Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Alexander John Shaia 0:00
When we're trying to form a new way of understanding God, which is a God of abundance, a God of generosity, a God of inclusion there's a horrible anguish about norming, this new experience.
Seth Price 0:30
Welcome back to the Can I Say This At Church podcast, I'm Seth your host, as usual. And I'm glad that you're here. Thanks for downloading. I don't want to do any announcements, because I'll do those at the end. That way, if you want to check out (on them) you can. I'm very excited for this conversation. So Alexander John Shaia is back on the show. He's always one of my favorites. We talked about baptism in the context of it a slightly different and you'll hear me kind of tell the story of that as we get going. But without further ado, let's make this thing happen.
Seth Price 1:26
Alexander, welcome back to the show.
Alexander John Shaia 1:29
Gosh, Seth, I've been looking forward to this.
Seth Price 1:33
I have as well. Yeah, very much so I am. Yeah, I cherish our relationship. I really enjoy that I have you as a sounding board when needed. So but um, welcome. Good morning. Good afternoon for you.
Alexander John Shaia 1:47
Good afternoon. Yes. Yes, for everybody who can't see I'm in Spain. And it's roughly 1:30 in the afternoon. And lunch here starts at three o'clock. So I'm fine. I just had my second cup of coffee.
Seth Price 2:07
I'm on my second cup. I'm going to try to do my best to not have the swallow sounds in this. So we'll see how it goes. What has been new? I don't even remember the last time that we recorded. It's been some time. But I don't remember when we recorded that. What is new for you in say, it was before the pandemic, so what is new for you?
Alexander John Shaia 2:29
Well, what's new is that I got I was in Spain under lockdown, last year, for 100 days. And lockdown here meant you couldn't go outside of your house. If you needed food or medicine, you call the police and they delivered it to you. And then I really discovered that I wanted to live you. And so I came back to the States and went through the process to get a residency visa, which is one year at a time. And I had just, just, just as of two days ago, got my national identity card, which makes me an official one year resident of Spain.
Seth Price 3:06
How much trouble is it to get renewed every year? Because I know how much trouble you went through to get that to begin with.
Alexander John Shaia 3:12
Talk to me in six months. (laughs) I don't know. I'm told not much. But I don't trust that.
Seth Price 3:22
So Spain intoxicated you while it kept you because of the pandemic.
Alexander John Shaia 3:27
It did it. One of the things I love here is the care for people for each other. I have to adjust to the fact that when I go to a store, and people here still are lining up to go into a store because there are still restrictions about the number of people to go into a store. People look at my grey hair and they step aside. I'm not used to that. Yeah, I'm not used to thinking of myself as as having reached a certain age, but I'm certainly not used to not just standing in line like everybody else.
Seth Price 3:59
Yeah. That's a different temperament altogether. So that was the plan to stay in Spain longer term before the pandemic or is this like a pandemic induced Spanish version of Stockholm syndrome implied by a country.
Alexander John Shaia 4:17
So in 2012, I walked the Camino for myself and I walked almost sixty days. And the very last village I walked into, which is here at the ocean is the village I'm in now. And when I walk into that village, I said, someday I want to live here. And nine years later, here I am.
So the idea was playing in my mind, but I have to say that when lockdown happened and I was here ,in one location, and couldn't move around and really discovered I love being here. It's not all the toys of Spain that attracted me it's something about the simple life here. Even if you're just locked in a house.
Seth Price 5:00
Yeah, it's on my list. I found out last yesterday that my what my mom, her dream is to go to Paris and spend some time and I was like, Mom, you're so close to retirement just go. She's like, Who would I go with? I was like take your sister's? Who cares? Just go, it'll be fine. But she lives in a state of anxiety. rightly so. So. Yeah. Um, so yeah. So for the topic to the end, though, you've you buried the lead. So you've done new things since then. So you started a publishing house, not in just words alone. You've put books out? Like, yeah, so yeah, talk a bit on that, because there's a lot going on.
