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.
James Danaher 0:00
We live in such an amazing time, the 21st century, we're seeing scientists coming into this mystical view where they're debating Einstein's concept of space time and quantum mechanics. There are two explanations for how the universe works. They both sort of makes sense but both can't be true and they both have anomalies. What's so amazing about our understanding of the universe, is (that) we continue to come to these places where we find anomaly after anomaly and then we have to change our paradigms. We have to change the way we conceptualize the world. And we keep on thinking that was the last paradigm “Okay, now we know how God really did it”. No, you don't! the way God did it is way beyond our understanding. And if the universe itself is beyond our understanding, how much more is its creator. That's why Jesus doesn't tell us much about God. And when he does tell us stuff about God, it's shocking! In Luke, he says in Luke six chapter, he says, You're supposed to be like God who's kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. We’ve never heard that before. He doesn't tell us a whole lot about God because we couldn't comprehend it anyway. What he tells us is who we should be in relationship to God. And he tells us, I said this to somebody the other day, and they said…duh… I said, What Jesus shows us is who God would be if he became a human being. And the person said, Well, duh, that's what we believe. Yeah, but think about that. Think about that. That's amazing that the most we can know about God is what he would be like if he became a human being and that's the Jesus revelation.
Seth Price 2:00
Hello, my friends and welcome back to the Can I Say This At Church podcast, I am Seth, and I am glad that you were here; today's conversation is fan flippin fantastic. So many things during it made me just take notes. Before we get into that, though, thank you so much for those that have reviewed the show on iTunes or Podbean, got a lot on pod bean lately, a lot of comments there. And I like that I'm able to engage in the comments there. And so anyway, if you haven't reviewed the show, if you haven't told your friends about the show, stop what you're doing and do that now. I would also encourage you, as you're talking to your friends about the show, and you're recommending it to your family or whomever person in your church person that you live next door to. Two requests of you. If you have not yet and you've been considering, you know, do I have a buck a month to spare? You do. I can tell you right now that you do because it's $1. I would encourage you to go to patreon.com slash Can I Say This At Church, click the button help support the show. You get some extra content, trying to get better about different forms of content that go on there. That Don't just early versions of the show, although the unedited version of the show is one of my favorite versions, for a couple reasons, you get the random jokes that didn't work. You get my flubs and all of the umms and the before and the after versions of the podcasts, the the run up to, let's do this, and the afterwards are almost a different show in and unto themselves.
Also, I have started a slack page, (it’s not included cause it wasn’t a good fit) and it will be included in the newsletter, if you're not on there. I'll also put links to all that in the show notes. I would like to try to get into a consolidated place to to make everything a little more manageable for us conversating with each other, because not everyone's on Facebook. Not everyone's on Twitter. A lot of people are on those, and they don't want to be on those. And so trying to find a place it's siloed that we can have conversations an be honest with each other and we'll see how it goes.
We live in a world today that depending on the way that you want to take it, truth is whatever I need it to be in a world of fake news and in a world of “my friend told me this and he's a smart guy. So it's got to be this or this person told And she's a smart lady. So it's gotta be this”! Truth matters. And I think as we think back through the history of the church, the way that the church has applied truth to faith has sometimes been good, but it's oftentimes been damaging to the world that we live in, even as I think about right now. I mean, even today, they want to change, you know, school curriculum and the way that we revisionist history in the way that we talk about people and it impacts everything about our worldview in a way that our truth is shifted in an Overton Window style.
So I had the opportunity to speak with Professor James Danaher who has a book that's out in March on Truth and Identity in Prayer. And I'm telling you right now, as I read through this book, I kept highlighting and highlighting and highlighting it is fantastic between his and a book called Touched by God that I've read as well from Padre Luigi Gioia, those two books that go so well together and so this episode with James literally shifted my view on-really my patience with others. This conversation is fantastic the book is even better. And I think that you should get it. I may send it but I think that you should get it this. I can't wait for you to hear this conversation. Here we go. Let's roll the tape with James Danaher.
Seth Price 5:39
Professor James Danaher, thank you so much for coming on to the Can I Say This At Church podcast! I was elated. It's been months pretty sure it's months when I was able to get in contact with you and you're able to get me your book that's coming out in March and I was excited to get into it and then as I read it and wrestled with it, I had to slow down. I began consuming it. Little too quickly. And and parts of it, I had to go back and read. So thank you again for making the time to coming on to the show.
