  Speaker 2: is that they're telling, And that one struck me as interesting,
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  Speaker 2: not least because I thought, well, stories often help explain
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  Speaker 2: what's going on. But his point was not that the
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  Speaker 2: story is unimportant so much as he was trying to
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  Speaker 2: gauge how people are responding to those stories. So, in
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  Speaker 2: his example, there was a teenage kid who saw himself
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  Speaker 2: as disrupting the environment, and the parent's reaction to that
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  Speaker 2: analysis was to sort of grimace as I recall to
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  Speaker 2: sort of show exasperation, and the son's response was to smirk.
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  Speaker 2: And that was especially interesting because what it showed was
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  Speaker 2: not that the stories are different, but the stories that
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  Speaker 2: the two groups were inhabiting were coming out of different
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  Speaker 2: places with different sorts of reactions. Yeah, that do speak
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  Speaker 2: to as you're getting out systems, and I think that
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  Speaker 2: that system is something that's hard at times to grab
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  Speaker 2: a hold of. Systems can be scary to us because
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  Speaker 2: they're often invisible to us, invisible to the point where
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  Speaker 2: we react within them and can get defensive if someone
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  Speaker 2: tries to call it out. We, especially in Christian circles,
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  Speaker 2: I find, have trouble wrestling with that reality of systems.
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  Speaker 2: It's much easier to talk about individual right. I can
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  Speaker 2: take responsibility ostensibly for something that I'm doing that I'm
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  Speaker 2: aware that I'm doing, that I'm choosing to do. But
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  Speaker 2: how do I take responsibility for being in something that
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  Speaker 2: have less control over? And so we grab towards probably
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  Speaker 2: two extremes, and this is where Dunnington comes in, and
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  Speaker 2: the two extremes can often be on one side. Everything's
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  Speaker 2: wilful choice, right I choose to eat ice cream or
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  Speaker 2: I don't I choose to play basketball or don't. And
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  Speaker 2: on the other side there's the concept of disease, something
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  Speaker 2: like cancer or something like heart disease. I don't choose this.
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  Speaker 2: It's just something that happens to me, and it happens
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  Speaker 2: to me, perhaps for genetic reasons, perhaps from environmental reasons,
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  Speaker 2: but it's something that I'm in some sense a victim of.
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  Speaker 2: And so what he wants to say is that often
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  Speaker 2: the way that we tend to think of something like
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  Speaker 2: addiction is in one of these two ways. And it
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  Speaker 2: can be contentious, right those who want to say, well,
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  Speaker 2: it's your choice. The alcoholic has chosen to drink, and
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  Speaker 2: the alcoholic has chosen to be subjected to those forms
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  Speaker 2: of life patterns that just keep going back to it destructively.
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  Speaker 2: And the other side says, no, this person is a
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  Speaker 2: victim of a disease and can't help help him or herself. Right,
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  Speaker 2: And Dunton wants to say, it's not quite either. While
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  Speaker 2: he understands both extremes, and what he wants to do
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  Speaker 2: is he con compares it to virtue. So not to
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  Speaker 2: rehash what we've talked about in the past in terms
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  Speaker 2: of virtue, just quickly. Virtue has to do with character formation.
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  Speaker 2: It's less concerned about the precise response or action that
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  Speaker 2: one takes. It tries not to give moral content to
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  Speaker 2: particular actions, but rather tend to give ethical content to
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  Speaker 2: the dispositions that are formed. Why am I doing?
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  Speaker 1: What am I doing? Right?
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  Speaker 2: So that what I'm doing might be different. If I'm
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  Speaker 2: throwing a surprise party for my kid, not telling the
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  Speaker 2: truth about what's coming is very different then if I'm
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  Speaker 2: I'm hiding some sort of sin that I'm involved in, right,
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  Speaker 2: some sort of misadventure that I'm undertaking. If I'm hiding
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  Speaker 2: a person in my basement who's being searched for by
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  Speaker 2: the state in order to arrest and to persecute in
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  Speaker 2: some ways think Nazi Germany and comparable actions that might
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  Speaker 2: speak on the present. My choice to hide the truth
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  Speaker 2: is very different than if I'm stealing something and I
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  Speaker 2: want to protect my own autonomy in that sense, right,
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  Speaker 2: And the virtuous is concerned about what is it that,
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  Speaker 2: what is the disposition within myself for why I'm doing
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  Speaker 2: what I'm doing, And we often then tend to think
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  Speaker 2: of the opposite of that virtuous behavior as vice. But
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  Speaker 2: Dunnington wants to say, that's probably not the most helpful
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  Speaker 2: way to think about it, right, because the virtue is
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  Speaker 2: fundamentally about dispositions, the forming of habits, the character that forms,
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  Speaker 2: and acting out of that character in a way that tends.
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  Speaker 1: To be wise.
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  Speaker 2: Vice is not the opposite of that. Vice tends to
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  Speaker 2: be doing things out of love, just like virtue is,
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  Speaker 2: but just out of a misplaced love. Right, So, if
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  Speaker 2: someone has a love of money, they do things based
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  Speaker 2: upon a love of having that money, compounding that money,
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  Speaker 2: and if that means screwing over other people as a result,
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  Speaker 2: that's okay, because I got my money right, and may
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  Speaker 2: the best person win. Doesn't even want to say more.
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  Speaker 2: The more the more that you look at that, the
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  Speaker 2: less it seems like an opposite, and the more it
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  Speaker 2: seems like a foil. Right.
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  Speaker 1: But the true.
