Latest / Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture / Politics as an Art, Not a Science | Faith & Politics #6

Transcript

Politics as an Art, Not a Science | Faith & Politics #6 · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: I'm Dr.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: James Spencer. I'm joined by my co-host, Dr. Ashish Varma.
• 0:06
  Speaker 3: And today we're going to be talking about the discussion
• 0:08
  Speaker 3: that we had with William Cavanaugh. William Cavanaugh is a theologian.
• 0:14
  Speaker 3: He's at DePaul University. He's written a number of different books.
• 0:18
  Speaker 3: As I mentioned on the episode, my favorite is sort
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: of Torture and Eucharist, but I like a lot of
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: his other stuff. And it was an interesting conversation about
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: politics and how Christians might think about recapitulating politics. And
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: so today we're going to just debrief on that conversation.
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: And I think probably the first thing that comes to
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: my mind when I talk to him was, you know,
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: it's always hard, I think, when you talk to an
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: author because their writing is so in-depth and thoughtful and clear.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: And when you talk to him, you know, it can
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: feel a little bit more scattered. And I felt like
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: some of the comments that he made regarding things like,
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: you know, the church is not always in opposition to the.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: World or appropriate.
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: But then when you read his work, it seems very
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: clear that part of what he's arguing for is that
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: the church actually resists the tendencies of the economic world,
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: the political world, the um, you know, the various operations
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: that the world sort of tries to pull us into.
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: And I don't think that's an exclusive act, you know,
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: like he's just telling us to resist, just telling us
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: to reject everything, but it certainly felt like a theme
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: that carried through his work. And it felt a little
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: bit softer when he talked about it. Did you get
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: that sense as well? Or is that just me?
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: I did. I got that sense. And I wonder if
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: a little bit of that is, um, that we were
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: working off of different ideas of world and different ideas
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: of what it means to live within it. Because I
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: think what we get, I mean, the very cover of his,
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: I love the cover of his Migrations of the Holy,
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: where you get this very strong sense that there are
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: different programs at play. So he has, as I recall,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: the cross in the center of one and the American
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: flag in the center of the other one. And I
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: think the point he's trying to make in that book
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: is that there are certain places that the state is going, right?
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: The very idea of a nation state, it rules this
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: whole first chapter. He's trying to say, we take for
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: granted the idea of a nation state. A nation state
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: is an ideological idea is an ideological thing is what
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: he wants to say. It's not some neutral organization. And
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: we talked a little bit with him. He didn't delve
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: too much into it in our podcast, but we had
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: asked him about, um, what does it look like to be,
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: to be taking the idea of the nation state and
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: to work off of it in a way in which
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: you're not, you're obviously not going to be opposed to
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: everything that it does, but you recognize it didn't have
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: to be this way.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: And I think in the book he does, he pushes
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: stronger to say, The reason we want to say that
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: it doesn't have to be this way is that the
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: nation state has certain ideals, goals, purposes. It has a
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: way of being in the world that is meant to
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: organize people as an exclusionary event, right? It creates an
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: in and an out. And we see this in the
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: frequent rhetoric. It honestly drives me nuts when I turn
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: on the news and I hear, there was this attack
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: at such and such a place and there were 42 casualties,
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: three Americans died. And my immediate reaction is, let's dwell
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: on the fact that there were 42 casualties. Why is
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: there a special notation for three Americans dying? Well, it's
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: because the news services know full well that the ways
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: in which we've been formed in the ideology of nation-state
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: is an in-out, us-them mentality, where there's something more significant
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: about us. And I think that is what I really
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: get a sense in the texts, that in his texts
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: that he's trying to push against to say the church
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: can't live in that space. And that to me is
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: where it kind of the intersection is where his comments
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: and in the conversation with us makes sense, right? Because
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: I don't hear him saying overall, every moment is a battle.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: I think it'd be a mistake to read them that way,
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: but I think his larger point in the book is
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: ideologically there's a difference and to be subsumed under the
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: one is, is to actually miss the goals of what
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: the church is supposed to be.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: And it does seem like that's why he drifts into idolatry.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: You do get a lot of Christian political writers who
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: don't drift into idolatry.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: And I think that that's.
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: An interesting sort of distinctive of some of his writing.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: He does tend to name that idolatry, that as we
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: as you're saying, the ideology of the nation state, we
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: are in essence embracing an idol. There is a glorification
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: of something other than God that is happening in the
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: ideology of a nation state that drives us toward different
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: aims than glorifying God. It drives us toward a different pre-reflective,
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: instinctual way of living in the world than conformity to Christ.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: And so these things are idolatrous. They are dehumanizing sort
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: of at their very core, even though, as he mentioned
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: on the podcast, it's not as if the nation state
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: only ever does bad things.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: I think biblically, we can't really say that.