Alexander John Shaia 5:39
Well, the publishing houses, called Shaia Sophia House, myself along with Nora Sophia. And we are an imprint of Quoir. And it's just a great relationship with them. And so our niche in Quoir is that you have a book that touches upon transformation in the wide avenue of transformation. We'd love for you to consider us as as your publishing house.
Seth Price 6:09
Yeah, I've read I think one, maybe two of your books in that in that house. And yeah, it's a good, it's a good flavor. It's a different flavor. And I enjoy it. I enjoy it. So I didn't want to bury that lead, because that is a huge thing and you didn’t bring it up.
Alexander John Shaia 6:25
And you didn't is it is a huge lead. And the other thing is that last December, I released a provisional copy of my book on the 13 Days of Christmas. And I'm now pushing to see if I can get a final edition help this year.
Seth Price 6:43
I got to be done by April, September to get everything bound and printed and shipped and where it needs to be?
Alexander John Shaia 6:49
Probably August and so I'm right on the razor's edge at this moment.
Seth Price 6:54
I said, April, I meant August, I get mixed up with the two that are ace. But I said April and September, but yeah, (we both laugh)
Alexander John Shaia 7:00
Yeah, I leave the middle of August to leave this year's camino, which, for so long, we weren't sure what's going to happen. But yes, in fact, the Camino this year of 60 days is moving forward. And we're now accepting applications for Camino 2022.
Seth Price 7:17
That's cool. That's cool. That's good. Yeah, a while back, I remember the night that it was I sent you a message in messenger. And it talked about a conversation that I'd had with my daughter, because someone had said something about baptism, the way that you know, eight and nine year olds do with a different understanding of God, which is totally fine. And you had responded with the history of baptism, there, just few people that think they know as much as they should. And you wish that theologians today would really research early Christianity is use if the ritual, and how it's different from today.
Which, for those listening, you should go back to the first time I spoke to you, I remember when we talked at that time, it was close to lent, and you're like, I'm not prepared to talk about Easter, because of this, this, and this, and it's pageantry. And it's not what it was.
And I was like timeout. Can we go ahead and schedule a second one? And so this one gave me a similar feeling where I'm like, I don't know anything about the history of baptism? I don't. And I know my thoughts on it. But it doesn't mean that there's any context there. So I'd like to weave in and out of that, because I would assume a lot of people like myself are equally as ignorant, because, you know, it's not on the 15 minute YouTube thing, then we just don't dig into it. And honestly, I started perusing books on baptism. And outside of like, Reformed Theology, there doesn't seem to be a lot on baptism, except for a couple cursory surveys of the differences between immersion and sprinkling and all this different stuff. So there's a lot there. Where should we begin?
Alexander John Shaia 8:57
Okay, so I want to start by saying, we have Christianity before the year 600 and we have Christianity after the year 600. So that is sort of arbitrary, but I'd like people to think of the Christianity up to 600 and after 600. And early Christianity, which I'm talking about is 5 or 600 years, I mean, it's two and a half times the age of the United States. This is an enormous sweet sweep of time. But it is is so different from the Christianity that we think of today, in every way possible.
But, I just, I can't emphasize enough that I mean, I think of the golden years of Christianity, us being the second, third, fourth, fifth centuries, where we were doing something that was unheard of in human history. And I really mean this and I don't mean this to be to downplay or make any other religious tradition second class, not at all. But Christianity was the first tradition that said, it no longer matters who your mother was. It no longer matters your bloodline. It no longer matters your economic status. It no longer matters whether you're free or slave. It no longer matters what part of the world you were born. We've got a table, and you're welcome to come and to sit at that table as a brother and a sister with everybody else at that table. Now, if we think that that's a radical idea, even today, go back 2000 years ago. And I love my Lebanese tradition but it also gives me a window into what the world of the Middle East was like all those centuries ago.
My grandparents, in that small mountain village, which was fairly isolated in Lebanon. They would look over the canyon, and they would see the people in that village over there, which they probably had never visited. And they would say “we don't know those folks. We don't know those folks” As as much as we think about what, what the shape of an alien, quote unquote alien is going to be when they make themselves known. I mean, the idea of in the Middle East 2000 years ago with every city, every village was its own. And they would extend hospitality to the traveler but that's not the same thing as inviting them to be a member of the village.
