God Can't with Thomas Jay Oord / Transcript

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.

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Thomas 0:00

I usually don't try to nuance the phrase “God is in control” because I simply don't think it's true. I don't think God is in control and I find that to be a great sense of relief. And I think most victims do as well. That is, if God is truly in control, that means that every rape, torture, (and) genocide in the world, are somehow caused or allowed by God. And the way most Christians think about it is that it's somehow a part of a master plan, because God's in control. I just can't live that way. And most people I know, can't live that way. Now, sometimes people use the phrase God is in control and by that they mean something like God's still working in this situation. I'm totally on board if that's the meaning that people have, because the God I believe in never gives up anytime. And we're never totally on our own. God is always present, always empowering, always acting for good So if that's what God is in control is supposed to be meaning then I'm on board with that. I just want to get away from the notion that God either could (have) prevented some evil or God was actually the cause of the evil I think that undermines a coherent view of divine love.

Seth Price 1:41

Hey there, everyone. Welcome back to the Can I Say This At Church podcast, January is about over, I'm Seth your host, and I'm excited that you're here. Before the show gets underway. Thank you so much to each and every one of you that support the show on Patreon and if you have not yet done that, click the button, do it. You're going to get some free stuff. Honestly, what Paul helped create with the four part series on Oscar Romero, I've gone back and listened to a few times it is really beautiful. Every once a while, you'll get some of my writings which have no author, but maybe one day. A few videos just BONUS stuff that you wouldn't normally get. Just you're on iTunes, we'd love to give that to you. And so thank you to our newest supporters, another recent uptick over the holidays. And so I appreciate every single one of you, I know that every dollar that you have is well earned, and hard earned. And I am humbled by your support.

If I asked you, is there anything that God can't do? Most people in America would have that normal answer. Of course not! God is all powerful. God is omnipotent. God is omnipresent. God exists outside of time, God can do whatever he wants to do because God is God. I've come to think that that's wrong. There's a lot of things that God can't do, and it's because he limits himself by his love. And that sounds odd to hear out loud but as I've wrestled over these past few years with what the concepts of God are, for me, what love looks like for me, what that changes in my life and how I fail at it constantly, I've realized a beauty and a linkage between love, between fear, between anger, and between pain. And anger and pain are always part of the equation. It's almost like they balance everything out. But that leaves you raw, and it leaves me raw. And it makes me feel like life is often unfair.

Thomas Jay Ord is a theologian he's a professor, he's a lot of things. And he has a book that just released here at the beginning of January called God Can't: How to believe in God and love after tragedy, abuse and other evils. So the topic you're going to hear today in the conversation today is a lot about the problem of evil and the problem of pain, how we deal with that, how we work through it, what we're called to-in it, and honestly, from the bottom of my heart, this book needs to be in every home and every house. hospital and every church library. This book, man it is powerful. And I'm not explaining it well and so I'm going to stop trying. Let's roll the tape on this conversation with Thomas Jay Oord.

Seth Price 4:41

Thomas Jay Oord, I'm so happy to have you on the show be so when I spoke with Mark Karris on prayer, he referenced you in his book so often that I bought it and then I gave it away. There's a small group of people on Patreon I correlate with some of the donations books and I send them books each month and so two months ago, I believe in over By the time this comes out, I sent about eight people your book and and got some great feedback on it. So not not that not the newest book, not the book coming out, right? But uh, but yeah, and so I love what you're doing and I'm so happy you've been able to come on.

Thomas 5:16

Thanks so much for hosting this chat.

Seth Price 5:19

I like to start with a bit about you. So in two or three or five or seventeen, if you do seventeen minutes though I'm going to edit it down, just kind of what brought you to where you're at in life, kind of, you know, the faith of your childhood, how that kind of impacted you growing up and then what brought you to do what you do now?

Thomas 5:39

Yeah, I grew up in a family of people who went to church a lot. My parents are Christians, my sibling Christians. They were not perfect parents, but they were probably above average. And I took Christian faith very seriously. I was one of those adamant door to door evangelists and in fact, I was a part of Campus Crusade for Christ for a while when I was in college. And about my senior year of college I got to the place where I could no longer make sense of faith and God and ended up turning to atheism for a short period of time because the reasons I had for believing that there was a god no longer made sense to me.

I came back to faith not because I was certain that there was a God, but it seemed to be more plausible than not that there was a God. And various factors were involved, but probably two or primary one was, I had this deep intuition that I ought to be a loving person, and that others ought to love as well. And I thought that belief in God provided the best overall framework to place that intuition. And secondly, and related, I believed that life must have some meaning, and I couldn't make sense of life having meaning if there wasn't a meaning maker, a “god”. And so I’m a theologian, married have kids. Probably the most important thing about me is that more than anything else in the world, I want to live a life of love.

Seth Price 7:18

You said two things there that I want to break apart of it, and it's extremely relevant to your writing. So do you feel like if someone disengages from a belief in God, that they can't live a life of love or maybe that's the wrong way to say it? But are the two connected in the way that like two links on a chain are or can they stand apart?

Thomas 7:39

Some of the most loving people I know are atheists. The Dalai Lama would be one of them. The Dalai Lama doesn't believe in God. No you don't have to believe in God to be a loving person. But I do think belief in God, a certain kind of belief in God. I believe in a loving God can be a major motivation to not only love but also think that our lives are meaningful and that love makes sense overall. Maybe another way to put it is, belief in God provides a fundamental framework for making sense of the, I think, deep seated intuition that most of us have that we ought to be loving people.

Seth Price 8:22

the book that's coming out for God Can't and I cannot remember the subtitle, it's longer than I can remember.

Thomas 8:29

Yes, I make long subtitles

Seth Price 8:31

Yeah, I've three small children and subtitles…it's all I can do to remember which episode of Umizoomi that we're on for the three year old. And if any of you listening watch Umizoomi I'm praying for you and I hope I really hope that you praying for me and for my sanity. But the one that I sent everyone is all about the uncontrolling love of God. And so your new book, God Can't really builds or at least I think that it builds off of that. And so I think for those that have not really read that book and I do not want to make this interview specifically about that-at all. But I think that it is good to kind of baseline what you mean when you say that because I think if I said that in any church would be that, “of course God's love is uncontrolling”. And the same way that I would say, hey, how's your Tuesday and not mean anything by it? So what do you mean when you say that?

Thomas 9:20

Well, first of all, you're right to see the connection between the two books. The Uncontrolling love of God was actually published by an Academic Press. And although I tried really hard to make it understandable, it was still a little too sophisticated for some people's reading. The new book, God Can't with the subtitle, how to believe in God and love after tragedy, abuse and other evils is a much more readable book includes a lot of stories, and I really wrote it to be the kind of book that, you know, my mother could read and not feel like she had to have a theology degree. So I do think a lot of people like the idea of uncontrolling Love the uncontrolling love of God. But those same people will recoil in horror if you say God can't do something. And to me those are inextricably linked. And the idea is this that God's love is essentially are inherently self-giving and others empowering. And therefore God must give freedom to complex creatures, you know, who are complex enough to be able to express free actions, or agency and self organization to less complex creatures, even the mere existence or what we call the laws of nature are derived from God's love, and God must love in this kind of way. And if God must self give, and others empower, then that suggests that God simply can't overpower, can't control, can't, you know, be a sufficient cause, to do the philosophical language there.

And so this new book really says it explicitly in the title, in part, because the first book generated lots of mail from people who have been hurt deeply, (have) been the victims of abuse, bad luck, accidents, horrible events. And that previous book gave them a way to think about God that allowed them to think that God didn't sort of stand by and not intervene to help them. So a lot of people have no problem saying God won't control others. But I'm going so far as to say God can't control others.

Because if God simply won't, sounds like God could, and victims of abuse are wondering, hey, where were you God? Why didn't you step in and help me out in the midst of my suffering?

Seth Price 11:48

Yeah, well, and that's a fair, if that's the God that we say that we believe in and the God that's preached on Sundays, that is a fair rebuttal to…I mean, I can't…if I'm God and one of my children is being harmed. If I do nothing, what kind of a father am I? And so it's an entirely fair criticism of what I think a lot of at least Western Christianity, characterizes God, quote unquote, as, or at least the people that I'm engaged with, in day in and day out the people that I talked with day in and day out, why can't God then? So if it's his love, I don't understand how that love restricts him from intervening in something that he created?

Thomas 12:38

Yeah.

So two things to keep in mind, first of all, is to claim that God's love is inherently uncontrolling. So that's sort of a you know, upfront claim that love just doesn't manipulate dominate, allow no free choice in response in return. But secondly, we sometimes can use our bodies to constrain the freedoms of others. You know, maybe you say you get kids, maybe one of your kids is about ready to step into the street and you reach out and grab him by the shoulder and or if you have a boy or not, so you grab your son by the shoulder and pull him out of the way of a car. Well, he was freely doing something and yet you constrained his freedom in some way by pulling him back. So one of the important points of the book is that God is a universal spirit without a localized divine body.

There's some things that you and I can do because we have localized bodies, the God simply can't do directly because God doesn't have a universal body. Now, of course, God can call upon you set the pull your son from out of the traffic and in that sense, you can be God's hands in that moment, but that's a little different from saying that God directly did it with the divine body.

Seth Price 14:32

So this is something, as I finished your book, it's actually something I wrote down so I'm glad that you brought that up this was a thought from it. So is the body, the corporeal body, (a) requirement of this? And so I guess my question is all the things that God can't do as we read through the book, because of the the nature of his of His love could Jesus subvert that since he was God, had a corporeal body could he be like now “No, we normally can't. But since I'm actually here, I am going to grab the shoulders of humanity”, or grab their shoulders of my son or pick a name, pick an instance. Does the body matter or do you mean that more as a metaphorical way?

Thomas 15:15

No, the body really does matter. Now, I think Jesus used his body in ways that help people out, you know, in, in obvious ways, but Jesus also couldn't do things because he was a localized person with the body. You and I can't do a ton of things, even though we can do some things. And so, you know, Jesus was unable to stop some horrific things, including the hurting people in some instances. In fact, he goes to his hometown and he says, he can't heal people there because they don't have faith and don't respond to him. But the claim that I'm making here in this book is that God's essential, we'll call it composition, the stuff out of which God has made his spiritual and it's universal. And Jesus is different.

Jesus has a particular body in a particular place. The kind of Christology I find most appealing is what scholars call a spirit Christology. And that's the idea that Jesus is truly a human. But because he responds to God's Spirit, the Holy Spirit in him, he reveals God's character, he's divine in that way. And so I wouldn't say I wouldn't I usually don't walk around saying Jesus is God. If by that we mean, Jesus had all of the attributes, we typically think God has, like, you know, knowing everything, being everywhere, all that sort of thing.

Seth Price 16:49

That’s fair. Yeah, because you never really addressed it directly in the book, but it was…the question bubbled up as I read. There's a lot of personal stories in this and so the question kept bubbling up and it was Usually around the problem of evil and if there's anything that I've learned this year, the further I intentionally try to connect with a beauty and a love of God, the more of offensive evil becomes and the more angry I get about it. And the more powerless I become—or the more I feel like I become I'm probably actually more powerful. I don't have the stones to act on it. So when you say tragedy, abuse and other evils tragedy, that makes sense, you know, a tornado or hurricane a tsunami abuse. I think I know where you're going with that. But what do you mean when you say other evils?

Thomas 17:39

Well, I think there's other things that happen in the world that aren't necessarily directly related to those first two. So like, let's say, sickness, you know, someone gets sick. This is tragedy. Well, maybe it falls in that category. If you think tragedy is anything that happens that wasn't caused by freewill people. Maybe another form of evil that I mentioned in the book is neglect. Maybe that abuse is big enough to put neglect under. But really that last “evil” is a catch all phrase to talk about any kind of pointless pain, or unnecessary suffering that occurs in our lives. I'm not making the claim in this book, that all pain and suffering is inherently or genuinely evil. I think sometimes we choose, in fact, to endure pain, we self sacrifice, because we believe in doing so we're going to, you know, bring about a better world or help somebody out or whatever. So I'm not making the claim that all pain and suffering is evil, but I do think some pain and suffering is evil. And I mentioned tons and tons of actual cases, but also just general examples like rape, torture, you know, war, etc.

Seth Price 18:57

And so is that what you're getting at you define something called genuine evil. And so is that what you're getting at when or is there a distinction there?

Thomas 19:07

Yeah, I like to say sometimes use the word genuine evil, genuine evil is an event that makes the world worse than it might have been had some other possible event occurred instead. And it's just a way of trying to admit that sometimes people use the word evil kind of loosely, and they will lump what is apparently evil with what is genuinely evil. And I want to say there's a difference between the two of those.

