Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / Patrick Miller: Negative World, Positive Church || SLP565

Transcript

Patrick Miller: Negative World, Positive Church || SLP565 · The Speak Life Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Glenn from Speak Life.
0:01
SPEAKER_00: We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: I am here with the co-author of the book Joyful Outsiders: Six Ways to Live Like Jesus in a Disorienting Culture.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: And Patrick, I want to talk to you about this disorienting culture.
0:13
SPEAKER_00: We are in the midst of a thermonuclear culture war, which is your culture war because it's from the States and you've exported it.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: And uh boy do I wish there were some trade wars so we could slap some tariffs on this thing and uh keep it to America.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, because uh you guys have done a great job of exporting some of your culture wars, and Britain's got some of its own to throw into the mix, uh, as does the rest of the Anglosphere.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: Um would you put some words to uh what it's like to be uh there at the epicenter of the world's culture wars?
0:45
SPEAKER_00: What are you seeing uh there in America?
0:48
SPEAKER_01: Well, uh as someone who's uh here at the greatest uh exporter of cultural cancer, uh I think I have a little bit to say.
0:55
SPEAKER_01: Uh look, the last six months have been challenging because we we are seeing a sea change in the culture war.
1:01
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it's uh one side's winning that wasn't winning before, um, but it is obvious that things that would have been out of bounds a year ago in our culture are now very much so in bounds, are now very much so part of the norm.
1:13
SPEAKER_01: And I think it'd be helpful to pull back the camera a bit and just ask the question, what is a culture war to begin with?
1:19
SPEAKER_01: And our mutual friend Christopher Watkin, he's helped me a lot on this.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: A culture war is what develops when two groups of people look at the same event and have a different definition or a different uh view of what it is.
1:30
SPEAKER_01: So we could think, for example, of two men getting married.
1:33
SPEAKER_01: Do you look at that event and say, this is a beautiful expression of love and fidelity?
1:38
SPEAKER_01: Or do you look at that event and say this is a breaking of God's law and God's vision for human marriage?
1:45
SPEAKER_01: Well, when you have two large groups of people in a culture who have different visions of that same thing, that's where culture wars crop up.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: And that's why I said we are experiencing something very strange here.
1:56
SPEAKER_01: Uh, because uh for the last 10 years, we have had this moment of progressive ascendancy in the U.S., of deconstructive ascendancy in the U.S., of postmodern ascendancy in the U.S., and that seems to be changing radically.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: Um, 2016, when uh Donald Trump's first inauguration happens, you have Snoop Dogg come out and he says anybody who performs during this inauguration is a racist.
2:20
SPEAKER_01: And then what happens in the 2025 inauguration?
2:23
SPEAKER_01: He performs.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: You have the village people who were sending cease and desist letters to Trump, who's, I think kind of ironically using their music at his rallies, to now they're performing at it.
2:31
SPEAKER_01: You have people from Zuckerberg to Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos who have historically been a part of this uh progressive imperium, very much so a part and parcel of uh affirming progressive values, now sitting behind Donald Trump with their spouses.
2:46
SPEAKER_01: And so it's telling you that on a popular level, something is changing inside our culture.
2:51
SPEAKER_01: The the war itself is is maybe shifting from one side to the other.
2:55
SPEAKER_01: Although though I will say I'm not sure this is really a rightward shift as much as it might be a almost multidimensional upward shift out of postmodernism into something else.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: Aaron Ross Powell Like metamodernism, that kind of thing?
3:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean I that metamodernism would be the term that I would personally use uh that I think explains a lot of what we're experiencing.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell Go on, explain metamodernism to us.
3:15
SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell So it might be helpful to try to give definitions to modernism and postmodernism first.
3:21
SPEAKER_01: Uh so and if anybody here is a philosopher or historian, just press fast forward because you're not gonna be satisfied with what I'm about to say.
3:29
SPEAKER_01: But let's let's speak in simple terms.
3:31
SPEAKER_01: Let's get the gist.
3:32
SPEAKER_01: Broad broad brushstrokes.
3:34
SPEAKER_01: Um modernism is is essentially what comes out of traditional culture.
3:38
SPEAKER_01: So in a traditional culture, um you're you're born where you're born with the job that you're gonna have, and everybody kind of lives in an order of being.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: And there's no expectation that you'll move up or move down.
3:47
SPEAKER_01: God puts you at wherever you're at.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: And then modernism comes along and says, Well, well, actually, you know, I don't I don't need a priest to access God.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: I I can access God on my own.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: And and actually, I don't need the system to make sense of the world.
3:58
SPEAKER_01: I have I have reason and I can make sense of the world with my own reason.
4:02
SPEAKER_01: Um and and actually I as an individual have have potential.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: In fact, in fact, my merit should be what determines my value and my worth in the world, not where I was born, the station into which I find myself.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: And so modernism is this very skeptical kind of discarding of traditional values and saying we don't need, you know, religion, we don't need spirituality to make sense of the world.
4:23
SPEAKER_01: We we can make sense of the world materially, scientifically, and if if we follow materialism and science, we'll we'll be led into this grand new order.
4:31
SPEAKER_01: Well, the grand new order leads to two world wars that kill more people in human history than any war, I mean, any century that we've ever experienced.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: And so people begin to critique modernism, and that's postmodernism, which is basically saying, look, any grand narrative out there, any grand story, um, it's probably a grab for power.
4:49
SPEAKER_01: Whoever is telling it is just trying to control you and to manipulate you.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: And so postmodern people tend to be very cynical about big stories.
4:57
SPEAKER_01: They tend to be very cynical about those who are in power.
5:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, and they become very deconstructive, right?
5:03
SPEAKER_01: Like they, they, they're saying, hey, the the the way to find the truth is to kind of deconstruct all the power you've seen around them.
5:08
SPEAKER_01: And it's worth saying, this postmodern wind, which starts in the 90s and I think is really run up through the present era, um, it it doesn't just characterize pop culture or secular culture, it characterizes Christian culture.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: Like I could probably sit down if you wanted me to and list off a boatload of best-selling books inside of evangelicalism that are all deconstructive.
5:28
SPEAKER_01: Their main point is evangelicalism has a problem.
5:31
SPEAKER_01: And it's from the left and the right, it has a problem, and we need to deconstruct it.
5:34
SPEAKER_01: We need to show what the problem is.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: And so cynicism and uh deconstruction, that's the mode of thinking.
5:41
SPEAKER_01: That's the methodology, that's the way, the mood, the vibe of the world that we live in.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: And then so metamodernism, is is there a chance for some kind of naive hope again?
5:53
SPEAKER_00: Like on the far side of cynicism, a lot of meta modern themes, certainly in storytelling and and cinema, um, seem to be a kind of uh a reappropriation of cringe and a reappropriation of um of naivety, a second naivety sort of thing.
6:09
SPEAKER_00: Is that something that's going on?
6:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so so there's a lot of terms for this.
6:13
SPEAKER_01: And you know, just like postmodernism and modernism, there's you know, there's artists and philosophers, and they don't all agree on what metamodernism is, even though they use the terminology.
6:22
SPEAKER_01: But I think the basic idea is that metamodernism is a kind of braiding together of what they would say maybe are are the best of both modern modernity and postmodernity.