And along comes Jesus the Christ and early Christianity, and we throw open the doors and say, Oh, no, we're not just inviting people…we're not just extending hospitality. We're inviting you to come and be a member of the family. From all the world's diversity, from all the different thought systems and ideologies and philosophies, and male and female, yeah. And I believe verities of sexual orientation, etc, etc, all of that. We're inviting to the table of the brothers and sisters. Okay, but here's the kicker. It's great to have the vision of a table where people can sit as brother and sister. But how do you create the behavioral changes and the attitude changes that make that not just an idea, but make that an ongoing practice? That's where baptism comes in. Because before the year 600 baptism was not about membership. Baptism, for the first aeons of Christian history was equal to what today we call ordination. And in fact, today's ordination, right is the old baptismal right, before 600.
Because we took seriously the idea that we were a community of priests. And certainly, the first step is to come into relationship with Jesus Christ. But that's just the first step. And that's not what baptism was. Baptism was you come into that relationship. You accept the rigors of learning how to live pan-tribally, with all these people who are not like and how to develop communion with that. And you learn and commit yourself to your talents, to give those to your family and to your community and to the wider world. And when all of that is done, then we baptize you, then we pour the water.
Seth Price 14:26
I've never heard the thing of juxtaposition between ordinational rites and baptismal rites. So what does ordination look like in the first 600 years versus now? Because that's, that's not.
Alexander John Shaia 14:41
Yeah, right. So ordination was a very small step. So you've got a community which is formed, deeply formed, in the practices of being a communion table. They're formed in a relationship with Jesus Christ, that's a given. And then secondly, being a communion at table. And then thirdly, that you also understand what your talents are and your gifts that you have to offer to each other in the world.
The priest is a small step forward, as we understand that this individual, or these individuals, have the talent of convening such a group of people at table. They actually are the priests to the priests. But the whole equation shifts because we don't have somebody as we do today. I'm not saying that this is a less than, but in the early church, you don’t have somebody standing up giving a sermon on Sunday. The community is obligated to prepare themselves to share the Word at that Sunday gathering with each other.
And there might be one or two people who are going to speak reflections that other people will, will share day in and day in, back and forth. Because remember, all of this is being built from the Jewish experience of Shabbat. And on Shabbat, you've got one person who gives a reflection but you've got the community who argues about it. And I really mean that arguing because that's an essential part for the Jewish people. No one person knows the truth, the truth is relational. And you need to have a whole range of people in the room. So you've got different perspectives about what's being shared. And that my passion about what I see above, evokes your passionate about what you see. Not that my passion should be the way you understand, but use the energy of my passion, to understand it in a very different way for yourself.
Seth Price 16:58
So the way that you're describing that to me, so I happen to go to a Baptist Church, but one of the things our minister says all the time is you don't have to agree with me, I'm gonna paraphrase him. You're not to agree with me, because Baptists believe in the priesthood of all believers. So just do the thing. Just do the thing. It's totally fine.
But it also sounds almost like a…so for someone pre 600 to baptize someone is that a subversive act against the religious leaders of the day? Like is it…would if you were like a rabbi, or whatever, in the day, and you're seeing other people do this and then assume a form of authority over what a word of God is? Is that subversive, is it heretical, is it…like what is like, for contextual purposes like what would that be?
Alexander John Shaia 17:53
Are you talking about governmental or religious?
Seth Price 17:57
Well, I think religions operate often like a government, but I'm not so much against like, against, like Rome, or something like that. But more so against like, you know, like, against the the priest and the temple, and the Sanhedrin, you know, what I mean? Like, would they look that way? Like, no, what do you know, you don't get to say anything, you haven't been trained, you don't get to just go in this water. And now you get to… Is this subversive at all or would they not care?