Seth Price 19:38

Do we need evil to have a concept of salvation or sanctification? If we could somehow remove evil from the equation would we even desire, do you think we would even desire will we have any need of a Savior?

Thomas 19:53

Yeah, I don't know that we need that, as if we have a choice over the matter, it's just the way that the world is and so given the world is like that, we also then bring in issues of salvation and the the search for a savior. I think maybe the bigger question is this: is it possible for God to create a world in which even the possibility for evil is not present? And I don't think it is.

I think every world God might create the possibility for evil is there. Now, not the actuality might have a hope that someday there will be no evil in heaven or however you want to talk about the afterlife. But even there, I think the possibility is there but creatures choose to cooperate with God's love.

Seth Price 20:44

So growing up Calvinist that doesn't jive with anything I was taught as a child (laughter from Thomas) because what I hear is God's not in control. If I'm hearing this as a person that's still on the fence of I like what you're saying, Thomas, I like uncontrolling love, I can understand that it calls me to action. I don't know that I'm comfortable with that. But I don't know that I can sit with God unable to create a structure that doesn't break itself because he set up the rules arbitrarily in such a way that he’ll let my son get hit by the car, because he doesn't want to control me, because then I don't love him. He's forcing me to do it. How do you? How do you nuance that for somebody that is still on that rigid fence?

Thomas 21:32

I usually don't try to nuance the phrase God is in control because I simply don't think it's true. I don't think God is in control. And I find that to be a great sense of relief and I think most victims do as well. That is, if God is truly in control, that means that every rape, torture, (and) genocide in the world, are somehow caused or allowed by God and the way that most Christians think about it is that it's somehow a part of a master plan because God's in control. I just can't live that way. And most people I know can't live that way.

Now, sometimes people use the phrase “God is in control”. And by that they mean something like, God's still working in this situation. I'm totally on board if that's the meaning that people have. Because the God I believe in never gives up anytime. And we're never totally on our own. God is always present, always empowering, always acting for good. So if that's what God is in control is supposed to be meaning, than I'm on board with that, I just want to get away from the notion that God either could prevented some evil or God was actually the cause of the evil I think that undermines a coherent view of divine love.

Seth Price 22:52

What do we do with…so when something bad happens what do we do with the trite responses and so this is I usually don't like to get very personal but so my, I have a family member that passed away and she had Downs Syndrome. And you hear a lot of people saying, Well, God got another angel in heaven or whatever, as if it's a way to placate me feeling better, because somehow I needed that. Is there any use for that type of thought process or that type of conversation with someone when they're grieving with evil, and they need something to hold on to? Because I can understand logically, God is still loving me and still working to make this whole and beautiful. And shalom, you know, he's still working for this. But I don't want to hear that right now. Because the parts of my brain that can think logically are turned off because I'm so emotional at this moment. And I just don't want to talk about that. And so is there any, is there any reasoning for placating like that Is it is it worthwhile or should we just not say anything?

Thomas 23:52

What I usually try to do in those situations is not correct what I think is bad theology, but respond with what I think is good theology. So if somebody says, you know, “God needed another angel in heaven”, I don't say, “Come on now, that's stupid. God's got plenty of angels” or whatever. I say something like God now, or I don't know what your name of your friend who had Downs Syndrome was, but let's say it is Jim, I can say, hey, “Jim's in a better place with a different kind of way of existing now”, or whatever.

And this brings up all kinds of questions about whether or not Downs Syndrome is inherently evil or not, or blindness or whatever. And that's a real, real interesting conversation in the disability community. In that kind of scenario, I typically respond to theology that I think is bad by giving a response that I hope is reassuring, but also theology I can believe in.

Seth Price 24:52

So my wife is a nurse. And so she deals with a lot with with loss and grief. And I have to think in your line of work, I mean, a lot of your work is evil and pain and theodicy and grief and angst and I find the more and more that I do this, people ask me questions that I'm wholly unequipped to answer at all, and I just usually say, I don't know, which is the best answer, I can say. What is the the role of empathy? And I feel like you had what was it called? You said something called the Crimson Rule, I believe, and it was, yeah, empathy, and then God feels that pain. And then there's a distinction between what an empathetic God actually is.

Thomas 25:36

Well, in the Crimson Rule, I was contrasting that with the contrast thing, I was supplementing it with a golden rule, which is, of course, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. And the Crimson rule is that “we should feel with others as we would have them feel with us”. In other words, we should empathize with them. Unfortunately, many formal or classical theologies have portrayed God is unaffected by what happens in the world. The impassable God is the classic phrase.

Fortunately, most Christians, most believers, have rejected the formal view of God on that point. Most people really do think that God cares about us has compassion and responds to our grief, and empathizes. So I spent one chapter expressing what that looks like, and how we can believe that God really does suffer with us.

Seth Price 27:03

What Scripture, specifically, just four or five, can support this view of God? Because I want to be clear on that. Because a lot of the pushback that I get often is I talk a lot about concepts. And then I talk a lot about theology. And then we don't always relate it back to Biblical Scripture verses. And so for the view that you're holding, and I do know, just based on some research on you that your view has not always been popular in the circles that you've run in, and there's been. So I mean, we can have that conversation. But that's easy enough to Google.

And so as people engage in this they need some meat to take away. And so what Scripturally and why can we read Scripture in a way that that supports this view of a non controlling God and that God can't do things?

Thomas 27:53

I do think that a lot of people are taken aback by any kind of claim that says, “God can't” do something. But I like to quickly point out that there are several passages in the Bible itself, that explicitly say God can't do some things. So, for instance, the writer of Hebrews says, it's impossible for God to lie. James says God cannot be tempted. The Psalmist says God can't grow tired. The passage that I like best is one in which Paul is writing to Timothy and Paul says, when we are faithless, God remains faithful, because God can't deny Himself. And I joined with many, many Christian theologians throughout the centuries, who have said there's some things that Gods simply can't do, because to do them would be to deny God's self.

So for instance, most theologians have said God can't stop existing. God exists necessarily, and so God simply can't choose to just disappear and no longer exist. Or they'll say God can't decide that God won't be in New York this weekend because God's omnipresent, God is present everywhere, etc, etc. And then there's most theologians have said God can't do is logically impossible. I don't know if you had philosophy in your lifetime, but a lot of philosophy classes, they asked the classic question, “Can God make a rock so big that even God can't lift it?

Seth Price 29:35

Yeah, I remember that question.

Thomas 29:37

Yeah. theologians have said, Nope, God cannot. That's simply impossible. It's logically impossible. And there's other things as well.

Seth Price 29:45

I can go without getting so mad at that question in my intro to philosophy because, you know, arrogant me. I was like, Oh, yeah, I know this answer. And the more I think about it, the more angry I get just so mad at that. I hate that stupid question!

Thomas 30:00

(laughs) Yeah, if you look at the history of theology, most Christian theologians have said, there's things God can't do because either they're logically impossible, or they go against God's nature. And I'm taking that second one and saying God's nature's love and that love is self giving, and others empowering, and therefore that means if God always does that, God can't control those he gives this power to or this freedom or agency. So it's kind of just a logical, laying out of the implications of saying, love comes first in God and love is this certain kind of action.

Seth Price 30:40

Big word time so that that view of God is what we call “open theism?” Correct, or am I wrong on that?

Thomas 30:47

Well, it's actually some open theists wouldn't agree with what I just said. What I call that particular view is essential kenosis. But open theists believe that the future is open for God and so the future isn't yet knowable so there's an unknown future.

Seth Price 31:06

And then say those other two words again. So how does that distinguish versus essential kenosis?

Thomas 31:12

Yeah, so I'm I'm both an open theist and an advocate of essential kenosis. I think God necessarily self gives and others empowers and God simply can't control others. But some open theists think that the future is open and God can't know it, but they think God could control others if God wants to. In fact, maybe sometimes God does. So I'm a little bit different than some of my open theist friends on that particular issue of God's power.

Seth Price 31:43

Does…should it matter that God, no…I'm saying this wrong…So I wanna, I can't say this right, and then my brain’s not at work. Okay. So in the last chapter of your book you talked about we need to cooperate with God and I, I struggle to figure out how to do that most days, I can talk a big game, and I can play a big game and I can feel like I'm doing it. And then at the end of the day, sit down and realize, nope, still not doing it. And so what is our role in cooperation to help repair things to help do what God has called us to? To help do the things that possibly God can't do because it needs to be us doing it with him? How do I…I can't make it work. Most days I can't make it work.

Thomas 32:33

Well, I think every day you love your children, you're cooperating with God. Every day you are kind, every day you go to work to do what's helpful for your family in the world you're cooperating with God. Every time you turn on your left blinker at an intersection are that straight in front of you so that they don't get in a wreck you're in cooperating with God. I think it's a lot easier, perhaps in some situations, and we normally think we normally think of cooperating with God, oh, that means I've got to go down and you know, I'm no, picket some unjust factory. Well, maybe that's the case, sometimes. But most of the time, our moment by moment decisions are fairly mundane. They're fairly usual. And God's calling us to do something in every single moment, and it's not spectacular. And when we cooperate, then God's will is being done in our lives and in the world. And I think God requires that kind of cooperation. If the world is going to be the kind of loving place and if we're going to be the kind of loving people God wants.

Seth Price 33:42

Did somebody cut you off in traffic today?

Thomas 33:47

(laughts) No, they did not but that's a good question. (laughs)

Seth Price 33:50

That was awful specific. So there's so many stories of you know, near death experiences, which I don't know how much credence I get to that. I felt like a lot of that has got to be chemical in the brain. And I'm not a scientist, but I don't know that they sound great. They're really fantastical and mystical and beautiful if they work for other people. But there are so many countless stories of God intervening in a way that kind of seemed to contradict the premise of the book. So what do I do with those?

Do I just write it off as “Yeah, those people over there a bit crazy. And we let them believe that because it makes them feel good” or what place should that hold those experiences those miracles, for lack of a better word, that don't really have any other? It seems like God went in and pulled the kid out of the road like, Nope, it's coming back. It's not happening or you know, people will. I mean, there's a movie coming out here soon. I saw a trailer for that a produced by Steph Curry where a kid goes under the water. He's frozen. It's based on a true story. He's down underneath frozen water for like 15 minutes and he comes back to life and he's got this beautiful story. I'm sure I'll go see it in the movies because there's not a lot else coming out around the holiday. So how do we sit with interactions like that, and stories like that, that you hope that everybody's not making them up? And I don't think that they are. So how do I reconcile those with a theology that says, Well, yeah, God really can't do that.

Thomas 35:16

Yeah, so I really do believe in miracles. I really do believe that God is working at all times and in all places, and sometimes miraculous, spectacular things occur—things that were unexpected. So saying, God can't control others, does not mean you have to give up on miracles. But you have to understand miracles differently than one might who thinks that God is controlling. What you have to do is think about other factors, other actors, other cooperations or conditions that are a part of the environment that make the miracle is possible.

The movie you just mentioned, I haven't seen it either. I haven't even seen the trailer. But the idea that someone could be dead for 15 minutes because they've drowned and come back to life. I mean, that's it's happened many, many, many times in history, people have been dead for hours and cold because they've drowned in cold water and come back to life. Now, I think that's totally explainable in a view that says God never gives up on anybody at any time. And when creation cooperates, even at the smallest levels, the cellular, the lungs, the organs, they have a capacity to cooperate or not and when they cooperate, incredibly miraculous things can happen. But I also want to make sure I add in there that these kinds of miracles are made possible because of God's acting first, and then creations response. And sometimes the conditions are not right. Sometimes creation does not cooperate. creatures don't cooperate, and miracles don't happen. To me, that's just as important as affirming miracles, because there's lots of instances in which people are prayed for, and don't come back to life. And if those are part of the world in which we live, and we want to give an account for the hope that we have within us, then we have to ask the question, okay, if God helped some people and doesn't help others, is this a loving God; or can we think God helped everybody? But the conditions were right in some cases and not in others?

Seth Price 37:31

I wanted to end with this. So for those that are driving, and they haven't been paying attention for the last 10 minutes, because someone cut them off in traffic, and now they're angry. Nobody signaled the blinker there-in two to three minutes what is the biggest takeaway that you want someone as they dive into the book and into into into the theology behind it? What is the biggest takeaway that you feel like someone can take and with agency act act upon to further I guess the kingdom of God like to further things to be better?

Thomas 38:09

In terms of this book, you mean?

Seth Price 38:10

Yeah, yeah, like if we take this this thought and and everything from it and we roll it together. And what is when someone closes the book, they set it down, they walk across the room to their wife or their husband or their mom or their neighbor and they say, “Hey, I just read something”. What is it that you want them to hear? Like, what is the ninety second pitch of “Hey, Grandma, you need to look at me in the eyes. I need to tell you something”.