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: You that the political authorities are set up to do
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: the good thing, to pursue justice. It doesn't mean they
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: always do that, but it assumes that they're capable of it.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: And so we can't just deny the fact that the
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: nation state does good things. I think, honestly, and I
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: appreciate your take on this, because I, you know, again,
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: as sort of a fan of torture and Eucharist, you
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: do see a much more resistance-oriented sort of take on
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: what the church does in that book than maybe you
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: see in theopolitical imagination or migrations of the holy. I
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: would say the two I'm most familiar with, and I've
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: read theopolitical imagination, migrations of the holy, but torture and
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: Eucharist and being consumed really do seem like there is
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: a an explicit call to the church for the church
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: to resist these sort of mechanisms, these inconspicuous patterns, as
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: I usually refer to them that are forming us into
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: something different than we actually are.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: So, so I haven't read those ones, so I just
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: have to lean on your expertise on them. The key
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: word that I hear from you is formation.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: And that's something that we've talked in various contexts about
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: on this podcast that, formation, I think, is the distinguishing marker.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: What are you formed into? And within that, then, is
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: a gloss on identity, because your formation says something about
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: who you are. Who do you see yourself as? Why
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: do you see yourself in this way? So my guess,
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: just trying to read into it from his other works,
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: and even the way that you and I talked about off-air,
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: the way that he organizes and populates as Erdmann's reader
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: for political theology, What was really refreshing to me in that,
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: and I think it dovetails into this conversation, is that
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: he recognizes that there are voices that are formed outside
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: of our sense of normalcy. Yeah. against a kind of
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: regime that had a different effect on them than it
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: might have had here in the Western world, North America,
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: especially in the United States, where in a real sense,
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: we can speak of ourselves if we think of a
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: global economic empire. We are in the middle of it. Now,
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: there's certainly a battle in the middle for what's the middle,
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: and that's its own conversation. But these other voices that
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: he brings in are people who are decidedly not in
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: the middle. They're the periphery. They're the ones who are
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: on the outside. And what is it that they're contending for?
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: How is it that they see things? And honestly, their
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: locations are in some ways closer to the biblical milieu
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: than ours, right? When you think about Jesus is on
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: the periphery of empire as well. Paul's on the periphery
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: of empire as well. And even to the degree that
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Paul has citizenship in that empire, apart from using it,
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: occasionally for his purposes. He's not living in that space,
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: making rules, dictating terms. He's reactive. And that's how some
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: of these other voices are. They're reactive. So it becomes
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: really interesting in our environment to think about that, that
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: perhaps one of the big differences is audience. So if
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: he's writing about the reactive posture in places where you're
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: on the periphery, maybe he's trying to kind of knock
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: on the head people who are in the center of
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: global economic empire and say, hey, you know what? There's
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: another way to view yourself and your formation is what's
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: at stake here.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's an interesting take. I think that... I agree
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: with it.
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think that, you know, the liberation theologians
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: among us do have a pretty unique perspective that they're
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: trying to bring to the world and help everybody else understand.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: And it sort of connects into a statement that he
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: made on the podcast. He mentioned something about, you know,
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: I'd asked him about clear, what practical steps would you
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: give to people as they're going into the midterms to vote? And,
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: you know, he said something like, I'm not sure I
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: can answer that without sounding partisan.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: And I actually think he really meant that. Yeah.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: Now, and here's how I think he meant that. Just
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: having read his work and even just the tone of
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: the conversation yesterday, he is not the sort of person
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: who's saying the Republican Party is wrong and the Democratic
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: Party is right or vice versa.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: He's the sort of person that's saying, I don't even
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: think he's saying there's a third rail. What I think
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: he's saying is almost what he led off saying, is
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: that the gospel is inherently political. That the kingdom of
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: God is a political entity that exists within the world.
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: And that the way that we operate in the world
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: speaks to and embodies Christ within public life. And so
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: we can't just think in terms of the polarities. that
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: we may be presented in political debate.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: We've got to be thinking theologically about what our activities are.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: And sometimes those theological activities are going to align with
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: one side or the other.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: We need to understand that not as partisan politics.
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: We need to understand that as a working out of
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: our theological imagination within the world.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: There's always going to be this sort of bleed over.
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: Where it can get confusing whether or not we're working
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: as a particular political entity and political party, because we're
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: going to be working alongside people who.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Maybe incidentally share this value with us.
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: But the reality is that a Christian who goes down
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: to help, you know, do humanitarian work for a hurricane
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: is doing something fundamentally different than just random, you know,
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: Joe Public who goes down and does the same thing.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: And it's often hard to understand that difference.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: But that's what I heard him saying when he was saying, look,
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: it's going to be hard for me to answer that
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: without sounding partisan.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: What I heard him.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: Saying was a lot of this theology is going to
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: overlap with one political party or the other. And that
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: makes it sound partisan. Right. But the reality is that
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: these are things that Christians should be thinking about, should
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: be acting upon, and should be reflecting about beyond the
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: political sphere and the political discourse that we have in
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: society today.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Was that how you sort of took him or am
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: I over-interpreting that?