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  Speaker 2: Opposite, he wants to say, is to put addiction into
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  Speaker 2: this category, because addiction runs on systems, systems that can
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  Speaker 2: be invisible to us. And so he especially analyzes alcoholism,
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  Speaker 2: and he especially out and analyzes the people and the
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  Speaker 2: work the people involved in and the work of alcoholics
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  Speaker 2: anonymous a and what he notices after looking over you know,
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  Speaker 2: numerous many hundreds, as I can understand interviews and data
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  Speaker 2: points from within this is that there's a commonality that
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  Speaker 2: flares up and that people who find themselves in Alcoholics
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  Speaker 2: Anonymous find themselves there because they've started to come to
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  Speaker 2: the realization that they have a problem, and that problem
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  Speaker 2: is not something that they have any choice to overcome,
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  Speaker 2: not because their willfulness is not entailed in their choice,
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  Speaker 2: but because the addiction that they're now in is something
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  Speaker 2: that they do despite the fact that they don't love it.
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  Speaker 2: So he recounts that these alcoholics don't actually want to
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  Speaker 2: be drinking. It's an automatic response that's habituated in them
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  Speaker 2: based upon some other trigger. Right. That other trigger was
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  Speaker 2: often things like a rough work environment, rough family situation,
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  Speaker 2: something happens at work. They spiral and the well well
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  Speaker 2: made path, that groove that is formed by their actions
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  Speaker 2: that we tend to think of as habits, directs them
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  Speaker 2: to now I'm going to go to the bar. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: they get to that fight with their spouse, and now
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  Speaker 2: they're going to go to the bar, or they're going
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  Speaker 2: to go pick up that drink, right, and just despite
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  Speaker 2: the fact that they hate it, because they hate what
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  Speaker 2: it does to them. They hate their dependence upon it.
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  Speaker 2: Their body is now dependent upon it, and they have
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  Speaker 2: to be they have to go to it. And so
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  Speaker 2: the work that makes alcoholics anonymous so so influential, so
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  Speaker 2: helpful to people. What don need to notice was the
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  Speaker 2: fact that they treat alcoholics as sort of that inverse
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  Speaker 2: a virtue, that habit formed addictive reality that they have
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  Speaker 2: to recreate pathways, They have to avoid those sorts of
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  Speaker 2: pathways in the first place. If the groove is there
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  Speaker 2: based on habit, then how do we avoid getting to
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  Speaker 2: that groove? If the trigger is my boss at work,
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  Speaker 2: how do I sit in that particular situation at work
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  Speaker 2: and not find myself slipping down into that groove? Perhaps
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  Speaker 2: it's the path that I take home. Perhaps it's the
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  Speaker 2: options that I now close.
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  Speaker 1: Off to myself.
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  Speaker 2: Because what he's doing there is he's recognizing that while
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  Speaker 2: willful choice is certainly involved and was involved in the
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  Speaker 2: formation of the practice, WillFull choice doesn't simply get one
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  Speaker 2: out of it because it's a system. It's a structure
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  Speaker 2: that has pulled us in. And I think the parallel
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  Speaker 2: here that we're talking about, or that we want to
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  Speaker 2: talk about, is that these systems, these structures that pull
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  Speaker 2: us in, that have us often unconsciously begin to form
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  Speaker 2: the way that we think about situations. They form the
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  Speaker 2: way that we identify ourselves within those situations. Right, Perhaps
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  Speaker 2: I have a tendency to consider myself a victim. I
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  Speaker 2: fall into that groove where it's now an automatic response
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  Speaker 2: something bad happens to me, I'm a victim, and I
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  Speaker 2: begin to dwell on those processes and there's no reflection
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  Speaker 2: on my own part within it. Right, Yeah, thoughts on that.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think it's a really interesting concept.
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  Speaker 1: So as we think about virtue and we think about
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  Speaker 1: virtue formation, I think part of what we have to
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  Speaker 1: recognize is that oftentimes when we're trying to form virtue,
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  Speaker 1: there's a fake it till you make it sort of
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  Speaker 1: moment that you do right, And that is part of
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  Speaker 1: that habit forming aspect. You don't wake up one morning
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  Speaker 1: and have virtue. Virtue tends to be, at least in
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  Speaker 1: my understanding of it's something that is a desired state
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  Speaker 1: that's down the road, and you begin to live into
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  Speaker 1: that desired state. On the addiction side, what you're really
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  Speaker 1: I think, if I'm understanding his argument and the way
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  Speaker 1: you're articulating it correctly. What's really happening is there may
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  Speaker 1: very well be a desired state, but the path you're
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  Speaker 1: taking is always going to short circuit you getting there,
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  Speaker 1: And so there's you know, I think of it like
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  Speaker 1: one of the things I was thinking. You know, my
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  Speaker 1: wife and I used to have to go to Vegas
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  Speaker 1: on business fair amount. I had conferences out there or whatever,
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  Speaker 1: She had conferences out there, And if I ever went
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  Speaker 1: through the casino, I just know I really like playing cards.
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  Speaker 1: I like doing that kind of stuff, and so I
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  Speaker 1: never took cash or a debit card. Now, I didn't
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  Speaker 1: feel like I was ever going to be in danger
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  Speaker 1: of like sitting down at a table and blowing through
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  Speaker 1: our bank account. But I also didn't even really want
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  Speaker 1: to waste my time on it, and so I just
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  Speaker 1: wouldn't carry cash and I wouldn't carry a debit card,
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  Speaker 1: and so I effectively have no way that I can
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  Speaker 1: anything in a casino other than walk through it. Like
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  Speaker 1: that's the sort of behavioral change that it sounds like.
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  Speaker 1: Alcohol economis is trying to get people to do right.