Thomas 38:37

One of the cool things about this book is that I have sent the electronic copy to quite a few people for reviews and podcast interviews like I'm doing with you. And the vast majority of people are blown away by this book. The vast majority of people have heard the tried and true and trite and unsatisfactory answers (that) people give to why a loving and powerful God doesn't prevent the horrific things, the injustice, the pain and suffering, that's unnecessary that we or our loved ones have gone through. And people I think are tired of the you know, “it's all a part of God's plan” or “God is punishing you” or “God just is at a distance and is not involved”, whatever the kinds of answers they've been given. This book solves the problem of evil. I know it sounds cocky to say solve, but I'm not messing around with this book. I'm not sort of throwing out little, you know, cliches and these answers that never made sense. I'm going right to the core. I'm saying God loves you all the time always. But God simply doesn't have the kind of power to control you or your circumstances. And that's good news not bad news! It's good news because you don't have to blame God. You don't have to worry the gods pissed at you, but Because you did something and is now punishing you, you don't have to look at the world and see all the evil and say, well in some mysterious way, it's really good and God's plan. You can look at the world be realistic believe in a God of love and as you finish reading this book saying now this is a God I can actually believe and actually can worship.

Seth Price 40:22

No, I agree. And it's and it's one that did receive the book. I want to be very clear. I walked away with that, that but I want to I want to try to give voice to those...

Thomas 40:34

Yeah. Oh, there's gonna be a ton of people. There are a ton of people who are going to look at the title of this book and say, You got to be kidding me. God, can’t! I know that

Seth Price 40:45

No, I like the title of the book. Yeah, there were many days that I would read. So I'll read while my wife balances a check register or whatever. And so I would read something I would look at her and she she's a nurse to pediatric Cancer kids. So when I said she was a nurse earlier, so it's not just cruel it's children like it's, yeah, it's hard. And it's…

Thomas 41:08

I've got a couple of endorsements from leading psychologists, therapists, and they say this is the book they want to give their clients because this is an answer to the deep questions people have, that most people are not willing to go in the direction I go, maybe it's not right to say they're not willing. I think most people have not even thought about this possibility. And so I think this is the kind of book that you can give somebody who is either in a caregiving capacity or in need of care and say, “Okay, this is the kind of book that can answer your toughest questions”.

Seth Price 41:49

Tom, as people hit end, and they go and they review the show, and they tell their friends to go buy the book, obviously it's on Amazon, but how do they get in touch with you, how do they email you with their thoughts with their questions with their concerns? I will ask everyone, there will be no hate mail or I will block you from downloading the show. I'm not sure how to do that. But I know people at the Google or whatever, but where do they go to engage with you to interact with you to interact with communities that are that are dealing with this?

Thomas 42:22

You know, I'm in I'm a lot on social media. So you could probably find me there. But the easiest way to get in touch with me is probably to sign up for my newsletter. You can go to my website, which is ThomasJatOrrd.com. And if you sign up for my newsletter, you can then just sort of hit respond or reply to a newsletter, and that's my personal email account, ask questions, make suggestions or whatever.

Seth Price 42:51

Nice.

Thomas 42:52

Also, I oftentimes give away free stuff and my newsletters are pointed to cool things and sometimes ask for help. For instance, this book is partly the contributions of people on my newsletter list to send me stories of how the and controlling love of God book helped them. And then I incorporated those stories into this particular book. So there's a lot going on in that, in that with the newsletter crowd.

Seth Price 43:20

Nice. Well, thank you again, so much, for making the time to come on.

Thomas 43:28

I'm enjoyed it Seth.

Seth Price 43:30

Yeah, I would love to talk with you again on a different day. There's a lot of things I'd like to pick your brain about, but we'll save that for a different time.

Thomas 43:33

Let's do it! I'd love to talk about some other things as well. So maybe, I don't know whenever you think is best for your for your schedules. Let’s do it.

Seth Price 44:14

I trust that each of you will wrestle with this topic whether or not you get a copy of the book, wrestle with it. I think I'm gonna give one away, I'm just gonna just gonna buy one and send it out to one of you. So as this show goes live, you know, retweet the episode, share it on Facebook, I'll keep track of those. And I'll have my three year old pick out a name as I write them down and put them in a coffee mug or a ball. And one of you I just want to send one to somebody, if you haven't yet done so we're closing in on about 100 reviews on iTunes and that's a small number, but it's definitely well below the amount of people of you that listen and so if you haven't yet, pause what you're doing rate the show on iTunes or pod bean or wherever you happen to be. I love reading those. They give me such joy and such pleasure to see how the show is resonating or not resonating with you. Be honest with me. Give me some feedback.

Today the music featured was from Becca Bradley. You'll find links to all of her music and a little bit about her in the show notes. You'll find today's tracks on the Can I Say This At Church Spotify playlist. We'll talk to you next week. Be blessed everybody.

Postcards From Babylon with Brian Zahnd / Transcript

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.

Back to the Audio Episode

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Brian 0:00

You see God loves nations with their ethnicity, their diversity, their language, their richness of culture, all of that God loves that. What God does not love it when a particular nation begins to believe it has a divine right to rule other nations, and a manifest destiny to shape history according to its agenda. The reason God opposes that is because this is the very thing that God has promised to his only begotten Son, God has promised to his Son, the right to rule the nations and a manifest destiny to shape History According to his agenda. So Empire by their very posture, position themselves to be opposed to God. And this is not a novel theme this is not a minor theme in Scripture, those that are raised in the church that is hosted by a superpower tend to have this screen down. But it's absolutely a major theme in the Bible, quite literally from Genesis to Revelation.

Seth Price 1:38

As this year further gets into the season of politics, we're quickly going to enter into discourse. Every single corner of our country will be yelling at each other and we will begin to use the Bible as a weapon even more so than we do now. There will be nationalists that use the Bible as a weapon for them, there will be progressive Christians that will use the Bible as a weapon for them. And there is no power in a gospel like that there is no power built on an ideology of less greed and pride. There is no power in a church that colludes with any administration and pretend that that is the Gospel. And so let's reframe it. I had a conversation with Brian Zahnd where we talk about America as a superpower, America as an empire. And what that means when the Bible is really written to exiles that live under the oppression of a superpower. What does it mean to re embrace a vision of what it is to be chosen by our Lord and what that vulnerability comes to show us about ourselves. This conversation will press you that's entirely fine. What better topics to talk about than a topic that forces us to look inward, reflect upon ourselves and really come to grips with what we see in the mirror and whether or not that is Christ like. Because if we don't look like that, Christ like, what's the point of being Christian? So here we go the conversation with myself and Brian Zahnd about Postcards from Babylon.

Seth Price 3:46

Brian Zahnd thank you so much for coming back onto the Can I Say This At Church podcast-recently I've had a very few number of repeat guests and so you're on the list of less than five people between you Alexander Shaia and a few other people and so I'm very happy to have you back on.

Brian 4:02

Thank you a Seth, it’s nice of you to have me. I'm glad to be here.

Seth Price 4:05

A couple things. I follow you on Instagram. And so last night you posted some I believe Rolling Stones music. And I'm upset that it's only 60 seconds worth of stuff because I was beginning to jam. And then it started over I was really sad about it really kind of sad. It made me go and actually stream the whole album. And so Rolling Stones if you're listening…

Brian 4:27

It was Exile on Main Street, which is their best album. I can say that definitively because I'm opinionated like that about certain things. Exile on Main Street also, by the way is a sermon title in my forthcoming book. See, I just did your segue for you...

Seth Price 4:50

Yeah you are a professional speaker, I am not so we're gonna go with that (but) before we get there. For those that are unfamiliar with Brian, instead of having him go back through kind of his upbringing. I did already an episode. I think 9. So find the Google, go back to the beginning of the feed, and listen for the first 10 minutes and then come back here. We actually listen to that whole episode because the end will spawn off to here. And so going with your segue, what is that forthcoming book?

Brian 5:16

Postcards From Babylon: the church in American exile, that's the title in the subtitle comes out. You know, if you asked me tomorrow, I could give you an exact date. I can give you what I think is the exact date. I think it comes out January 14, it will be January. I think it's January 14, but I don't quite know at this moment.

Seth Price 5:45

Who's publishing it?

Brian 5:47

Well, this one I'm bringing out with Spello Press, which is me, which is what I did with Water to Wine. The reason I'm doing that I had numerous publishers. Let's see Erdman’s wanted it for Fortress Press wanted it. But, you know, having published six times previously with conventional publishers, and I'm not saying I won't do that in the future, I probably will, in fact, but they take, they take 18 months, I give them a completed manuscript, you can ask the editors that have worked with me, here's what they say to me. They say, Brian, you're easy money, we don't really have to do much, you know, copy editing, and that's it.

So I give them a completed manuscript, but it's still 18 months for them to you know, market and do all they do. And this book, I just felt a certain urgency, a time pressure in that I felt I was writing to this present moment. And I didn't want to wait 18 months for it to come out. So it's under the name Spello Press, which is also the publisher of one of my books, just one Water to Wine, but just between you and me, Spello Press is me.

Seth Price 6:55

How about that? So I'm talking with both the publisher, producer, and mind behind at least the entire book, I know that you've spent a lot of time over the last year, intentionally getting away and honestly getting out of the country you did the what's it called the Camino. And so how do you find the time to self publish and market and figure out printing and all that stuff a book and do that while you're disengaged on the car now?

Brian 7:22

Well, the question is, how do I find time to write and I just scheduled time, I make time I don't, I don't write in the middle snatches. I don't go like oh, I've got three hour All right, I block out a day, or two or three in and I it takes, you know, I write on my writing days and I average advancing a book 1600 words per writing day.

Now that means going back and also working on what I've written previously, I can write a book in 40 days doing that. So I don't work too slow I work fairly quick. As far as what we call self publishing. Really, I got a team of people around me to help it's really no different than working with a publisher. In fact, if I had to say, and if publishers are listening to me, they're going to hate this. I mean, as one who has experience on both sides, it's for me anyway, it wouldn't be true for everyone I guess. For me, it's probably less work, bringing it out myself then working with a publisher, I’d say less work for me. And she beat you may see more people do this because I mean, you're in control of your own stuff totally. Although I really don't let editors push me around anyway.

I mean, I'm gonna write what I'm gonna write, they're gonna have to like it or not.

Seth Price 8:40

And if they don't like it, there's always your publishing firm. Yeah, I don't have that carrot or that stick.

Brian 8:48

Well, in see the thing is, unless you're, you know, JK Rowling or somebody, you pretty much selling your own books anyway. Right? And so there's more and more people saying, you know, I don't know…I don't know if I need this middleman. But I'm not saying that. I mean, truly the reason though that Postcards from Babylon, I mean, the reason I'm doing it myself if you want to put it that way, is it's gonna come out in January. You know, this coming year of 2019 instead of June of 2020. I don’t want to wait till June of 2020. So, that's the reason.

Seth Price 9:23

To expand out just on the title alone. Where is Babylon and who is sending the postcards? Is it you? Is it our culture? Who is it?

Brian 9:35

America is Babylon and I’m sending some postcards? Exactly. The epigram for the book comes from the conclusion of First Peter, where the author of that epistle writes cryptically,

she who is in Babylon greets you.

Well, what is meant Okay, this is this is an epistle written by Peter or someone associated with Peter in the first century who is writing in Rome and writing to believers throughout the Roman Empire, especially the Eastern provinces, in fact, they're named at the beginning of the book, the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. And the author of this epistle calls them exile and strangers, foreigners, but they're not. He doesn't mean that they are literally expatriates now living in the Roman Empire, he means that because of their baptism, their identity has now been transformed.

And the place that they were once fully at home in, that is the Roman Empire, now they somewhat have to live as strangers and exiles in that land. And so she is the church who is in Babylon, Babylon is a cryptic way of talking about Rome, Babylon being the iconic image of Empire in the Bible. Rome at that time being the Contemporary expression of that.

Well, I see my situation as similar. I am now a pastor inhabiting a superpower in the early decades of the 21st century. And I have some things to say about what it means to be faithful to Christ while also living as a citizen of a superpower. How do you live as a citizen of a superpower and a citizen of the kingdom of Christ simultaneously? This has always been a challenge for the people of God, whether we're talking about the people of God in the Old Testament, during the Babylonian exile, or whether we're talking about the early church in the first century, in the Roman Empire, or at various times throughout the history of Christendom up into our present moment.

And I suppose just to put the ball fully in play at this moment, if I wanted to just try to sum up what I'm trying to do in this book in a sentence or two—I want my readers who I presume, are are mostly Christian people, mostly probably in the United States—I want them to see American not as a kind of Biblical Israel, but as a kind of Biblical Babylon. And so what is fidelity to Christ in the midst of that look like?