James Danaher 6:08
Oh, you are quite welcome.
Seth Price 6:09
I always like to start this way for anyone that is unfamiliar with either the topic at hand, or the individual that I'm speaking with. And so Jim, just a few quickly, to bring us through, you know, what makes you kind of your upbringing and what brought you you know, along in your career and your thought process to doing what you do today?
James Danaher 6:29
Oh, that is a strange story.
I have a book called The Second Truth. And in it, I talked a little bit about my background. I was a terrible student when I was a kid, I actually didn't read a book until I was 22 years old. When I was 22, I read a book and sort of got carried away with it and read a lot of books since and I went from a D student to an A student overnight and eventually did three master's degrees and a PhD in philosophy, I started publishing in the early 90s, mostly articles. I guess it all goes back to my dissertation was on John Locke on Real and Nominal Essences. And I guess what really informs my Christianity is the fact that all of our concepts are nominal concepts. You know Aristotle had believed that language mirrored nature (and) that got destroyed 500 years ago, or 400 years ago when the microscope was invented. And we discovered that there's a whole world that Aristotle knew nothing about and that world is actually responsible for the kind of things that exist in this world. And without an inherited nomenclature for that world we had to make up these concepts. And all of our concepts are basically nominal.
And when I bring that into my Christianity, I'm always asking, you know, what does Jesus mean when he says faith? And you know, scholars in the past would say, well look in the Greek, well, the Greek doesn't help. Well look in the Aramaic…no Jesus, I always say to my students, Jesus ain’t from around here, you know, he's got different concepts. And when you look at the two times in the gospels, where he says, great faith, it has nothing to do with what we think of is faith. One the Syrophoenician woman, and the other is a Roman centurion. Neither one of them are Jews. They're not of his religious background at all.
But he says to both of them “great faith in all of Israel, I haven't found faith like this”. He has a different concept of faith. He has a different concept of love. And I guess all of my books have been about trying to reconceptualize the Gospel according to Jesus’ concepts.
I had a book come out in 2006 called, my title was “Postmodern Jesus”. But the publisher always picks the title and the publishers title was Eyes That See Hear and are Perceiving Jesus in a Postmodern Context. And I'm always rethinking these things. And in this recent book that's coming out March 1, I'm rethinking the concepts of truth, prayer, identity, and how they play into the spiritual journey. And we've inherited a concept of truth that is epistemic, it's about “what you know”. You know, Aristotle said that we're involved in three basic activities: making, doing, and knowing. When we make we want to make what's beautiful, when we do we want to do what's good, and what we know we want to know what's true.
Well, that's not what Jesus is talking about at all! When Jesus says,
I'm the way the truth and the life.
he's talking about a way to be. And that's how we’ve missed the gospel completely. We think the gospel is about believing a certain doctrine and believing a certain theology. And it's not it's a way “to be” that Jesus is calling us to. So with that understanding, I reinterpret both prayer and the Scripture. And I see that it's a spiritual journey. I've been doing this for about 40 years, this Christian thing, and I'm not there yet. I'm still amazed. I'm doing a book right now on the Sermon on the Mount. And I'm just amazed at “My god! Does anybody pay attention to the things that Jesus is saying here”? It is just unbelievable!
Seth Price 10:42
Do you think that the goal of Christianity is to get “there” yet? I mean, that just to just to build off of that, again, should that?
James Danaher 10:51
I think the ultimate goal of Christianity is to be Jesus to the world. And the way we do that is by internalizing the words of Jesus and taking them seriously. I say this to Christians all the time, don't you find it strange that what we call the gospel has nothing to do with the four Gospels? It's from scriptures outside the Gospels that we believe in our heart and confess with our mouth and end of story. No, that's just the beginning of the story. The end of the story is the Sermon on the Mount. The end of the story is Jesus words and internalizing those words. And it's an ongoing process.
And what's really interesting about it is it's not so much about getting it right, and and internalizing all of Jesus words and living the way Jesus lived, but living in a state of repentance, for not forgiving everybody, for judging people, for not loving yours enemy's, for not doing the things that Jesus calls us to do. And it's that constant state of repentance, I think, that brings us down to the place that we can be Jesus to the world. Richard Rohr has a great line where he says, “You don't come to God by doing it right, you come to God by doing it wrong”. And the only way you do it wrong is by paying attention to the words of Jesus.