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  Speaker 1: If you eliminate some of these factors that are going
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  Speaker 1: to enable a bad choice then you can't make that
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  Speaker 1: bad choice, or at least it's much more difficult to
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  Speaker 1: make that bad choice. Conversely, if you're pursuing virtue, there
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  Speaker 1: may be certain practices that you put in to say, no,
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  Speaker 1: I'm just going to do this. I'm going to do
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  Speaker 1: this on a daily basis, right, and I'm going to
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  Speaker 1: structure my life so that I do this on a
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  Speaker 1: daily basis. And in doing this on a daily basis,
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  Speaker 1: eventually it's going to form in me this sort of habit.
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  Speaker 1: Not habit in a sense of, you know, sort of
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  Speaker 1: an unthinking reaction necessarily, but habit in terms of a
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  Speaker 1: component of myself that now just begins to make sense, right, Like,
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  Speaker 1: this is now part of who I am. And I
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  Speaker 1: think that individually we can get we get a good
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  Speaker 1: understanding of that. I think where I would push in
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  Speaker 1: is say, I feel like it works very similar for
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  Speaker 1: organizations groups. When I've worked with colleges in the past,
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  Speaker 1: what I tend to see are a series of interactions
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  Speaker 1: that tend to lead to the same place, right and so,
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  Speaker 1: and then there are there are points where bad behavior
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  Speaker 1: is being enabled that keeps the whole institution from moving forward.
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  Speaker 1: There are points where the institution is trying to do
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  Speaker 1: good practices, but then those things may get short circuited
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  Speaker 1: by various other you know, whether it's financial resources or
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  Speaker 1: technological system problems, or just you know, sort of loud
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  Speaker 1: mouse within the organization who don't want something to go
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  Speaker 1: a certain way. And so you kind of see these
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  Speaker 1: dynamics within an organization. And part of the diagnosis that
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  Speaker 1: you do as a consultant as you walk in and
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  Speaker 1: you say, well, what's hindering you from heading to your
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  Speaker 1: desired state? Right? Where do you want to be and
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  Speaker 1: how how do you get there? Now you have to
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  Speaker 1: look at what would help you get there and what's
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  Speaker 1: hindering you from getting there, and how do we maximize
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  Speaker 1: what's going to help you getting there and minimize what's
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  Speaker 1: hindering you from getting there. And so I think my
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  Speaker 1: intuition is that this concept, this system's concept, this virtue concept,
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  Speaker 1: the addiction loops, that these can be applied within organizations
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  Speaker 1: and that they might be interesting to think through in
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  Speaker 1: terms of what happens at the church.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. Anecdotally. One can look to sports cultures, right,
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  Speaker 2: we see certain organizations and sports that every other year,
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  Speaker 2: every third year, their general manager and their coaches are fired.
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  Speaker 2: How do they blow the team? And they bring someone
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  Speaker 2: new in who has this great pitch, and things start
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  Speaker 2: over and we end up in the same loop three
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  Speaker 2: years later. And what you start to realize is that
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  Speaker 2: you do have organizational cultures. Right, they're coming in and
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  Speaker 2: perhaps these people, these new people come in and they
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  Speaker 2: find themselves slowly slipping into and adapting to the organizational
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  Speaker 2: culture that is itself. You know, in sports terms, toxic, right,
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  Speaker 2: may not have moral detriment, but can't seem to get
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  Speaker 2: to the point where they move to new ways of
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  Speaker 2: thinking and build contender teams, or they themselves find themselves
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  Speaker 2: unable to push past certain barriers. Right, Maybe they notice
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  Speaker 2: these things, but they can't push past certain barriers that
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  Speaker 2: just exist organizationally. And what you end up finding is
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  Speaker 2: that these teams just get stuck there. They can't get
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  Speaker 2: out of it. And after the third or the fourth
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  Speaker 2: court coach change and the general manager change and the
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  Speaker 2: player overturn, you start to allies, oh, this is an
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  Speaker 2: organizational problem. Yeah, and sometimes you overcome that by the
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  Speaker 2: organizational heads realizing it. You know, it takes a lot
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  Speaker 2: of humility and firing someone and hiring someone else that
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  Speaker 2: is able to break through that barrier and create a
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  Speaker 2: new culture. And sometimes it's just you know, I think
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  Speaker 2: about my beloved Chicago Blackhawks, where it took there, you know,
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  Speaker 2: the previous owner passing away in the early two thousands
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  Speaker 2: to now allow a new culture to seep in that
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  Speaker 2: built what ended up being a Stanley Cup, you know. Culture.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think a Goo Bears too, that revolving
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  Speaker 1: door of quarterbacks that the Chicago Bears have.
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  Speaker 2: In Chicago Bears. Can't we get this unfortunately, you know, right,
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  Speaker 2: Chicago Bulls unfortunately.
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  Speaker 1: And I think it is.
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  Speaker 2: Owner, top down sort of dynamics.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And you see same owner with the White Sox and
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  Speaker 2: using the same problems right right, Not to make this
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  Speaker 2: about Chicago sports, but you see those dynamics, and I
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  Speaker 2: think those transfer to church dynamics right where there's certain
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  Speaker 2: structural hindrances that are in place that keep us from
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  Speaker 2: being able to see other sorts of things. Perhaps those
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  Speaker 2: things are We've had centuries maybe not centuries that's too long,
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  Speaker 2: maybe decades long of social social issues that we elevate.
