Latest / Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture / The Fear of Syncretism Is Making the Church Assimilate

Transcript

The Fear of Syncretism Is Making the Church Assimilate · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: doctor James Spencer. I'm joined by doctor Ashish Pharma, and
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: we're going to be talking a little bit today about
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: this idea of assimilation and how in the world the
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: church tends to lose its shape, let's say, as the
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: world sort of encroaches into it. There's an incorporation that
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: sort of happens where the Church and the world start
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: to look a lot more alike than we might want
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: or hope, and so it becomes a problem of identity,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: it becomes a problem of thought process, it becomes a
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: problem of values, and so that's what we're going to
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: be talking.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: A little bit about today.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: We'll do a few episodes on the different problems we
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: sort of see, our forces that we see pressuring in
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: on the church and keeping the Church from developing that
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: sort of mature, uncompromising faith that says, hey, I'm going
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: to obey Christ even when the consequences are fairly negative.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: And figuring this out.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: So this first one is assimilation, but well we'll dive
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: in in future episodes into what we call fragmentation and
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: then transaction. So that's what's coming up. But today assimilation,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: So I'll leave it there. But ah wan, don't you
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: start us off help us. Maybe you'd mentioned something before
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: the podcast about syncretism, and I think people have probably
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: heard that term and off a lot. I've used that
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: term and off a lot. I'm interested to understand your
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: thoughts on syncretism. So why don't we just jump in
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: right there?
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: I love jumping right in, jump into the deep end, right,
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: and then might as well the shock of the cold,
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: you get over it quicker, that's right. So the two
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: are often welded together for me, and that when I've
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: gotten into conversations with assimilation, often in the classroom, I
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: often hear students raise the concern of syncretism, and I
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: think the connection for them is, generally, if assimilation is
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: the problem of one group absorbing into itself another so
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: that there's a loss of itself. The fear, on the
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: other end is when that sort of assimilation is is
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: compared to a religious setting or setting in which you
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: have people concerned that we're going to lose the basics
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: of our faith, We're going to lose the core of
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: what it means to be in our case Christian, because
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: we've allowed ourselves to get too close to something else,
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: whether it be a culture, a way of thinking.
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: And often this is.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: One directional right, it's a group of people that have,
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: whether they recognize it or not. Usually it's they don't
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: recognize it, a very culturally saturated understanding of their faith
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: and often very traditioned. Right that it's been deep rooted
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: for so long that these traditions just become the normativities
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: of what it means to express their faith. And that's
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: now engaging with another culture that's beginning to do similar
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: sorts of things, right, starting to gain roots or begin
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: to articulate the message of Jesus in light of its
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: own place, and the fear then enters in of whoa
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: that sounds too much like fill in the blank, whatever
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: your culture is, right, right, So generally that conversation of
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: syncretism that flows out of the assimilation conversation is a
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: fear based conversation. I'm afraid of losing the essence of
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: what makes Christianity what it is. Yeah, Now, I put
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: it that way deliberately because I want to highlight my
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: use of the word essence. There is already philosophically and
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: culturally saturated sure, right, And what I want to get
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: at within that is that there's a way discussing things
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: that's irretrievably tied to locality. So we think about universals,
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: we think about generalities, we think about common sense, these
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: things that should be true here, there and everywhere, and
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: it makes sense that we think in those terms. But
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: my reaction, my initial reaction, is to say that we
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: take for granted in that moment, how we don't know
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: anything as generalities, We don't know anything as universals. Everything
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: we know. And so my case in Boinde is one
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: of the other things we were talking about, completely unrelated,
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: was teaching in Europe, right.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: At a place I used to teach, one of the
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: perks was this opportunity regularly to go teach these these
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: programs abroad. And I might have mentioned it on this
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: podcast in some previous times, So forgive me if this
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: was repetition, but I will never forget this moment we're
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: teaching in. I'm teaching in Germany and the setting we're
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: living in this youth hostel for me for weeks, for
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: the students for months. Part of the deal is they
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: have this very German breakfast right, yep, these mini loaves
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: of bread that are fantastic, fresh fruit, cheese, cold cuts,
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: put out some dutella, and students initially think that's breakfast.
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: Maybe they're used to.
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: Cereal and milk, or reanola and yogurt.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: Or make stup scrambled eggs.
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right, that's right.
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: But by the time they get into this a couple
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: months in, it's like this is normal to them, and
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: they love it. I'll never forget the initial part though,
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: And the initial thing was having these students walk up
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: to the to the little food bar where all this
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: stuff is laid out, and there's the basket of fruit,
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: and they look at the apples and they know that
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: it's an apple. It's not a confusion as to what
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: it is, right, but there's still a level of huh.
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: And the reason is and and I have an inverse
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: example of this as well. So before I get to
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: the punch one of this, let me give the inverse.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: I had a student in my philosophy class years ago
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: who was from Germany, Okay, and I was telling this story,
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: and her first reaction was to start laughing and say,
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: that's how I feel about American apples. All right, So
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: where's the juxtaposition. You go to a major American supermarket
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: and you go look at the apples and they are big,
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: and they are perfect spheres, and they have this mild
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: layer of wax on them so they're shiny, and they
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: work hard to make sure that you don't find one
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: with the dent or the bruise in it. Right, And
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: it's this idyllic image of the apple, and not just
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: the students, all of us. We go to the store,
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: we have this image in mind. And now when I
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: say apple, the first image that pops into mind is
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: that thing.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: And that's just not what you're gonna find in Germany.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: Right, So you go to Germany and you you have
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: this thing that's not waxy, and it's not big, and
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: it's often not a perfect sphere. Its color is kind
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: of dull. It's a dull red, right, because it hasn't
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: been polished.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: So my German student had that image in mind and
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: she sees these American apples like, what in the world
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: is going on with this? I've never seen apples like this,
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: even if there's enough similarity that she knows, right, Yeah,
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: And these American students in Germany are like, what in
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: the world is going on with this? I could take
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: two bites and be done with this thing, right right.