Seth Price 12:23

Ever since the conversation that I had with you then to be honest, I haphazardly asked you that question of and I forget how I asked you, but I asked you is America, the Babylon if today? And you said, oddly enough, I'm writing a book about that and it will be fairly wasn't really looking for it not hyperbolic, but like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe this man just said this.

Brian 12:42

Perhaps people would regard it as pejorative elements, although I don't intend it to be that way. But I am writing with passion and conviction in this book.

Seth Price 12:52

What is the risk of America relating itself to being the Israel in the story of the Bible? Why are we not allowed to have that posture?

Brian 13:06

Well, because we're not because the Kingdom of God gets radically redefined following the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus and the outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost. So we could say it this way. God begins his program of redemption in earnest with Abraham, a man that he calls, who ends up forming a family through faith, that becomes a clan, a tribe, a nation and promises are made.

And yet Israel doesn't seem to live up to the fullness of their calling, for the most part. And when it looks like they really are going to fail in being what they're called to be this light to the Gentiles. This agent of salvific work of Yahweh in the Earth. When it looks like they're going to fail, suddenly there emerges on the scene, the true seed of Abraham, the true son of David, who becomes, as it were, Israel in person, and carries the whole project through to completion.

And Israel completely assumed into Jesus. Jesus takes on the whole project of Israel so that Jesus becomes Israel before God. Of course, what happens is Israel in Christ is crucified, but raised again, but in resurrection, things have changed. So to put it in a sentence, I would say it like this: in Christ, the chosen people is the human race, and the Holy Land is the whole Earth. And no longer is the temple defined geographically in other words, the temple that is built to the true and living God is not made of stone on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, and we're not waiting for a Stone Temple made with human hands Mount Moriah in Jerusalem. No, the true temple, now again, this also comes from Peter is made of living stones, and it's not confined to one geographical location.

But it's spread throughout the nations, throughout the world, where people gathered together in the name of Jesus, break bread, share a cup of wine, call it the body and blood of Jesus and baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Wherever that is happening there is the temple, there is the Kingdom of God. The great temptation though, for the last 17 centuries, post Constantine has been to conflate particular nation states, generally empires, with the kingdom of Christ. Now I now said that throw around this word Empire and I want people to know that I'm not doing that. willy nilly, I don't just, you know, mean to just…

What does he mean by empire? What do you mean? Well, here's what I mean. Empires are rich, powerful nations that believe they have a divine right to rule other nations and a manifest destiny to shape history. I'm gonna say that again. See, God loves nations with their ethnicity, their diversity, their language, their richness of culture, all of that God loves that. What God does not love it when a particular nation begins to believe it has a divine right to rule other nations and a manifest destiny to shape history according to its agenda. The reason God opposes that is because this is the very thing that God has promised to his only begotten Son. God has promised to his Son, the right to rule the nations and a manifest destiny to shape history according to his agenda. So empires by their very posture position themselves to be opposed to God. And this is not a novel theme. This is not a minor theme in Scripture, those that are raised in a church that is hosted by a superpower tend to have this screened out. But it's it's absolutely a major theme in the Bible, quite literally from Genesis to Revelation, very pronounced in Genesis, Exodus, several of the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, especially Daniel, it's quite pronounced in the four gospels, and maybe reaches its crescendo with the final book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, which is a prophetic critique of the Roman Empire and the thus by implication, all empires.

Seth Price 17:46

Yeah, so here is my question now. So then, as an American that grew up with no other context until I became, I guess what a fully functioning adult that decided I could finally make my own opinions regardless of whether or not Brian likes them or my neighbor likes them or anyone else likes them, how have we gotten it so twisted? I can't think that the church has always been as bad at it. Although if it's that many centuries, maybe we have been but how have we gotten it so blatantly twisted that Americans are afraid to disengage from empire for fear of love of political power? And then how do we disengage that from the pulpit? How do we disengage that from I don't want to pick on Fox News, but Fox News or Pat Robertson? There's just so much in entanglement, to use a bad metaphor, of the two that I feel like the church doesn't even realize that it is involved in empire building or maintaining.

Brian 18:39

Yeah, and that is, you know, that's what I take 200 and some pages to answer. But, I mean, really quite seriously. Let me just approach this as as methodically and carefully as I can. To begin with this has not always been a problem for the church. It is quite honestly, and I think nearly all church historians that aren't actually in the employ of some sort of, you know, Imperial agenda would agree with me, that there was a profound shift following the Emperor Constantine in the early fourth century.

So what you had was a church whose primary gospel was a gospel of the Kingdom, and its primary announcement was Jesus is Lord. Now if I say Jesus is Lord today, it sounds almost entirely religious, because the term Lord is never used, other than in a religious context. So if I say Jesus is Lord, people hear me making some sort of, you know, spiritual aphorism.

This is nothing like what it originally meant. For one thing, the term Lord was an imperial title granted to the Caesar by the Senate along with, and these were formal titles, but the Senate in Rome granted to the Caesar, and would be placed on coins that would have the Emperor's image with these particular titles, and it was the means of mass communication of the day because, of course, the coins circulated throughout the Empire. Other titles for the Emperor were Prince of Peace, Savior of the world, son of God, King of kings. So when Christians began to use these terms to speak of Jesus of Nazareth, they were, in one sense, employing terms that were already in circulation for the Roman Emperor.

So when they first second third century Christian says Jesus is Lord, lurking right there in that very political statement was the implication and Caesar is not because the first church, the pre-Constantine church, saw the kingdom of Christ as a present reality. Yes, they did believe in a culmination. They believed in an eschaton. They believed in a period of time that in which Christ that would sum up all things at the end of the age, but neither would you see them just kicking the can down the road saying, well, someday the kingdom of God will come. Oh no, they believe the kingdom of God had arrived in the life, death, burial, resurrection ascension of Jesus Christ. In fact, that's how they understood the ascension.

The Ascension was not, you know, Jesus becoming the first astronaut. It wasn't some sort of doctrine to explain the apparent absence of Christ. Rather by ascension, we mean promotion. We mean that Jesus Christ has been promoted to the Oval Office of the universe, that he is at the right hand of God and all authority in heaven and earth have been given to him, now. And so the church lived as citizens of a very present and very real kingdom.

But this often involves persecution not because of their Religious claims but because their claims about Christ had political implications, the Roman Empire was really pretty tolerant about religion. They didn't try to convert the whole world to some single religion, they’d let you hold on to your religion. But they wanted you to confess that Caesar is Lord.

The early Christians were not persecuted for religious reasons, but for political reasons. In fact, the early Christians by the Roman persecutors, or the Roman society that was opposed to the Christian faith, called the early Christians, “atheists”, because they didn't believe in the gods of the Empire. So this is how it is for three centuries. And then you have the phenomenon of a—well the story is that that general Constantine is about to have a decisive battle. He's not the Emperor yet, he’s contending for the throne. The winner of this battle is going to become Emperor because there's a civil war going on in Rome. And as Constantine, as the story comes to us, on the eve of battle, Constantine sees a Christian sign in the heavens, presumably a cross, with these words “in this sign you shall conquer”. Of course, conquer is a euphemism for kill. So in this sign you shall go and wage war and kill. And as the story is told, and maybe somewhat legendary, but there must be something lurking behind it, Christian symbols are placed on the weapons of war of Constantine's army and he prevails in the battle for the Milvian Bridge, and in quick succession becomes the Emperor and then very soon issues the Edict of Milan, which establishes Christianity as the favored religion, announced the fast track to becoming the state Religion.

The church made a mistake going along with that. I have no problem with saying that. But I also say I think it was an inevitable mistake. I don't know how the church avoided this mistake.

But what happened was, is now suddenly, instead of the kingdom of Christ being fully a rival Empire to all of the other empires of the world, you're trying to conflate two of them into one thing. The problem is, is now Jesus is a little bit out of a job, because we're really going to let Caesar be Lord. So what's Jesus going to do? Well, he gets demoted to Secretary of afterlife affairs, and it becomes the job of Jesus to get parts of people into heaven, their souls into when they die. But in the meantime, we're gonna let Caesar run the world.

You know, interestingly, this first so called “Christian” Emperor Constantine he appeared to understand that there was a conflict because contrary to any kind of Christian practice of the time, Constantine delayed his baptism until his deathbed; because I think Constantine himself understood that you really can't claim to be a follower of Jesus and be the emperor of a violent superpower Empire waging war simultaneously. And in fact, Constantine, even after giving favored status to Christians and associated with Christians, and maybe trying to call himself a Christian, although he wasn't yet baptized, even during that time, you are the execution of family members that he thought were maybe a rival to the throne.

And so it's pretty sordid in its background. And this has been repeated throughout history, whether we're talking about the Byzantine Empire, the Russian Empire, the British Empire, Spanish, Portuguese, etc., and now America is having its flirtation with it, so it's nothing new. But that doesn't mean it's not diabolical, and poses real challenges to Christians that live in the midst of it. Of course, from perspective of history it's relatively easy to bring the critique. The tricky part is actually to bring the critique while you are living in Babylon.

Seth Price 26:59

I have no idea how your book is set up (editors note* I hadn’t read it at time of conversation), but, I would assume the next chapter is a different postcard from Babylon. But that's just the way that I'm seeing it in my head. And if that's wrong, that's fine. That's the way I see it in my head. And so, are those postcards addressing individual flirtations, or what do some of those flirtations look like in 2018 or 2019?

Brian 27:18

I start the book with a chapter called Conversion, Catacombs and a Counterculture as chapter one, and in that chapter, I tell my own conversion story. As a 15 year old Led Zeppelin freak, come in the 70s overnight went to be in the high school Jesus Freak. And suddenly I was right in the midst of what was known as the Jesus movement of the 1970s. The spiritual revival among counterculture youthbeginning in America but really went throughout much of the Western world. That became a significant enough you know, spiritual movement that it was on the cover of Time Magazine and, you know, reported widely. I think it's safe to say that hundreds of thousands of young people came to faith in Christ during this time. And I was a part of that. And I talked about what a what a counterculture sense it had, we didn't see ourselves as fitting…we were pretty apolitical. I mean, we certainly wouldn’t have seen ourselves as Republicans or Democrats that would have appeared ludicrous to us. We did have strong anti war sentiment, not because we got it from the Beatles, but because we got it from the Sermon on the Mount.

And the epicenter of the catacombs, where I'm from here in St. Joseph, Missouri, was called The Catacombs. And eventually, by the time I was 17, I was leading that ministry, which was kind of a music venue for the Jesus music scene, but it's what turned into Word of Life Church. And we call it The Catacombs partly because our our meeting place, our first meeting place, was in the basement of a dive bar on Third Street here in St. Joseph.

So it was subterranean and was underground it was kind of dank and dark and so, catacombs but also we were riffing on the idea of week since some sort of connection with the Christianity of the catacombs in Rome. Remember, you know, you couldn't bury the dead in Roman culture, you burn them but Christians adopting the Jewish practice said no, as a sign of our hope of resurrection, we bury our dead, but they had to create these underground labyrinths to do their, you know, burying of the dead, which they, you know, eventually buried hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, it's you know, I've toured them several times when I've been in Rome. It's quite fascinating, but it also became sites at times of Eucharistic worship.

And so catacombs is a nice, I want to say metaphor symbol for early Christianity, and so we were referring On the to that, yeah, we're meeting underground. But we're also an underground movement. We saw ourselves as subversive. We saw ourselves as a challenge to just easygoing American Christianity as usual, we saw ourselves challenging that.

But I end that whole section with that we were so very young. And then I go into talking about how, over the over a period of about a decade, we found ourselves moving from our very edgy counterculture, you know, believing the Sermon on the Mount should be taken seriously to being a part really, of what became the religious right. And serving the interests of well, what happened was is that evangelical Christianity instead of being this energetic, witness to the possibility of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, in effect becomes the religious wing of the Republican Party and I see that as a tremendous, catastrophe, disaster, failure and so that's where I start with on the book.

And then I talk about various aspects of what I think we ought to do about it. I think we have to see the kingdom. I think the main thing though is, can we see ourselves as not a kind of Biblical Israel, but I kind of Biblical Babylon, talking about the United States. And then say, Okay, so how do how did Christians live in the time of Daniel, in the Persian Empire? How did Christians live in the first century in the time of the apostles in the Roman Empire? And I think that gives us clues, that gives us some direction.

You know, the book of Daniel is very interesting. Most Bible scholars say it's written about 150 years before Christ. Most academic Bible scholars all say that, but it's set in an earlier time. The reason this is done is because the present crisis 150 BC, was a vicious persecution by the Seleucid Empire on the Jewish population, there was a forced hellenization program that was being employed by Antiochus IV Epiphane.