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: No, that was how I took him as well. I
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: think the key word you used is incidental.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: That it's not him approaching the situation saying, I am
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: fill-in-the-blank political party member. And therefore, I affirm the values
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: of those political parties, this political party. Rather incidentally, it was,
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: I am someone who's being attentive to what we should
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: recognize as holy if we say that we are followers
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: of Jesus.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: And insofar as Jesus actually says stuff and his followers
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: say stuff, and we collectively have understood what they say
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: recorded as scripture— I want to take these things seriously.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: I thought it was important that he said, you know,
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: he sort of tongue in cheek said, of course, the
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: Catholic church has never had problems in the past, which
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: he knew full well that it did. And he was,
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: you know, he certainly didn't mean that it hasn't. And
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: for him, that was sort of, it was a tacit
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: recognition of where the Catholic church and posture to it
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: is now versus maybe when Luther was reacting to it,
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: that he has the ability to, in the current climate
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: to be able to say that the church was, has
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: been wrong and stuff.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: And then we could start to lay, we could, we
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: could start to line up all these issues in which
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: no one in their right mind would want to say
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: the church is right about this.
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: Right. Right.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: But the honesty there was able for, for him to
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: be able to say, the reason I can say that
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: it's wrong is because we have these recordings that What
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: it is that shows closeness to the heart of Jesus.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: Or I think about when we were talking to Allison Barr,
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: where she had mentioned that, look, at the end of
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: the day, what do we look for? We look for
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: fruit of the Spirit that tells you something about the truth.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: And that's sort of how I heard him. The fruit
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: of the Spirit of those who are wanting to draw
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: close to Jesus to recognize what is in fact the Holy.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: entails these different things, right? These postures that in our
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: current world work themselves out to the way that he
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: wanted to say, you know, like I've got solar panels
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: because I think being attentive to energy is important and
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: how we get it and whether it's helpful to the
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: earth or not, you know, where I buy from matters,
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: you know, what, where I have my investments for retirement
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: are matter. These are material things. And incidentally, those happen
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: to draw him closer to one political party. But to
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: your point, I didn't hear him as saying, I am
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: that political party member and I'm going to advocate for it.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: I heard him saying, I'm advocating for the things that
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: I see Jesus and the apostles advocating for. And the
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: way that works itself out today where I am means
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: that I have a clear path for voting. Which I
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: think it's worth saying, it's enriching to hear. It wasn't
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: one issue. It was a conglomeration of issues, which isn't
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: to say that there might be other things on the
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: other side of the aisle that he doesn't agree with. Invariably,
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: he probably does. But it was the overwhelming preponderance of
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: this party more than the other one is accomplishing, or
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: at least seeking to accomplish those tasks, is what I
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: heard from him.
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and what I found interesting about that is I
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: didn't get the sense that he was saying.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Vote for one party over another. Right.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: What I got the impression of saying was these things
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: are important regardless of which party advocates for them and
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: regardless of whether either party advocates for them. I think
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: it's a stretch to look at, you know, Politicians from
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: either Democratic or the Republican Party and suggest that any
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: of them consistently would advocate and live out, you know,
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: the sort of things that he's suggesting.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: And I think that that gets to that sort of
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: incidental nature.
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: And so to me, what he's doing, which is a
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: distinction we made early on in the podcast, is this
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: distinction between the strictly political. which is the policy debates
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: between our various representatives and senators and politicians and all
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: that kind of stuff, that sort of political realm versus
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: our public life, which is even a distinction that we
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: talked to Michael Rhodes and he makes this distinction. I
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: think it's actually a really helpful distinction. How we live
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: life publicly matters. And all of those things he's talking
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: about are ways that we can live life publicly. ways
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: that we can allow our theology to sort of unwind
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: itself into very practical, tangible moves in our lives that
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: do not exhaust our theology in any way, shape, or form,
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: but certainly express it in some at least minor ways
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: as we're sort of on the path looking for additional
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: alternatives to live as the Bible tells us to live.
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: And I think that's a real important sort of distinction.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: I read him and listen to him as saying, look,
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: this is the public life of Christians. When you start voting,
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: it gets real complicated.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: He didn't say that.
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: I'm putting those words in his mouth, but it would
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: get real complicated because you're looking at two sides of Generally,
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: at two sides, I suppose we could count independents or whatever,
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: libertarians in the voting parties.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: At least on the national level.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: When you get to the local level, it's more than
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: two sides, and that's significant.
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: But at the national level, what we normally see on
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: the news and what we hear about, these feel to
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: me like politicians who have various shades of difference that
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: really don't make a whole lot of sense. they really
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: don't distinguish them from one another that much. I think
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: we're seeing that hard difference between like a Biden and
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: a Trump because the things that they differ on have
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: become much more visible publicly and they've been keyed on.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: By the news media.
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: But it's hard to envision really hard distinctions between some
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: of the other politicians between Democratic and Republican senators, for instance,
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: or what have you, except on very peculiar issues. They
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: seem to all be operating within a very clear system, right,
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: that is part lobby, right, part sort of virtue signaling,
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: part maintaining your voting public, and part doing some really
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: good stuff. And so, you know, you've got that sort
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: of intermingling, but I didn't, when I was listening to him,
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: I was hearing him say, look, these are the things
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: that we could do theologically in public. These are some
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: of the things we could do theologically in public, as
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: opposed to this is the way politically we should move.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Agreed.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: And he didn't come out and advocate for a political group, right?