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: My point in this is.
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: That whatever image we have in our head, it came
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: from somewhere. So even as we think in generalities, think
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: in universals, think about the perfect form of the apple.
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: If you want to think click a Titaness.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: Philosopher, we never get the image in our head from nowhere.
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: I'd say the same thing what I do with my
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: students now with regard to the category of what is
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: a weed? Now, some of them are funny, and they
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: think immediately of marijuana, and I think, okay, cool. But
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: the ones who are thinking about a weed in terms
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: of the garden, a dandelion, creeping Charlie. You know, I
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: can't run all the weeds that we have out there, crabgrass,
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: These sorts of images pop into their head.
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: Flower, a.
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: Zenia arose, a daffodil, right, a buttercup, something like this
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: pops into their head. Now, how come the wild violet,
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: the dandelion, these all have flowers on them. Why are
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: they in one category versus the other? Again, the point
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: here is that there is no universal This says more
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: about us in the way that our language has been
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: shaped by our place, by our expectations, by our desires,
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: and we begin to put other things into these categories.
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: And that's not inherently wrong, that's just how languages work.
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: But the trouble creeps in, and this is where we
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: get back to synchronism. The trouble comes in when we
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: fail to recognize how deeply shaped our way of seeing things,
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: hearing things, feeling things, imagining things is by our locality,
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: by our cultures, by our traditions, our histories. And now
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: we get to the Christian faith and we see a
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: Christian faith and that I wanted to flag the word
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: essence earlier because essence is a deeply philosophical term coming
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: out of a particular Greek philosophical tradition that has saturated
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: Western thought and its development in multiple cultures, and especially
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: saturated the formation of Christian theology as we know it.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: You go to Scripture, the language of essence is just
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: not there, right, not because it's wrong to use that
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: as theological category, but because the form you break thinking.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: Right, right, they wouldn't have ever called it essence, right.
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: That's right.
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So we're very quick and easy to use, these
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: languages that are deeply shaped and cultured and local and traditioned,
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: and so on and so forth. But in that process
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: to miss that it is just that it's not some
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: sort of pure version of the faith. And now when
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: we see another culture that's newer to the faith trying
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: to wrestle with the same sorts of things, we call
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: it syncretism.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's helpful.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Actually, my framework for syncretism was a little different, but
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: I am with you on what you're saying. In Old
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Testament theology, syncretism is a very clear thing, right. We
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: can talk about scism in the Old Testament, for instance,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: where we have Israelite practices, usually idolatrous, but not always,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: there's a an intake of what is clearly stated to
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: be inappropriate adoption of foreign cultural practices into Israelite society,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: which then creates these sort of mergers of incompatible notions
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: under what's broadly called Yahwism. And so I think the
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: difference so just as I'm hearing you talk, and we
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: might tease this out a little bit, when the Bible,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: i mean the Bible is making it explicit, right, it's
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: not saying that any cultural appropriation would be problematic. Right,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: it's saying that these particular ones are compromising Israelite faith
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: and creating a skewed understanding of who God is and
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: how God operates within Israelite society. That's often referred to
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: as syncretism in Old Testament theology. But what you're talking
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: about I agree with. I think we have to be
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: very careful and recognized that we are culturally rooted and
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: that not every difference would count as syncretism, which is
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: going to have a negative and pejorative understanding of what
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: that actually is. Right, So when we say something is syncretistic,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: we're essentially saying it's heretical. It's a soft form of heretical. Right,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: You've accommodated to the culture, You've compromised, You've allowed something
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: in that shouldn't have ever come in. As opposed to recognizing, no,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: that's not exactly what this is. We can't equate this
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: exactly to the sort of quote unquote syncretism that we
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: identify in scripture, which that word is never used in scripture,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: by the way, either it's Old Testament theology, right, is
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: naming a dynamic within the Old Testament syncretism. So that's
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: not biblical terminology, it's Old Testament theology terminology.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: But when we.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: See that in the scripture, yeah, okay, we can name that.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: We can see it. It's clearly an abruption, like these
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: are problematic things, but when we see it out in
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: the world, we have to be I think, more careful
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: with it.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: You can almost argue that the fact.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: That we are naming something syncretistic when we see it
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: in another culture is a sign of our assimilation into
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: our own culture. In other words, the depth of ingrainment
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: that we have in our own culture keeps us from
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: recognizing that this other expression by other Christians may actually
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: be helpful and appropriate and a necessary understanding for us
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: to recognize as part of what it means to have
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: a good Christian witness. At the very least, we should
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: recognize it as something that could be very good within
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: a given culture of that culture's witness. And so I
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: think that that what you're describing would point back to
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: an assimilation to our own.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: Culture right where we've lost the script.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Of I like to think I'll give a really cultural
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: example to illustrate this. I've kind of gotten into this
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: idea that it's like an operating system. There's firmware, right
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: that defines the logic of a given system. So any
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: computer we purchase, or an iPad or a phone or
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: something like that has a basic logic to it, and
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: every app that we put on that, every piece of
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: software we put on that has to be formatted to
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: fit that logic. So we could say that the firmware
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: is the governing logic of this system, and everything we
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: put onto it has to conform to that governing logic.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: And I think that part of.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: What we struggle with when we're dealing with this emmolation
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: is recognizing that, yeah, well we may have to conform
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: our behavior to within a given culture. As Christians. We
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: see this all over the New Testament. We talked about
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: in other episodes, where Paul is arguing that, hey, we
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: can still fit within these structures, we just have to
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: think about them differently.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: So there is that aspect.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: But I think when the governing firm where starts to
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: skew the way we even think about things, that's where
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: there's a baseline assimilation that starts to happen. I don't
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: know if that makes sense, but throw it out there.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: It does. And so it leads to I have I
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: should be clear and say my concern with the conversations
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: that I often hear on syncretism doesn't mean that I
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: don't that I think everything goes right, right. I want
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: to tease out the Old Testament stuff.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, go for it, because I think that.