Seth Price 12:24
Well and being honest with yourself. Two questions are one is really quick. So you said a word earlier that I want to make sure everyone really hears and knows what it means in case it comes up again. So what do you mean when you say epistemological? Because that's a word that we don't really use ever.
James Danaher 12:41
In philosophy, there's branches of philosophy. One is epistemology which is the study of the web required knowledge. And the other is ontology which is the study of being. And truth as being ontological truth is different from epistemic truth and Jesus is talking about epistemic truth; He is the truth, his being and the being that he's calling us to. Epistemic truth is having knowledge, believing the right things. And I say all the time, you know, Satan has all the right theology. He believes the right thing is he just hates those things, you know? And that's that's the distinction that's the thing that I'm critical of with Christianity Today that it's about the leaving the right things. And those things change over time.
Our theology is, you know, people think that what they're believing is doctrine and theology is something that Christians have always believed, (but) when you study the history of Christianity. That's not the case at all. But the words of Jesus have not changed in the last 2000 years.
Seth Price 13:51
So church the way that we value truth has changed over time?
James Danaher 13:57
Well, the way our interpretation of what what the gospel is over time has changed. What hasn't changed is the practice of prayer, contemplative prayer, of the saints have who have been people who wanted to be Jesus to the world and took Jesus’ word seriously, and internalized those words. And part of the message of the book is that the only way we can really do that is from the place of prayer. I argue that prayer is a place that you go to, in order to have the Jesus perspective and be able to make sense of Jesus’ words, long as we're in the world. Jesus’ words don't make sense.
I remember a guy saying to me once you know, I love the Bible, but that love your enemies stuff…that's a bit much. Of course, it's a bit much, that's the point! It’s the kingdom, it's not the world. And the Bible is a bad God meeting us in the world. And the gospel is about Jesus calling us out of the world and into His Kingdom.
Seth Price 15:02
You need talk about in the book. And I feel like it's chapter one. Maybe it's chapter two is my philosophy class because I was aggravated by, although if I could go back in time, I think the way that I'm wired now, or what interests me now, I would really like to go back. But I can't do that. And so instead I'll talk to you.
So you talk about its relationship to truth. And then the question that I wrote on that, on that, and from what I remember what you what you wrote is, you know, that churches throughout history thought that for something to be true, it has to make logical sense, right. And that theory, in my mind makes room for multiple truths. If we take it to something today, you know, a Presbyterian can believe this and a Baptist can believe this and we're both interpreting or even like the concepts of hell, right, you know, people will translate and here this is a truth. have eternal conscious torment, God forbid, or evangelical universalism, or something altogether different. And so how does that understanding ho w should that understanding of truth impact the way that we make room for truth period, at all?
James Danaher 16:16
Yeah, you know, we live in such an amazing time, the 21st century, we're seeing scientists coming into this mystical view, where they're debating Einstein's concept of space time and quantum mechanics. There are two explanations for how the universe works they both sort of makes sense. But we think that they both can't be true. And they both have anomalies. what's so amazing about our understanding of the universe, is we continue to come to these places where we find anomaly after anomaly and then we have to change our paradigms. We have to change the way we conceptualize the world. And we keep on thinking that was the last paradigm “Okay, now we know how God really did it”. No, you don't! The way God did it is way beyond our understanding. And if the universe itself is beyond our understanding how much more is its creator, that's why Jesus doesn't tell us much about God. And when he does tell us stuff about God, it's shocking.
You know, in Luke, he says in Luke’s 6th chapter, he says, You're supposed to “be like God, who's kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.“
We never heard that before! He doesn't tell us a whole lot about God because we couldn't comprehend it anyway. What he tells us is who we should be in relationship to God. And he tells us, I said this to somebody the other day, and they said, I said, What Jesus shows us is who God would be if he became a human being. And the person said, Well, duh, that's what we believe. Yeah, but think about that. Think about that. That's amazing that the most we can know about God is what he would be like if he became a human being, and that's Jesus revelation.
Seth Price 18:01
And there's entirely more…a God of a cosmic universe has to be more than that or what a puny God? But that's an entire separate conversation. Yeah, that's entirely separate, boiling it down to me, as a person, you know, I decide truth. And so there's a part in your book that you write about, that we take our truths, and then we make those equate to value.