Alexander John Shaia 18:23
Well, so now, I need to make a further discrimination, which is to remember the year 325. So we've got Christianity up to 325. And then we've got 325 to 600. And then we've got after 600.
Seth Price 18:39
Okay.
Alexander John Shaia 18:41
In 325 when the legal persecution of Christians ended, and Christianity then became “the state religion”, the tradition began to take on some of the trappings of government. And as soon as you begin to take on some of the trappings of government you begin to develop sort of an in group in and out. And when you have an in group and an out group, you have an enormous amount of fight and disagreements.
Seth Price 19:14
You don't say‽
Alexander John Shaia 19:15
Quote unquote the fourth century is known as “the heretical wars”. And basically, what that meant is, is that Christianity was trying to figure out what's the wide middle? I like to think of Christianity in the fourth century, is like somebody on the pommel horse at the Olympics. How far can I bend to the left? And how far can I bend to the right without falling off the horse? That's my image for the heretical wars is, you know, on one hand, Christianity said, you can't say that Jesus was just a good person. And on the other hand, you can't say that Jesus was just God. It's like how you hold that Jesus was by Human and God together…there's a wide range but Christianity's got to stay in that wide range and not fall off one way or the other.
But during that time, there was an enormous amount of argument. I oftentimes use the phrase that I learned when I worked out the bayous of Louisiana, sadly, many, many, many decades ago when it was really a lovely place to be, but they gotta saying out in the bayou. And I'm gonna tell it to you. Like I heard it. When you're up to your ass and gator you can't remember you came to drain the swamp.
Seth Price 20:45
(laughs) Let's get away from the Gator.
Alexander John Shaia 20:47
Well, yeah, so are the up to 325 Christians are running for their life. And we were doing what we had to do to stay alive and serve the community. And then after 325, suddenly, we had the luxury to start talking with communities that were far flung. It's like well, what do you believe? Whoa, what do you do on Sunday and then this cacophony, which I think of is the gift of Christianity, all this diversity became known. But in that becoming known there was a sense of wisdom probably need to norm the middle. And that created enormous amount of anxiety and frustration and philosophical wars.
Seth Price 21:42
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it seems like that still is the case. We haven't learned anything. I was listening to a podcast the other day, which I become addicted to that I don't feel like advertising here. But I can tell you later if you want. And it's a historical podcast. And he's like, the only history I've come to realize it's true is humans don't learn anything from history. We just read about it. But he's like, that's the only thing that I've come to see is true. So pre John the Baptist, and Jesus, it feels like because there seems to be a baptismal right in the early church, but it seems to be more of a cleansing. Like this is a ritualistic, repetitive. Do this, do it again, do it again, layed with my wife too close to menstruation, do it again, somebody passed away, do it again. But that doesn't appear to be the way that it seems to be afterwards, you know, the way that Mark talks about it, John talks about it, the way that it's written about in Matthew where it becomes a thing. So is this even the same thing? Are they two different baptisms?
Alexander John Shaia 22:42
Seth, they are two different baptisms, and this is, you know, just when we're reading the scriptures, and we see the word baptism, there is almost nowhere in the scriptures where that word relates to what the second century Christians develop.
So first of all, let's remember what John the Baptist is doing is not Christian Baptistism he’s not baptizing Jesus into being Christian. He's offering the Jewish ritual of a mikvah bath, which is something that you can repeat over and over as a cleansing of oneself and an offering of oneself deeper to God. And the radicalness of John is, many people in those days are Jew are doing the Jewish ritual of baptism, which because at that point, Judaism had taken on a lot of Greek language, it changed the rituals name from a mikvah bath to baptism. And then 300 years later, they changed it back the mikvah to make it clear that Jewish mikvah was not Christian Baptism, alright.
But John is baptizing people by taking them down into flowing water, the Jordan River. Everyone else in those days and there are many are doing baptism in the synagogue in a stone vessel with with a firm floor on it. What is so upsetting about what John is doing, is that John is taking people down into the element that the Jews considered as potentially the place which was the door to Sheol and where the demons lived. Flowing water to the Jewish people in the first century is anathema a taboo. You don't want to go near flowing water. You want rain water, you want well water, but in look at the Psalms, always praying for still water but not flowing water.