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: Actually helps us understand the sorts of dynamics we're working
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: with here. You're the Old Testament scholar, correct me where
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: I go wrong. But I want to put them in
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: tension with Acts chapter two, right where in Acts chapter two,
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: the disciples receive the power of the Spirit coming into
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: them and they start to speak, and people marvel specifically
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: that at this point it's Jews from diaspora who've come
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: back to Jerusalem. Yes, and so they've come back. Now
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: they're hearing the message of Jesus being proclayed to them
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: in their own tongue.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: And I think that that's a significant claim, right, especially
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: to the degree that languages contain the boundaries, the ways
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: of thinking, the localities. Right, So some things are just
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: lost in translation. But I hear people say chai tea,
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: I get irritated because chai means tea. But I also
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: get it because what an Indian person means by is
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: not precisely what a British person would mean.
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: By tea right in America.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: So that's such that I've been in a situation where
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: someone offered me chai and I said yes, and I
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: got a little thing with a green tea tea bag
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: and hot water. Like, what the heck is this?
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: This isn't what I signed up.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: For language for this, This isn't right. That's right.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: So I get the tension in that moment, right that
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: to say chai tea is redundant. But I get also
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: that when people say chai tea there, yeah, you know,
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: there's layers going on. Yeah, they're saying they're referring to
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: something different than the bag of green tea and hot water.
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: But I also get that when people say chai t
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: they're probably referring to something from Starbucks.
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: That is not chai.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, so there's there's at least three things
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: going on. Yeah, languages do.
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: That to it this That's what I'm trying to say.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And the fact that you have acted chapter two
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: making that distinct point about language, I take it to
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: mean that no one language gets to declare that central normativity,
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: which means no set of categories gets declare one set
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: of central normativity to accessing Jesus. And sure enough the
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: rest of Acts is about not just to the Jew
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: but to the gentile, and the gentile not a second
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: class citizen. But what was far drawing near right? So
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: Acts fifteen in some ways the climax there. So I
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: say that to now put that intention with the Old Testament,
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: that it seems to me that when we have this
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: thing that Old Testament scholars will call syncretism. In the
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: Old Testament, what's at stake there is Yahweh worship. Yes, always,
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: so the syncretism of bringing Yeah, so the syncretism of
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: capitulating to Canaanite ways is not capitulating to some other groups'
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: ways of making chy or cooking rotti or bread or
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: something like that.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: Right, correct.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: The issue here is the centering of life around the
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: appeasing and worship of some.
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: God who is not Yahweh.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: That absolutely is a concern.
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: Right, And if the concern here is a detraction from
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: as we understand Yahweh as the triune God revealed in
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: the person of Jesus and administered to us by the
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: breathing out of his very own breath, as we see
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: at the end of John Yep, the Holy Spirit. Right,
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: if that is undermined in speaking in a different tongue,
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: then the issue here isn't that we've entered a different
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: tongue with another set of categories. The issue here is
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: we're no longer talking about the God of Abraham, Isaac
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: and Jacob. That's right, the God revealed in the person
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: of Jesus Christ.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I agree, and that's a problem. Yeah.
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: But if the issue here is that you've begun to
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: use categories that don't align with the long tried and
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: true versions of speaking essentialism.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: Right, totally dif, then we got there. Yeah. Right.
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: So one of the ways in which I've seen this
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: is as an Indian who is a Christian, I have
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: long felt that there's a challenge to be given, and
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: that challenge is that because of the way that modern Christianity.
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: So there's an older tradition of Christianity in India, there's a
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: modern tradition of Christianity. The way the modern Christianity came
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: to India was through British colonialism. Sure, merchant and soldier
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: and missionary were working in tandem in a shared sort
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: of project, such that those who embrace Jesus through the
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: modern missionaries to India, I can affirm in this Philippians,
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: one kind of way of the Gospel was preached, and
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: I take joy in that, but I also am saddened
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: by the fact that part of that project was we
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: need to break being.
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: Indian out of you.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: Yes, right.
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: So unfortunately that that version of the Church that comes
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: from the modern missionary movement in India rightfully so gets accused,
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: I think by other Indians as rejecting being Indian. And
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: it seems to me that the logic of Acts two
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: and following is that no Indian is capable not only
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: of bearing the presence of Christ, but ritually embracing, rather
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: than being a secondary category. So with that in mind,
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: it's been very important to me over the years, and
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: I've written essays in the past on this, on how
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: the Valley, which is in some ways, especially in northern India,
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: but two larger Hindu India, kind of Christmas it is
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: the chief There's tons of holidays, but it's kind of
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: the chief holiday.