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  Speaker 2: It's above anything else that prevent us from being able
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  Speaker 2: to look at other issues or to look at those
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  Speaker 2: issues that we have from other angles. Right, maybe the
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: problem isn't so much that our position is wrong, but
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  Speaker 2: the way that we look at it, the way that
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  Speaker 2: we should seek to engage it, are problematic. If I
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  Speaker 2: could be so bold, One of the major issues that
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  Speaker 2: have dominated conservative churches since the late seventies early eighties
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  Speaker 2: has been the abortion issue. In fact, it's been the
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  Speaker 2: issue now it's I think it's a more complicated issue
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  Speaker 2: than we've often allowed it to become. But if what
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  Speaker 2: we want to say here at the baseline is is
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  Speaker 2: that God values life, specifically the life of his creatures,
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  Speaker 2: human life that He's made in his image, and that
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  Speaker 2: we need to value it as well, that's a fair position,
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: and I think that's at its heart what has driven
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: the desire to uphold, you know, single issue voting sorts
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: of things. But the thing that gets in the way
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: is that it has resulted in such a deep embedded
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: structural way of thinking that there's a failure to be
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: able to understand what the other sides are trying to say.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: And it is sides.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: It's not one side or trying to say what might
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: animate what they have to do and what they want
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: to advocate also to see the complexity of the issue, right,
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: which is now is not the time to get to do.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: But then finally a simple reality that often simple partisan
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: politics has not yielded the sort of results that the
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: common sense thinking within that structure has wanted to say,
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: you know, and to be blunt with it, the common
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: sense thinking is is if you have a particular position
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: on abortion and that's tied to a particular party that
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: says it champions that that you would therefore find that
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: fewer abortions happen when that group is in power. But
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: the numbers actually don't back up that stats. Ironically, the
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: numbers work in the opposite direction, and so that's prevented
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: thinking through more thoroughly. Maybe there's other ways to address
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: this conviction that might otherwise be a good conviction.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Right right, And I would say part of the challenge here,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: and I think what that issue particularly helps us to
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: understand is that the how over the last since the
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: seventies or eighties, you know, like whenever this really got going,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: the how has always been a more politically oriented how
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: that's been the dominant how. How do we address the
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: abortion issue? Will we address it through legislation, appointment of
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court judges, and you know, political lobbying groups. That's
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: how we do it. There's obviously other ways. There are more.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: You know, my wife and I are part of a
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: because we out involved with foster care. Same group also
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: helps single moms, right, gives them shelter and homes and
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: those kind of things. And so those activities also go on.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: But what we often hear about what seems to be
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: better funded, right, are these bigger political movements. And so
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: we have to then ask ourselves a couple of different questions,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: which are, like, what is continually participating in politics in
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: this way and really only focusing on politics in this
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: way or focusing on it to such a dominant in
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: such a dominant manner that the other things sort of
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: diminished in comparison. How is that forming us? In other words,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: if we're talking about this in terms of virtue, formation
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: and habit, do we really become political animals as opposed
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: to people conformed to the image of Christ? Now the
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: two aren't in my mind, the two are not isolated
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: from one another. The difficulty is in the way I
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: would sort of think about it is it's a primary
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: aspect sort of problem. If I become primarily a political
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: animal and also a Christian, I'm missing something somewhere. This
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: is not the road to conformity to Christ. This is
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: being a politically effective within a given nation. If, on
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: the other hand, I'm pursuing Christ and conforming to his image,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: I think there's ample room for us to participate politically,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: but that will then be shaped to the degree that
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: we are also conformed to the image of Christ. And
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: so it's a difference in pursuits and how we go
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: about practicing these things. But I think part of the mistake,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: and part of what we see in systems theory is
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: that participating in a particular system usually is not a
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: neutral activity. These things that we do, the practices that
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: we engage in, they have a formative effect on us.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: They shape us in very particular ways and in ways
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: to your point, that we often just don't notice, right,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: And so there's a sense in which I think that
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: that's really part of that whole conversation that needs to happen,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: is not, Hey, is life important? Right? To a degree
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: of view, yes, life is important? So now what do
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: we do about that? How does the church respond to
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: life being important, and how do we allow our desire
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: to be like Christ shape those responses as opposed to
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: allowing the mechanisms that we have around us in the
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: United States and in our democracy to shape the way
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: we respond to those things. Again, they may not be
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: mutually exclusive, but I think the one has to come
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: before the other. Otherwise we're inverting an authority structure, and
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: we're changing our desired end really or desired end state
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: to something other than conformity to Christ. I don't know
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: whether that made sense, but I'll leave it there and
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: let you respond.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it does make sense. It signals me to something
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: else that David Van Dyke was talking about.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: I can't remember the exact terminology he used, but the
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: idea that he was trying to put forth was trying
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: to show when he's in that family family therapy setting,
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: trying to show people on all sides the sort of
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: the boundaries of themselves, which included the boundaries of their agency,
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: included the boundaries of what they can know, what they
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: can understand, in order to then to begin to appreciate
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: that the other people in the room also have boundaries
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: that are not identical to mine that include ways of thinking,
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: ways of being that are not identical to mine, to
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: then be able to pull back from what can be
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: too easily habituated in us, which is someone thinks or believes,
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: or acts differently than me. It is therefore an affront
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: or an attack upon myself because my personhood is under
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: assault from difference. He wanted to help pull back from
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: that right now. Part of his intention was to be
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: able to help people recognize their own boundaries in order
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: to let go of certain things right in order to
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: be able to say I can't control that. I'm not
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: going to let that make me anxious.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: I want to extend that a little bit to say
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: yes that and recognition of those boundaries hopefully helps me
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: understand my finitude and the ways that I think, the
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: ways that I understand the things that I'm aware of,
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: so that maybe I can begin to think in terms
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: of what is it that I can learn from you?