6:32
SPEAKER_01: And so you end up with these kind of strange ideas like ironic sincerity.
6:37
SPEAKER_01: You know?
6:37
SPEAKER_01: Uh you end up with uh things like pragmatic idealism, right?
6:42
SPEAKER_01: Things that don't normally come together.
6:45
SPEAKER_01: Um and and that and that begins to characterize this new era.
6:48
SPEAKER_01: But w what I think we can say about postmodernity is that the human soul craves beauty and it craves meaning and it craves purpose.
6:59
SPEAKER_01: And deconstruction can give you a kind of meaning and even beauty for a time.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: But there's a point at which, to misquote Lewis, you see through everything so much that you see nothing at all.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: And when you have humans in these, you're living in the rubble of postmodernity, the rubble of we've torn down our churches, we've torn down our institutions, we've torn down journalism and the government.
7:22
SPEAKER_01: It's all we don't trust any of it anymore.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden you realize this is a miserable way to live.
7:28
SPEAKER_01: And so I want to find meaning.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: I want to find purpose.
7:32
SPEAKER_01: And I think this is why we're seeing this resurgence, at least in America, of interest in Trump, who historically, I mean, last time he got inaugurated, 500,000 people gathered to protest.
7:42
SPEAKER_01: That did not happen this time around.
7:44
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's because he's promising in almost an ironically sincere way this new pro-American moment, right?
7:50
SPEAKER_01: Like literally, he's listening to the YMC.
7:52
SPEAKER_01: This is this is the most anti-LGBTQ president we've had in a long time.
7:55
SPEAKER_01: And he's listening to the village people.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
7:57
SPEAKER_01: Like you have to laugh at the irony.
7:58
SPEAKER_01: You've got people doing Trump dances, and it's like, is it serious or is it ironic?
8:02
SPEAKER_01: Like, well, maybe it's both at the exact same time.
8:05
SPEAKER_01: And and and now, and now I think that's what's happening.
8:07
SPEAKER_01: He's come out and he's saying, hey, I have a vision of what our country could be.
8:11
SPEAKER_01: I want to give us a sense of meaning and purpose.
8:13
SPEAKER_01: And while it's true that not everybody in the country is on board for it, there is a portion of the population that is so hungry for meaning that they're willing to jump in.
8:22
SPEAKER_01: And so again, that that is metamodernism.
8:24
SPEAKER_01: It's it's the choice to say, I know that the world is meaningless, I know that it's all deconstructible, but so what?
8:31
SPEAKER_01: So what?
8:32
SPEAKER_01: I need purpose.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: Right.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: And do you think the church has caught up to that as our cultural moment in terms of the way we reach out?
8:41
SPEAKER_00: Certainly I've been in the uh sort of evangelism and apologetics space for the last couple of decades, where Richard Dawkins is the target.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't it doesn't matter what you're talking about, you're you're just going after like materialism.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: Um when actually we're it we're in a time and a space where witch talk is taking off uh taking off, and people are reading the Quran on TikTok, and everybody's trying ayahuasca and psychedelics and the occult and UAPs and um and and and so it it seems like so much of our outreach to the culture is is pitched to the level where the culture isn't anymore.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: Am I seeing things right?
9:21
SPEAKER_01: I think you are, and that's one reason why I send people towards your channel because I think you are actually seeing these things and and we need to recalibrate.
9:28
SPEAKER_01: We're not talking to new atheists anymore.
9:30
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Richard Dawkins has come out and called himself a cultural Christian.
9:33
SPEAKER_01: Uh we have new atheists converting left and right to Christianity.
9:36
SPEAKER_01: Now, you know, the sincerity of those conversions, I I have no idea.
9:39
SPEAKER_01: That's that's up to the Lord to decide, but I'm encouraged by it.
9:42
SPEAKER_01: I think it's a really positive thing.
9:44
SPEAKER_01: Nonetheless, what you just hit was was the was the main theme, which is we are open to meaning making in a way that we weren't before.
9:51
SPEAKER_01: We're open to a form of spiritual realism that would have been out of bounds.
9:56
SPEAKER_01: Joe Rogan is a great example of this.
9:58
SPEAKER_01: You go listen to his stuff five years ago, and he's making fun of Christians for believing in the Sky Fairy.
10:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
10:02
SPEAKER_01: And then you get to his interview with Wesley Huff or Kid Rock, I mean and Jordan Peterson, there's a number of people, and it's clear that he's not a Christian, but he's open to the idea that miracles are real.
10:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you brought this up miracles, man, morality.
10:15
SPEAKER_01: Those three things that you brought up in your analysis of the Wesley Huff interview, uh, those I think are the starting place right now for evangelism and apologetics, and that's a very different starting place than we were before.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: Tell me a little bit about so we've we've talked about the culture war as though it's a thing that's out there.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's also inside the church, isn't it?
10:35
SPEAKER_00: And there's kind of a a civil war within evangelicalism.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: Uh how how do you how do you keep your head uh in in the midst of this kind of intramural dispute?
10:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, I I have a few thoughts.
10:47
SPEAKER_01: My my first thought is this I'm a pastor, and that means I spend a lot of time with normal people.
10:53
SPEAKER_01: And it's really, really helpful to realize that the average normal evangelical Christian is totally oblivious to the battles that are happening on Twitter or, you know, or in the pages of First Things or Christianity Today or wherever it's happening, right?
11:08
SPEAKER_01: The vast majority of Christians have no idea what's going on.
11:10
SPEAKER_01: They're just trying to get through their week, they're trying to love their kids, they're trying to love their spouse, trying to do their job well, right?
11:16
SPEAKER_01: That that that that's their life.
11:18
SPEAKER_01: And so part of me wants to say one great way to move past the civil war is a little bit to ignore it.
11:25
SPEAKER_01: I mean, so in fact, after a very popular book came out deconstructing a number of uh, well, what the author would call left-wing evangelicals.
11:34
SPEAKER_01: Uh now in the culture, none of these people could code left in any universe.
11:38
SPEAKER_01: Um and my response to the book, I wrote an article about this, is I said, we need to be like Nehemiah.
11:45
SPEAKER_01: You know, when he's up on the wall building the wall, he says, people are coming along saying you need to come down, you need to talk to us, we need to, you know, deal with these problems.
11:53
SPEAKER_01: He says, Hey, I I I'm doing a great work and I can't come down.
11:56
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's the proper response right now.
11:59
SPEAKER_01: And again, it's the the meta modern thing, by the way.
12:02
SPEAKER_01: The postmodern authors on both the left and the right who are out there deconstructing evangelicalism, and they've got the latest, greatest book on why the church is so problematic.
12:11
SPEAKER_01: They're not building.
12:13
SPEAKER_01: And they might sell a lot of books, but I will tell you what, their names aren't going to be remembered ten years from now because it's going to be the people who say, Look, I'm doing a great work inside my local church.
12:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm building an institution, and you can shred and you can tear, but we're going to build something of meaning.