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: So again, it was his recognition that what he was
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: going to say is going to tip his hat towards
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: a certain group. that has certain priorities in the present
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: that the other doesn't. But I think that's important that
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: he didn't tip his hat because I think his larger
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: point regarding the political, and we've made this point before,
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: but I think it's worth bearing forth again, we've tended
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: in our moment to conflate the idea of the political
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: with the very specific machinations of how we see, especially
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: the federal, but also to a certain degree the state,
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: branches of government working and we see them in terms
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: of cycles right the two-year cycles the four-year cycles the
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: six-year cycles and i that's not how he was talking
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: about political no it's not and it's not the older
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: usage of the term right the older uses the term
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: political has as its base polis from the greek word
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: for city and And in that particular ancient setting, the
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: city was the basic unit of administrative ordering of peoples.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: So we think of Greece, but there wasn't Greece. There
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: were these different, what we think of now as Greek city-states.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: Rome was Rome. Rome wasn't Italy. Rome was Rome. And
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: then it had conquered beyond those boundaries.
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: Correct.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: And we could say the same for all these other empires.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: But the idea here at play was that the whole
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: reality of the city was itself an administrative district of
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: public life. So it's people who are joined together and
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: the political life was the public life of what it
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: means to live together within these confines, right? This is
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: what distinguishes people of this city versus that political unit
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: over there. And with that huge caveat, I think if
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: we bring that forth into the present and that broader
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: sense that Kavanaugh was speaking out of and that we've
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: tried to speak out of, The political life is bigger
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: than two- and four- and six-year election cycles. It's bigger
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: than legislative and executive and judicial processes. It entails the
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: basic things that are involved in communal living. And by
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: communal living, I mean here in Chicagoland, where I am,
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: we have issues. And I don't mean that in a
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: negative way. I just mean we have people here. And
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: the people here are of the demographic distributions that they
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: are and the economic distributions that they are. And that
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: presents us with the challenges that what we want is
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: our local governments to attend to those. But by no
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: means does that mean that we're expecting the local government
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: to do everything. The idea is that the local government
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: makes it possible for us within our communities to do
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: what we need to do.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: And I think the way that Kavanaugh was talking about
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: was taking for granted that notion of the political. And
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: that notion then led to him to be able to say,
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: here are the things that my church does. Not perfectly,
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: but it's been really important. Here are the things that
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: I try to do, right? So there are these different circles,
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: if you think of concentric circles, of spheres of influence.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: Here's what I can do, me and my family. Here's
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: what me and my church community can do. And as
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: you broaden that out, on a local level, here's what
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: we can expect now of those that we seek to
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: elect to represent us to do things that are beyond
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: our scope. And in that sense, he could say, these
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: are priorities that we see as theologically derived. And in
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: that sense, again, the incidental. Once you telescope out, it
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: became apparent where he would vote. But that wasn't the focus.
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: That wasn't at all his focus. And I think it's
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: important just to drive home your point I think about
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: how I feel when I watch somebody throw trash on
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: the ground. There's something really annoying about that and almost disrespectful.
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: You see somebody just litter, just intentionally litter, not something
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: flying out of their car because they're going fast and
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: it just happens to fly out the window, but just
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: throwing their trash on the ground. That is in some
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: sense a political act in that old sense of the term.
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: It's a pretty minor political act. But if you think
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: about what that's doing, it's a way of interacting publicly
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: and with your neighbors that basically says, my trash can
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: go here and I don't really care what you think
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: about it. It suggests a breach of decorum, a breach
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: of almost collegiality between neighbors that is a very small,
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: not insignificant act that says, here's what I think about
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: this polis. And I think to your point, we want our,
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: you know, maybe we want our local government to say, hey,
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: we're going to have littering laws and we're going to
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: find people who litter and we're going to try to
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: use this as a deterrent. But if we look beyond
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: that littering law, why is that done? It's because individuals
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: aren't honoring the polis. And I think that's the sort
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: of tension that we have to live in as Christians is, yes,
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: there's going to be these moments where we want our local, state,
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: federal governments to do things, right? Speed limits are probably
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: a good idea. You know, the analogy I often use is,
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: you know, defining which side of the road to drive on,
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: probably a good idea. That should not be left up
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: to my arbitrary judgment. Today, I'd like to drive on
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: the left side of the road no matter what anybody.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Else is doing.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: That's not a good thing for us to have in
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: our society. There has to be a level of coordination
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: and enforcement and orderliness that the government sort of applies
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: to that. But the government is not the only thing
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: that has to operate there because you can't enforce everything.
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: You know, I don't, you know, it's always the joke,
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: like who gets a ticket for jaywalking?
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: No one. It's because.
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: You can't enforce every single minutia law. What you're trying
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: to do is say, hey, look, it's we're going to
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: have a more orderly society if everybody just uses the crosswalks,
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: even when it's inconvenient. Right. And so I think there's
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: this sort of notion of polis that we need to
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: recapture that Kavanaugh is writing about and that he gestured
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: to in the podcast that is that.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: Broader public life.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: What can we do individually, locally, statewide, federally that are
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: going to contribute to the broad polis that is the world,
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: but also care for our local polis that is maybe
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: our subdivisions, city, what have you. And it's all of
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: those layers that sort of come together. As Christians, we
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: could say we're resident aliens. I mean, that's a phrase
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: that Howard Ross has used. But it also comes out
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: of Philippians, right?