And he wanted to just force all Jews to become Hellenistic Greeks and adopt Greek ways. And so they're resisting that and there's a persecution going on. And so this book is written at that time, but to keep it a little bit safe, they set it in a, you know, what would it be 200 years earlier, or so 250 years earlier, in the time of the Jews under the Persian rule. And if you look at the book of Daniel really what it's about is, it's how to instruct particularly young men to get along in the empire, have jobs, survive, you know, be a productive part of society but don't compromise your Jewish faith. And it's tricky, you know it's a dance and it’s not always easy. It would be easy to capitulate, it would be easy to get killed. The Book of Daniel says well let's try to find this narrow tightrope and try not to get killed. But you know if you must die you might have to go to the lions den, you might have to go to the fiery furnace of course, both of those stories. They survived, but there's always the risk of martyrdom, but you don't go necessarily inviting it to the extent that you can you seek the well being of the city of the Empire, the nation in which God has caused you to live as exiles.

But that's what I want American Christians to see themselves as doing. To not see themselves as serving trying to further the American agenda in the world, but trying to further the kingdom of Christ and understand there's a radical difference between the two.

Seth Price 34:07

Two questions on that. I feel like as I checked the pulse of the internet, or Facebook or anything else, or anything that you read, a lot of the most vocal voices ended up being people that are young, younger than me all the way up to my age. And there are a few that are older than me that are extremely vocal, and that use their platform to do that. And obviously, you're one of those, but I find that many youth don't have the tools or the knowledge to actually engage in anything outside of just words of “we should not do this”, we should, you know, “we should help the people with the caravan” or “we should not do this” or “we should do something for the people in Yemen”, without any actual backbone to stand on outside of words that aren't theirs. And so what would be one or two things that young people that feel called to this kind of subversiveness, and I wonder if there's a part of being young that helps us posture ourselves to that but I'm not a psychologist, but what would be one or two things that you would advise people to do to equip themselves to both not become a martyr in America, but also use their voice wisely to affect actual change?

Brian 35:12

You mean other than reading Postcards from Babylon, that's why I'm writing that book. Well, I mean, and I do have probably a younger audience in mind. I mean, I don't mind speaking to my peers. I'm 59, I'll be 60 in March. I've seen a lot of my…and it saddens me, my goodness, it saddens me. And I was one of the younger ones, really, I'm about as young as you can be, and really have been a part of the Jesus movement. A lot of the people that were there with me are five to ten years older than me. So they're in their 60s now. But I see them now and I and at some of them, I just want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them and say; “What happened to that radical Jesus Freak? What happened to that person”? That really saw yourself as countercultural you know, here you are in your 60s, and now you just have, the best you can do is be a conservative Republican. I mean, ultimately, I consider myself both theologically and maybe somewhat politically, I consider myself a true conservative, not a full conservative, not this thing that has been foisted upon us. This populism and this nationalism, I'm not that. But I really do see the value in ancient traditions being preserved and I'm not too quick to jettison them. I see myself as a true conservative but also as a radical one. When people call me a liberal. They'll say you're a liberal I’ll say “I'm not a liberal. I'm a revolutionary Christian.” Because neither left nor right on the political spectrum, I was going to be interested in what it is I'm advocating for and that is that we truly live as citizens of the Kingdom of Christ here and now.

That whether the rest of the world does or doesn't, that we embody the reign of Christ here now. Now I do see amongst some of the if you want to use the word progressive, younger Christian movement, here's what I see that I would critique. And I don't do that this much in the book because it's not, maybe it didn't quite fit, but it may be what I write next. I see them having a zeal for justice. Okay, but being rather suspicious, or if nothing else, disinterested in worshiping Jesus, and just you know, doing church and worshiping Jesus. Well, I want to say there are two commands to great commands. This comes to us from the Old Testament, but it's confirmed by Jesus. But there are two great commandments: The first thing love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. The second is to love your neighbor as yourself.

In other words worship followed by Justice. I see a lot of young people maybe progressive leaning in the church or outside the church that would call themselves Christian or Christian-ish or they'd like Jesus or something like that, who are very interested in doing justice not so interested in the practices of worship. I'm suspicious of that whole project. I think what they're doing maybe, unwittingly, is borrowing on Christian capital that eventually they're going to run out.

I'll tell you a story. I was hiking in the mountains in the winter, few years ago. And winter hikes are very, very different. This is you know, up above treeline, snowshoes all that and part of the challenge of winter hiking is just route finding, you don't want to get lost because no trails or anything. And I came across another hiker and So we're hiking. It was good, you know, I felt a little security by having a hiking partner. And so we hiked for about a half an hour, we're having a lovely time talking mountains and things like that. And then he asked the dreaded question, what do you do?

Seth Price 39:17

I know many pastors hate that question.

Brian 39:18

I say, “Well, you know”, and I thought about saying, I'm an author, which is True enough, but it's still disingenuous. So I decided to tell the truth. And I said, “I'm a pastor”. Well, you know, it all went downhill pretty quick. From there. He was a disgruntled former Christian. That's, you know, he would describe himself as that. And then he said, I'm going to tell you what you Christians should do. I said, Well, please do.

He said, “You should do good works, but you shouldn't worship Jesus. You should you should do good work. You should help the poor you should help the weak you should advocate for justice. But you shouldn't spend all this time you know, getting in worshipping Jesus”.

So well hold on here a minute pal, I think you have overestimated me. I think you've made the assumption that I'm just really by nature, a generous, caring giving guy. I don't know, I think left to my own devices I'm a pretty selfish son of a gun. If I'm going to become the kind of person that generally does care about social justice issues, it's because I worship Jesus. And so what I would say to progressives on the left side of the spectrum within Christianity is don't lose worshipping Jesus as the necessary act of faith that forms us into the kind of people that can do justice.

So I remember, you know, if you think about like the hippie movement, so you had these hippies you know, they don't like nuclear weapons, I don't either. And so they go to a nuclear weapons plant and they protest and, and they do this for about six months, and then they burn out, and then they became insurance salesman and just went on with their life. But I know Benedictine Nuns who are now in their 80s, who were protesting at nuclear weapons factories in the 60s, and they're still doing it. Why? Because they had the practices of prayer, worship, contemplation, (and) formation that allowed them and enabled them to have a radical stance within society for a lifetime.

Well, I want to be that kind of person. I don't want to be a chaplain to the Empire, I want to be a prophetic voice. And I think that's not just me saying I want Brian's Zahnd to be that. I think that is the appropriate posture of the church within a superpower is to be a prophetic challenge, not a chaplain saying, “yes, we're going to bless your wars, we’re going to bless your greed. We're going to bless your economy”. Leave that to the priests of Mars and Mammon, the followers of Christ are to be something radically other.

Seth Price 42:07

Yeah, well, and I know, the more often and no, that's the wrong way to say it, the more open and at ease I am in my church community, the more actual fuel I have to do things like this, because actually doing interviews at the frequency that I try to do them at and to learn what I need to learn to try to be prepared to talk about it is exhausting. And it's also exhausting to constantly protest if all you ever do is expend fuel right without any contemplation or fellowship, or maybe we'll use a Biblical metaphor if I don't lay that cross down for a second, worship, recharge, reengage, pick it back up, and let's go a little further down the road. As you've gotten out of the country over the past year, and I have to assume you've discussed the themes of America, plurality America, nationalism in America, whatever you want to call it, not patriotism. America worshiping itself how did these concepts come off as you're talking with people in communities that aren't American? As you're on the roads and you know doing the same, the Camino and Santiago as you're talking with other people outside of our frame of reference? How do they view America? Do they view us as as a Babylonian type, Roman type oppressive Empire? Do they care? Do they think we'll even be able to change?

Brian 43:30

No, they care. Let me answer this in a bunch of different ways. Let me first say America is four things. America is a nation, a culture, an empire, and a religion. As a nation and a culture America is a mixed bag. It's good and bad. There are things I can critique, but there's a lot that I could admire. There's a lot that I can genuinely be proud of in being an American as a nation and culture. When you step into the realm of superpower or Empire, I've already addressed that the problem with Empire is their claim to have divine right to rule nations manifest destiny to shape history is what God has promised to Jesus. And then finally, you take the last step into Americanism, which is a kind of religion, which the adherents of our are loath to admit, because it creates far too much cognitive dissonance.

So they try to conflate Christianity and Americanism into a single entity, but you can't do it. It's blasphemous. It's idolatrous. It's not a new problem. It's been around for 17 centuries, but it's a real problem. So America has four things. So it's hard you know, it's unwieldy, to talk about America just as simple as that.

What do people think about America's and you're right, last couple of years, I've spent probably about a third of each year, you know, in New Zealand, Australia, Portugal, Spain, Germany, France, England, Middle East, and other places. So you understand that there has been post World War Two, you know, for 60 years-70 years, you know, there's been a deep admiration of America in the rest of the world and that though has come under pressure. There are three things that always come up and here I'm just acting as a reporter. I don't know what our listenership consistent of and I don't know if people are gonna like this, but at this moment, I'm going to try to step out of being a preacher and just, I'm gonna report to you what comes up.

There's still an admiration for America. But there's two things they don't get about America. They there's two things they don't get. They don't understand our obsession with guns, and they don't understand why we don't have the same kind of health care that the rest of the advanced, prosperous, world has, I wouldn't say there's they're not raging against they just they find it is just as odd to them. You know, why is America this way? They'll ask me that and it's hard for me to answer. Of course the other thing that comes up, you know, there's guns in health care but now what comes up is of course Trump. America is divided about Trump, we all know that that's not that's not me telling anything new. Outside of America, there isn't that much of a division. Unless you're in Russia or Israel, which are nations I've been to a lot with the exception of Russian and Israel, I would say that Donald Trump is wildly unpopular, outside of those two nations, and make of that what you will.

So that's how we're seen. Now a lot of my travel are, you know, I find myself in some version of Evangelical Church, preaching, teaching seminaries speaking, teaching, whatever I do, there is also the issue of they just don't understand. I mean, if I'm with Hillsong, let's say in London or Sydney, Australia, these are people that are really conservative evangelical type Christians, that with American evangelicals would be on the same page, theologically and in ecclesiology, that sort of stuff. They're pretty much on the same page, but then you come to politics and Trump. And then they just like, what, why are American evangelicals on board with this guy?

Again, if you're, I'm trying to report a little bit now I have my opinions and you can guess what they are. But, so I'm not talking about you know, some sort of progressive, far left, mainline way out there Presbyterian, USA. I'm talking about evangelicals outside the United States, look at their evangelical brethren within the United States and cannot for the life of them understand why their American brothers are on board with someone they see as completely incompatible with anything that would reflect Christian values.

Those are the things that come up. And they come up all the time. They come up more than I wanted to come up, they come up and I get tired of talking about it, but I try to be polite and talk about it, but it comes up all the time.

Seth Price 48:37

Yeah, well, I want to make this my final question. If we can't pivot away from our love of Empire, will it destroy the church in such a way that my grandkids don't have an easy way to worship?

Brian 48:50

Yes.

Seth Price 48:53

Uhhh…I don't like that. I don't like that you so easily can say yes without any nuance.

Brian 48:58

I say it easily. I say it passionately, there's a difference. I don't say glibly. I pray every day. God helped me to help make Christianity possible for my grandchildren and their generation. So I'm 59 years old. I have seven grandchildren, all eight and under. So eight years ago, zero grandchildren, and then there was a tsunami of grandchildren.

Seth Price 49:24

(Laughter) A tsunami of grandchildren! I can picture in my head just waves of children and you just scooping out a few and keeping those.

Brian 49:30

They're divided between our two older sons. One has four children, one has three, they live across the street from each other five minutes from where I'm sitting here right now. So my they're here and I'm around them. Jude, Finn, Evie, Liam, Mercy, Hope, and Pax. In fact, the book is dedicated to Those seven grandchild Postcards from Babylon is dedicated to them. And it's part of my attempt to help make Christianity possible for them and their generation. But if that's going to happen, then Christianity is going to have to be willing to be a subculture and a counterculture.

I mean, I subtitled the book, the church in American exile, which is, I like that one, that should be the subtitle it is. But the alternative, but it was clunky, and I didn't want to go with it. But the other option was making Christianity countercultural again. If Christianity is going to be possible for our children and grandchildren, it's going to have to be willing to be countercultural.

Seth Price 50:47

So, the banker part of my brain. How do we pay for that because I feel like the moment that America tries to do that the churches will explode because the government will threaten to take away tax exemption. As that voting bloc goes away, to reinforce their power, I don't think that the churches is man enough to to give away that golden carrot.

Brian 51:11

Probably…probably not. What you're going to end up with is probably inevitable. We're going to be in a situation much like Western Europe within a generation or two. But the church is definitely present. I can take you to any of these countries. I mean, I go to them all the time. It seems I'm in a phase that over the last 10 years where I'm a lot in France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, England, I'm just back from several of those countries just like a week ago.

