February 18, 2025 • 59 mins
The episode focuses on the interconnected themes of identity and story, emphasizing that understanding one's identity as a gift can alleviate the burdens of self-creation. Rev. Dr. Chad Lakies leads the discussion on navigating authenticity in a complex society, the role of suffering, and the impact of essentialism in relationships.
• Exploring the relationship between identity and personal narratives
• Understanding societal pressures of authenticity in modern life
• The role of suffering in shaping a deeper sense of identity
• The dangers of reducing individuals to singular labels
• Highlighting the importance of historical and religious wisdom
• Embracing identities as gifts from a divine perspective
• Community and faith as core components of resilient identity
Find peace, clarity, and companionship for your spiritual journey.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Lead Time.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman.
Here it is part two withReverend Dr Chad LaKeys, and
Jack Kauberg is also in for thisconversation.
How are you doing, jack?
I'm doing fantastic.
How are you doing, sir?
Yeah, I know, loving every day,man, it's a true privilege to
get to hang out with leaders.
(00:24):
I just got done recording withDr Dale Meyer.
He's such a hilarious,hilarious man and he knows you,
dr the Keys, and speaks veryhighly of you.
So we're going to last episode.
We kind of gave an overview ofthe kind of light and dark, the
culture this one's going to be alot more.
I guess pointed on the secondhalf of the book, how the Light
(00:46):
Shines Through Resilient Witnessin Dark Times.
So I'm going to start off justa question based on chapter five
how to find yourself in an age,how to find yourself in an age
of authenticity.
So what is the role, dr LaKeys,of identity and story in an age
of authenticity and story in anage of authenticity?
(01:08):
Those are two huge topicsidentity and story in an age
where people are trying to findthemselves.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Air quotes.
Well, I think they relatedirectly in a really simple sort
of way.
I think, in our time, identityis the story I tell myself about
myself and then, therefore,that's the story I want to tell
other people about myself, andso that's really how they come
closely into alignment.
The challenge, I think, is, inthe time in which we live,
(01:36):
identity has become something ofa task.
Right, I've got to figure itout, I've got to discover it,
I've got to.
In some sense, it feels like aburden that I've got to carry,
right, and, and there arepitfalls.
Right, if I don't kind of findmy way in the right sort of way,
right, am I going to live alife full of regrets?
(01:58):
What am I going to be missingout on if I don't sort of land
in exactly the right place?
That, you know, is really thetrue, authentic me, and that's
the challenge of our time is inan age of authenticity.
I think it's been put out therethat we've got to search for
this, we've got to chase downthis task, and there's really no
(02:20):
guidance for how to come to anyconclusions that we can be
confident in, because it'sconstantly a look inside here,
listen to what you hear and feel, and and if anybody challenges
that, that's a no, no, becauseour feelings in our time are
completely sacrosanct, right,and we live in a time when it's
(02:42):
forbidden to forbid.
So to look in here and followyour heart Right, march to the
beat of your own drummer, you doyou All of these things.
A number of cultural mantras,some of them are encouraged in
popular media.
I think I use the Burger Kingexample, right, have it your way
.
And the even longer littledescription that they've got on
(03:05):
some of their old posters, and Ijust think that's going to be a
really exhausting sort ofjourney, and so I'm trying to
help people find a way out ofthat.
I want them to know that thereare other stories that exist
outside of themselves that havecome down through the ages and
(03:27):
have provided wisdom andguidance to people for many,
many years.
I love GK Chesterton's line ofdon't rip up the fences if you
don't know why they were putthere in the first place, and
he's talking about fences interms of something like moral
boundaries, guidance of thatsort.
(03:51):
And you know, we've kind of comethrough this age of
enlightenment in the last 250years where we've sloughed off a
lot of the wisdom of religion,and that's Christianity, but it
includes a number of otherreligious ideas.
Right, we've thought that as weproceed in a technological age,
we'll have more and morecontrol over our time.
(04:12):
We won't need religion and it'smythological, meaning false
stories in that sense to fill inthe gaps that we can't answer.
We're going to be able tofigure it out.
Right.
It's a very man is the measureof all things kind of story.
So we've gotten rid of all ofthese ancient pieces of wisdom
and we're out here sort offloating around, scrambling,
(04:35):
living fairly aimlessly, notknowing what to do.
Right, what I want to do oftenis a competition with what you
want to do and think is best foryour life.
There's no arbiter, then, forthose situations.
How do we fix this?
Let's lean back on some oldwisdom, and that's all I've
(04:55):
tried to do is open the space toreconsider the Christian story
again and see that it's got somewisdom right, see that your
life is a gift, your roles are agift.
What you are called to do is agift.