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: And the basic premise of the Valley is that.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: The God ram entered into the kingdom of Rabin, who's
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: a a demon god, to rescue his bride who'd been kidnapped,
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: to liberate her, set her free. And the tagline of
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: it is light overcomes darkness.
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: Now, if we strip away and.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: We strip away it ob and these names, right, it
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: sounds very very Christian, to be honest.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: You get a lot of resonances. Yeah, that's right.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And so my writing has been to the effect of,
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: you know, can Indian Christians embrace the valley, which on
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: the surface might sound like how dare they? That sounds
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: like the same secretism you just said in the Old
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: Testament is not allowed, right, the portrayal of yahweh worship
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: for someone else worship. But my parallel here is to
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: think about Christmas December twenty fifth. Yeah, how did we
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: get there? We didn't get there from the Bible, there's
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: no date. We didn't get there from the snow. I
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: don't get the sense in the Middle East that there's
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: very much snow. We got there because Christianity really seemed
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: to take root in the Greco Roman world, and in
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: that Greco Roman world, especially under the Latin influence of Rome,
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: had this holiday called Saturnalia. On December twenty fifth, then
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: among other things, Saturn, who's God, the father of the gods. Right,
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: Jupiter is the high god, Saturn is the father of him. Yep, oh,
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: that sounds like it has some resonance, right, the father
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: and Saturn. Parents would give their children gifts on Saturnalia
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: as a bestower of the parent, Saturn bestowing his gifts.
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: And Christians saw this and they said, hey, God, the
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: Father gave us the ultimate gift in the person of Jesus. Right,
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: I'm truncating this, right, but you can see within this
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: how Christmas became December twenty fifth.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: And I, by the way, I think that's a beautiful
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: move that Greco Roman Christians, especially Roman Christians, made to say, hey,
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: we can celebrate on the same day and we can
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: testify to.
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: Jesus on it.
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: And I've tried to use that as a parallel to say,
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: can we do that same sort of thing with light
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: overcoming darkness in the voley? Yeah, to me, that's not syncretism.
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: That's an attempt to continue the mission of the Book
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: of Acts.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think so that would square with what's
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: often referred to as syncretism in Old Testament theology, because
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: what you end up having is not so we could
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: easily just call it idolatry in the Old Testament. But
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: the reason I think it gets the nuance of signatism
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: often in the literature is that it's not a straight
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: trading of Yahweh with another god. You don't just reject
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: Yahweh and then pull another god in. What ends up
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: happening is the sole allegiance that you're to have to
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: the Lord to give him all you are and have right.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: This is Deuteronomy six four and five. Right, give the
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: Lord all you are and have right. The short way
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: of saying all that, and so happens in the Old
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Testament is you say, well, Yahweh is great for agriculture, right,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: but I need something for war, right, And so I'm
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: going to pull in bail for war, or I'm going
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: to pull.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: In you know, some other god for war. And you know,
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: God is great for you know.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: The big stuff, but these household gods they really handle
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: the tedium of the day, right, And so I'm going
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: to pull those in. And what ends up happening is
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: you have not a wholesale rejection of Yahweh, but a
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: limiting of him, And what I usually argue is it's
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: a distortion that ultimately results in a denial. So distorting
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Yahweh and making it seem as though he is either
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: incapable of or irrelevant to certain aspects of society is
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: ultimately a denial of who he is. That to me
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: is the best way to shorthand explain what is usually
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: meant by syncretism. It's a practice that sort of brackets
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Yahweh to the side. And so what we have then
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: in your example, what you're saying is no de vali Christmas.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: These things are.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: The term I've been using lately, relocated, so you move
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: them from one sacred social order into another. So now
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: Devali really falls under the story of Christ and his church. Well,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: that's not syncretism, that's a wholesale move over, right, And
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: so now it's sitting under something different, it's sitting under
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: the authority of Christ. It's been reshaped. You can make
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: the same sake case. I think your example of Christmas
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: is right on, and so what we have is not
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: an assimilation to right different culture. I'm going to be
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: a Christian, but I'm going to continue to worship Devali
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: over here and that's going to be fine, because it's
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: really just part of my culture.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: There's a difference in saying that, I think, than what
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: you're saying, which is, no, I'm not going to celebrate
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: d VALEI because it's part of my culture. I'm going
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: to celebrate it with a renewed understanding of it because
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: I've moved it over underneath the authority of Christ and
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: I'm rethinking the whole thing. I'm going to assimilate it
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: under my faith as opposed to allowing myself to be
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: assimilated to it. I think there's a subtle move there
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: that's really crucial. And that Old Testament, like I said,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: what gets assimilated at or we gets understood as syncretism.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: The Old Testament is.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: Largely that it's Yahweh is not in charge of everything.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Yahweh is only in charge of certain things. And once
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: you make that move functionally, you have denied who Yahweh
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: actually is, and in a very important way, especially in
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: ancient Israel.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: But I would argue for the Church as well.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: And so there isn't a there is a cultural condition
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: that I think has to happen, But sometimes we get
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: the impression I think that like we read the Book
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: of Daniel and we say, well, if we eat the
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: king's food, we're going to defile ourselves, and so we
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: have to remain apart from whatever culture we're in. That
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: isn't exactly it, right, Daniel is not refusing the king's
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: food to.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: Avoid cultural appropriation.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, he becomes an expert in Babylonian culture and
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: learning and understanding. It's difficult to believe that doesn't leave
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: some sort of an imprint on him, right, But he's
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: also preserving a deeply rooted we would probably call it
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: identity of some sort and commitment to the Lord by
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: refusing the king's food, right, by not becoming overly dependent
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: on the king. I think the practice is largely intended
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: to remind he and his friends that God is still
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: caring for them, you know, And all the other episodes
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: in Daniel, I think take on a similar flavor. They're
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: going to learn these things about Babylon, They're going to
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: become experts in the culture. They're going to become the
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: wise people of Babylonian society, not because they've refused Babylonian understandings,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: but because they've retained their yahism while learning the Babylonian culture,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: the Babylonian whatever, and so this makes them very unique,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: powerful individuals in that culture because they can now be
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: bridges into it. They can learn the new language, but
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: they understand in a very different way. That's how I
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: kind of read that aspect of it. Does that sort
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: of give you a sense of does that align with
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: what you're saying it?