So I know where to find the Christians there they're zealous, they're on fire, but they are a tiny minority. And that's just the reality of it. And I think it's going to be the reality here. I mean, Christendom over. Europe knows it, North America doesn't know it yet because presently we're still tangled up and be the de facto state church.

One chapter in the book is entitled tangled up in red, white and blue. Which is you know, a riff on Dylan’s tangled up in blue, it's tangled up in red, white and blue, you see what I'm doing here. But that is only going to last at most another generation-at most. And by a generation I don't mean 40 years I mean 15-20 because that has been sustained by people who the next stop is the grave. And when that generation is done, then the money's gone anyway.

And so the church is going to have to reinvent itself and I think either it becomes and is willing to be subversive, underground, counterculture or those that aren't limited, it's just gonna cease to exist. It just won't exist. Alright, so how do you do it? Well, then that's why you read the book of Daniel. It doesn't mean you can't work for Darius, or Nebuchadnezzar, you can. But there's certain lines you're not gonna cross. There's certain jobs you're not gonna do. There's gonna be times when they say, “All right, everybody, we're gonna play some music and everybody's gonna bow down to this big old statu. And Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego goes, Yeah, can't do it. I can't do it. And anyway, so a good part of the book is about that.

Seth Price 53:45

Well, I hope for those listening and for myself as well. That you go out and get the book. I know, I'm going to go out and get the book, because I like the way that you write. I like the way that I'm able to understand it. So often, I read a theology book and I have to read it again to figure out what I didn't understand the first time. So I appreciate that in the way that you're right. Where would you direct people to, to either engage with you engage with this type of contextual license of religion? Where would you direct them to?

Brian 54:15

You know, I'm easy to find because there aren't a lot of Brian's Zahnd’s out there, I think I'm the only one. If you just Google Brian's Zahnd, you'll find my blog site, you'll find Word of Life church, you'll find Twitter, Instagram, I do some stuff on Facebook, although Facebook scares me, but I still do some.

Seth Price 54:37

And so a monster you have to feed.

Seth Price 54:47

Well, Brian, thank you again for coming back on pleasure as always.

Brian 54:55

Thank you.

Seth Price 55:41

What do we do realizing or recognizing that America is a superpower, America is an empire, America has dropped nuclear bombs. America has the means to help the planet in a way that you were I personally can't. What does it mean that we can do all that? And we don't? What does it mean that we can do all of that and we treat people often as the Pharisees would treat to Samaritan? What does it mean that we haven't progressed?

Really, when we think about it, that we haven't wrestle with this? What do you call to do to be that voice of subversion that is not antithetical to truth and is not hypocritical, or as best as we can try not to be that calls light into the darkness that embraces God and Jesus in a way that people see him through us because of the way that we treat others. What does it mean when we act that way, as opposed to the way that we tend to? I don't know the answer to that. I like to think that I do it well, but I'm fully aware that I probably don't.

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Surviving the Bible with Christian Piatt / Transcript

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.

Back to the Audio Episode

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Christian 0:00

I don't think it's necessarily prideful to feel like you want to reclaim that. Because really, it's kind of the antithesis of an egocentric way of approaching Scripture. Because what we often do is we sit down and we pull a text out of context, and we say what's in this for me? Because we don't understand the bigger story. Right. And that's part of what the lectionary does. It gives you an Old Testament text, a Psalm, a gospel text, and an epistle or a letter attributed to Paul, although he probably didn't write them all, and showing you a common theme throughout them, or how they're referencing the same event, or person or place. And a lot of times if we just read one out of context, we don't see those connections.

And so since we don't see the bigger connections, we refer it back to ourself and make it a self help manual. And if the Bible says anything, I think it says it's not all about you, especially the Gospel. So if you're doing that you're kind of running counter to the ethos of the Bible to begin with, so we have to be given that thing that makes us feel like we're part of something bigger and I think that's actually very important part of the Christian experience or the Gospel emphasis.

Seth Price 1:38

2019…who would have thought we'd still be here last year was so crazy. I mean, from politics, to earthquakes, to fires, to everything. It is a good thing my Escala.., topical escuela…Oh my God, my end times views are not what they used to be or I might be Chicken Little today.

What does the Bible mean for you? How should you read it weekly; maybe what the heck is the lectionary? There are so many things about my faith that I know so little about the lectionary being one, year A, B and C being two. And oftentimes context for the scriptures that I read being three.

Today's guest is Christian Piatt. He's written a book. This is year, the second year that he's done it. Year C, he started with Year B on surviving the Bible for 2019. And the breakdown of reading the text throughout the year is done a bit differently. I find it refreshing to have a fresh set of eyes and new life breathed into text for me that sometimes gets stale. So I hope that you enjoy the conversation. Let's roll the tape on this Christmas Eve recorded conversation with Christian Piatt.

Seth Price 3:10

Christian Piatt, thank you so much for coming on to the Can I Say This At Church podcast on this beautiful Christmas Eve morning at recording (and a) big thank you to both your wife and your family for allowing you to get away and also to mine upstairs if you're listening hun, I love you. But Welcome to the show.

Christian 3:27

Thank you. I appreciate you having me on man. Sorry. It's taken a while for us to get it worked out.

Seth Price 3:31

You know what it's fine. It's life. But I really wanted to make sure that I talked to you before 2019 considering the book that we're talking about, or the devotion(al) that we're talking about is for 2019. And so I thought that that would definitely, that would definitely be helpful. Before we get into that content, though. I always like to start for first time listeners of anyone that's never been on the show before a bit about you. And so can you give me just a handful of minutes. The story of what makes Christian Christian kind of, you know, the faith that you started in as a child and all the way Up to whatever you happen to practice now.

Christian 4:06

Sure, well, I was raised Southern Baptists in Texas, and my dad was not a church person at all. So I just went with my mom, partly because I was mama's boy, and partly because she would bribe me with doughnuts. So I would go and it was just a part of my upbringing coming up, and it was good. You know, I went to VBS and Sunday school and camps in the summertime, whatever, you know, I did all that stuff. But when I started getting to a point, I was in this school where they really taught us critical thinking, rhetoric, debate and so I started kind of analyzing things in a different way. And I started looking at these, this notion that this was the only place in my life, in church, where I was supposed to just believe everything, literally whether it made sense or not, and not ask questions.

And I thought, well, that doesn't make sense. The rest of the world doesn't work that way. Why does it work that way they here? And so I would ask some questions anyway. And long story short, I got thrown out at age 17.

Seth Price 5:20

…of the school or the church?

Christian 5:21

The church.

Yeah, I get thrown out of the church. My youth minister literally threw a Bible at me and invited me not to come back. He was armed with the Word, and in a manner speaking, I guess. I left religion for 10 years and didn't look back. In fact, you know, I've been told that not only was I actually worse than an atheist, because not only did I not believe God correctly, believe in God correctly but that I was dragging other people down with my questions and doubts, huh? So it was best that I didn't toxify the water anymore. I guess I was brackish as the Bible would say.

And so I was poisoning the well, and so I had to get out. And so I did for 10 years, I just decided that I was anything but Christian, you know, ABC. And then I met Amy, my wife, who if you listen to the homebrew culture cast, she's my co host, she's a pastor. And at the time, she was a regional youth minister for Christian church Disciples of Christ. And I was like, well, that's gonna be awkward since I'm not a Christian or anything, I'm not really sure how I feel about this God thing. And I was still very angry and bitter, you know about the whole religion stuff. But through a various series of events that were very revelatory and kind of broke me open in a number of ways that were very unexpected. Over that next year, I gave it a try again. And over time, I really came to realize that those scars were my story now. And it's not that they exclusively define me. But those war wounds that I had, had helped change the course of my story in a way that made it uniquely mine. And I realized (that) there was an entire tribe of people out there who had gone through much the same thing.

And so I kind of found my voice in that way as well speaking to the questioning, the disaffected, the skeptical, the marginalized, the “others”, within and beyond organized religion, so that's kind of where I've stayed ever since.

Seth Price 7:56

To play on that metaphor. You had of brackish water, I would I would echo a lot of those sentiments, especially I'm also from Texas actually grew up in Midland was born in Odessa. And I haven't thought about it until just now. But if that type of faith is a brackish kind of water, it's a lot like the Dead Sea that everyone says it's gonna kill you, you know, this is gonna be awful. But we all just float on the surface. And then while we're up here, let's talk about things. Let's get personal. Let's talk about it because nobody's sinking, which actually come to think of it. I think that's what grace looks like. But that's an entire…that's an entirely different topic.

Christian 8:30

New sermon series!

Seth Price 8:32

Yeah, there we go.

Christian 8:33

Yeah, you're welcome.

Seth Price 8:34

You can take that one. I'm no preacher.

Christian 8:35

(Laughs) Neither am I.

Seth Price 8:37

I think I'd be an awful teacher because I like sarcasm too much and I don't know, you can get away with that in a youth group, but maybe not at a church-or maybe you can maybe that's the church that the world needs.

Christian 8:52

Exactly

Seth Price 8:54

Do you still have that Bible; the one that was thrown at you?

Christian 8:55

No, no! I didn't really want to have anything to do with it. It was his, you know, a big floppy King James Bible with the you know, the annotations and everything.

Seth Price 9:05

I was just thinking it would be great…so you know, package it up nice ribbons and just mail it to him. Yeah, just as a “Hey, I actually do still like this book. Here's a copy of this devotion that I've written about it. And then here's the one that inspired it. So I appreciate you, you know, Mister youth pastor ‘y’or whatever.”

Christian 9:25

That's right. Yeah, no, yeah, that would actually be very, very fitting. And you know, I am actually to a point of being grateful for the story and the course it is taken hard as it was at times. I don't believe that God made this happen to me. I don't believe that kind of shit. But I do believe that God gives us the capacity to find beauty in the midst of the of the garbage, and not that Evangelical Church is garbage by any means, but it was a pretty shitty situation. And so to be able to come out of that, and for life and beauty to emerge from it over time is very-that's good news. You know, that's Gospel to me. And so I'm grateful for the the course of things as they've taken themselves.

Seth Price 10:19

A couple questions that I've asked everyone from Texas because I have an inherent bias. And so the first question, I don't know, where are you at in Texas?

Christian 10:27

Now we're in Fort Worth, I grew up in Dallas, I was in Austin for a little while as well.

Seth Price 10:31

I know that both of those cities there's big cities this will work for and so when I left Texas In and Out Burger was just a California thing. And the last time I went home, which was March, I went to Dallas, actually to visit some family. And there was an In and Out Burger there and so my question is, which is the correct burger? Is it In n Out or is it What-a-Burger?

Christian 10:53

Well, I mean, that depends. Do you go with natives or imports because Whataburger I think has been here since the beginning. All I can tell you is I've been to a few Whataburger’s since I've been back and have not been to an In-n-Out. That's all I'm gonna say on that.

Seth Price 11:11

I don't know that I would go to a Whataburger is it's entirely too greasy. But I feel like you're insulting my family. If you say that In-n-Out burger’s better.

Christian 11:23

Yeah, I mean, that could be your job. You can do that since you're from Texas. But I can't and you know what, there's something to be said for a burger animal style.

Seth Price 11:36

Christian, you've written a book, which is why I had you on entitled, I believe Surviving the Bible. Correct? So two questions about it. A: Why does it matter that I survived the Bible? Is it possible to read it in such a way that I can't survive it and be what the heck is year C, I have no idea what that is. And I noticed that this one says you know your see your calendar. See I don't even know what that means.

Christian 12:03

Well, um, I feel like I kind of almost literally survived the Bible. You know, after having ducks, he threw it in my head man he'll I could call. It's a big whopping King James. So I survived. But what I mean by that is like, a lot of us. If you ever decide you're going to start reading the Bible, you start in Genesis, and by the time you get to Leviticus or something like that, you know, or even numbers, you're you're just dead in the water. You just don't ever make it. And you know, it's because we don't really know, ways to access the Bible. The Bible wasn't written that way so why don't we read it that way? Which makes intuitive sense to people but they don't know how to access it.

So, you know, I want to give them plain English accessible ways to look at this that don't echo the cliches of devotionals past. That don't just live on that surface as you were talking about. And and that actually give you a road-map if you want to understand how you can also be a questioning person of faith or a skeptic or, you know, someone who's just kind of living on the outskirts of them and toeing the line, you know, identity of mainline of, you know, the status quo of Christianity, and there's still something there. of substance. So it's a way to survive getting through the whole Bible and actually being made better for it and I don't mean that in a Joel Olsteen kinda “What’s in the Bible for me?” kind of way at all. But we do all, I think, aspire to be better people. Since, for most of us the Bible is, is a big part of our cultural identity and story, we should probably understand it, even if we know that the way it was taught to us isn't really on a gut level, what we believe that God had intended.