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: We're a colony.
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: We're sitting within an empire and we're waiting for our entry.
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: We're actually citizens of heaven. We just have to live here.
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: And so as citizens of heaven, what does it mean
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: for us to represent our true citizenship within the context
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: of different poli? I guess it would be the plural
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: of polis, right? Within these different entities, what does.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: It look like?
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: So how would we represent our citizenship in heaven as
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: we live our lives within a given polis? And really
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: demonstrate what it looks like to have our citizenship in
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: heaven worked out within tangible ways within a given environment.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: And I think that, as I reflect on what he
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: said in the.
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: Podcast and what he's written in his books, I think
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: that's where Kavanaugh sort of pushes us and.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Hopefully helps us to land.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to set another anecdote next to your
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: littering one. I think that was a good one because
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: it gets down to the nitty gritty every day.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: And to your point, it's really unenforceable to have littering
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: laws with the kind of force that we have. Apparently
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: some places like Singapore managed to enforce it really well.
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Um, maybe that's something worth looking into. Maybe it's not,
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: I don't know. But to put next to that, I mean,
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: I think about my own anecdote is that we're created
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: to be carers of the rest of creation, right? It's
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: clear that we don't see better. We're not faster. We
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: don't hear better. We're not stronger than the other creatures
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: of the earth. You know, we're better at some of
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: those things than some of them, but there's, there are
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: creatures that do all those things better than us. So
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: it's clear that being, Being given this special status as
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: image bearers in Genesis 1, carrying into what that looks
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: like in Genesis 2, is not meant to mean some
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: sort of physical superiority.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: And you and I have worked through that quite a bit,
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: so there's no need to rehash it. But what's significant
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: is that there is this distinct sense specifically of care,
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: to work the ground up. to care for the animals,
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: to name them, has a certain level of intimacy. To
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: even recognize the emotional gap, I think, is ultimately what's
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: at play in Genesis 2, between us and the animals,
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: in that naming. And that we need others like us,
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: is to put us all on this gigantic web, right?
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: What Wurzba would talk about as enmeshing, entanglement. And now
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: let's put that in contrast to our modern lives, and
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: whatever steps it took to get here, As again, something
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: maybe worth exploring at another time and place. Now we
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: can go from point A to point B without any
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: direct contact with the environment that we're in.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: That's right. Right.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: I remain forever just an embarrassment of myself of this
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: day when I was a first year, just finished my
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: first year of my PhD studies and we were doing
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: this Labor Day picnic. And it was the first time
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: in my life I had an attached garage to park in.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: And I managed to drive 15 miles and not realize
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: that it was chilly out. And I show up in
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: shorts and a t-shirt. How can we do that? That
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: says something about our abstraction from our environments, from our places.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: But you think about the contrast between, and that's all
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: set up for the anecdotes. Here we are as created
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: to be caretakers of the rest of creation. And I
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: want to keep saying rest of because we're part of it,
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: not above it, not outside it. And yet we have
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: the capacity to harm creation and to do so even
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: to the point of not knowing we're doing it, right?
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: You drive down the road and you see dead squirrel,
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: dead rabbit. Of course, the dead deer, we can see that.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: That one we know happens, but it's entirely plausible.
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: We didn't know that. And I remember this day I
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: was walking home from the train after work and there
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: was a squirrel and the squirrels get confused by the cars, right?
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: They dart back and forth as soon as they see
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: a car coming and they're quick, but because they're darting
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: back and forth confusion, sometimes they'll get hit. And I
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: watched one where the car clipped the squirrel's leg and
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: I'm walking down the sidewalk and my hands immediately go
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: up and I just, my mouth agape.
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: Whoa.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: Whoa.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: And the squirrel's not dead. It's one leg clearly broken,
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: and now it's gimping in the road. And here comes
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: the next car because of where that squirrel is and
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: can't move, and it finishes the job, puts it out
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: of its misery. And I'm just... To me, I wouldn't
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: call it traumatizing in the sense that it stayed with
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: me in this deep emotional way, but it was upsetting, right?
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: And I have no reason to think that the car
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: is meant to do it. But they did it. And
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: the fact that they could do it ignorantly... is a
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: great travesty of what has happened to us as opposed
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: to what we were made to be. But what was
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: especially upsetting was the third car that came. And in
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: that third car was someone that I knew. You know
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: him too, but we'll leave names away. And that person
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: realized what was happening because he saw me from a distance,
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: saw my reaction differently. looked on the road, saw the squirrel,
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: and then saw it finished off. And his reaction was,
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: this is hilarious. And he starts dying laughing. And the
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: next day at work, he brings it up, thinking it's hilarious, laughing.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: And that to me is the contrast, right?
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: To be political creatures is to be cognizant of and
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: caring of your space and your place.