12:30
SPEAKER_01: And I think in the meta modern moment, there's going to be an openness to meaning, almost a hunger, a thirst for meaning that we're going to see catch up with us, I hope, in a holy way, in a good way, where people are saying, Well, look at these ancient traditions and these churches that are celebrating, you know, these these antiquitous orthodox beliefs.
12:48
SPEAKER_01: They have meaning and purpose, and I want that, and I'm hungry for that.
12:51
SPEAKER_01: The the bridge for the metamodern person is going to be going from, I know it's not true, but I'm just choosing to believe it's true, to saying, no, I really believe this is real reality.
13:01
SPEAKER_01: That's going to be the bridge that we're going through.
13:03
SPEAKER_01: It's no longer the postmodern cynicism, like let's let's defend the church against the cynical challenges of post-modernity.
13:09
SPEAKER_01: I think that's I think that's how we prepare.
13:11
SPEAKER_01: So there's a little bit of wants to say, ignore the culture war.
13:14
SPEAKER_01: Like just build good churches.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: Right.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: And one of the ways you suggest we do that is by adopting this identity of joyful outsiders.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: Um that's a that's a lovely phrase that for for me, it it feels like I'm either tempted to be a pugilistic outsider, like fighting, or a kind of placid rube who's already been captured by the system.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: Um whereas you're saying joyful outsider.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: What's that trying to communicate?
13:42
SPEAKER_01: Well, I I think you hit the nail on the head.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: First, it's saying we are outsiders.
13:47
SPEAKER_01: Um, Aaron Wren, he has this theory of us living in what he calls the negative world.
13:53
SPEAKER_01: And and I can speak more to that.
13:54
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but there were some people who responded to Wren and said, Oh no, we don't live in a negative world.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: Like it's great right now, you know, or they would say, Hey, come to my country and you'll know what a real negative world is like.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: Um and I find both those approaches rather unhelpful.
14:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's true.
14:11
SPEAKER_01: Depending on your context, the negative world is a liquid fact.
14:14
SPEAKER_01: If you're living in Iran, you are living in a far more challenging environment than I live in in the United States.
14:20
SPEAKER_01: Um, but that doesn't mean that I'm not living in a negative world here.
14:24
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean that I'm not an outsider here.
14:26
SPEAKER_01: In fact, I think there's a great danger that comes when we don't see ourselves as outsiders in this world.
14:32
SPEAKER_01: We syncretize, we become conformist to the world around us.
14:35
SPEAKER_01: And so that's the first fundamental reality is that we're outsiders, that Peter calls us exiles.
14:40
SPEAKER_01: Uh, the book of Hebrews says that Jesus was crucified outside the gate and calls us in Hebrews 13 to go outside the gate and bear the shame and reproach that he bore with him.
14:47
SPEAKER_01: There it we're called sojourners, we're called foreigners.
14:50
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is a theme that is just shot through the entire Bible.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: It's undeniable the idea that in this life, until the resurrection, we are outsiders.
14:58
SPEAKER_01: But the idea of joy on the front end is just saying, like you said, we're not called to be combative outsiders, we're not called to be conformist outsiders, we're not called to be conflict avoidant outsiders.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: Instead, Jesus gives us this very counterintuitive, it's almost ironic sincerity, a mode of you are an outsider, and that's painful in its heart, and everything against you wants to run against it, and yet you're filled with joy because when you're an outsider, you're with me, and that's the only place I am.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: Let us go to him outside the camp.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh Hebrews 13.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: That's I love that part of Hebrews, because every other chapter in the book of Hebrews, up until chapter 13, if you ask the question, where is Jesus?
15:35
SPEAKER_00: the answer is at the right hand of the Father.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: Where is he in chapter one?
15:38
SPEAKER_00: Right hand of the Father.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: Where is he, chapter two, right hand of the Father?
15:41
SPEAKER_00: You go all the way through to chapter 13, final chapter, and it's let us go to him.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: Where?
15:45
SPEAKER_00: Outside the camp.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: And apparently, yes, we can boldly approach the throne of grace, um, which is, you know, most of the book of Hebrews, and we can worship him, uh, you know, because we're on Mount Zion, as chapter 12 says, Um, but we can also encounter him outside the camp.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: So apparently Jesus is in two places he is at the right hand of the Father, and he is in the place of exile, um, which apparently is where where we're kind of called to.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: And I I contributed to uh a book, Faithful Exiles, um, where I spoke about the the Abraham option as as the the sort of the mode that we're called to as the church.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: I just love Genesis chapter 14, where it's the first war um described in the Bible.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: It's the first description of kings and it's the first description of wars, um, and that's probably not a coincidence.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: And yet what you've got is Abram building the household of faith by the Oaks of Mamre, far from Sodom, where Lot has kind of he he's kind of capitulated to the system he's become an insider to the systems of Sodom.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: Um Abram is kind of this outsider, but he's this joyful outsider who doesn't enter the fray except when Lot gets carried away, and then with 312 men, he's clearly been raising um a kind of a household that is distinctive, that is crunchy, that knows how to handle itself, that's uh that can get tasty when a bit of conflict happens.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: And so these 312 men are able to, you know, fight the great superpowers of of their day and weigh in on the culture war, on the war anyway, on one side, and for the sake of the household of faith, kind of win that skirmish, um, but then he refuses to like enrich the the king of Sodom or let the king of Sodom enrich him, and he draws all things to Melchizedek, the king of righteousness, the king of peace, the king of Jerusalem, the one with bread and wine.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: And the the whole thing finishes with him going back to the household of faith, which is kind of where he belongs.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: He's he's kind of this joyful outsider.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: Does does he does he qualify it?
17:51
SPEAKER_00: Is Genesis 14 a good example of this?
17:53
SPEAKER_00: I I think it's a fantastic example.
17:54
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, this both what you did and what we were trying to do, it highlights the importance of drawing our cultural apologetics out of counterintuitive passages.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: You know, I love Jeremiah 29, and and I love, you know, uh that we're called to be salt and light, and these are important passages for exploring how we engage with the world.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: But when we start looking at, for example, the example of uh Abraham in Genesis 14, or in my case, Hebrews 12 and 13, which is really the center point of the whole book, and I don't know of any other books that were trying to do cultural apologetics out of those passages, you'll you'll find these beautiful insights because you know, back in Hebrews, it's not just Hebrews 13, we need Hebrews 12, because that's where we learn why Jesus went to the cross.
18:33
SPEAKER_01: And while of course it was a duty, and of course it was an act of submission, Hebrews 12 says it was chiefly for the joy that was set before him.
18:41
SPEAKER_01: In other words, when Jesus took up his cross, he chose joy.
18:46
SPEAKER_01: And so when we're called to go outside the camp and take up our crosses, we are called, yes, to be outsiders, but we're being called to choose joy.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: And this is just it is a completely alternative way of thinking about what it looks like to be different than your neighbor than than than what we natively come to, which again will be combativeness or conformity or conflict avoidance.
19:07
SPEAKER_01: I I think the other part, and why I liked you brought up Abraham, um, is uh I I fear that as a church we've we've locked ourselves into one size fits all approaches to culture.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: And you know, I don't buy one size fits all clothing because it doesn't fit.
19:20
SPEAKER_01: And if that's true for my clothing, how much more so is that true for how we engage our world?