So, there's that for survive in the Bible. And as far as not surviving it, what I would say is just giving up at exceeding the meaning that you've been given by someone else as to what it means and not being able to decide for yourself what it means. That to me is not surviving the Bible. That's an cessation of your power of your own authority in engaging the text to someone else, which is, you know, for some people, they're very comfortable with that for me, I want to know how to engage it on my own in my own way in my own life, my own terms. That's kind of what the Protestant Reformation was about. It was about breaking us away from that intercessory way of engaging the Bible like someone else has to tell us what it means.

No, they don't! So for the last 500 years, we've been encouraged to do that. And then in some great, weird ways, more recently, we're like, actually, I'm going to tell you what this means, again, because this is getting a little too far afield. And I disagree with that. I think we should all engage in on our own for sure, or in small communities. As far as what Year C is there's this the 50 cent, theology word for it. The churchy word for it is part of the lectionary. The lectionary is a three year cycle that goes through the bulk of the Bible over over those hundred and 56 Sundays, or weeks in three years.

So you've got your A, B and C and I started it would be just because that's when the contract with Fortress Press started. So We'll go year B or C and then Year A. So it really doesn't matter. You don't have to start with A, obviously. You can just jump in any time and it's not a linear thing like you're trying to go from A to Z. That's one of the misnomers I think of our contemporary Western culture, that everything is linear and you're starting at the beginning and you're getting to the end.

Because what happens with the lectionary, once you get to the end of Year C, is you start back at A again, it's a cyclical experience of life, which I think is much more fitting to the way the universe works.

Seth Price 17:00

Are they the same texts? So like, next year, Year A, is that the same thing as 2017? Is that is that is that math right? I think that's right.

Christian 17:12

Yeah, by and large, they're gonna be similar. It may change a bit from year to year because the calendars don't quite work the same. But, but yeah, you know is like Lent and Advent and things like that those are part of the liturgical calendar, which the lectionary follows. So you've got Pentecost, you got Advent, you got Lent, you got epiphany and all these things a lot of people don't even know really what all that shit means. So that's part of the whole idea is demystifying all this fancy book stuff that has intimidated you out of identifying with Scripture and sort of embracing the Gospel for yourself.

Seth Price 17:55

I think so many people have no idea what epiphany and well they all know what Pentecost is, they all know what Easter is, and they all know what Christmas ss, but I know, growing up, Advent was a thing that until the last two or three years honestly wasn't a thing to me, it was just whatever it is what it is. I'm not, I'm not dealing with all of this. Which I feel like I was cheated out of a portion of my spirituality that I'll never be able to recuperate from or get back. I feel like I'm constantly playing catch up with some of the inner work that I should have been called to do 10 years ago, that I'm just starting to do now.

Maybe that's prideful. I don't know, maybe that's the wrong way to look at it. But I do know that that's how I currently feel about it.

Christian 18:32

Well, yeah, I mean, I totally get what you're saying. Because yeah, I knew what Advent was because we put the wreath up, but we didn't really talk about it.

Seth Price 18:38

I just want the pieces of chocolate behind that calendar thing-I was really interested in that.

Christian 18:43

That's what it was all about right! And it was the torturous month before Christmas. But we didn't really consider what you know that Advent is a time of waiting and that epiphany is a time of enlightenment and coming to together and that Pentecost is a time of Revelation and dissipating back again, you know, so you've got the coming together and then you've got the going out the inspiration and the going out; and you have lent, which is a preparing time. And these are themes that echo throughout our lives and seasons of our lives, did I just say that…gross…periods of our lives.

Seth Price 19:26

You don't like seasons?

Christian 19:29

Seasons of our lives? It sounds like a bad soap opera.

Seth Price 19:31

It's the Telemundo version of Days of Our Lives.

Christian 19:33

Yeah, there you go. They're important to understand and if we can resonate with those, I think. And I don't think it's necessarily prideful to feel like you want to reclaim that. Because really, it's kind of the antithesis of an ego-centric way of approaching Scripture because what we often do is we sit down and we, we we pull the text out of context and when we say Well, what's in this for me? Because we don't understand the bigger story, right. And that's part of what the lectionary does. It gives you an Old Testament text, a Psalm, a gospel text, and an epistle, or a letter from attributed to Paul, although he probably didn't write them all. And showing you a common theme throughout them are how they're referencing the same event, or person or place.

And a lot of times, if we just read one out of context, we don't see those connections. And so since we don't see the bigger connections, we refer it back to ourselves and make it a self help manual. And if the Bible says anything, I think it says it's not all about you, especially the Gospel. So if you're doing that you're kind of running counter to the ethos of the Bible to begin with.

So we have to be given that thing that makes us feel like we're part of something bigger. And I think that's actually a very important part of the of the Christian experience, or the gospel emphasis.

Seth Price 21:00

If there is an easier way to get another Bible thrown at you, it's to start bad mouthing Paul in America, you're gonna have to really be careful Christian.

Christian 21:09

Well I’m in good company if I do. A lot of people think he’s misogynist and homophobic. The thing about Paul, he's a perfect example like, to me of how even I can come back and be sort of a teacher or a leader within whatever this movement is of trying to figure out who Jesus is. Because if Paul, who made a living knocking off Jews and Christians for a living, you know, his fellow people, and “whacking” them for the Roman state, can suddenly be used to yield this amazing content for Scripture. Then maybe I have some hope as well.

And King David who he wants to get on with his good friends wife, so he sends him off Uriah her husband off to die. So he can get up in that. If the Bible can use that for good as well, if God can use that for good, then maybe I’ve got a chance.

Seth Price 22:22

My, um, my pastor said a few months ago, and I can't remember the context and so I'll probably badly paraphrase this but he was talking about wrestling with, you know, things that don't agree and and even when we don't agree with each other, and he's like, Guys, I'm telling you right now, if Paul and James can both exist in the New Testament, your opinion and my opinion can also both coexist, because if we read them the way that they are, they don't agree on a lot, but they do agree on who Christ is. But outside of that there's a lot of nuance there. And if they can agree and both be in Scripture, you and I can also figure out how to disagree and still be Christians together. And still do live together.

Christian 23:01

I think sounds like you got a good church there.

Seth Price 23:03

I think so, um, before we get into the meat of your book, I am curious. So January 20, lectionary text, you call it people to cake ratio. And I'm a big fan of the way that you title each, each reading. So I know that that's a play on Office Space because I work at a big company and office space is one of my absolute favorite movies. But I'm curious what is the proper people to cake ratio? In a non theological term like for you what's the ratio?

Christian 23:36

The people to cake ratio you have really, if you want to talk in all, you know, seriousness about how to avoid panic in an office place, you have to have at least 33% more cake than people. Because otherwise they will lose their minds worrying about whether or not there's enough cake for everybody. If you're not throwing half of it away, then my god you might not have enough.

Seth Price 24:00

You didn't do it? Well, if that's not a concept of America, what else is, Lord forbid we have just the right amount of cake, we need to have enough to throw away an entire another person's cake. And for those that have no idea what we're talking about, just hit pause, go to Amazon and buy the movie Office Space. I promise you, it's the best two hours of your life that you'll spend over this Christmas holiday.

Christian 24:21

It is the best, it is fantastic.

Seth Price 24:23

Um, yeah, “blow this place up”. So you do the beginning of each reading, very similar to a lot of devotions where you've got a first reading, you got a psalm reading, and then you've got a second reading. And so I don't want to spend a lot of time there. Because I feel like anyone that picks up a devotion, if they picked it up, that's what they were expecting; something that isn't really going to make them think too far outside the box. But what really surprised me about each of your breakdowns is you do a section called Bible decoded, Points to Ponder and what's the other one, digging deeper and heads up and so I'd like to break those apart a bit with the intention behind them and kind of how we use those as we work through this text. Starting with Bible Decoded.

Christian 25:09

Yeah, Bible Decoded, takes all the names of people places, and the church speak where the old ancient words are historic words that we don't really understand if we're honest. You know, we read about Uriah alot of us don't really know who that is or why he's talking about why Jesus is talking about a mustard seed. There are so many places and names and words in the Bible that we just don't get. And we're usually too intimidated by it to just say stop and go, Well, sorry, another word. I don't understand. Stop explaining. So I do I try to take those words. And if I'm being honest, a lot of these I'm reading and I'm like, What the hell does that mean? So I have to go look it up myself. It's not like I have this all sitting in my head and I'm just pounding it out like some expert on high. I have gone along and sort of figured alot of this out along the way too. So hopefully you benefit from my grunt work and can just see…Oh, that's what that means. That's the difference between a Seraphim and a Cherubim or whatever, you know, it doesn't even matter. So that's kind of the idea of the Bible decoded piece so you know all the words that you're reading to begin with, maybe it makes a little more sense.

Seth Price 26:36

Does it make sense to read through the Bible Decoded and then maybe go back and reread the text?

Christian 26:42

I think so. Yeah, so I've got the the texts in brief and the Bible decoded. If you want to try just reading it on your own first, and see what you get from it, and then go through and read the texts in brief in the Bible decoded piece. That could be an interesting way to do it. If you're just really kind of going into it the first time and you're really in daunted by the idea of reading Scripture at all. You know, you can start with mine and you know, just say, Hey, you know, hearing a sentence or two, here's some stuff about sort of the big picture of what this text is about. And here are the words you might want to know before you jump into it, then that's a way to do it as well. I've seen people do it both ways. And people get different things from it.

Seth Price 27:32

Yeah. And as people wrestle with these, how do they…is there a way to, to further wrestle with the text to not do what you alluded to earlier, where we're just taking Christian’s word, that, you know, Glory means this or that cheribum means this or that whatever the Spirit of God means this is where what other places are you using to help glean that…alright, so here's what here's what Holy Spirit actually is. And as we read this word, here's everywhere that it's repeated. Here's why it's repeated. Here's the symbolism behind it. Because they don't I want to make sure that we're riding the line carefully between just using you as another figurehead, “Pastor”, from the pulpit saying, trust me, this is what it means. Go with me.

Christian 28:18

Hmm. Well, there's this beautiful thing called the internet. And you can look it up for yourself and see if you think I'm full of shit or not. But other than that, I really like a site called workingpreacher. Which, I mean, it obviously sounds like it's for pastors, but it's actually got some really good reflections and sort of in depth analyses of different texts if you want to go deeper. And so that's one thing that you can use to dig in a little further. You've also got Christian Century is a really good resource. It's a magazine that comes out I think, I think like, twice a month. Is that right? I don't know.

Seth Price 29:11

Sounds good to me. We can also internet that one as well. But I'm always reticent to just trust the internet because on the internet, Abe Lincoln is excited about the internet in that one meme that you see on Facebook all the time.

Christian 29:25

Don't get your news and don't get your Biblical commentary from Facebook for God's sake. But, yeah, Christian Century is really good. The Liturgist Podcast is really good. Not that they break down Bible Speak but but you know that that's another one. And, you know, Christian Century, Working Preacher, The Liturgists and then really, I think the most valuable thing instead of just looking to another, so called experts source…

Seth Price 29:59

…is this podcast!

Christian 29:59

Absolutely. Seth Price’s Can I Say This at Church podcast; and in addition to that small groups get into a small group and read this in a in a group because so there's this ancient approach to reading scripture called Midrash that the Jewish people used to do, and I guess they still do. And you had to read it in community. You had to read it several different ways. You had to look for the symbolic meanings, the theological meanings, the historic and the mystical meanings of it, hmm. And you're looking for multiple layers of truth in the text and then you're supposed to debate or argue or discuss it. And you're not supposed to arrive at “A” correct answer. If you did, you're doing it wrong. It's multiple layers and levels of truth. So That I think is probably the healthiest way to do it; as what is it DennisMiller used to say, “don't take my word for it I could be wrong”. So that that that would be my suggestion.

Seth Price 32:02

As I read through, so I did not read the entire calendar of the book for the entire year mostly because I'm enjoying actually keeping up with it, but I did dive in. I always read like the week of my birthday and a few others. And something that I've noticed is in Points to Ponder as you're, you know, expounding upon the text that you just read. Here's kind of how, you know, first thoughts here we go, let's deal with this is I can't decide if you like the Psalms or if you don't like the Psalms. Like I remember there's one where you're talking about Doubting Thomas. And I think verbatim, you say, you know,

if you're like me, you aren't a big fan of Christian praise music. And this is also why the Psalms are annoying to me.

And I, that's not exactly what you say, but it's something like that.

Christian 32:42

Yeah. (laughter)

Seth Price 32:45

As we do points to ponder, am I wrong and hearing that in your writing that you may or may not like the Psalms or maybe you do now, I don't know?