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: And all that is entailed within that. And that means
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: don't just throw the littering stuff on the ground. Be
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: attentive to what we're doing to the environment with emissions.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: It doesn't mean there's simple answers. These lithium batteries are
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: pretty damaging in their production processes to the environment. It's
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: not clear that that's the ultimate solution. But be attentive
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: to it. Be attentive to these machines that get us
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: from point A to point B faster than humanity has
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: ever before been able to do that abstract you from
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: your place and make it so that you're accidentally killing
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: the creatures we were supposed to take care of. Think
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: about it in the way that we care for our lawns.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: These are the things that telescope out from the way
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: that I'm hearing Kavanaugh that was really refreshing to larger
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: political acts that we generally tend to think of. It's
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: the micro-political acts of the polis that he was concerned
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: about that generated the bigger. For him, that came from
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: theological conviction.
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: I keep going back to the conversation we had with
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: Norman Worspa, which will be after this podcast. So people
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: won't be able to listen to it unless they've got
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: the membership that allows them to listen to all of
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: our stuff.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: We're time traveling.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: That's right. We're talking about the future. Yes.
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: But one of the things he brought up was this
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: notion of like source, right? Looking beyond, like if you're
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: sitting down to eat, think about all that went into
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: getting that food on your plate.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: Like recognize the effort. And I think more frequently what I've.
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: Been finding is that I do that with the technology
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: that I'm using, right? Technology can feel very distant, like
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: you're just interacting with, you know, zeros and ones or whatever,
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: you know, circuitry and digital mind you're trying to engage.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: But the reality is there are embodied and fleshed humans
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: that are coding these things in. There are natural resources
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: being used to do something as mundane as cooling a
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: data center. There are actual processes and resources going into
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: everything that seems so easy for us to use. I
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: don't think that should mean that we stop using it,
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: but I do think that it needs to become a
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: bigger part of our conversations. It's something that we need
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: to be cognizant of and understanding how much is actually
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: going into this before we buy in a hundred percent.
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: You know, he, um, Kavanaugh talked a lot about, you know, Amazon.
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: He mentioned Amazon. He doesn't buy off Amazon and those
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: kinds of things. I do buy off Amazon.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: Right. Um, and so I will freely admit that.
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: Um, but I get why he doesn't, I understand it. Uh,
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: I just don't know that, um, I can remember when
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: the whole target kerfuffle came up a few years ago
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: and there were these podcasters that were calling for target.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: To be sort of banned. I think it was around
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: LGBTQ issues or something like that. Right. And my big
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: question when I was listening to it was, so where
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: do you shop? Right.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: You can't get away from it. There is a problem
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: with every corporate company. That's what we're going to do. Right.
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: And so there's, There's a sense in which I think we,
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: and I don't say this flippantly, I think we have
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: to move from our convictions and sort of pick our poison.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: I mean, much respect to the people who are going
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: to go out in their backyards and grow their gardens
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: and raise their chickens and live a fairly sustainable lifestyle
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: apart from having to go to a big chain grocery
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: store or something like that. I don't live like that.
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: You know, my sense is that you don't live like that.
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: A lot of people don't live like that. And I
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: think that cultivating a cognizance of the implications of how
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: we're living and allowing that to sort of sink into
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: us so that we begin to change our behavior is
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: probably the more reasonable reaction than living off the grid.
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: And I think that was... part of his point, like
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: you don't have to live in a tent. I remember
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: him saying that at one point or live in a mansion, right?
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Tree house. That's right.
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: And, and I think that was really helpful, you know, um,
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: because we're, we have to sort of realize that all
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: of these things that are happening around us in the
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: world are in some ways going to be problematic. And
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: even if we pulled completely off the grid, We're never
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: going to get to a point where we are living
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: with the land as we used to live with it
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: in the Garden of Eden.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: We don't get there. And so it. just isn't possible.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: That's what fallenness is, right? And so....
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's just part of me that really appreciated his
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: comments on that. And I think that we need to
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: leave that up to individual discernment for Christians. And when
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: I say that, I really do mean that we need
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: individual discernment on it. It shouldn't just be our default.
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: It should be something we come to. It should be
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: something we question. It should be something we think about.
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: It doesn't have to be our obsession necessarily. But it
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: does need to be something that we are truly, deeply
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: cognizant about and, on some level, thankful for.
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: Tell me what you think about this. I don't want
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: to put words in Kavanaugh's mouth, so I'm not at
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: all saying that he was saying what I'm about to say.
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: But this was the sense that I got. Okay, background
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: to the sense that I got. We have a tendency
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: in our modern world— and again, by modern, I mean— epoch
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: of way of the ways in which we envision shaping
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: reality right um in our modern world we're very much
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: geared towards helping us have some level of control how
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: do i know that i know controlling knowledge having objectivity
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: being able to separate the things that are subjective from
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: the things that are objective gather things that are universal
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: that are neutral ostensibly I have my doubts about that project.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: But that's at least the ways in which we tend
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: to default. I'll never forget the day that I, in
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: the morning, I was listening to the news radio, and
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: every morning it would be, here's the latest study. And
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: one of them was, researchers have discerned that kids who
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: go to bed earlier tend to be more energetic the
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: next day. Exactly my reaction.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Shocker.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: We needed to spend how much money on that one?
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: I think every parent in the history of humanity has
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: been saying that.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: Hey, guess what? The parents are more energetic than the
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: next D2. Amazing, right?