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: Does the the language that I like to use is transfigured.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you've used that before. I like that a lot.
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So the idea I mean, if you think about
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: the Hebrew scriptures, yep. The way in which Yahweh is
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: depicted in the Hebrew Scriptures is certainly distinct from the
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: way that say, bal would be by the Canaanites, right,
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: or the gods of Egypt or the gods of Babylon.
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: But there's something remarkably similar. And what I mean by
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: that is that the mannerisms, the customs, the traditions, the
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: sorts of things being addressed seem deliberate.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, It's set up in a and we could call
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: it a cultural key, so that those who are among
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: the Canaanites and those who are among the Babylonians and
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: the Persians and the Egyptians. They're not seeing in yahweh
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: something so utterly foreign and distinct that it's category problems. Right.
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: This isn't like the person who grows up at the
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: equator internet suddenly transported to the Arctic saying what is
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: this right?
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: Right? Right?
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: Or vice versa someone who grows up there and whatever
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: they encountered the equator. This is distinction through proximity. Is
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: there's something oddly similar.
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: And yet radically different.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: And that's how honestly, that's how difference makes the most sense.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: If it's so radically different, it doesn't it's not threatening.
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: When the European colonizers came to what we thought we
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: began to think of as the Americas, a lot of
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: them were initially embraced by these First Nations peoples. And
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: I would argue that it's partially because they were so different.
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: A lot of the First Nations peoples would have greater
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: senses of trepidation towards other groups of First Nations peoples. Right,
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: you think about the dam and the Apache. Sure they
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: actually had a different name for themselves. It's escaping me
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: at the moment, But they were not friends in a
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: way in which they were both in different sorts of ways,
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: willing to make partnerships with the expanding Americans not coming west,
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: And part of that was because of such radical difference,
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: there was no sense of threat.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's the.
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: Similarity in which you see, oh yahweh is not one
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: of these, right, that the distinction is made. And I
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: think part of that is just simply for human reasons.
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: What does it mean to eat the idea of an apple?
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: Not only do I even know what the idea of
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: an apple is apart from what I experience, right, either
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: as that big, juicy, round, perfectly perfectly round, waxy thing,
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: or as this small, not as juicy, not so symmetrical
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: or waxy thing. Not only do I not know a
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: apple apart from what I experience in day to day life.
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: And we could go about that with everything. I don't
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: even know within that environment what it would taste like.
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: It's one of those apples more ideal than the other.
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: I don't know, Like sure, I guess, yeah. Like My
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: point here is that the categories that the Revelation to
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: the Hebrews had to make sense, something so radically different
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: that it didn't make cultural sense would have been so
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: radically different, that there's no basis for understanding, which is
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: all to say again that the Hebrew texts are working
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: precisely within a cultural bubble, let's call it. And it's
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: a challenge because it's in that cultural bubble, not in
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: spite of it, so that when you now begin to
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: think about the moving of the text and the Gospel
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: into other spheres, it's got to make sense within that,
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: and to call one purer than the other just on
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: the basis of the culture, that's a part of I
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: think misses the thrust of the Book of Acts, and
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: I think it if forecloses on the richness of what
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: the old US narratives are trying to do within those environments. Right,
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: Why these rules that say you can't eat food that
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: comes from animals with cleft feet like in and of itself?
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: I think that the rest of the Old Testament and
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: the New Testament make it clear that doesn't really mean anything, right,
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: but it certainly meant something to them because they lived
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: in an environment where these were the sorts of rules
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: around them, and Yahweh worship was now distinguishing itself within that.
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: Does that make sense?
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: It does?