And why was that? Two reasons for that.
First, if you know the flood story, well we think of the flood as the vault over the earth opening up and waters coming down. True, but if you read the text closely enough, you realize that the text And the vault underneath the earth opened and the waters came up. They came from both directions and wiped everything away. So when the Jews see flowing water, they're like, well, we can look up at the sky, make pretty sure that the vault overhead is firm. But is the vault cracked? If I go down into flowing water, am I going to go out through that flowing water into Sheol? Plays a deep, deep, deep, deep anxiety.
And even if you if you read the text about coming out of Egypt, and Moses is standing there and Yahweh removes the waters, the text says a wall of water on the left on a wall of water to the right. And then what does it say next, and the Jews walked on dry land. The Jewish people of that time had tremendous anxiety about flowing water. They wanted their feet on dry land. So when John the Baptist doesn't do the Jewish ritual back in the synagogue with a firm bottom, but it's inviting people to go down into a place which is, which they think is treacherous and dangerous. This is a whole new level of committing yourself to God.
And he's upsetting the religious authorities who are like, well, who told you you could do this? John, where did you go to get the temples Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval?
Seth Price 26:44
(Seth laughs quite a bit) Good Housekeeping.
Alexander John Shaia 26:46
Well yea! So again, not that he's baptizing but that he's using flowing water which is why early Christians, and we've totally lost this since, why early Christians used flowing water to baptize was not because it was clean water but because it was treacherous. You go down in to a place, like an emotional or spiritual death, to live through that place and be raised by the power of God to live a wider life.
Seth Price 27:26
Yeah, again, we referenced earlier, there were no books that I could buy that gave me any context. And I have to I have to chew on that quite a bit.
Alexander John Shaia 27:35
Well, one of the great, more contemporary theologians that this is a Benedict in named Aiden Kavanagh who wrote one of the most magnificent books called The Shape of Baptism. And about how the baptism imagery is horrific. And he reminds us that in the early centuries, our ancestors said to us to look at the baptistry you should be horrified because only with the eyes of faith would someone look at such horror and see new life.
Seth Price 28:13
I'm gonna buy that today. I think that two books that you made me buy this month? And it's July? It's like July 8, and I'm already at two. (Alexander laughs)
So zooming forward then to today? Actually no, another question. So if John was just taking people into the synagogues on the sly when people weren't, wouldn't have been as subversive, or what he would have, would it have been disrespectful, wouldn't have had any similar form of power, or would they have not like, you know what I mean, I hope that question makes sense.
Alexander John Shaia 28:44
But yeah, I mean, I know I don't think he would have that power at all. Many, many, many people were leading Jewish people through a ritual the mikvah bath as every synagogue today has a place where a mikvah bath. And so we have to constantly when we're reading the scriptures, and now when I translate the scriptures, I stopped using the word baptism, because it's not baptism, as we understand it in Christianity. It's a mikvah bath. Jesus is going down into the Jordan and receiving a mikvah bath from John.
Seth Price 29:20
Yeah. I kind of like I kind of like the picture thinking of baptism that way as entering a live source and leaving a live source, alive, or entering a stale source and leaving the same just leaving “wet” maybe that's an oversimplification, but I kind of like, I like that.
Time for a quick break. I'll be back in like a minute. Hang tight.
Seth Price 30:28
So zooming forward to today, we've got 800 ways to baptize people. Like we baptize babies. We sprinkle babies, we dunk babies, we don't do that we have believers baptism we have, whatever the Presbyterians do whatever the Methodists do. So how did we get here? Like, because baptism means 20 different things to 20 different people. It's like trying to define the word evangelical, it means different things.