And so like in America, it's capitalism. It's I have more stuff than you look at this house, these columns are fantastic. And I bought a brand new Tesla, it's my third one! And somehow that makes what I have to say have more weight or more truth and the value and then you also relate truth and value to how the church has been complicit in racism. And so I wondered if you might break those two things apart a bit and kind of go into that a little.
James Danaher 18:58
We've still are basically Aristotelians, we believe that language gives us access to reality. And we believe our cultural concepts that we know what love is, we know what right and wrong are, and we read the gospel through that. So what we do is…the hard words of Jesus that presents anomalies, to whatever our theology might be, we just ignore those things because they don't fit with our culture. It's the reason why I'm an evangelical, and the reason why evangelicals love the Bible, but they hate the Gospels. They stay away from the words of Jesus. Why? Because they will destroy whatever theology you develop.
Seth Price 19:42
How then does that type of truth, of the way that we treat truth, how do you boil that down to racism a few times and so much as if you know separating people into other because they can't understand our truth and dehumanizing people because the words that we use?
James Danaher 20:00
Yeah, I'm trying to get a grip on that, I didn't realize I mentioned racism that much I do. I do talk about racism all the time. And I think we're all racist because we grew up in a racist culture. I grew up in northern New Jersey, and not only with my high school segregated, but the entire league. I never played against black athletes. Why? Because we lived in a racist society.
Seth Price 20:25
Yeah, if I remember, right, you were talking about, you know, this truth could work as long as we're on this continent. And then as the church spreads its wings, you know, and encounters people in South America and encounters people in the Caribbean and people in the Hawaiian Islands or any other culture and the way that our truth is based on an understand common language, and, you know, up means up and you know, I mean, I just learned something the other day about, you know, some civilization and navigating the sea for people from the Hawaiian cultures. And that's probably the wrong way to say Hawaiian culture but I can't think of the right word. They say things like, I'm heading sunward or away from the sun. They don't go north, but it's different. And so when I remember you writing that, you know, when they encounter that these people have a different set of truth. So that either means that I'm wrong. And I'm not willing to deal with that. Or they obviously are some form of other species that looks like me, but definitely is not equal with me.
James Danaher 21:23
Yeah, it's the section of the book where I talk about the origins of racism, either you're going to give up Aristotle, and realize that we don't have a way to conceptualize the world the way God did or we see that people who have different concepts are not godly people. And that's the problem of bringing our conceptual understanding to the gospel and demanding that the gospel conform to our understanding. Remember, there was a debate at Nyack when I was teaching there, there was a hunting and gathering group that they had discovered and they were trying to translate the Gospel for this group, but this group, (but) their basic substance was not bread, but pig.
So the question was when we translate “Jesus is the bread of life” should we translate it as “Jesus is the pig of life”. And people were so upset about that. You can't say that Jesus the pig of life. Well, that's the only way it would make sense to those people. But that's the idea of taking my culture and thinking it's somehow sacred.
I knew a missionary that was a missionary in Laos and when he first went there, he would ask people how to get to a certain place, and they'd say, go north, and he'd go, North and he’d get lost. And then he finally found out that go north meant go up river. It didn't mean go geographically north, it just meant to go up river. So to think that we like Aristotle think that we have an active intellect or an agent intellect that gives us the ability to conceptualize the world the way God conceptualized it is the enormous error. And it's one of the things that separate people today, there's a lot of people that are still Aristotelians thinking, “no, no, no, God equipped us we know how to conceptualize world” and other people saying, “No, we really don't.”
Seth Price 23:20
You talk about that as we come to wrestle with truth at a personal level. And, and I'll borrow a phrase from Richard Rohr, he talks a lot about you know, people live in multiple boxes, you know, you see a box a and the box B. And the goal isn't really to be in box a or box B, they are both are dogmatic. And the goal is to sit over here at a posture that I'm man enough or kind enough or compassionate enough, or honestly not arrogant enough, to think that I'm always going to be right, and then my views might have to change. And so I feel like you touched on that a bit. You wrote, if I can quote, you know,
if God has to make us into the divine likeness, we must return to the self that God initially created before the world got ahold of us and began shaping us into its likeness. By accepting the prejudices that it purports is truth.