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: How can I begin to understand you? How can there
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: be you know? The German hermeneutical theologian or sorry philosopher
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: Gottamer would say the fusing of horizons. It's the recognizing
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: of the boundaries of my horizon, recognizing that there is
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: stuff outside of it, to begin to expand the expanse
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: of my horizons so that I can begin to understand
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: things in a new way. Now, the way that I
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: understand it when I'm talking to you inevitably is filtered
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: through some of these both conscious and unconscious categories of mine,
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: these structures. But hopefully in that process that makes me
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: aware enough to begin to understand my structures at least
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: a little bit more, which will enable me, hopefully to
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: begin to, in the most generous sense, question them right,
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: not to chop off the limb that I'm sitting on
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: or the branch that I'm sitting on, but to recognize
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: the limitedness with which I'm approaching things.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: I think of someone I once worked with who would
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: amusingly say every time he learned something and say, well,
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: I learned something new. I guess I can go to bed,
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: And he would say it jovially, and the thought process
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: behind it was, you know, every day I should learn
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: something new. And I appreciated that about him, and I've
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: sort of adopted that both in its jovialness and and
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: I think the practical life lesson than that of yeah,
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: I should be. If I think I can approach a
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: day without learning something, then that's a me problem and
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: probably more specifically, a structure problem that's invisible to me.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: What can I say about that? Am I taking? Am
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: I taking it too? Personally? When these young people think
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: Lebron James is the best basketball boy that's ever played,
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: Maybe I should But yeah, maybe I should back off
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: a little bit.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: You know, it seems like a personal affront. No, I
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: resonate what you're saying. I think, I mean, these examples
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: are going to be individual, but I'll try to couch
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: them back into a collective understanding. So there was a
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: point where I was I had resigned as a dean,
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: and the faculty members were kind of coming into my
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: office and somewhere saying goodbye. Cordially, others were a little
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: less happy with me, and so they were pleased to
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: see me go. And one of the I was trying
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: to practice this I had gotten into Edwin Friedman. He
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: wrote a book called The Failure of Nerve and Nity,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: talks about being a non anxious present, having this self
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: differentiate character. And one of the things that I noted
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: noticed is I started to execute that like tried to
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: really live into that was that it was easy for me,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: just my personality, to become fairly callous to what other
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: people were feeling. And so by that point, I'd started
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: thinking to myself, this can't become an excuse for me
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: not to care about other people, right, because that's not
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: really what I wanted to do. What I wanted to
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: do was was to and I decided on this was
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: to be recognize my own boundaries but also exhibit a
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: care and a curiosity for the person talking to me.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: And so when I was sitting with this particular faculty member,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: he said something like, I think your resignation was a
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: gift from God, and I'm so grateful that you're leaving, right,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: And I think it's the sort of comment, right that
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: would elicit an angry reaction, But in the moment, I
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: just thought, to myself, I wonder what's going on in
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: his mind and like his emotions, his perspective that he
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: feels like A he needs to convey that to me,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: and B that he's feeling that deep sense of angst
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: about it, right, Like, what is it What's going on
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: in him that this is such a crucial issue for him? Right?
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: And I think that not being defensive in the moment
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: helped that conversation go better than it would have otherwise, right,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: because my response then was conditioned on, hey, why don't
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: you why don't you voice that a little differently, why
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: don't you help me understand why that is? Like, what
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: is it about something that I did, you know, or whatever,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: you know who I am, that you feel like it's
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: great that I'm leaving. Help me understand it. And so
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: we had a really ten conversation, fairly awkward, where he
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: voiced some of his opinions, but I wasn't concerned about
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: it because I knew he didn't really want to know
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: the context in which some of the decisions I'd made
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: had been made. And so it was like I had
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: a job and I exercised my responsibilities with integrity, and
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: I felt okay about it, and so I just really
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: wanted to understand his perspective and see if I could
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: learn anything from it. I say that it's sort of
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: like when we're looking out at the world right as
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: the church, sometimes I think what we want to do
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: is we want to insulate ourselves from the world or
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: say all the things that the world is doing are bad. Right.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: I had a gentleman asked me the other day while
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: I was on Stand in the Gap, and the host
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: asked me why I thought that so many political candidates
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: have change oriented messages that they use during their campaigns.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: And my response was, is this, Like, it's because people
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: are feeling a degree of pain and are looking for
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: a change that will alleviate it. Like, we need to
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: recognize that not everything is pernicious in politics. A lot
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: of it is limited human leaders trying to figure out
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: how to alleviate the pain that society is feeling, and
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: doing so largely apart from God, apart from God's resources,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: without really factoring God in the equation. And so the
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: decisions they make are reasonable from the perspective that they
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: don't have any other framework other than I have these
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: limited resources and I'm going to try to shuffle them
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: around to solve certain societal problems. I always use the
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: example of Pharaoh, and while I don't agree with his methods, right,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: if you just look at the logic he's using when
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: he sees the multiplication of the Israelites, you can't fault
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: him for exercising his responsibility. He's basically saying that the
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Israelites are multiplying, they're going to become more numerous than
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: we are, and if an enemy comes, they're going to
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: join with the enemy and defeat us. Well as a
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: ruler of a nation, that's sort of important to notice, right,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: And so the way he responds to it, the things
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: that he does, we don't have to agree with, but
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: we can understand why he would do it. We can
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: understand why he recognizes this as a problem as opposed
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: to recognizing it as the blessing of God that he
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: should really work with, as opposed to work against. And
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: I think that there's a as we refuse to be
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: defensive about some of these things, I think we can
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: have more productive conversations, both within the Church and with
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: with non Christians about some of these more contentious issues
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: that tend to divide us as opposed to unitus.