19:24
SPEAKER_01: And so that's our that's the other goal, which is saying, you know, in the book we look at six specific ways, but what are the various ways the Bible itself, through its characters, through its stories, give us as models to think about how to engage the world?
19:37
SPEAKER_01: Like you brought up with Abraham, he does a lot of different things.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: Like he he he goes off and he fights, but then he, you know, refuses to enrich the king of Sodom or take those riches for himself.
19:46
SPEAKER_01: Like he does all these different things, which is interesting, right?
19:48
SPEAKER_01: Um and I think in the exact same way, some of us are called to be protesters, right?
19:52
SPEAKER_01: We might be the people who are called, in a sense, to go to war, to fight on behalf of justice, to change the world by challenging injustice.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: But others of us might be called to be advisors, people who are kind of working on the inside of institutions, influencing the influential, who aren't going to get perfect justice, but they might move us towards proximate justice.
20:07
SPEAKER_01: Like there's all these different callings that the church has to live out as joyful outsiders.
20:12
SPEAKER_01: And again, I think that's something that gets lost in a lot of churches where it's we all need to be protesters or we all need to be disciplers, or we it's like this is the one model.
20:20
SPEAKER_01: And I think God said, no, we have a body and we need we can't all be thumbs.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: How do we stop this from being kind of centrist dad, um lukewarm?
20:32
SPEAKER_00: Um it was really interesting.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: Our last video on the channel, I sort of weighed in on the J.D.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: Vance versus Rory Stewart's political uh who was a politician and now a political commentator on the Rest is politics podcast, and he took issue with J.D.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: Vance talking about America First and bringing in the Ordo Amoris, um, which is this ancient idea that uh you are to love first those who are nearest and dearest, and then extend the circles kind of beyond that.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: Rory Stewart came in and said, I I've read The Good Samaritan, and apparently we're just to to love the stranger, love even the enemy.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: And for 48 hours on Twitter um we were having a theological discussion.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: Everybody was having a theological discussion.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: Of course, we're always, all, always having theological discussions, but it was this was even with Bible verses attached.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: Um usually we forget what the what the references are in our uh theological kind of intramural disputes.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: But so I I kind of did this video where I was like, well, here is the challenge for JD Vance and those who want to go for the Ordo Amoris, and here is the challenge for those um who just center everything on the Good Samaritan and a certain reading of the Good Samaritan.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: Um and it's just so interesting in in the comments, um, a a lot of people kind of felt hurt.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: Um so those who would more I identify on the right would be like, I I can't believe you just took pot shots at the right.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: Those who would more identify with the left, I I can't believe you would say anything nice about the right.
21:59
SPEAKER_00: Or Or or it it's just it's really difficult to take a stance like this.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: And then obviously the the accusation that comes quite commonly is just this is the coward's way out.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: You might not be interested in the culture war, but the culture war is interested in you.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: You're just gonna get swallowed if you don't pick a side.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: Um how d how do you respond to that?
22:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean I I I would respond in in two ways.
22:23
SPEAKER_01: Um and I'll I'll I'll name the first and I'll come back to it.
22:26
SPEAKER_01: Um one is you have to pay attention to who you're talking to.
22:29
SPEAKER_01: So you know, I would invite someone to to come.
22:33
SPEAKER_01: You know, you can read our book, you can l you can engage with our work.
22:36
SPEAKER_01: You will realize uh we have been canceled by the left and progressives more times than I would guess most people on this podcast have.
22:44
SPEAKER_01: Um we we've taken our hits because we're brave, we're courageous.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: So on one level, I'm like, yeah, you know, we're we're just not wallflowers, so I I that that particular uh uh critique isn't gonna land for me.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: Um but the other side is to say we are so fixated on this X plan, on this like X-axis of left and right, you know?
23:04
SPEAKER_01: And I think the kingdom of God doesn't exist on an XY axis.
23:08
SPEAKER_01: It exists on a on an X-axis, it exists on a Y-axis, it exists on an up-down axis.
23:13
SPEAKER_01: And when we start saying my citizenship and my sense of loyalty is is to the kingdom, we ascend above this left-right debate thing.
23:23
SPEAKER_01: And if people are just living in the two-dimensional world of left and right, and that's all there is, they're gonna be confused when they see aspects of that kingdom ethic, that kingdom value kind of cutting into where they're at, and then they're gonna try to read and be like, oh, you must be on the left or you must be on the right.
23:36
SPEAKER_01: I'm saying, no, I'm living in three dimensions, and you're just seeing the points where my view are intersecting with your points.
23:41
SPEAKER_01: Like we need to have a more multi-dimensional view.
23:44
SPEAKER_01: Um, and again, that's like I I can give a really practical example of this.
23:48
SPEAKER_01: Um we need to both cultivate and resist the world around us.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah calls us to do this.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah 29, cultivate, you know, work for the welfare of the city in which you find yourself.
23:57
SPEAKER_01: Then the end of the book of Jeremiah, flee Babylon, run from its idolatry, don't get caught in the conflagration, right?
24:03
SPEAKER_01: You have both these elements in the book of Jeremiah, flee and resist Babylon.
24:07
SPEAKER_01: And I think when you do this as a church, you code both left and right at times.
24:12
SPEAKER_01: You, you, you like you totally go go nuts with people's uh categories.
24:16
SPEAKER_01: Um in 2019, we uh we we preached a sermon about Genesis 1, and we preached that there's only two immutable genders, and yet God calls us to love our trans neighbor, right?
24:26
SPEAKER_01: Well, well, this led to a massive cancellation.
24:28
SPEAKER_01: We had all kinds of partnerships with local film festivals, um, with local art studios.
24:32
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this was so big there were New York Times articles, IndieWire articles, um, and they effectively canceled us, said, We want nothing to do with you.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: You guys are you know evil, bad bigots, right?
24:42
SPEAKER_01: By the way, that sermon would age well now.
24:43
SPEAKER_01: We could preach that now and have almost no response.
24:47
SPEAKER_01: Points to this weird vibe shift that's happened.
24:49
SPEAKER_01: But that's that's not the point.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: Um, that same year, we uh chose as a church there's crippling medical debt in our state, and so we decided as a church that we wanted to try to cancel uh the medical debt of anybody under uh the poverty line in our city.
25:03
SPEAKER_01: And we partnered with this group called RIP Medical Debt, and for one dollar you can cancel$100 of medical debt.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of a force multiplier for uh debt cancellation.
25:13
SPEAKER_01: So we tell us to our congregation we say how much we have to raise to cancel all the debt in our city uh for people under the poverty line, and we we didn't hit the goal.
25:22
SPEAKER_01: Instead, we ended up going way above it.
25:25
SPEAKER_01: Uh, we ended up paying off about$43 million of medical debt.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: That's about 30 counties in our local state.
25:31
SPEAKER_01: Now, one of those is a cultivation story, right?
25:35
SPEAKER_01: One of those is a resistance story.
25:37
SPEAKER_01: And I was talking to a gal after we preached that sermon, and she said to me, Why are we talking about this trans stuff?
25:43
SPEAKER_01: Like that just proves people that it shows people that there's no beauty to Jesus.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: Like you're you're just distracting people from from who he is and what he's doing.