And then you kind of relate that into returning to our true selves as Nicodemus must. Although that first part is beautiful, like I enjoyed writing that down, and I've enjoyed reading about it and praying kind of thinking of those concepts. What do you mean when you say returning to our true selves as Nicodemus must?
James Danaher 24:27
Yeah, I think who we are, at our core, is consciousness itself. You know, when people want to explore the personal truth is the truth. The first chapters on truth, that's a tough chapter going through the different theories of the three basic theories of truth correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic but then I start telling you about personal truth and people in certain personal truth might go to a therapist and want to try and understand what what what what are the words In my childhood that caused me to become this kind of person where they study the enneagram and want to know about their personality, or they want to explore their sexuality to get deeper into an understanding of who I personally am. Well, I think the deepest level of that is pure consciousness. And that's what the contemplative, that's what the mystic, is always going toward, coming into that stillness and that silence of pure consciousness. And that's the thing that connects us to God, and all other human beings.
And I think that's who we really come to identify with. And what I argue in the book is, it's only when we get to that place of prayer, where we are who we are in that pure consciousness that experiences God's presence, that we can really understand the sermon on the mount that we can really understand the parables. Because all of a sudden we're beneath all of the cultural stuff, all of the linguistic stuff, and we can see the beauty of Jesus words.
Seth Price 26:43
A quick follow up question. How did they end up translating that? Did they use the word pig or did leave it as bread and make it where nobody understands it?
James Danaher 26:50
I don't know. (Laughter) It wasn't a debate in my class, but people were telling me about the debate.
Seth Price 26:57
Really. I have to know. And so this is something that I've been wrestling with since reading your book, and specifically about how language and truth go together. And I remember reading somewhere that they say you don't really understand the language at a base level until you dream in that language. And then as I talk with other friends that know multiple languages and they see the world differently because of the words that they use to interact with that world. And so I don't often get to speak with philosophers.
So my question is, do you feel like, personally right now, the reason that America or cultures as a whole struggles with transgenderness is because we don't really have an adequate word, to say what that? We still don't have really defined pronouns we're trying and it's not there yet. And then I also kind of wonder if that maybe relates to why we always view God as masculine because God's not that but we don't have a word physically for something that is this and so how could we possibly have a word theologically to go with it. Do you find any truth in that at all?
James Danaher 28:04
Oh, absolutely. It's, all about we think that we can reduce God to words and if we have the right words, that means that we know God!
I'm doing this sermon on the mount book right now. It's so amazing to me in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that “in the last days, there's gonna be people who say, we did miracles in your name. And in your name, we prophesied and we did these great things in your name”. And Jesus responds, and he doesn't say, you never knew me. But he says, “I never knew you”. And I relate that to the two seed parables, where Jesus says, a man went out associated, and he talks about the seed falling on different ground. And then when the disciples asked him to explain the parable, he says, the seed is the word of God.
And Jesus is the Word of God contrary to what evangelicals believe, like I say I'm an evangelical, the Bible is not the word of God. The Bible never says that it’s the Word of God. The Bible says that Jesus is the Word of God, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God. That’s the first of John. And also in the 19th chapter of Revelation. It says that his name is the word of God. And it's internalizing those words, allowing those words to those are the seeds that we allowed to come in and and impregnate us and bring forth new life. I used to teach a lot of Plato and I actually had three semesters, three semesters with Seth Benardete at The New School, who was the greatest Plato scholar of the 20th century.
Plato in The Symposium, it’s the only book that Plato writes where Socrates at the beginning of the book says, “Oh, this is great, because this is something I know something about” because they're going to tell me about Eros or Love. and with all of the other Plato books, Socrates is always saying, I don't know what justice is. I don't know what what virtue is. I don't know what courage is. But with eros or love, he says, Oh, I know what this is. And as it turns out, when he again, eventually gets to explain what and make his speech about what love is, he says that he learned what love was from the philosopher Diotima, who turns out to have been a woman in an enormously sexist Greek culture the greatest philosopher Socrates ever met was a woman.
And she taught him that what what Eros was was the desire to impregnate the beautiful and bring forth offspring. And I think that's what Jesus is trying to do with us with what he says there in the sermon and what with the seed parables he's trying to impregnate us with His words. He says, build your house upon the rock, and the rock is the word of God. It's his words that we internalize and that's what transforms us and makes us is his likeness, not our theology. That just seems so silly to me that we think “Oh no, if I have the right theology, I'll be right with God”. No, no. If you've internalized Jesus words, and you become Jesus to the world, that's what he's interested in.