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a couple of examples there, we're really helpful to
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: think through this. I want to take the last one,
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: just in the interest of time, Yeah, and have a
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: bit of a thought experiment as to what could have
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: been the way that you describe Pharaoh. I think that's
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: a really helpful way to take a character in the Bible,
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: who might often be considered that other one whose boundaries
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: outside of mind that it's very easy to dismiss right
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: and just flatten out as the bad guy. But you've
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: helped us look at him and say, well, from the
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: framework of him being the ruler of a nation, his
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: interest has to be in the good of that nation.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: I want to take that and think about that for
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: a moment and think, so, where exactly was the problem?
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: Right on one macro level, we could say the problem
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: with his response was it was a failure to accept
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: the God of gods right as the Old Testament would
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: refer to Yahweh, Yeah, the God of Israel. But on
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: a micro level, he's not even necessarily thinking in that sense.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: He certainly recognizes that that recognizes that these people, these Hebrews,
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: were worshipers of another god. But he looks around and
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: he sees a lot of different people worshiping different gods,
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: and he doesn't have the same reaction to them that
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: he has to the Hebrews. The fear of his and
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: I think it's important to describe in terms of fear
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: is that this is a group of people with the
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: different God and therefore a different set of understanding the
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: nature of the land that he was in, that was
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: inside his lane and right, so he's operating on the
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: basis of fear. That's a great thing to recognize there,
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: and should he hopefully help us to stop and say,
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: how much of my reaction is on the basis of fear?
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: What am I losing? What do I think I'm losing
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: when I draw these hard lines or when I react
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: emotionally to these structural attacks. Am I losing anything at all?
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: Am I on the non important level? Am I losing
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: anything at all? When my brother in law tries to
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: convince me that Lebron James is the greatest basketball player
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: of all time? No, I'm not really losing anything, right,
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: he doesn't convince me. But okay, yea, what so what
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: what then.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: Is then?
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: The is the counter to this that I want to
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: say everything he said was garbage? Of course not. Of
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: course Lebron James is one of the greatest of all time.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: Perhaps I had the greatest career, right, cool, Let's move forward. Yeah,
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: So that that that dynamic of fear is something to
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: recognize that I think transfers immediately. But then I think
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: we can take that to another level and say, what
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: did that fear cause him to miss? He failed to
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: recognize that these Hebrew people actually had a stakes in
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: his land as well, Right, so perhaps they would join
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: with the outsiders. But why would they join with the
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: outsiders when they've been with these Egyptian people at that
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: point for generations?
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: Is there perhaps a way that they've been in that land,
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: treated in that land that would cause them to side
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: with foreign invaders that they don't know? What would what
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: would create that alliance? And so one might think that
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: rather than act out of fear, he could he could
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: respond by saying, what is it that we can do
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: in this land so that these people don't think that
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: they have to join with other people against us? Perhaps
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: the answer is that they have to then worship the
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: gods of the Egypt. And if that's the case, Okay,
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: I understand his response that, well, that's not going to
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: ever happen. But it's not clear to me that he
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: had to have that response because he's had generations of
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: evidence that they could worship a different god and be there, Right,
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: So what is it that he could do to help
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: them feel like they belonged in that place?
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: Now?
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: If that seems like overly touchy of a reading of
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: the passage. I think just the implication here is to
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: think now about the Church of I think we tend
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: to have these fears that if I allow someone to
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: question this point of mine, that's going to result in
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: some slippery slope that will eventually lead me into The
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: words we've used off air are liberalism, or the words
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: that I've heard are you'll be a postmodern or you'll
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: be a heretic, which those three terms, in my understanding
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: or my hearing, tend to be used a poorly and
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: b synonymously. They're all the same thing. But the basic
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: idea is they will reject what makes us who we are.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: But if that's the case, and we're talking about people
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: who ostensibly love Jesus, we have to ask ourselves then
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: to turn it back to our own question of what
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: we can control. What is it that we think makes
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: us who we are. Is it a confession about Jesus,
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: Is it a confession about the nature of divine revelation
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: that comes forth in the text, or is it a
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: set of interpretations that we've decided must and can only
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: be those interpretations? And I think, unfortunately it's often that
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: last thing rather than the first two things. And to
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: me that signals sort of what might be behind those
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: invisible elements that cause us to be afraid.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's good. I think I actually don't
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: think this way of understanding the Exodus narrative is out
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: of bounds. And so when we read the Exodus narrative,
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: what we find is that this is the Pharaoh who knew,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: not Joseph, and so he has no context for understanding
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: why this multiplication is happening. He has no context for
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: understanding how the Hebrews and the Israelites, and particularly Joseph
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: ended up blessing Egypt. And instead of asking a few questions,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: he lets his fear wall him off from these other people,
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: and he takes on a protectionist stance. And I do
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: think that there's a real lesson there, even then when
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: he's confronted, right, So, I think people sort of sometimes
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: mishear me when I say this, but I would say
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: his first acts against the Hebrews are done out of ignorance.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: This is Pharaoh accidentally being against God. He's not opting
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: to go against Yahweh at this point. He just doesn't
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: know what he's doing. He misrecognizes the situation, doesn't investigate
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: it enough, and ends up going against the grain of
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: God's blessing. Then as we fast forward into the narrative
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: and we see that, you know, even when Moses is
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: telling him, Hey, this is what's going to happen, this
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: is how things are going to go down, he decides, no,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: I'm going to oppose this. This isn't actually going to happen.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: That's when it starts to get more willful. But you know,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: based on the conversation we're having right now, there is
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: a systemic sort of practice that Pharaoh was doing here
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: that ultimately he is He's doing the same thing over
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: and over and over and over and over, and even
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: after the Plague of the Firstborn, when he lets the
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: Israelites go, he quickly changes his mind and goes after him,
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: and so he is sort of stuck in this interesting cycle.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: But I think to your point, when we're as the church,
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: when we're sitting back, we're afraid that we are going
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: to dilute ourselves somehow, and so we have to pull
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: back in and create like a hard boundary. I think
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: that is problematic in a number of ways. I actually
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: think this is the sin that we see God hold
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: against the church in Ephesis and Revelation, that they've abandoned
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: their first love. There are many commentators, myself included, who
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: would argue that their first love. What's really happening there
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: is that Ephesis is pulled back from the world, isolated themselves,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: and instead of compromising in the way that let's say,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: like the Laodicean Church does right by, you know, sort
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: of participating in all these different economic practices and really
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: becoming part of the Groco Roman world and all those
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: kind of things, Ephesis is pulled back and refused to witness.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: They've refused to be that testimony that God calls us
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: to be in the world. And so there's a there's
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: a polarity there that we should recognize that it is
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: possible on that reading of Ephesus to be too closed
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: off in the world right to be absolutely right doctrinally,
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: to be holy, to be uncompromised in sort of a
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: purity sense, but still deny ourselves the basic functions of
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: what the church is to do, proclaiming the Gospel out
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: to the nations, making disciples. On the whole other end
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: of that spectrum, there's a possibility of being so assimilated
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: into the surrounding culture that no one can tell the
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: difference between the church and the culture. Also a problem
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: in the middle. There's this interesting negotiation that has to happen,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: and I think we're constantly sort of finding our way
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: in understanding when are we closing ourselves off too much?