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: So let me try to rephrase a little bit, and
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: I'll use the Old Testament studies arena to do this.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: But there's been this sort of myth for a really
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: long time now that Old Testament law is let's say,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: more just than any other ancient Near Eastern law. That
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: you see more mercy in the Old Testament law than
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: you do in the ancient Near Eastern law. But as
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: we've studied ancient Eary Eastern law codes outside of Israel,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: outside of what we find in the Old Testament, that
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: really doesn't bear itself out. It's arguable that ancient Your
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: Eastern law codes were in certain instances more merciful than
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: what we find in the Old Testament. So even when
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: we have analogs, let's say, of different laws like how
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: long you could keep a slave, or what a basic
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: punishment might be, or something like that, many times the
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: ancient Near Eastern law codes are more favorable.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: Than the Old Testament is.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: So what's the difference, Well, what I would say is
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: I go to Deuteronomy for I think we've we've leaned on,
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: we've wanted, we've wanted somehow the Old Testament to be
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: quote unquote better than the ancient Near Eastern law.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: Codes right.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: We want to we want to advance a narrative that says, look,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: these people were immoral, right, they only caught the law
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: in partial ways, right, and so they're worse off than
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: the Israelites were. That's not exactly the way I think
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: that's appropriate to frame it.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: Before.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: What we see is the Israelites are practicing the law.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: They're obeying the law that God has given them. And
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: the nations look in at the Israelites and they say,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: what other nation has a God so near they that
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: he gave them this law? And the implicit answer is none.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: And so for Israel, the distinctive feature was not that
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: their law was so different than everybody else's. The distinctive
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: feature was God in their midst. And so you have
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: this sort of to underscore your point, there's a deep
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: similarity that they can see, and the core difference was
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: God in their midst, that God had come near to
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: give them this law, and that the dynamics of obedience
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: and blessing that we see often in Deuteronomy, where you
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: know the if Israel will obey, they're going to experience
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: then the blessing of God that comes with living.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: Along the grain of reality. Right.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: It's not a quid pro quo, but it's a as
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: you live into reality, you're always you're going to experience prosperity.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: And so that's all deeper topic. But just everybody trusts me.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying that if you obey you get stuff right,
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: not prosperity gospel there, but so I deal with that
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: in other places you could look and find it. But
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: essentially what I'm saying is just to underscore your point
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: that deep similarity doesn't is actually there.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: It's not.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: You could tell the difference because we're familiar with the literature.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: But somebody who wasn't familiar with the literature, if I
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: laid out ancient Near Eastern laws with like Egyptian laws
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: with Old Testament laws, it's not easy to tell the difference.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: If you lay out an ancient, you know, Near Eastern
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: proverb against an Old Testament proverb, it's not necessarily that different.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Like these common cons were, just that they were common conceptions.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: And the distinguishing feature was really that Israel had a god,
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: a known God, a God who had revealed himself to them,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: that was in their presence, in their midst And this
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: is why syncretism becomes such a problem in the Old
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Testament because once you start pulling in these other gods,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: right now.
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: There really is no difference.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: There's no difference between Israel and the rest of the people.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: And so I think that that gives us an understanding
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: not only of what was normally called syncretism, but almost
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: what we're getting at with assimilation.
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: It isn't that Greek speaking Jews and the.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: New Testament couldn't really understand God that they needed to
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: speak Aramaic or Hebrew or whatever, right, otherwise they're just
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: completely lost and without hope. That's sort of ridiculous, right.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, Stephen's speech in Acts seven speaks against this
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: as well. Right, Whereas the Pharisees and Sadducees, the religious
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: leaders of the day, wanted to narrow God down into
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: the temple and the law, Stephen narrates this whole history
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: of Israel where God is acting outside of the land,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: apart from the Temple, and saying you're missing it. God
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: is not confined to these areas. You're too narrow. And
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: I think the point you're making is when we get
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: to if we're not careful, we'll get so narrow, right
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: that we miss all the different expressions that can be
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: appropriate of watching God work in the world. And so
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: that Greek speaking Jew isn't a lesser Jew because he's
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: Greek speaking. That gentile is not a lesser Christian because
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: they're gentile. They're expressing that faith in Christ within their culture,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: and arguably most of Paul's letters are helping people work
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: out what it looks like to do that in their
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: particular moment in situation. Maybe not culture one hundred percent,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: but definitely within their situation most of the time. And
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: so I think, Yeah, this notion of assimilation really is
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: to me more akin to what we find in the
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: Old Testament, where they're drawing other things in and giving
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: allegiance to something different than Yahweh. They're sort of saying,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: I'll give Yahweh ninety percent of my devotion and ten
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: percent I'm going to spare for whatever other God I
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: tend to that I want to worship.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: To me, that gets.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Into assimilation because we've changed something fundamental about what God
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: is asking us for. In denying him any aspect of
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: his authority over our lives, we're functionally denying the whole thing.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: And that may seem like a harder line. But I
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: think that's sort of where assimilation starts to come in.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: We start to say no, even though this doesn't align
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: with Scripture, it seems okay to do. Or just because
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: I'm now allowing something else to drive the course of
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: my life, it doesn't mean I'm denying the Lord. I
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: would argue that biblically it kind of does, right, and
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: so that authority structure has to be in place. And
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: I do think your illustration of Devali in Christmas it
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: does describe that dynamic. It's not I'm going to do
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: both of these. I'm going to be a Christian and
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: I'm going to celebrate Davali as is it's I'm a Christian.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean I can't celebrate Davali. It just
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: means that Devali has to conform to what I know
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: of in christ That's more what I hear you.
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: Saying, yeah, and more than conform. I would still go
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: back to the language of transfigure, right, because it's it's
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: not as if I'm forcing it into a to which,
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: as I'm seeing within it echoes of something yeah that
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: are deeper and rich, and so to me, this gets
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: to the assimilation discussion, maybe from a different angle. See
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: if it's saying similar something similar to you or not,
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: let me know what you think that. I think in
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: some ways if syncretism is often a fear discourse, right,
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: we're afraid of losing what makes this thing what it is,
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: what makes the faith what it is, what we say
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: about Jesus unique assimilation is the result of that fear discourse.
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: So it's still part of the fear discourse where it's
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: because I'm afraid of assimilating. The best practice is this
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: tried and true thing over here that we've forgotten, is
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: itself an incarnate expression let's call it, or a transfigured expression?
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: Yep, you must.