25:50
SPEAKER_01: She goes, You know what kind of church I wish we were?
25:52
SPEAKER_01: I would I wish we were like that kind of church that that canceled all that medical debt.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: And she could not imagine that yeah, she was talking to the the the very church that yeah, was doing that.
26:02
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's the point, right?
26:04
SPEAKER_01: That that that's that's what we have to hold together.
26:06
SPEAKER_01: That's how you end up not being a centrist.
26:08
SPEAKER_01: So someone could hear one of those stories and say, oh, look, look at that lefty church, or go look at that one, go look at that righty church.
26:13
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, no, we're living on a different plane.
26:15
SPEAKER_01: Like we we are we are above this left-right fray.
26:18
SPEAKER_01: We're trying to be citizens of the kingdom.
26:19
SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell, Jr.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: So tell us how how can we do that?
26:21
SPEAKER_00: Give it give us some strategies for being joyful outsiders.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: You give six in the book, perhaps uh pick a couple of favorites.
26:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, so so the six ways in the book are you you can almost call them archetypes, um, almost personalities, although I don't think they're unique to individual personalities.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: Um but each one of them has a different way of changing the culture, of both resisting and cultivating the culture around it.
26:42
SPEAKER_01: So you have people who we call trainers, or we might call them disciplers, people who change the world uh by changing people's habits, helping people to grow in virtue.
26:51
SPEAKER_01: Because I mean, again, you you can read all kinds of people in the secular and Christian world who would say you can't have a virtuous people without virtue.
26:58
SPEAKER_01: Like you have to have virtuous people to run a society in a fruitful manner.
27:02
SPEAKER_01: Uh we talk about artists, people who change the world by creating beauty.
27:06
SPEAKER_01: Again, that can both challenge and cultivate the world around it.
27:09
SPEAKER_01: Uh, we have ambassadors, your classic evangelist type people who change the world by changing hearts.
27:14
SPEAKER_01: You have builders, people who change the world by building institutions.
27:17
SPEAKER_01: Those might be nonprofits or businesses, because institutions are very much so uh the durable forms of our common life, the place where we live our lives together.
27:25
SPEAKER_01: So you can change the world a lot doing that.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: You have protesters who change the world by challenging injustice.
27:30
SPEAKER_01: And so what we do with each one of those is basically look at a biblical character who embodies that particular way, and then look at examples from Christian history of people who also walked in that way to say, hey, what can we learn from them about how we do that in the present?
27:44
SPEAKER_01: And how can we as a church be okay with people saying, Look, I I I might be called to do all of these things at different points in my life, but there's probably going to be some that I'm best suited for.
27:54
SPEAKER_01: And so let's encourage those people in our churches to go do those things.
27:58
SPEAKER_01: Let's not critique them, let's not undermine them, and and let's return the favor for others who maybe engage the world differently than the way we do.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: And then how do you as a pastor hold together these six types of people in one congregation?
28:10
SPEAKER_00: Because as you gave with the illustration of this woman, she um was was very happy with the debt cancellation, not so happy with the Genesis 1 sermon.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: What what kind of pastoral gifts does this call from us in order to hold these six types together?
28:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I I I I think there's no silver bullet.
28:29
SPEAKER_01: Um, there's no perfect way to keep people who are diverse together with one another.
28:34
SPEAKER_01: However, I think if you as a church, even in your preaching ministry, um, exemplify this kind of approach that we can care about multiple things and we can lean into the world in multiple ways, that will train people inside the church to say, oh, just like our pastoral team or our pastor uh is trying to engage the world differently, so we can do uh the exact same thing.
28:55
SPEAKER_01: And then I think the other element is just preaching on the diversity of gifts and talents and callings inside the church, reminding people that God has a song, a story that He wants to sing in the world, but that song is replete with harmony, and you will miss sing it.
29:09
SPEAKER_01: You will sing it inappropriately if you cut out any one of those voices.
29:12
SPEAKER_01: And so giving people a vision for a diverse church with diverse voices and diverse gifts, I think is key if you want to have people be able to go alongside one another.
29:20
SPEAKER_01: Now, to some degree, we have to be okay with the fact that there might be a certain subset of the church that leans one way and they're gonna get along a little bit better, and this part of the church leans a different way and they get along a little bit better.
29:31
SPEAKER_01: And maybe in an ideal world, you're great at reconciliation and you help those people connect.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: But I I I am comfortable with the fact that people are wired differently, and if we can embrace each other, if we can affirm each other, I I think we can do a lot more alongside one another.
29:44
SPEAKER_01: And again, I've got lots of stories of how that's happened inside our church.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: And I love that that's the emphasis um inside the church because social media is uh uh pulling us in quite a different direction and probably amplifying the protester voices, um, certainly over the reconciler voices.
30:03
SPEAKER_00: Um what are some of the answers to that?
30:06
SPEAKER_00: Like, it's is is there a calling sometimes for reconcilers to get on social media and kind of leaven that space with uh with more of their pacifying influence?
30:17
SPEAKER_00: Or yeah, what how how do we deal with the fact that social media is going to amplify certain of these types and certain certain of these ways to live and not others?
30:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, I I think what I would say is um if if the world of social media was a neutral space where you know everybody got the same level of boosting, uh their voices were the same volume, you might say.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: Uh then sure.
30:43
SPEAKER_01: I would love it if reconcilers would come out there and do their thing.
30:47
SPEAKER_01: Uh the reality is that there are unequal voices on social media.
30:52
SPEAKER_01: Uh the algorithm is designed to amplify certain voices.
30:55
SPEAKER_01: And the way it amplifies them is by determining which voices are producing the most eyes on screens, you know, who's saying the things that people stop the scroll for, um, who are saying the things that get retweets, and who are saying the things that get reposts, whichever format or social media platform it's on.
31:11
SPEAKER_01: And so that means that it might be nice to be a reconcilier, but the reality is if you go onto Twitter and you try to do your reconciliation thing, because of the actual structure and design of the social media platform itself, you will never have the same volume as someone who's there trying to deconstruct, as someone who is there trying to go to war.
31:32
SPEAKER_01: And so to me, reconciliation on social media honestly feels like a Pyrrhic battle.
31:37
SPEAKER_01: Um I I I suspect there'll be moments where you'll have small victories, but the war itself is already lost because of the structure of the platforms themselves.
31:46
SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't think that means that Christians shouldn't use social media.
31:50
SPEAKER_01: You're on there, you're on there very fruitfully.
31:52
SPEAKER_01: And you know, so I but I've experienced this myself.
31:55
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've I've felt the deforming power of social media.
31:58
SPEAKER_01: There was a time period where I was using social media very regularly, very negatively, very critically, and very much so part of this deconstructive game.
32:06
SPEAKER_01: Um and here was the catch.
32:09
SPEAKER_01: I had local people who know me well, who love me enough to say, hey, when I I had a friend, one of my best friends, hey, when I read you on social media, I don't know who that is.
32:22
SPEAKER_01: That was really sobering.
32:24
SPEAKER_01: That was a huge gift.
32:25
SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of the people who are highly online are highly disconnected from institutions.