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: When are we opening ourselves up too much? And that
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: isn't going to be just a straight line down the road.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: It's going to sort of waver back and forth a
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: little bit. It's going to oscillate. I think our trouble
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: and the danger I see is that we pick a side.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: It's either the side of isolation and closure or the
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: side of radical openness, neither of which does us any
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: particular favors. One I think dissolves the boundaries. The other
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: makes the boundaries far too narrow and rigid and divides
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: the church. Either way, we're losing aspects of our identity
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: on either one of those sides of the spectrum, when
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: where we need to be is together, united in Christ
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: managing our disagreements. One of my favorite passages, Roma's twelve
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: to ten out do one another in showing honor right
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: like this is the space we need to be in
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: because that's really who we are. It's not that dine
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter. It's not that the content of our faith
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter, but it's not the only thing that matters.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: The way we execute that content, the way we think
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: about it, the way we dialogue with one another, actually matters.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: It's constitutive of who we are. And I think that
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: is that system's issue that we very seldom really deal with.
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The only thing I'd want to add is that
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: the degree to which doctrine matters is always as a
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: pointing tool, right. It is what hermeneuticians would call second order,
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: which is different than the way that David van Dyke
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: would use it. But it's second order in the sense
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: that it isn't. It's an interpretive grid, and so its
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: role is always to direct us. And the question is
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: to what well it's to direct us to life in
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: and with God in Christ. Yeah, heart stop. And if
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: the doctrine itself becomes the stopping point, then the doctrine
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: actually is doing something as if it is first order,
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: as if it is the thing itself. Yeah, And I
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: fear that that's the rut the mind, the habit of
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: the mind that we've allowed ourselves to fall into. Maybe
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: that's a conversation for another time, but the historical theologian
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: Hans Fry actually makes this point that in some ways
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: the conservative and liberal trajectory as we think of twentieth century,
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: nineteenth and twentieth and twenty first century Christian theology and
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: the Americas are two sides of the same coin. They've
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: both released the thrust of biblical narrative and replaced it
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: with the second order things of On the conservative side,
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: the doctrine as the thing itself, which is now no
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: longer open for revision because the thing behind it, the
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: biblical narrative, has lost its place as the primary reality.
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: And on the liberal side things it's the ethical mandates,
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: and now the ethical not surprisingly, also becomes lost and
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: very easily codified rights and wrongs that itself doesn't fit
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: the sort of dynamic that we see in virtue, which
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: is the dispositional behavior, the drawing close to the right
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: things to shape us dispositionally, and that's right. Thing that
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: we want to draw close to is the narrative. And
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: instead we draw close then to our structures, and the
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: structures become violent, even to the point where virtue has
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: become violent historically because of the structures drawn near to
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: So I think that's where we want to make s.
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: You know, the rigidity happens partly because we we misinterpret
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: or mismanage these proximal goods, as folks like a Coitus
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: would say, these things that are good as secondary things
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: pointing to something else, and we make those proximal goods
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: the ultimate good.