Seth Price 31:18
On a scale of 1 to 10 what would you say dogmas weight should be? If Jesus is words internalized is 10 what what placeholders should dogma hold healthily?
James Danaher 31:31
I was having lunch with my pastor a couple of weeks ago, and I said something about theology and doctrine. And he said, “Well, it's worth something, isn't it?” I shrugged. “I don't know. I don't know!” I don't think it's worth much at all. Jesus” words is a 10 and doctrine keeps you from the journey. Once you have your doctrine you think okay, I have it. I've got it. Now. I've got the truth. No, you don't! The truth. is always out in front of you. In my second truth book it talks about the truth is Jesus and it's always out in front of us. And I'm always trying to get a better understanding of what do you mean by this Jesus? How am I supposed to understand this? How am I supposed to integrate this into my life?
Seth Price 32:16
For those not listening in the back row…Hit pause rewind it two minutes because Jim is preaching right there like that was that was beautiful. To I internalize those words, is what we're going to call contemplative prayer. Which I feel like modern church really left by the wayside. And I don't know why maybe we don't like emotions. I don't honestly know enough about sociology to know why. But I do know that I wasn't raised that way. But it's one of the things that I've fallen in love with.
Honestly, in part from doing this podcast, it's, it's forced me to deal with things that I've not, I didn't know that I was prepared to deal with, and honestly, I'm still often scared that I'm not, but I'm really enjoying it. And I'm learning a lot. I think I'm becoming a better person. I hope I am. But I guess we'll see eventually. You talk about that when we're praying. And we're meditating on scripture. And the goal is, you know, pray without ceasing, that we have to sit in the silence for long enough that the silence is silencing us. So what do you mean that the silence silences us? Because I know when I sit, you know, downstairs in the basement, you know, subterranean seems to work well, because it's damp, and it's cold. And I hear I don't hear the train that runs close to the house. That all here is maybe you know, my kids getting out of bed, or something, you know, in the middle of the night, but I hear everything like I hear the wind moving through the fibers of the carpet, and I find it distracting. And so how do we get to a place that the silence is itself silencing?
James Danaher 33:51
I think you have to listen to the silence. Because God is so beyond words, the only thing that really describes God's presence is the great silence. You know, God is omnipresent, he's always present. The problem is that we're never present. And it's that we make that connection and experience the divine, the presence of the Divine, by becoming silent and and hearing God's silence. Getting down beneath words, beneath all the thoughts, you know, our consciousness is constantly flooded with all these thoughts and feelings it's just an endless flow, and we're not in control of it. And what prayer is all about is going to that place, that solitary place, that silent place, where you're open to nothing but the silence of God. And I think when you get to that place that God doesn't give you wisdom in that place. But what it gives you is a perspective, from which you can see the beauty and the goodness of Jesus words. When you get to that place of all you are is that pure consciousness. You're not your occupation. You're not all the things that the world tells you you are. But you've gotten beneath that identity, and you are who you are in God, just this pure consciousness that's connected to the consciousness that's behind all of this, and is the creator and maintainer of all of this.
That's the place we get to. And it's from that place that we have the perspective where all of a sudden, the words of Jesus make perfect sense. And we go, Oh, of course, I can love my enemies. Of course, I can give to everyone who asked, of course, I can, you know, do all of the things that Jesus calls us to do, or at least, are returned for failing to do those thing.
And a lot of times I think the failure and the repentance is more valuable than the doing of it. The doing of it makes us into righteous jerks but the failing of it brings us into the experience of mercy and forgiveness, and that really is the end of the law. The end of the law is not obedience. That's what religious people thought in Jesus day. “We’re the righteous ones”. Why? Because we follow the law!
Jesus says there's more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than ninety nine righteous. Why? Because they've experienced the mercy and forgiveness of God. And it's the mercy and forgiveness of God that makes us into His merciful and forgiving likeness. That's the whole project the gospel. It's not to be obedient and do what Jesus says. But it's about becoming like Jesus, specifically in terms of mercy and forgiveness. If we ever “got” that that was the gospel, the gospel would take over the world tomorrow. But we're not close to that.