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: It makes sense. If we get full rest, then we
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: are more energetic.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: Great.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: But why do we need that kind of study is
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: the real question. Because of the ways in which we've
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: got a stranglehold on the production of knowledge, the bases
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: from which we determine knowledge counts as knowledge, and then
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: how we can then use that to create a fuller society,
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: a polis. What I heard Kavanaugh saying, and it at
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: the very least is the way that I want to
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: think of things like the theological enterprise, is that We
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: need to spend less time thinking about public life, political life,
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: theological life, church life as a science, and more time
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: thinking of it as an art.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: Now, art is hard to control, and art will have interpretations,
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: and art will have more obvious disagreements, though it's worth
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: noting scientific discourses have tons of disagreements.
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: That's where we get these monographs and these peer-reviewed journals.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: There's no settling of issues.
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: Or if there is a settling, it creates new issues.
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: But in the artistic realm, there is an attentiveness to
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: recognizing what is beautiful. But what is beautiful, ostensibly, right?
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: I realize that in the arts, people would say, we're
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: not trying to make what's beautiful. But ostensibly, what is
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: beautiful is related to what is good and what is
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: related to what is true. Mm-hmm. And if we spend
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: less time thinking about the political as a science to
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: control with our studies and with our carefully formulated ecosystems
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: in which we have our news channel that tells us
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: what we want to hear and reports on our issues
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: from our angle, and we think of more as life
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: together as an art that's imprecise, that can be beautiful,
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: then we can start to arrive at the sorts of
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: things that I think we're driving Kavanaugh's conclusions uh the
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: ways that he sought to to live out the political
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: life on on these telescopic or concentric ways right moving
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: from the personal to the communal and the ecclesial and
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: ultimately the way that he saw his involvement in the
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: state without the control mechanisms what do you think about.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: That I agree.
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think that we didn't talk a ton
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: about the true, the good, and the beautiful, but I
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: think that that factors in a good bit to what
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: we need to be thinking about. You know, for Christians
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: to recognize what God has already set forth as good, true,
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: and beautiful is important. We need to recognize that aspect
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: of reality wherever it's found. And then we need to
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: lean into it, play into it. Our posture needs to
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: be toward it, not against it. And I think that
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: sometimes we get a little too analytical, to your point,
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: a little too, there's a great line in one of the,
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: it's a book on the matter with things. It's written by, boy,
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: I'm going to blank on the guy's name, but the
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: matter with things is the book title. And the author
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: writes something like, we tend to think that we can
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: control the world by pulling levers and pushing buttons. But
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: every time we try to control the world, we end
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: up messing more things up because we don't really understand
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: the world. In other words, our manipulations of the world
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: tend to create more problems because as we try to
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: manipulate it, we're doing so from such a deficit in
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: understanding that that we can't see how pulling this lever
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: and pushing this button only solves some sort of a
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: near-term problem for us, but they create these long-term problems
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: for us. And I think that there's something to that, right?
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: And so this understanding of the world, I don't think
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: can be encapsulated in the sort of analytics that science
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: tends to focus on. It can include it, but it
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: can't encompass it. it has to also include these sort
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: of art forms that you're talking about. This notion of
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: when I look out and I look at a beautiful
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: blue sky, I can legitimately call it beautiful and recognize
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: it as such. And I don't need any other sort of,
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: I don't need to know why the sky is blue.
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: I don't need to understand the science behind clouds. I
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: don't need to understand how the physics work. I don't
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: need to know any of those other things. I can
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: just simply recognize that the world that God has given
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: us is beautiful, that there is an order to it,
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: and that I need to live into that order. And
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: so I think that there is definitely something to that.
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: And when I hear Kavanaugh talk, I don't think he's
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: trying to, and maybe this is an aspect of the
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: point that you're not emphasizing as much, but it's one
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: that I've thought about a good bit, so I'll throw
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: it in there. I don't think he was saying, look, everybody,
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: here's how we fix the world. I think what he's
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: saying is aligned with something more like our responsibility is
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: not to fix the world. It's to live faithfully in
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: a world so broken only God can fix it. And
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: so when we try to manipulate to fix, when we
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: try to manipulate to make our situation better, when we
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: try to manipulate to assert our self-sufficiency or feel more
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: secure or We're inevitably doing something to the world that
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: may not actually be helping the world. It's only helping us.
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: And we are not particularly good at long suffering within
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: the broken relationship that is our fallen condition and saying,
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: these are the consequences that we must live with because
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: of our sins. We're more inclined to say, I don't
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: see why I should live with these consequences if I
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: could overcome them technologically.
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he mentioned, to your point, that pretty provocative tagline
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: of the fall is a hopeful or a … It's optimistic.
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: I can't remember the exact word, but it was an optimistic.
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: That's what it was, an optimistic doctrine, which on the
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: face of it seems utterly bizarre.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: What do you mean?
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: But his point, his defense of it was, I thought,
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: quite compelling. And that's to say that the reality of
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: fallenness and the reality of the fall actually points to
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: the possibility of something better. And to your point, the
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: question is, what is that better? Is it something that
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: we create that better, or is it something that we
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: witness to?
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: And I think that larger point is it's something we
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: witness to, such that, here we go, ready for this?
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: As Gandalf says, we have a fool's hope.