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: Become more like this. So it's a stripping away of
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: those things that we fear could be syncretistic elements in
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: order to make you like this. In its worst forms,
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: it really did carry the language killed the Indian to
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: save the person, right, And in that case, people weren't
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: talking about me Indian. They were talking about the Native
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: Americans who were not Indian. And that fear based discourse
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: means assimilate. I think it doesn't have to take that
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: sort of strong version, but there is a certain implicit
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: power structure involved. Right, It's that we want to make
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: sure we maintain control. And I think what's lost in
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: that process is possibility. So rather than the possibility of
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: saying interesting, there's this deeply embedded mythic reality of light
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: overcoming darkness in which God has to enter into the
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: depths of darkness to rescue his bride. Yeah, and seeing
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: a possibility within that we foreclose on that possibility out
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: of a degree of fear. Right, it's a fear based discourse,
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: and so control must be maintained, and what's lost is
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: ultimately a richer expression. If we're really serious about the
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: fact that God surpasses everything that we can imagine, he
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: surpasses the finitude that is tied to our creational setting,
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: not making creation bad, but God surpasses it can't be
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: contained within it. Then we really should be looking increasingly
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: for more ways to express the God that we say
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: is true and good and beautiful. Right, And so to
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: see something like the valley shouldn't be a reaction in fear.
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: It should be the wonder of possibility. Now, that doesn't
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: mean that we lose the sense of transfiguring. If we've
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: lost the sense of transfiguring. Then we've lost the sense
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: that this is ultimately about God.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: But it seems to me like the Book of Acts
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: is saying, worry less about that fear and more about
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: the fear of the fear that leads you to assimilate.
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: So to that culmination in Acts fifteen, where you have
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: this great Jerusalem Council, the Jews wanted to say to
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: the Gentiles, you must become Jewish in order to embrace
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: the Messiah, who is Jewish. And the point of dispute
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: wasn't that Jesus was anything less than the Jewish Messiah.
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: The point of dispute was that one had that one
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: could only fully participate in the very life and flesh.
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: Of the Jewish Messiah by becoming Jewish.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: Where the reality that comes out of that council is
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: a recognition that both existences can exist coequally, right, the
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: Jewish and the Gentiles. So the gentile is asked to
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: honor these certain things about becoming Jewish, about the Jewish Jesus,
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: but a rejection of you must become Jewish, right, Yeah,
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: honor these sorts of things and fellowship with us. You
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: don't have to be circumcised. That's a pretty powerful declaration,
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: right to say, put these things next to each other. Yeah,
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: And I think the fear of syncretism brings about the
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: active fear, which is assimilation, and the result is the
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: loss of the kind of beautiful mosaic that the Book
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: of Acts and Versus in chapters fifteen and following are
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: offering to us.
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, what do you think?
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: No, I like that a lot. I think so.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: I used to describe when I teach hermeneutics Bible study methods.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: I would try to help the students understand how the
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: Bible work by describing my daughter's playing with glitter. They
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: were really young at the time, and they always had
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: glitter out, and so you clean this stuff us.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: Yes, it's exactly it right.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: You'd clean it up and you'd be like, okay, I
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: got all the glitter, and then you knew, like ten
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: days later, you're going to come back and you're always
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: going to find more glitter, Like the stuff multiplies somehow.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: You just can't get clear.
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: I was quoting Dimitri Martin, so in case that I
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: stole his joke, I've cided him.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: I recognized it.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: But yes, but yeah, I mean that and so what
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: I'd explained to him is, you know, every time you
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: come back to God's words, you're just going to find
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: more glitter. Right, that's the idea, And I think I
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: would apply that same analogy to what you're suggesting. That
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: God's realm is full of goodness, truth, and beauty, much
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: of which we can't capture in our first run of
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: the story. And so every time we come back to
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: creation and look at what God has given us, we're
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: going to find different aspects of that good, truth and beauty.
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: It's just going to keep showing up like glitter.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: Right, you can't get rid of this stuff, and so
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: and so we have to remain open to goodness, truth,
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: and beauty. I think we have to remain open to
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: people seeing aspects.
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: Of the goodness, the good, true, and the beautiful.
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: Right, even if they don't understand who God is, they're
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: going to understand and see the goodness of creation, and
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: they're going to recognize certain truths.
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: They're going to see certain things as beautiful, and we
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: need to.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: Be affirming that like, yes, you're right, you've correctly recognized
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: an aspect of the goodness, truth and beauty.
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: Our role is then to sort of recognize that as
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: something that we've been given by the Creator, something that
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: we don't determine, but that has been given to us,
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: and so as Christians, in my mind, it's almost in
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: a way a resistance to a recognition of all the
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: God has given us when we're refusing to see these
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: other things, when we close ourselves off to the goodness, truth,
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: and beauty that we finding all over creation, when we
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: decide that we're never going to see another piece of glitter,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: even when it's a parent to us, Right, we're just
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: going to leave it in the corner and ignore it, right,
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean it's not still there. And so there's
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: this aspect of it that I think we've got to
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: be not maximally open to anything, but consistently open to
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: recognizing that what I thought was there wasn't all that
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: was there. Right, There has to be an opening up
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: to not to other viewpoints like it's it's not quite
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: as like we often hear the boogeyman of postmodernism. It's like, oh,
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: there is no truth, there is no whatever, and it's
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: just all perspective.
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: That's not what I'm saying.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: What I'm saying is that God's creation that is given
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: to us has more than we're capable of seeing in
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: any one moment, and that we have to be continually
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: open to looking at it afresh, recognizing goodness, truth and beauty,
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: and that often I think we'll recognize that goodness, truth,
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: and beauty through other people we are seeing the world
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: differently than we are, And that means that it doesn't
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: mean that we have to agree with those people every time,
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: but it means we have to give them their due
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: that they're seeing something, they're recognizing something, some aspect of
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: God's world that's really.