Seth Price 36:36
Do you think we'll get close? Because, honestly, the way that things happening right now just in America, I'm not hopeful. Do you find that attainable?
James Danaher 36:47
I know, I'm not hopeful. It doesn’t look good right now.
But this is gospel thing has been going on for a long time. In every generation there's people that take it seriously, and they change the world. You know, when Mandela does what he did and I was just reading about Gandhi the other day. Before he would meet with the British officials to try and liberate India, he would memorize the Sermon on the Mount. He didn't think much of Christianity, but he loved Jesus. And the words of Jesus were what he used as his weapons against the British Empire. And the British left India, because of this one man taking seriously the Sermon on the Mount.
Mandela, you know, when he dies, the whole world mourns. Why? Because after being imprisoned and tortured for 26 years, when he becomes President of South Africa, he dances with the people that had imprisoned him!. Why would you do that? Why would you do that‽ You know, come on, you're in power now. You do to them what they did to you. That's the way the world! No, no. There's another way and it's the Jesus way. And in every generation there's a handful of people that choose that Jesus way. They're just a minority and maybe it'll always be the minority but it changes the world.
Seth Price 38:14
It's worth the effort and I would argue it's entirely worth the punishment that the world's going to inflict when we talk about the Jesus way though you know love your neighbor as yourself you know, love your enemies; love the Lord your God with all your you know, your heart, your mind your soul, you deal with the word love in a different way than I've read before. So you borrow the word love or borrow you borrow a phrase from a gentleman, Jose…
James Danaher 38:40
José Ortega y Gasset!
Seth Price 38:42
we're gonna say that, you know, love holds attention, or is attention abnormally fixed. And so when we think about love and attention that way, what does that then call us to do differently because we say you know, love others, you know, love your neighbor, and then don't do anything and so what does that have normal attention, you know, and fixation on something what does that actually call us to do and change at a local level.
James Danaher 39:09
I used to teach a class called philosophies of love. one semester, this is several years ago, I had over 100 students in it. And there were a lot of different philosophers that I would draw from. Plato, of course with The Symposium and the idea of impregnating the beautiful and of course, the words of Jesus. But Ortega y Gasset, the Spanish philosopher of the early 20th century, argued that what love was, was attention abnormally fixed, and he was talking about romantic love, but I think it extends way beyond romantic love. The things you love, you give your attention to, if you love golf, you give your attention to it. If you love money, you give your attention to it.
My wife used to say to me all the time, we'd go out for dinner and she'd say “you're not here”. I'd say no, I heard what you said. And I could repeat what she said. But you know what she meant? You're not attending. You're not attentive.
And that's all God wants! All God wants is our attention. That's why contemplative prayer is so important. He doesn't want our petitions. He doesn't want our words. He just wants our presence, just to give us his attention. And that's what kids want from parents. It's what friends want. You want somebody else to pay attention to you. And that's what God wants Richard Rohr’s line this another Richard Rohr line. I've stolen so much from him. I was with him 10 years ago, I spent 11 weeks with him. And I said something at some point, and he said, “Oh, that's good. I'm gonna use that”. I said, “Please be my guest. I've stolen so much from you”! He says it's returning the gaze. You know, when lovers…you ever been in a restaurant you see two people in love and they're not talking, they're just looking at one another, and just returning the gaze. And that's what prayer is really all about. It's getting to that place where you're in God's presence, and you return the gaze.
Seth Price 41:12
We're running short on time, and I have about 35 other things that I want to ask you about. So what does that then do to our spiritual journey? And for me, what should that mean as a parent, and so it's easy for me to internalize this and what I need to do. But for those listening, you know that impact the next generation of believers, what does wrestling with the truth, and love, and intention, and fixation, and attentiveness do or should do for our journey with those that we have influence on?
James Danaher 41:45
What I see it for, is to keep us in that constant state of repentance. I'm not being attentive. I'm not loving my neighbor as I should. not loving my kids the way I should. I'm not attentive enough. I'm too involved in myself, instead of my neighbor or instead of God. Jesus starts in Matthew, as he begins his public ministry, he says, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn nigh.
And the trick of the Christian life is to find out, what do we need to repent for? And I think the most essential thing we have to repent for is a lack of love. Jesus reduces all of the law to those two laws. Love God with your whole heart, soul, and mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. And I think what that comes down to is the idea of attentiveness.