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: There's a fool's hope, right? And what I think he
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: means by the fool's hope is that it's not our
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: strivings that accomplish this new thing, but that doesn't mean
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: don't strive.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: Because what our strivings do is they testify to the
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: hope of something that can't be fulfilled from within our
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: structures and systems that can only come from the outside
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: that's right right so to me personally i was doing
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: this the other day when i was playing some basketball
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: in the park at night I looked up and I
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: realized Venus was shining bright in the sky and utterly glorious.
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: And the way that Tolkien tries to draw this out,
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: this fool's hope is to remind us, he, he, he
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: says more academically, he says without Thor lightning and thunder
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: are just lightning and thunder.
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: But when Thor enters into the mix, we now have
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: a story around it that enriches our imagination, allows us
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: to think that there's more at play than just, the
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: physics of it which by the way the physics of
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: all that in the blue sky is actually a beautiful
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: thing so that's not a generation of that it's quite
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: awe-inspiring but the larger point is it's an enchanting it's
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: a recognizing there's more than just this and so he
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: does this when he when we see venus he wants
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: us to see the light of arendelle and we won't
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: go into that right now but for him the light
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: of arendelle is a point of saying there is hope
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: but that hope comes from outside the the structures that
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: rule our enclosures of the world That's right. And for
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: me to be able to look up and see Venus
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: and to have all that rich narrative behind it is beautiful.
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: It's really hopeful to me. And that's the fool's hope.
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: But the point again is don't stop striving. Don't seek
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: to make pictures of what is to come. But it's
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: just that, right? Don't lose sight of the fact that
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: it's also pictures of what is to come. And what comes,
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: comes from outside the structures. And that's the work of
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: God in Christ by his holy breath.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting.
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: And maybe we close with this because we're getting toward
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: the end of time here. But I would say I've
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: been teaching through Hebrews. And one of the things that
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: Hebrews emphasizes is you have these sacrifices that had to
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: be performed year over year over year over year, daily, weekly,
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: ongoing by a priest who is incapable even of forgiving
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: his own sins. He's got to make sacrifice even for himself.
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: And then he's got to make sacrifices for the people.
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: And that these sacrifices were not bad or evil in
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: some way. And they could not be set aside. They
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: had to be practiced. But in the practice of them,
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: there's a gesturing forward. there's this notion that even though
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: you have to continue putting the effort in, and even
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: though you know that this effort is never ending, it
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: can actually accomplish what you're hoping it will accomplish. It
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: can't go beyond its own capabilities. We could say it
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: like that. It has an efficaciousness, but it's a limited efficaciousness.
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: And you're always looking for something more. And so you're
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: grateful that, for the effort that you're able to put in.
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: You're grateful that these things have been provided to you.
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: You're grateful that you get to participate in these things
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: at the same time that you're lamenting the fact that
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: you have to.
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: And you're looking forward to a time when you don't.
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: It's sort of this weird mix of emotions that we
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: have as we read the book of Hebrews, I think,
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: which is saying, you know, not everything that was pre-Christ
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: was horrible. But it's saying everything that was pre-Christ was
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: pointing to Jesus, and now we have him. And life
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: has now changed. The things that people were looking forward to,
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: part of those have come. And so we're not living
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: in this world where we have to continue doing these
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: sort of actions that we were.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: Doing ad nauseum.
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: We now have a certain degree of difference within our lives.
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: where that sort of effort doesn't need to be put in,
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: but other sorts of effort do, because we still haven't
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: achieved what Christ has achieved. We're now looking forward in
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: a slightly different manner to what has gone on. We
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: have a clearer picture of what these things were pointing to.
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: And that changes now even more how we live in this,
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: not a torturous world, but a world where we.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: Definitely feel the effects.
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: Of the sins that we have committed. And I think
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: that that is sort of that biblical way of saying
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: fool's hope, right? It's this notion of the effort is
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: put in without ever thinking the effort is going to
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: achieve or even maybe knowing that the effort is not
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: going to achieve what you're hoping for long term. But
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: the effort is not meaningless. It just can't be ultimate.
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: And those are two very different things. So, um, so yeah,
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think, and I think that's instructive for
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: the way we think about polis and politics and political engagement.
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: And I really do think that Kavanaugh is, um, especially
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: in his work, but also in the podcast has, and
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: was pointing towards some of those aspects. And so I
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: very much appreciate that about him and his work and,
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: and that conversation.
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: So, Great.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: I thought it was, it was an honor having him on.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: I was glad he agreed to come on. You know,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: we were both a little bit.
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, I was fanboying out a little bit. I
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: tried not to let it show, but.
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, it should.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, listen, you know, if we ever get
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: Stanley Harawas on the podcast, you'll see a little more,
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: it's going to be more inappropriate. So anyway, well, that's
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: our debrief on Kavanaugh. And so if you haven't listened
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: to that episode, check it out. If you have, hopefully
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: this was helpful to reframe some things. And keep coming back.
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: We're doing the series on faith and politics. So next episode,
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: we're going to have somebody else on talking about faith
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: and politics.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: From different angles.
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: We've got some great guests that have been on the
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: show thus far and some more good ones coming. So
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: stick around. Come back for the next episode of Thinking
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: Christian and take care until then.