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: Good, true and beautiful that we didn't see yep.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: And I think if we're unwilling to do that, what
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: we end up with is we end up assimilating to
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: our own culture, which is going to offer a very
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: constrained understanding of God's creation, a limited story right in
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: which certain parts, you know, we just like I said,
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: we sweep the glitter to the corners and we leave
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: it there, and then we.
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: Just never look right right.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: And that is an aspect of this assimilation that we
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: end up getting to.
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: We end up buying into a narrower story than we
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: need to.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: And then refusing the other stories out there, the other
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: perspectives out there that could really widen our frame and
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: help us see God's reality as it actually is.
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and the loss is really our loss.
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: It's very much our loss.
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the loss of seeing beauty more fully realized, you know.
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: And of course there remains a litmus test. And the
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: litmus test I don't think is merely is Jesus the center.
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: I think it's more specific than that, is is Jesus
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: the Jewish Messiah center? I think that sure to really
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: lean into Acts fifteen, I think that's an important part
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: of the conversation. That the answer wasn't merely that gentiles
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: don't have to become circumcised Jewish people to follow the Messiah, right.
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: The answer was was that these gentiles could be gentiles
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: without losing sight. It's very specific though, that without losing
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: sight that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah.
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: You don't have to become Jewish, and that doesn't mean
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: you're less less Christian for it. This isn't a class
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: issue in Christianity, right, But this is recognizing that Jesus
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: was not a gentile. First, this was a covenant made
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: in which Jewishness comes out of that to expand to everyone. Yeah, right,
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: and so the way that some would you know, I'm
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: a member of a theological group called the Society for
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: Post Supercessionist Christian or Theology, excuse me, and that's kind
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: of one of the things to say that The goal
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: here is not to say all things have to pass
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: through some sort of approval process. The issue here is
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: to say we are second readers, and being second readers
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: means that we are approaching an existing medium of theological revelation,
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: and that revelation is culminating in the person of Jesus,
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: who is a real person in a real place, opening
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: up that real place so that you didn't have to
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: be in or of that place.
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: And so that kind of litmus test says not everything
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: will go right if something supersedes not just Jesus, but
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: the Jewish Messiah Jesus.
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: So we've got a.
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: Problem, right, But that doesn't that shouldn't foreclose out of
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: fear seeing the glitter everywhere?
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think so we're getting toward the end here.
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: What I would say is maybe where we're landing, which
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: I think is a little different than when I would
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: have what I would have said assimilation is at the beginning.
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: But maybe what we what we mean by this is
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: something closer to we're so captured by an ideological story,
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: a story that is that claims to be more complete
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: than it actually is, that we close ourselves off from
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: God's broader creator creation, God's broader reality. We essentially put
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: blinders on, and this is an effect of assimilation. There's
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: a way of fusing God where we say I'm going
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: to see in this way and only in this way,
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: and it doesn't matter what else God puts before me.
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: I'm only going to see in this way. And that
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: creates an inappropriate closure that reflects our stronger commitment to
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: a particular way of seeing a particular story than it
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: does to our commitment to Jesus being the Jewish Messiah.
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, I think that's actually a helpful way
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: of thinking about assimilation.
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: I don't know, would you agree with most of that
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: or yeah?
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, And I think it's a helpful way to walk forward. Right,
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: So instead of walking forward out of fear, it's walking
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: forward with a sense of wonder and imagination.
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: But it's not, it's not in.
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: All things go, because that's often the fear. Well then
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: anything will go no, no, no, are we are being
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: very deliberate to say all things must be encircled because
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: it's a life giving reality, the life giving reality of
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: the very body of Jesus Christ too. Wasn't just anybody, right,
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: It wasn't Warner Solomon's German Jesus. He was the Messiah
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: who walked, that's right, from Nazareth to Jerusalem and back again.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: There's a constraint there that I think is really important
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: to recognize. We used to when I used to be
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: an administrator in higher ed if you remember, we used
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: to do curriculum and stuff like that, right, And one
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: of the things I always had in my mind, whether
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: articulated it or not, was your best creativity happens within constraints.
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: And so for us, there's no point in releasing all
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: the constraints and saying we'll see the world better without
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: any boundaries, because that's simply not true. What we need
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: are the appropriate constraints so that we can actually be
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: enabled to see the world that God has given us
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: in an appropriate and theologically fitting manner.
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: And I think that.
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: That's an ever expanding sort of understanding. We don't just
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: see it once and then close it off. It's not
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: a snapshot. It's a continuing conversation that we're having with
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: God and others as we interact within creation. And to
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: resist that sort of movement and that sort of dialogue
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: is really to close ourselves off, to narrow ourselves so
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: much that we're unwilling to see any more of God's
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: creation at all. So, yeah, the constraints have to be
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: there there. To use Alicia Jauaro's language, they're enabling, They're
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: not limiting. The constraints are actually enabling us to do
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: something that we wouldn't be able to do without them.
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: And so Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, is an enabling constraint.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: With that in place, we're able to do things with
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: our minds. We're able to see things differently that we
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to see without that constraint.
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: So agreed.
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: Very cool man, Well, there has been a great discussion
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: on assimilation and looking forward to the one on fragmentation
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: and transaction.
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: We'll kind of dig into those as we go.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: We're kind of playing around with the diagnosis of this
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: for Christianity, American Christianity particularly, but I think it would
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: apply more broadly than that, and so we'll walk through
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: these issues, these three forces, we're kind of calling them assimilation, fragmentation,
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: transaction as we go further on the podcast, but hopefully
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: you enjoyed this and.
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: We'll see on the next episode. Take care of everybody,