Are you attentive to the people around you? Are you attentive to God? Do you spend time in God's presence? And that's what love is. It's not a pleasant feeling or liking. I like this and I like that. But it's deeper than that. It's this intense attention that we give to people who are not ourselves. You know, most of our attention is focused upon ourselves. And what Jesus is trying to tell us is, you know, the trick to life is to not focus upon yourself.
And that's the thing I constantly repent for. I'm focusing constantly on myself, and my false identity of who I am in the world. You know who I am? You know, somebody said to me the other day, you know, somebody meets you and they don't find out that you have a PhD, you've written all these books, but within the first half an hour they find that the quarterback in high school and in college, what's that all about? Well, it's about me being stuck with that worldly identity. And I want people to know, you know, I was a quarterback, you know, how silly that is, because I'm focused upon myself, instead of being focused upon other people and on God.
Seth Price 43:57
I really want to end our time with this. So you break apart a lot of the parables that Jesus uses as teachings. And you talk about when Jesus, you know, uses the parables He's intending to not really answer any questions, when in fact, I think he only answers a handful of questions in a lot of gospels. Like people asked him questions, and I heard what you said, but we're not talking about that right now. We're gonna move right on on let me tell you the story about this thing that happened. And so as you were wrestling with these parables, and it sounds like you're still wrestling with it, like, I don't know if maybe this is where that book started. But what has been, you know, if you could just pick one parable and be like, you know, here's what I hadn't seen before. And as I relook at the facets of this story, here's what I see now. Like, what is the biggest thing at this time that is impacted you that way out of these parables?
James Danaher 44:47
Oh, the story of the prodigal. Henry Nouwen says, “if you get the story of the prodigal, you get the gospel. And if you don't get the story of the prodigal, you don't get the gospel”. The one Son, the older son does it right. And that turns out to be bad. The other son does it wrong. And that turns out to be good.
Jesus is turning the world upside down. It's not about obedience and being good. It's about experiencing forgiveness and mercy in order that you might become merciful and forgiving. That's what the younger son realizes, and the oldest son doesn't. That's the gospel right there. That's beautiful.
Seth Price 45:28
That’s beautiful.
Point people in the right direction Jim, where do they interact with you? How do they obviously this book is on Amazon and probably everywhere else that you know that you can buy books, but how do they connect with you?
James Danaher 45:39
My publishers Paragon House, just a great, it's such a blessing to me. My publisher, Paragon house, Gordon Anderson has a PhD in philosophy of religion from Claremont. So this has been an enormous benefit to me. As a matter of fact, he contributed greatly to this book that's coming out March 1. He had some great insights and, and I was wise enough to listen to his insights. And it's really shaped this book. But I have a website to JamesPdanaher.com. I don't interact much with the website, but it has all my books there and my articles and stuff like that.
Seth Price 46:17
Fantastic. Well definitely for those listening, go the show notes. I'll link to that. Well, thank you so much again for your time. And thank you for this book. And as people were listening, do yourself a service and buy this, and honestly, Jim, we got to get your marketing better because I need books like this in more people's hands.
I honestly think that this type of thought will be what makes at least the western church to stop the implosion. Parts of it, I think are already imploded and probably irreparably so. But texts like what you're doing and other theologians and philosophers and good thinkers are doing, I think can be so impactful. So thanks for writing it and thanks for coming on the show.
James Danaher 46:58
Thank you Seth
Seth Price 47:30
I would challenge each and every one of you to be more flexible and understanding as those that hold a different truth in you. They may have that truth for a reason. And it may be a good reason whether or not you agree with it. But have a conversation with others and a conversation intending to hear with a mindset of permissibility for different viewpoints and I think if we can do that, man, it's gonna be good.
Thank you so much for listening in today. The music That you heard featured is from Ben and Noelle Kilgore. You'll find links to their music in the show notes. And the tracks from today will be listed on the Spotify playlist, which is a fantastic playlist. There's hundreds of songs there; it's one of my favorite playlists. And I know I'm biased because I created it, but it really is a good playlist. So listen to it there. You'll find links to all that in the show notes. I will talk with you next week. I really pray that your Lenten season is going well and that you're hearing our Lord in a way that you didn't hear yesterday. Talk to you soon.