Christian 32:54

You know, you're the first person to actually pick up on that. You talk about how ambivalent people are toward Paul, sometimes I have an ambivalent relationship towards the Psalms. And I think part of it is because of what we've done with so much of it.

We've pulled so much of it out of the pretty words that sound good, out of context, completely of why it's even there. And we've turned it into these really crappy, bad songs that are just bad production, bad with theology, and we sing them badly. And it just makes the Psalms look terrible. And the Psalms are not just about Yay, Jesus is my boyfriend. There no Jesus in Psalms you know, God is my boyfriend. God looks after me. I'm his. I'm his favorite and all that but that's what you would think in hearing a bunch of the songs that are based on songs. What I have enjoyed is learning a lot of the politics that were going on in that time. So basically these tribes in that region and you know, David was the king of Israel. And, and there were all these other tribes and they're always sort of changing alliances.

So Judea and Syria would gang up on Israel for a while and then Israel and Judea would gang up on somebody else, and then they'd all get pissed off and turn on David. And so when you all of a sudden read these texts, knowing the the game of Risk that are playing if you played that old board game, you know, this, this sort of strategy of trying to get the upper hand and just survive and, and, you know, fight out by word, who’s God was right. It's a lot more interesting.

And really read how incredibly conflicted and imperfect this David guy really was. And yet he and God said had this really fundamentally rich relationship in spite of it all. You know, it makes me think, okay, so when you're in a relationship or you're wrestling with God, it doesn't make your teeth whiter, it doesn't make you speak and do perfect things. It actually is even harder in some ways. Because you know better and then you feel like you have to do better. You can't plead ignorance, I guess. So I have a love hate relationship with the Psalms. So a very, very astute observation there.

Seth Price 35:50

Well, that's when you know, I guess that people are really reading as opposed to just just taking what you give them freely and do nothing with it.

Christian 35:58

Yes, I've had many times when I've been interviewed and I'm like, did you open the book or did you just look at the back cover?

Seth Price 36:06

There's another question but I don't want to dive off into Star Wars but I've heard you say elsewhere that, I forget which one you say is better, but I'm pretty sure you use Return of the Jedi as the be all end all in the book. But I know that that's not what you truly maybe I'm getting them backwards either way. I know you contradict yourself, but I can't remember. I can't remember…it doesn't matter.

Christian 36:28

The paradox is beautiful. But no the fact is, it's just an empirical fact that Empire Strikes Back is the best of the first trilogy. And Return to the Jedi is the worst because when you start putting talking teddy bears and you're gonna take down the Empire, you've jumped the shark.

Seth Price 36:43

So you also don't like the Care Bears then I'm not happy with this amount of hate towards the bears.

Christian 36:51

I cannot stand the Smurfs, the Care Bears. I don't even like My Little Pony. You can just mark it down-mark it down today.

Seth Price 37:00

I want to be really clear. I also don't like the Ewoks or any of the other things that actually so last night we were going to pick up my kids from someone at church it was letting them do like Christmas cookies at their house while my wife and I went out. And while I'm following in this minivan into the neighborhood, the little DVD that they have down because they have a fancier car than I do. They were watching like the original 1980’s Transformers. And I really was sad that I couldn't listen to it. Like I could see it. I'm like, I know that episode. That's a good one. And then I couldn't I couldn't partake in it, it really pissed me off, because that's a much better. Anyway, we were way off the deep end there.

Seth Price 37:39

(laughter) I've lost my train of thought. (Christian laughs)

Actually no this kind of works. So I feel like if I was you, I would figure out a way to make Transformers work its way into the lectionary text. Because one of the things that you do I mean, you use Office Space you use the Empire Strikes Back you use Super Mario Brothers, you use music videos, you use so many different things to help shed new light light on to the text in the contemporary way. And so is that easy to do to take something that isn't used for an entirely different purpose and then roll it back in to Scripture?

Christian 38:14

You know, I guess it's just how my brain works. Because in the last interview I did, and they weren't even asking me about the pop culture references, per se. But I think in a span of a half hour interview, I brought up The Matrix, Pulp Fiction, and Star Wars. And just because I think, Oh, it's like that time when Marcellus Wallace’s soul is in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, or when, you know, Neo says there is no spoon or whatever. So it just, I don't know, that's just how my brain just kind of marbles around it, you know, pinballs around in there. And I've always liked seeing those connections. It's an anchor point for me, because the I was horrible at history in school, believe it or not. I was so bad in history class, it was the one class I could barely pass because it was so abstract, the way it was taught, it wasn't relevant to me today.

And then all of a sudden, I took a history of political science or government class or something. And I thought, God, this is gonna be horrible. But the guy actually made it relevant to me today. And I was like, “Oh, that's what all that means!” Suddenly, it made sense to me today in some lived experience. So ever since then, my brain has kind of done that to make sense of things that I've read or that have happened in the past. And so I just sort of as I'm writing those devotionals usually, I just think oh, this totally reminds me of “bla bla bla” and that's so that's what I'll write down.

Seth Price 39:57

Are you happy with the way that Jules Winfield from Pulp Fiction uses the Ezekiel text? Do you feel good with with his expounding on that?

Christian 40:04

Well, I wouldn't say it was a particularly healthy exegesis. But it was pretty badass! I gotta give him that.

Seth Price 40:16

It was it was great. Yeah, I rewatched that the other day. And I was like, Man, this is. This is really good, now. I remember at the time feeling so taken aback that oh my gosh, I can't believe that you would use the Bible that way. And I'm at a point now that I'm like, I that's clever. I like you. I like what you know, you're so good. I like what you did there.

Christian 40:35

And it's a great example of us, just basically justifying what we are already doing in life by sanctioning it by God, which is something that David did a lot if want to tie it back to Scripture. So, you know, in that way, Jules was a lot like David and saying, Oh, you know, this is working because God wants me to do it or justifying, I have to do this because I am an emissary of God. Yeah, we do that all the time.

Seth Price 41:05

What was your least favorite version in Year C to write? Like what was your least favorite week that you had to deal with, just didn't want to deal with this text or I don't want to deal with this part of the liturgical calendar.

Christian 41:19

Well, normal season is always kind of weird. And you can figure out why it's called that ordinary time. You know, when you've got a finite period, like Lent or Advent and you have these very intentional themes that you're working on. It is usually more fruitful, I think. Whereas sometimes I feel like the the people who put the the lectionary calendar together, we're kind of grasping and some of those ordinary times like, well, we got to put these together, because we haven't talked about it yet. And let's them figure out what they how they connect. So sometimes that's hard. Um, I sometimes there are just really brutal stories…about…well…like Lot throwing his daughters out to be gang raped by a crazy, you know, mob outside his door-or how, you know, it says thank you God for letting us you know murder this entire other tribe of people because you love us better.

You know that kind of stuff is hard to work through, because it says what it says. But what it does is it challenges our fundamental approach to how we understand Scripture, is it that was God revealing God's true self through Scripture or was it humanity trying to get at different aspects of God in the media that we had? And that maybe there's some of that that has truth in it. But that doesn't mean that the claims made by the author are entirely encompassing of the nature of God. So those are hard because that's a lot to fit in to say 1500 words, which I do for a week.

Seth Price 43:21

Someone buys the book, they sit down January, one New Year's resolution, I'm going to read the book. I'm not gonna read the book, I'm going to read the Bible and this book intentionally each week, and I'm going to meditate on these what is the biggest thing that you hope someone walks away with on December 31?

I would like to say from Advent to Advent, but we've already missed this Advent because tomorrow's Christmas. So what's the biggest what's the biggest thing that you say you know, alright, so when you starting Advent in Year A, which is not the way the alphabet works, but whatever, from C to A, what's the biggest thing that you hope that someone that is that sits with this with intention and really wrestles with the text that they end with?

Christian 44:01

I mean, one of the most rewarding things I've had people tell me is your books finally allowed me to pick up the Bible again, and feel differently about it. But I think a lot of people have very complicated feelings around Scripture, or at least the way it’s been used toward them or against them even.

Yeah, so I hope that they feel that the Bible has been liberated from that. That, the shackles, that burden of fear, anger, resentment that they had, that they look forward to it. They see that there's some pretty exciting things to learn. I know that Bible and exciting don't really go together unless you're, you know, unless you're the super hip youth minister from Saved your Jesus is awesome. Jesus is rad. Let's get hiped for the Bible.

Seth Price 45:00

That sounds like a Texas version of Danny Lovett, but I went to Liberty I don't know if you know who Danny love it is but if you know who that is?

Christian 45:07

Exactly and it's you know it's just basically it's it's Hellfire and brimstone fundamentalism with better grooming and a hipster t-shirt. And so it's not that-this is meant to be like “Wow, there’s some beautifully deep waters here and I just feel like I'm, I'm making some new connections. And I want to I want to talk to the people about it”. I don't mean to go out and like convert win souls for Jesus but like, have some discourse and to not be intimidated into silence about what you think and what you believe and why you think it and why you believe it.

Because I think that happens a lot with mainliners and progressives and skeptics and people on the margins. You know, we say, I don't really think that the way you're talking about the Bible the way you're using it is right, but I don't have enough tools to speak to another perspective. I really hope that they feel like, that people feel like, that they have some new tools and a new vocabulary and a new confidence to say, you know what, there are other ways to interpret the scripture that you just use to tell me that gay people are evil. And, I have something to back that up with. And I don't mean to get into a fight, but I mean, it's not even to tell somebody they're wrong. But say, you know, I actually have another perspective and here's why. That would be all I could ask for.

Seth Price 46:38

No, 100% agree, especially with the tool thing, if anything I've learned this year the amount of reading that I've had to do to speak at a level that I can even function with people such as yourself, and you know, NT Wright and other people has given me way more information that I could use if I felt like it in a way to make people feel a little; and I'm finding though that I never really want do that, like that's not helpful. It's not beneficial. It's definitely not the heart of Christ. And if anything, it turns people off from any form of religion especially mine.

And if you don't believe me just go on Facebook and and get in an argument with someone real quick and then there we go he talked about it earlier about not getting your theological grounding in the Facebook post. Oh, although it's fun if you just want to post I find I just like to post memes over and over again doesn't really matter what you said, I just posted a meme until quiet, it just makes me laugh.

And that's really all I care about. Where would you point people to Christian to both engage with you to get the book? You know, just in general, where would you send people to?

Christian 47:43

To engage with me, I am on social media. While, I think there are a lot of downsides to it. It also is sort of a connective tissue of our culture today. So I am on Facebook, hopefully not arguing with people. I’m on Twitter, Instagram

Seth Price 48:03

I mean I can go on there right now and yell at you and so we can argue yesterday if you want.

Christian 48:08

Perfect! Yes, I’ve have my coffee, I'm ready to go, I’m loaded!

So you can find me at Christianpiatt.com is not very up to date but you can reach me through that if you have questions specifically or if you're wanting like books signed or anything like that.

You can look up all my books from my memoir on parenting to the novel Blood Doctrine to Banned questions about you know, the Bible, Jesus and Christians another series I did just all on, you know, Amazon, Barnes and Noble Apple books, you can order them in stores and yeah, I'm pretty easy to find if you if you want to find me.

Seth Price 48:53

Everywhere good books are sold.

Christian 48:55

Yes. And Home Brewed Culture Cast is our podcast. We've been in a hiatus for a while, but we are coming back. And so you can look up the Homebrew Culture Cast to hear my wife Amy and me doing our our thing as well.

Seth Price 49:10

When should we expect that because honestly, I've never listened to that I'm happy to, I don't really want to go back in time and re listen to all that stuff because I don't have that kind of time. But I would like to listen to it going forward. So when do you expect that to be a thing?

Christian 49:24

Well, we're about to go on…well, tomorrow afternoon, Christmas afternoon, we're going to head up to New Mexico. And my guess is we will do some recording there while we have some time and get started. Because I've already got a couple of interviews in the can. And so look for it in the new year.

Seth Price 49:41

Awesome. Awesome. Well, Christian, thank you again for your time. And for this text. And for those listening please do go and buy this. Everyone likes to do a devotion throughout the year. And this one is is well worth all the time and energy. I'm greatly enjoying it personally. So I would encourage each of you to do the same. But thank you again, Christian.

Christian 49:59

Appreciate it. Thanks Seth

Seth Price 50:27

Entirely needed are conversations that press us and give us further depth of knowledge so that we can have conversations with those around us in Christians survive in the Bible for this year does that music today provided by Loud Harp, you can find their most recent release everywhere. Good music is sold released in June of 2017. And as always, you'll find today's tracks on the Can I Say This At Church Spotify playlist, tell a friend rate and review the show.

Talk with you next week.