32:32
SPEAKER_01: They don't have close friends to come along and say, Hey, the way you're treating people, you would never do that in per in person.
32:40
SPEAKER_01: But why are you doing that?
32:41
SPEAKER_01: And that was such a gift to me because it it really led me to re-evaluate whether I was using social media or social media was using me.
32:49
SPEAKER_01: And the honest truth was it was using me in a lot of ways.
32:51
SPEAKER_01: And so I've had to very much so change how I engage on there.
32:55
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, I get far less engagement.
32:57
SPEAKER_01: Um, like I my my follower count was growing for years.
33:00
SPEAKER_01: And it's basically stalled out since I said, you know what, I'm I'm not gonna use this for dark ends.
33:04
SPEAKER_01: And I'm okay with that.
33:05
SPEAKER_01: Well the the wild thing is I can point to plenty of other people who who were very much so in the same camp and they've continued down that path, and you know, their follower count's growing and it's going great, and I'm just like, at what cost?
33:16
SPEAKER_01: Like my soul is not worth 2,000 followers on Twitter.
33:20
SPEAKER_01: Like it it's it's just such a stupid trade-off.
33:22
SPEAKER_01: Um my heart breaks for those who are caught up in it, because I was caught up in it too.
33:26
SPEAKER_01: And if it wasn't for the gift of a good friend, I'm not sure if I would have uh seen the light.
33:31
SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
33:31
SPEAKER_00: So you very much want to um touch grass and invest locally and in invest in the mission of the church um at grassroots level.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: Do you do you have hope that that is where we will see growth?
33:46
SPEAKER_00: Do you because it it seems to me that there is certainly a a portion of Gen Z who is um aware of what the technology is doing to them and and very much wanting to resist and to find communities in which they can resist.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: Um do you do you have hope that the church can pioneer a way forward here?
34:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean I I do think we're living through something of a religious renaissance.
34:09
SPEAKER_01: Now, I notice you said religious renaissance, not Christian Renaissance, because uh what I mean when I say that is a a general interest in spiritual things.
34:18
SPEAKER_01: I might be like uh neopagan mystical UFOisms, um, but like there's something out there.
34:25
SPEAKER_01: I mean it's undeniable.
34:26
SPEAKER_01: Uh Bible sales in the last year grew by 22%.
34:30
SPEAKER_01: And that was after a five-year low in 2020.
34:32
SPEAKER_01: Um and the crazy thing was they they grew because of first-time buyers.
34:37
SPEAKER_01: There was a whole trend on TikTok of people posting themselves, young people, Gen Z, posting themselves, buying their first Bible and reading it, which would have been so cringy five years ago.
34:47
SPEAKER_01: Like, how could you be so naive?
34:49
SPEAKER_01: Like, don't you know you're being colonized?
34:51
SPEAKER_01: And they've totally embraced the cringe.
34:54
SPEAKER_01: Like, whatever.
34:55
SPEAKER_01: You know, this whole deconstructive milieu has nothing to offer me.
34:59
SPEAKER_01: And here's this book that says it's got the way, the truth, and the life.
35:02
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, I'll give it a shot.
35:04
SPEAKER_01: And and I think I think that's I think that's what we're actually experiencing right now.
35:08
SPEAKER_01: Um, there's a great meta modern movie, Everything Everywhere All at Once.
35:12
SPEAKER_01: And in that movie, uh, the villain-ish character is uh someone who realizes that we live in in a million billion different multiverses, and she's conscious of herselves and all these different multiverses, and she realizes that that reality makes her life meaningless.
35:28
SPEAKER_01: Like in this reality, she goes this direction, that reality she goes that direction.
35:31
SPEAKER_01: So really nothing, nothing really matters.
35:34
SPEAKER_01: And she decides that she just wants to absorb all of reality, all of her life, into the everything bagel of nothingness, which is of course kind of comical and absurd.
35:42
SPEAKER_01: Um, and and and that I think is the end goal of deconstruction of postmodernism is look, nothing really matters.
35:48
SPEAKER_01: But her mom comes along, she sees the same reality.
35:51
SPEAKER_01: And at first she's like, you're right, nothing really matters.
35:54
SPEAKER_01: Let's just absorb it into the everything bagel of nothingness.
35:57
SPEAKER_01: But then she realizes, but wait a second, I love you.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: In my reality, I love you, and you're my daughter.
36:03
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm just going to choose, even though I know all these other possibilities exist, I'm just going to choose to make my love for you and our relationship be my meeting.
36:10
SPEAKER_01: I know it's absurd.
36:11
SPEAKER_01: I know it makes no sense, but so what?
36:14
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to do it anyway.
36:15
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's where we're at when we start thinking about Gen Z.
36:19
SPEAKER_01: It's not necessarily that people are saying, I'm I'm really interested in Christian unity.
36:23
SPEAKER_01: I think they've become self-conscious and saying, Yeah, I understand there's a million billion different possibilities.
36:28
SPEAKER_01: I've been on social media, there's a million different truths out there, there's a million different perspectives, and each one can be deconstructed, and they're saying, look, I just I want to have meeting in my life, so so what?
36:38
SPEAKER_01: I'm just gonna choose to do it.
36:40
SPEAKER_01: And so I think that's the thing that we have to speak to in the church is helping people say, Yeah, you're right, you do have a longing for meeting, and yeah, you're right, the church and and and Jesus ultimately can fulfill that.
36:50
SPEAKER_01: And then one step further, and and here's the crazy thing the thing you want to be true really is true.
36:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
36:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
36:58
SPEAKER_00: Take me through those steps because I um so Justin Briley is a good friend, and uh obviously the surprising rebirth of belief in gods um has as its central kind of paradigm the the idea of tides, the tide of the sea of faith is out, and maybe we're starting to see the turning of the tide and um perhaps some kind of religious revival happening.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: And and I think my my kind of take on that is um whether there's going to be a flood or not, um, there are low tide opportunities.
37:34
SPEAKER_00: And in this meta modern moment in which people have seen all their certainties kind of fall apart, in this meaning crisis, lots of things become clearer to us that were not clear when the tide was high.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: Um how much we owed to Christianity becomes so much more evident when Christianity is in the rearview mirror.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: Um, what lies beneath this way of the spirit, i.e., the way of the flesh, that way of the flesh becomes so much more laid bare in this kind of low tide moment.
38:08
SPEAKER_00: And there's something about low tide that means if you're going to end up in church, you're not going to bob along on the sea of faith towards a church.
38:18
SPEAKER_00: There's something about owning it and and taking steps of of faith that is more difficult, I think, for for those who have not grown up in the faith, but yet more meaningful when people do indeed, they go into Amazon and they buy a Bible and they start at Genesis 1 and they and they read.
38:37
SPEAKER_00: And then they stop in Leviticus.
38:39
SPEAKER_00: And they stop in Leviticus.
38:41
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, we we we had a guy in our church who just ordered a Bible from Amazon, just the absolute he was he was the platonic ideal of this story.
38:50
SPEAKER_00: I was he was like 22 years old, bought a Bible from Amazon.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: I was like, which translation?
38:54
SPEAKER_00: He said, Oh, the old one.
38:55
SPEAKER_00: I was like, the King James?
38:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's the one.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: Where did you start reading?
38:57
SPEAKER_00: Genesis, obviously, like the beginning.
38:59
SPEAKER_00: Where where else, buddy?
39:01
SPEAKER_00: And and so these are the guys who are showing up in church.
39:05
SPEAKER_00: What what are the steps that we can that we can offer them, Patrick?
39:08
SPEAKER_00: How do how do we how do we kind of shepherd them towards faith?
39:12
SPEAKER_01: I think if we're imagining this person coming inside the church or they're buying a Bible and they're checking things out online, you know, they're watching your church online or they're engaging with you know your YouTube channel or whatever else it is online, which I I think all of these are happening simultaneously.
39:27
SPEAKER_01: Um I I I have a few thoughts.
39:30
SPEAKER_01: Um one is, again, uh the themes you've explored of man, miracles, and morality.
39:35
SPEAKER_01: Like these are themes that we need to keep talking to.
39:37
SPEAKER_01: People are open to spiritual reality and things that would have once been embarrassing to talk about, um, like stories of God's miraculous power in life.
39:46
SPEAKER_01: You know, you think people are gonna be cynical, they're gonna cringe at it.
39:50
SPEAKER_01: People are very open to this because they understand there's something more.
39:53
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there I think one of the positives about social media is that it's made us hyper-aware of the fact that reality is far more multitudinous than than we once thought.
40:05
SPEAKER_01: Like, there's not just four channels with four versions of the same story, um, there's a bajillion channels, each with their own version on reality.
40:13
SPEAKER_01: And I'm left in the position of meaning maker, like chief meaning maker to decide what's real and what's not real, which is of course this you know massive weight of anxiety.
40:20
SPEAKER_01: And that would be one thing I would say in discipleship actually leans into that.
40:24
SPEAKER_01: Um a guy I like a lot, Brad East, has said that in his uh professoring work, as he's working with Christian college students, uh, they'll often ask him, Hey, can you tell me about X question?
40:36
SPEAKER_01: And he said in the past he would have kind of given like a four V's answer, like, well, you know, there's four different views on this particular topic.
40:42
SPEAKER_01: Um and now he says, I kind of just say, What's the what's the thread that runs throughout Christianity, throughout the ancient tradition?
40:49
SPEAKER_01: And I say, Well, this is what we've always thought for these reasons.
40:52
SPEAKER_01: In other words, he's kind of bypassing the postmodern, here's all the multiple realities out there.
40:58
SPEAKER_01: And he's saying, Hey, you already know that there's lots of different options, but you're not asking me to give you the multiverse.
41:06
SPEAKER_01: You're just asking me to give you the way.
41:09
SPEAKER_01: John Mark Comer, I mean, here's a guy who writes biblical theology for three books and is you know somewhat well known, but it's when he starts walking into um spiritual practices and helping people to try to walk in this ancient way.
41:21
SPEAKER_01: Again, he's he's tapping into that antiquity, saying, here's a you feel like you're on these shifting sands of postmodernity and nothing is solid and certain.
41:28
SPEAKER_01: And well, let's go to something ancient that is firm, right?
41:31
SPEAKER_01: But he also doesn't give you four views on fasting and four views on silence and four views on solitude.
41:36
SPEAKER_01: Instead, he says, This is this has been and this is the way.
41:39
SPEAKER_01: You see that that moment of direct discipleship.
41:42
SPEAKER_01: And again, I think that's what metamodern people are looking for.
41:44
SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, I know, I know there's a bajillion different options.
41:46
SPEAKER_01: Like, just tell me.
41:47
SPEAKER_01: Like, would you please just tell me how I'm supposed to walk in this?
41:50
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I think that's one key component of discipleship that we need to start leaning into.
41:55
SPEAKER_01: Um, and as a major phase shift for people who are used to a more, I don't know, cynical postmodern more mode of communication where expecting people um to you know say, well, what about this, and what about that, and what about this, and what about that?
42:08
SPEAKER_01: I I think that might be uh in our rear view mirror at this point.
42:12
SPEAKER_00: That's so interesting because yeah, what they're looking for is something old and deep and rich and challenging and embodied and a way to walk in.
42:21
SPEAKER_00: So that's yeah, you you live yourself into a new way of thinking rather than think yourself into a new way of living.
42:27
SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, therefore therefore, I mean, uh I'm commonly saying this that that when I began in evangelism in the sort of noughties, um the moral certainties of Christianity I've never heard someone use that before.
42:42
SPEAKER_00: I know the knots, but the naughs.
42:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm here for it.
42:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let me uh let me give you a chuckle again.
42:48
SPEAKER_00: In the noughties, I uh I would um yeah, I guess the moral certainties of Christianity were a real turn off.
42:58
SPEAKER_00: Um now they're such a bridge um that you actually have to caution people that this is not the center of Christianity, you know.
43:08
SPEAKER_00: And we saw Wes doing that with Joe Rogan um as as soon as we we got near to so Joe Rogan kind of saying, Well, it works, so I guess it's true, was was basically Joe's point.
43:21
SPEAKER_00: And and then Wes is like, Yes, but I need I need to insert this word of caution.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the the interview was basically gone, there was like five minutes left, you know, it and and Wes really wanted to insert that word of caution.
43:34
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's wise, because I think at the moment um people are fascinated by the moral certainties of Christianity and think that that is the sum and substance of the gospel.
43:46
SPEAKER_00: And what I'm constantly having to do with people is to say, I'm glad you want to walk in the way.
43:52
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you about the one who walked the way for you, and and that becomes news for people.
43:57
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
43:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it becomes good news, right?
43:59
SPEAKER_01: I mean If someone starts trying to walk in the way, they will quickly discover, well, hopefully they'll quickly discover that they're failing and that they can't live up to it.
44:08
SPEAKER_01: And and that's where the good news of grace can't step in and say, Well, yeah, you were never meant to walk in this way alone.
44:13
SPEAKER_01: In fact, someone else did it on your behalf.
44:15
SPEAKER_01: Um I I also think there's I mean, I just think about church ministry in this moment.
44:21
SPEAKER_01: I I I I think we my friend Paul Annleitner, who's great on metamodernism, um, he's a good follower.
44:27
SPEAKER_01: He's got a YouTube channel called Deep Talks and a podcast as well.
44:31
SPEAKER_01: Um, he talks about embracing the cringe.
44:33
SPEAKER_01: Um and that's just his way of saying that what once would have been cringy, and is still, by the way, cringy.
44:39
SPEAKER_01: Like we are self-conscious of the fact that it's cringy, but we're just all in.
44:44
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of what I said earlier of like, yeah, I know it's crazy, but so what?
44:47
SPEAKER_01: I'm just gonna do it anyways.
44:48
SPEAKER_01: I know it's cringy, but whatever I'm all in.
44:50
SPEAKER_01: Um here's a great test.
44:52
SPEAKER_01: Um go and watch the music video for Jay's for Jars of Clay's song Flood, okay?
44:58
SPEAKER_01: And then go watch the music video of Forrest Frank's song Up.
45:03
SPEAKER_01: Now here's what's interesting about these two videos.
45:05
SPEAKER_01: They're both talking about the exact same theme.