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: What you're saying reminds me, Jeremiah said, Jeremiah seven is
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: one of my favorite prophetic passages, and it's the one
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: where you have the threefold repetition of the temple by
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: the false prophets. And basically what we have in Jeremiah
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: seven is this condemnation of a group of people who
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: are are looking at the temple and saying, if the
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: temple is still standing, God is still with us. If
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: the temple is still standing, no calamity will befall us. Right,
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: God is in some ways captive to the temple, and
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: so as long as the temple is still here, we
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: don't have to worry about anything. And Jeremiah steps in
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: and says, no, that's not true. Second order, right, the
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: temple is second order, And so I think that as
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: we fetishize some of these things, right, as we look
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: at the temple and say, oh my gosh, there's the temple,
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: or as we do this with doctrine right a particular position,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: what that can start to do is to distort our
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: understanding of our relationship with God, our relationship with others,
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: and our relationship to creation. And that's what we really
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: see in Jeremiah seven. It's Thomas Overholt wrote a little
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: book called The Threat of Falsehood where he deals with
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: Jeremiah seven a good bit, and essentially what he's arguing
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: is that these false prophets are creating a false narrative
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: and enticing the people to attune their lives to that
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: false narrative, which ends up putting them at odds with
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: God as opposed to cultivating allegiance to God. And I think,
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: honestly we see this in Act seven as well. Another
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: chapter seven that I like. But in Act seven we
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: look at Steven's speech. So this is before Stephen is
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: going to be stoned. He's been condemned of speaking out
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: against the law and the Temple, and what he does
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: throughout this whole speech in Act seven is he highlights
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: all the different ways that God has been with his
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: people outside of the land and outside of the temple.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: And what he's trying to get the Jews to understand
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: is the category mistake they're making is that God always
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: works here in this little box. And what Stephen is
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: saying is, no, he doesn't just work inside that that
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: little box, and he never has. You're ignoring pieces of
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: the story to make it fit this this box that
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: you've put God in, But he's not actually there. He's
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: all over the place. He's doing these things outside of
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: the land. He's you know, he's doing these things apart
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: from the temple, apart from the tabernacle, like this is
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: the God we serve. And so I think in both
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: instances they illustrate the point we're trying to make, which
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: is we can't pretend that we can close God in right,
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: put God in a box and say this is what
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: This is what God is, this is how God op rates,
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: and this is the only way God operates. What we
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: have are we have some guardrails, some soft guard rails
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: to keep us within a certain span of Yeah, we
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: know these things about God now as we live within
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: those guardrails, whether guardrails is the right analogy or not,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: But we live within those guardrails. But that's all they
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: really are. They're guardrails, right, They're the bumpers and bumper
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: bowling right like that. We like they're just keeping us honest,
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: but they aren't the thing that we're shooting for. And
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: I think that's sort of those two passages I think
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: highlight a good bit of what we've been talking about.
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that reminds me of Augustine who speaks of the
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: path and in his work on Christian teaching, he says
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: the path is is there not because it is the
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: end and of itself, but because of where it's leading.
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: So it is to work.
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: Lass, Can you leave that path and still get where
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: you're going? It said, yeah, actually sure, but how would
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: you know where to go?
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: If you get there? It sort of becomes an accident.
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: The goal of the path is to make sure you
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: get there. But the corollary to that that I think
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: we're trying to get out here is it's also entirely
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: possible the one walks the path and then they stop
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: and just start to adore the path, you know, and
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: they stop walking, they stop moving and become fixated with
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: singing the praises of that path, being dedicated to that path,
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: defending that path, right when that was never really the
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: point of the path.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was out. Maybe i'll close with this. We
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: can keep talking. But I was at a coffee shop
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: this morning and these gentlemen were sitting at a table
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: over next to me, and they were doing a Bible study,
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: and so I got up to use the restroom and
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: I asked him to watch my stuff for me. And
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: when I came back, they most of them had left
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: and there were just a couple of guys there. And
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: that's this one gentleman. I just said, Hey, where you
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: guys go to church at? And he his comment was,
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: he's like, oh, we all go to different churches. And
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: so he's like, I went, I go to this Lutheran
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: church just down the road. But you know, Bob's a
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: Southern Baptist, and you know Joe goes to the Presbyterian
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: church or whatever. And he said, we've been talking to
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: him for such a long time, many years of getting
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: a Bible study together, and it doesn't matter what church
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: you go to. It doesn't matter, you know, what your
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: doctrinal statement is. He didn't say it like that. But
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: that's basically what he was saying. He's like, we just
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: all get together and we try to understand what gods
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: were to say. I was like, that's that's pretty cool, Like,
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: you know, that's that's odd in a way and awesome
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: in another right. And so I think it's good because obviously,
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: and I listened in a little bit. It was hard
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: not to listen to him. I mean, they're there are
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: like six guys at a table right next to me,
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: and so you know, you hear things, right, but they're discussing,
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: you know, one of them's got the King James open,
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: another one's got the NIV open. They're like actually discussing
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: the passages and trying to figure stuff out and just
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: having a good time together. They're not like there's no
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: there was no animosity at the table. There's no yelling
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: back and forth. It was just like, oh, you know,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: well I wonder what that is, and I wonder how
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: that would work, and I want, you know, like it
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: was just a lot of deliberation at the table. It
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: was kind of fun to listen to. And I think
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: that that in that I would didn't really think about
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: it at the time, but it's sort of like, that's
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: a great picture of what I think the church is
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: supposed to be. Right, there are obvious disagreements at that
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: table to guarantee, the Southern Baptist doctoral statement looks different
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: than the Lutheran Churches doctoral statement one hundred percent right,
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: like for sure, But it didn't matter. It didn't matter,
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: And you could argue, all maybe they didn't understand it
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: well enough or they don't you know, and it's like, well, no,
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: I think they understand it well enough. I think they
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: actually get what they're doing right, Like they have a
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: vision for a unified church that transcends denominations and they're
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: getting together to do something about it. Great, right, So yeah,
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: just an interesting picture that you don't always see, right,
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: You just don't always see it. We've gotten so fractured
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: that sometimes I think we forget that we are all
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: part of the same body. Indeed, any novel thought, novel
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: thought right. Well, anyway, I found that conversation with Dave,
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: Dave and Dyke really compelling. I've always been interested in
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: the systems theory, and so I appreciate it. I'm this
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: conversation about it with us or with me, and we'll
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: close it out there. We'll probably revisit this some other time.
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: We're hoping to have some of the marriage and family
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: systems folks from Weeting on and and do a little
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: bit more with them. I think it's really a fascinating field,
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: especially as we think about ecclesiology. I've tended to approach
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: that through sociology, but I do think marriage and family
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: systems cuts a little different than sociology usually does, and
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: so I find their stuff pretty fascinating. But anyway, thanks
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: for the conversation, and thanks everybody for listening. We'll catch
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: you on the next episode of Thinking Christian Take Care.
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: I just want to take a second to thank the
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com,
• 57:32
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• 57:36
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