Alexander John Shaia 30:52
So let's go back again to this, you know, for easy speaking, take the date of 600, the Germanic tribes of Northern Europe have swept down to the outskirts of the city of Rome, and they are preparing to sack the city the next day. And the Pope, and in this moment I can’t remember which Pope it is, goes out to meet them, and makes a tremendous bargain with them which saves the city of Rome, saves 1000s of lives. But here's what happened. He said to them, if you will allow yourselves to be baptized and promise then after you're baptized to go through the process of accepting the disciplines of Christianity. We'll give you the keys to the city.
Seth Price 31:57
No bullets fired. Well, there weren't any bullets, but…
Alexander John Shaia 32:00
No. So in that moment, the whole of baptism being a preparation for the priesthood at the table of everybody. After that moment, it became a ritual of first profession, of membership, with the promise that I will further develop myself. And what happened is now we have two different levels of people at the table. We have the people who have gone through a deep personal transformation and understand their relationship with Jesus, have accepted the practices, have exhibited the grace of the practices, and know the role that they have to give the community. And then we have other people at the table who have simply promised first membership.
Well, now we have a cultural moment happen. And that is the whole of the Roman Empire is gone (and) much of Northern Europe is in chaos. And the church becomes the school, the police station, the hospital, the community center, the everything. Education is very limited. It is said that probably most priests were simply the only person in the village who could read write a little bit. And everything in Christianity became the priest gets formed a little and everybody else gets formed a very little. And you begin a stratification, which ultimately ends the community, the true community of the priesthood at the table.
Seth Price 33:43
So there's no inherent on try to say this without a weight of offending anyone listening, it might not be possible. So many of my friends believe that without baptism there is no being with God after we're done breathing. But that doesn't seem to be any of what you've described. Enough so that some people you know, will will baptize infants who aren't making a commitment to try to better themselves in a spiritual way. So how did we get back to…it feels like a new version of a ritual cleansing, but a one time ultimate cleansing? How did we get back to that because what you were describing doesn't seem to match what many denominations do today.
Alexander John Shaia 34:29
So just to further understand the early origins of baptism baptism has a series of moments in it which could go over two or three years. But from the first moment of baptism, which is you make a profession to be a follower of Jesus, that begins the process to two years later when you have shown evidence that you know the practices and you know your talent is when the waters are poured, all of that baptism. And the early church called Baptism of desire as the fundamental root of the entire process, and without the baptism of desire, there was no real baptism because there's no commitment of one's heart to live in a certain way.
The early church also understood that there was no need, spiritual need, to baptize an infant. Because if the parents are truly alive and Christian, just not just nominally Christian, but if the parents are true practitioners of the tradition, the child is bone of bone, blood of blood, flesh of flesh, and spirit of spirit. So the church would baptize the child not because they were concerned about where the child was going to go if they died. But recognizing that the child of two people who are truly practicing Christians can be nothing but…now they can make their own decisions when they grow up. But if your household is steeped in the ways of the Christian tradition, that child is going to be given Christianity in the same way that you've given the child its DNA. So there was no sense in the early church of, quote unquote, “original sin”, and concern about where the child was going if the child died. There was the reality that a child born to Christian parents is Christian in the womb.
Seth Price 36:54
Huh. So I might be stretching this way too far. But I saw a joke the other day about John Piper and Abraham Piper. I don't know if you're familiar with either of those. So John Piper is a, I want to put this very plainly, a horrible, non loving person from everything that I can see. Like he just seems to intentionally spew hate and use the Bible as a sacred weapon. His son, he excommunicated from his own church, because his son has expressed doubts. And he walked away and said Dad I'll come back and he welcomed him back which great, and then he walked away again. And so someone the other day, it said, but how do we then deal with this section in Titus that says to be an elder or a leader in the church, your kids have to be showing fruit or you can't be an elder or a leader because what are you doing? And to hear you explain baptism in that way almost feels and maybe I'm reverse Litmus testing this in of we can see what the children are doing later this kid doesn't seem to be doing what we would expect. So I wonder if the parents were actually what we thought? Maybe I'm stretching that in ways it isn't intended to be just because the joke is still in my head. Maybe I'm not. Maybe I am, I don't know.