45:08
SPEAKER_01: They're both talking about being kind of this Psalm 46, like I'm down in the mud in the mire, and God lifted me up, God, God pulled me up.
45:14
SPEAKER_01: But when you go to the Jars of Clay video, it's very much so of its postmodern moment.
45:19
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think it was contextualized for a postmodern audience, right?
45:22
SPEAKER_01: It's it's dark, it's muddy, the cut old, the colors are muddled, um, you know, there's rain, there's like people like enslaved in this cave watching this weird, like matrix-y green face thing, right?
45:32
SPEAKER_01: And it's a great song, but it it's very like it's it's kind of cynical until it moves to God and says, hey, but God can pull you out.
45:39
SPEAKER_01: So you see it speaking to the cynicism and the darkness of the postmodern moment.
45:43
SPEAKER_01: And then you go to Forrest Frank's video, and he's singing this song very similarly about how he was in the mud, but God pulled him up.
45:50
SPEAKER_01: But he's singing it on the inside of like an air balloon, like the like like the envelope, like the balloon part of it.
45:55
SPEAKER_01: It's full of color, it's exuberant, it's emotional, it's hopeful, it's bright.
46:00
SPEAKER_01: It's, I mean, in terms of of like the medium, they couldn't be more different, even though they're saying the same message.
46:07
SPEAKER_01: And in the middle of that section of Forrest Frank's song, he he literally says, You're gonna call me crazy, but I don't care.
46:14
SPEAKER_01: God pulled me up.
46:15
SPEAKER_01: That is our moment.
46:17
SPEAKER_01: I know this looks cringy.
46:18
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna call me crazy, I don't care.
46:21
SPEAKER_01: He pulled me up.
46:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
46:23
SPEAKER_01: That's that that and I think when we start seeing that kind of expressivism in our worship, in our discipleship, this awareness of like, yeah, people are gonna think this is weird, but I think that speaks to the meta-modern mood and is an evangelistic tool and discipleship tool we can lean into to pull people towards believing this isn't just a reality, it's the reality.
46:41
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
46:42
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
46:42
SPEAKER_00: All in for Jesus to be joyful outside, isn't that?
46:45
SPEAKER_00: And that's where, yeah, let's let's stress the joyfulness of it as well as as we seek to do that.
46:51
SPEAKER_00: So, Patrick, you've uh written this book together with uh uh Keith Simon.
46:56
SPEAKER_00: Um what is it that you really hope the book will do?
46:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean I uh at the end of the day, if people read this book and you walk away, not just feeling like an outsider in your culture, but feeling like an outsider who is united to Christ in your outsider dom, and and that you have joy in your life as a result of knowing that you are with him.
47:17
SPEAKER_01: That would be that would be the biggest gift.
47:19
SPEAKER_01: Uh years ago, eighteen hundreds, uh there was a guy named Charles Blondine.
47:24
SPEAKER_01: He was uh the first person to attempt tightrope walking across the Niagara Falls.
47:28
SPEAKER_01: And so this giant crowd gathers around him for his first attempt, and according to the newspaper reports, everybody thought he was gonna die.
47:34
SPEAKER_01: I guess that's entertainment in the 1800s.
47:36
SPEAKER_01: And he starts going across the rope.
47:38
SPEAKER_01: He gets about halfway, and there's 70 mile-an-hour winds buffeting him, so he sits down and people think he's done.
47:44
SPEAKER_01: He lowers a rope, and instead of climbing down the rope, he starts lifting it up because there's a boat below, and they've attached something to it, and so he's pulling it up and he opens up this bag and it's a bottle of wine.
47:54
SPEAKER_01: He drinks the bottle of wine and then finishes the walk.
47:58
SPEAKER_01: That's what they did in the world.
48:00
SPEAKER_00: That's a shaman.
48:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:01
SPEAKER_01: And and so so he kept he he he continually went across.
48:05
SPEAKER_01: He went across backwards, he went across without a balance beam, he went across with a blindfold on, he went across with one of those old timey cameras and took a picture of the crowd from the middle of the Niagara Falls.
48:13
SPEAKER_01: And by the end of it, the crowd thinks he can do anything.
48:15
SPEAKER_01: And so he says, Hey, all of you, do you believe I can do anything?
48:18
SPEAKER_01: And they all cheer, yes, yes, you can do anything.
48:20
SPEAKER_01: He says, Okay, then one of you volunteer to get on my back.
48:25
SPEAKER_01: The whole crowd goes silent, except for one man, a guy named Harry Calcord.
48:30
SPEAKER_01: He raises his hand, he says, I'll go.
48:32
SPEAKER_01: So he gets onto Charles Blondine's back, and about halfway across the guy wires start to snap because the rope wasn't designed to hold that much weight.
48:39
SPEAKER_01: And Charles Blondine says to Harry Calcord, You are no longer Harry Calcord.
48:44
SPEAKER_01: You are now Charles Blondine.
48:46
SPEAKER_01: Do not try to balance on your own.
48:47
SPEAKER_01: When I sway, you sway.
48:48
SPEAKER_01: When I lean, you lean.
48:50
SPEAKER_01: When I balance, you balance.
48:52
SPEAKER_01: If we don't, we perish.
48:54
SPEAKER_01: And they make it to the other side.
48:57
SPEAKER_01: When I think about what Jesus did for us, he went across the tightrope of death and came across the other side alive.
49:05
SPEAKER_01: On our behalf, we know that he can do anything.
49:08
SPEAKER_01: And the invitation he's offering us as outsiders in this world is to say, Will you get on my back and will you trust me?
49:15
SPEAKER_01: And you can cheer from him for him from the sidelines, all that you want.
49:20
SPEAKER_01: But it's really only those who get on his back who will get to hear that message.
49:24
SPEAKER_01: You are no longer you, you are me.
49:25
SPEAKER_01: When I lean, you lean, when I sway, you sway.
49:28
SPEAKER_01: If we don't, we perish.
49:29
SPEAKER_01: That's the promise of joy that Jesus offers us if we choose not to become battery conformist outsiders, but joyful outsiders who are alongside him.
49:37
SPEAKER_01: And so if people can walk out of this book feeling more united and more assured in their un in their union with Christ, that would be an amazing gift, exactly what we would hope to have happen in people's lives.
49:48
SPEAKER_01: Wonderful.
49:49
SPEAKER_00: Wonderful.
49:49
SPEAKER_00: Well, the book is Joyful Outsiders, Six Ways to Live Like Jesus in a Disorienting Culture.
49:54
SPEAKER_00: Are there ways that people can keep up with you online?
49:56
SPEAKER_01: If you want to, you can follow me on Twitter, that that that uh burning pile of sess.
50:03
SPEAKER_01: Uh Patrick K.
50:04
SPEAKER_01: Miller underscore.
50:06
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you can follow me there.
50:07
SPEAKER_01: We also have a podcast called Truth Over Tribe where we talk about some of these cultural issues, uh, and people can check that out on any major podcast player.
50:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a really great uh podcast to add to your rotation.
50:18
SPEAKER_00: Patrick Miller, thank you so much for joining me.
50:20
SPEAKER_00: Uh thank you so much for having me.