Alexander John Shaia 38:05
Well, I mean, I do think you're stretching it in a way it's not intended to be (Seth laughs). And I have to honestly say that that's my hope. What I think we miss is that Christianity in those first two centuries is a maelstrom trying to become this tradition which welcomes everyone. And the polemic is not so much about pagans, the polemic is about people who believe that they have the only way to God, which every pagan tradition believed. They were not traditions, at that point in their history, where they were welcoming converts. If you belonged to a tradition of your village, or if you were a worshiper of Dionysus, etc, they saw their god or goddess as having limited powers. Why the heck am I going to ask my god or goddess to be your god or goddess that's gonna diminish what they have for me. And when we're trying to form a new way of understanding God, which is a God of abundance, a God of generosity, a Got of inclusion there's a horrible anguish about norming this new experience.
Seth Price 39:34
I did not know that about scarcity of power for like a diocese did not know that at all. So I didn't interrupt there just now.
Alexander John Shaia 39:42
Yes! I mean, why is Paul inveying so heavily against pagans? It's because of their tribalism. The great hallmark of Jesus Christ is this understanding that all people are brother and sister Which Judaism has, which Hinduism had to some degree at that point. Nobody, nobody, had yet gone to the next step, which is to say, and we've got a room where all that world's diversity can sit with each other as brother and sister. That's just folly to think that we can move from separate but equal to equal around a common table.
Seth Price 40:34
Separate but equal, made my mind spent in a different way, trying to figure out a way to 14th amendment scripture of all humans equal and just under the law. I'm not saying that right. I can't remember what the either way, I'm stretching that again, in ways probably unintended.
Alexander John Shaia 40:52
I mean, I love my Jewish brothers and sisters. If I were not Christian, I would be Jewish. And I totally admire the sense of how they understand the equality of all people before God. But Judaism is not quote unquote, evangelical in the sense of wanting people to join them.
Seth Price 41:16
Yeah, yeah, there's no proselytizing.
Alexander John Shaia 41:21
Right. Yeah. Which Christianity is one of the first quote unquote proselytizing traditions, because we understand that all humanity can sit together as brother and sister. But it can't just be an idea. It's got to be a practice that we learn how to do. And that was an essential part of the long preparation of baptism.
Seth Price 41:51
I want to shift gears…
Alexander John Shaia 41:54
…which…no..
Seth Price 41:55
Well, no, go ahead. No, no, no, which was…
Alexander John Shaia 41:56
Which I think is the piece of Christianity that we have lost today. We have lost the ability about how to hold diversity of ideology, diversity of theology, diversity of socio-economic condition, diversities of sexual orientation, etc. And we are trying to make churches that are ideologically the same. Rather than saying we are the place where diversity can learn to be brother and sister.
Seth Price 42:31
Yeah, I'm glad that you kept going. Yes, yes. Amen. 100% of that, yes.
Where I was switching gears that segue so brilliantly.
So same two questions. I've been asking everyone for the bulk of this year. The first one is just a play on the rhetorical question of the name of the show, because why not? (Alexander chuckles) What should Christians humans, not necessarily ministers, be concerned with being able to speak about in our congregational bodies? And if we don't we’ll just explode faith communities? What should we be allowed to talk about? Or should we be intentionally talking about in our churches?
Alexander John Shaia 43:10
We should talk about anything as long as we can learn how to talk about it with respect. I'm very sad to say that I think that this is a core Christian practice, but I didn't learn it in Christianity, I learned it in psychology, I learned it in sitting with men's groups, etc. That when you're sitting in a men's group, and there's a great amount of disagreement and tension that comes into the room of what's being discussed, the facilitator will ask us to go out and chop wood together, or chant, or drum, or do something that allows us to hold the energy and see each other as brothers. And then we come back in to the discussion and discovered the discussion has gone to a deeper level. That we don't…in the men's group, and this is utterly, utterly foundational to Christian community, that we do not try to resolve it by giving a right answer we try to resolve it by the community finding a way to harmonize diversity.
Seth Price 44:25
With axes, you want to take tension and let people chop wood with axes I'm just playing a little bit. Everybody's heightened and anxious. Let's give them all axes. Now I'm teasing a bit but it makes me laugh. Yeah. I've realized I've been waiting to ask you this question in a recorded way for years now that I get to ask you. So when you try to wrap words around what God is, what do you say to that?
Alexander John Shaia 44:58
I'm gonna paraphrase Rob bell on this one. He really said it to me the best that I found the way to say it is that God is the hum, or the melody, that's going on in every cell of the cosmos. And that hum, or that melody, that's going on in every cell of the cosmos. It's in the cosmos, but it's transcended there is a reality that the hum refers to.
Seth Price 45:32
I heard someone recently give an answer to that question with inadvertently. It's an old YouTube interview of I think it's Conan O'Brien, or maybe Stephen Colbert, and Keanu Reeves of all people. And they got existential about John Wick, which is a movie I don't know if you've watched any of those or not. I've only watched the first one. But he asked him what happens when we die. And all Keanu Reeves said was,
I don't know. But I know that the people that love us miss us tremendously.
And for some reason that feels godly to me, like it feels divine. The hum kind of calls that same memory to my mind, where do you want people to go to do the things that they should be doing as it relates to the work that you're doing?
Alexander John Shaia 46:14
Great question. So in the last year and a half, over this time of pandemic, we have really tighten and refined and made radiant the process of heart and mind community, which is about 18 months of spiritual formation, as using the book radical transformation and the paperback edition of Heart and Mind as a way to learn the spiritual practices of the map the journey, and especially how we hold diversity in a certain way, until it opens up as a vibrant part of us.
Seth Price 46:55
How do people do that?
Alexander John Shaia 46:56
Go to our website quadratos.com. And then up in the right hand corner, you'll see a tab that says communities click on communities. And then you will see Heart and mind Community. You'll also see walking Spain's Camino there, all the various spiritual practices that you can be part of, to learn and to reform and to make more vital today-a new form of Christianity.
Seth Price 47:29
Yeah, I've realized. So for those listening, I'll link it somewhere that may have been the last time that we spoke. So I was involved in a heart and mind community that I had done online, just because of everybody being geographically spread out across the continent. And I remember the four of us, me, you, Darrell, Danielle, and Jim, the five of us having a conversation about the impact of being in that community. So for those listening, if you kind of want to hear a biased view of what it was for me, you should go back and listen to that one. Alexander it is always a joy.
Alexander John Shaia 48:00
I mean…I really want people to know there's a map. And knowing the map is not the same thing as walking it but dadgummit gamut. I don't want to go on a journey without a map. And then, and then secondly, there are some key early Christian practices which we can restore today, which will open Christianity’s radiant heart as it’s intended to be. And if any of that touches you, please go to the website, look at what we're doing. Find it through us find it somewhere. But Christianity is in better shape today than it's been in a couple of 100 years. And it's only going to get better.
Seth Price 48:37
My friend, I have enjoyed your time. My morning, your afternoon. Very much. So thank you so much for coming back. Appreciate it.
Alexander John Shaia 48:45
Yes. Always Seth, thank you.
Seth Price 49:05
You made it this far, you're at the end. Thank you. Now the show is produced by the patrons of the show, a little bit by the ads, but mostly by the patrons of the show. And I wanted to welcome Meshi Michelle there to the community. Thanks for being here. Over the last few months. We've lost a few patrons. But it looks as though it's because cards have expired. So if that's something you still want to do, and you're like, Huh, I haven't seen any of the emails yet. In a while from the show. check on that. If you are able to join in jumping over there be part of the community. I would be ever thankful if you can't I get it times are tough for a lot of people. It's a crazy world that we live in, just share the show on social media, but just send it out. Let me know how things are going and maybe share one of your favorite episodes. It's one of the best ways that the show can grow. Either way, I'm glad that you listened today.
A special thanks to Remedy Drive for the use of their music in this week's show.
I will talk with you in a week.
Be blessed everyone.