What you are called to do is agift and it's freeing from this
burden of identity as task tobecome identity as gift.
That was a long answer.
I hope that's what you'researching for.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
That is awesome.
I love that.
This is something that needs tobe talked about a lot.
I think you really hit the.
You know, you really hit theright nail here.
That identity is the mainnarrative that people are
walking through right now, andis it something that we have to
create for ourselves or is itsomething that's put on us?
And if it's something that wehave to create, boy, that is a
(05:36):
huge burden.
That is a huge burden for us toactually say like we are the
authors of our own lives, and ithas to be something meaningful
and impressive, you know, andyet there's eight billion people
in the world that you're tryingto compete with from for
meaning and purpose, right, uh,rather than an identity that's
(05:56):
put on you by god, that is likeincredibly special and
incredibly powerful and isshaping you Right, and it's
something that you can findpeace and joy and contentment in
.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Yeah, if I can add to that, I think another thing
that we're searching for is akind of affirmation of our very
being Right.
And so, as we try to craftthese identities that work out
in some way, as you're saying,to get attention amidst the many
, many other human beings thatwe're competing with and we do
(06:30):
it via various kind ofperformances and displays of
ourself, often on social media.
In our time, that becomes inand of itself very challenging.
But I think that underneath thespiritual side of it that I
want to bring up is this searchfor affirmation is very normal.
It's a part of what it means tobe human.
(06:51):
Right, when a child is born andthey make that connection with
their mother and we developattachment with our parents,
right, those are the beginningsof affirmation, the beginnings
of its fulfillment.
Right, god has given us thoserelationships, in part to help
us experience just a glimpse ofwhat his unconditional love is
like.
Right, because none of us canactually do real unconditional
(07:13):
love, but we can see pieces andparts of it.
But I think, spiritually, whatI'm trying to do when I'm
looking for affirmation fromeverybody else is I'm searching
for affirmation in thehorizontal realm and I want to
use that as a proxy for God'saffirmation in this way.
(07:35):
See God, I've got all of theselikes and all of these followers
and all of these people affirmme how could you not?
I don't know if there's anyother way to kind of really
explain it, that kind of breaksit down that simply.
But I think this is what we'reafter and this opens a spiritual
(07:57):
space then for us as pastors,ministers, gospel proclaimers,
to speak into this search in thelives of people that we're
ministering to.
You know, there's all kinds ofdata that says there's spiritual
openness.
That's really characteristic ofour time.
This might be one of thosemoments, but it's a really end
around angle to try to get thereto really say you know, let me
(08:21):
tell you about the ultimate kindof affirmation that's possible
for you as a human being, thegreatest kind, the most
fulfilling kind, the seeminglyimpossible kind.
It's God's affirmation for youin Jesus.
Look what he did and you got tosit back and order.
Why would he ever do that forme?
(08:42):
And that's just the questionthat we get to sit with every
stinking day of our life.
Why would he do that for me?
But it's sort of reveling inthis gift and it's helping
people find a way to fulfillthat search for affirmation and
then be able to set aside someof these, these bad habits.
Right, because there's a greatarticle in the New Yorker from a
(09:06):
handful of years ago by, uh uh,an influencer named Tavi
Gevinson and, um, I think mostrecently she has been, um, an
actress in an HBO televisionseries.
I am not, I am very unculturedwhen it comes to television, so
listeners would have to look herup.
(09:27):
But anyway, this article.
She asks who would I be withoutInstagram?
Because she was one of theearliest influencers on the
platform and she just came torealize how deeply it was
leading and guiding her life,this search for affirmation from
other people on the horizontallevel.
(09:47):
And I think in a sense she'sescaped from that.
She still remains a celebrityand many opportunities are
thrown her way as a result ofthat.
But just the fact that she washonest enough to ask this
question, as I've used that Ithink I've got a sermon where
I've used that example.
It's one of those ways ofopening the space, her story,
(10:08):
her personal kind of confession,and then where she's gone from
there to sort of get out ofthose bad habits of constantly
looking for and measuring hersense of self on the basis of
what all of these other peopleon social media think of her.
It's just a huge shift and itmeans that it's possible.
What all of these other peopleon social media think of her.
It's just a huge shift and itmeans that it's possible for all
(10:28):
of us.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
So I'm having a thought here, as I'm thinking
about these models of identityright, and how they interweave
with how we think about thenotion of freedom, and it seems
to me that the popular model isfreedom is a tool that I use to
create my identity.
But the Christian view isactually God gives me an
(10:50):
identity and that identity givento me is what makes me free.
Do you agree with thatstatement?
Speaker 3 (10:57):
I totally would agree with that.
Hang on just one second andI'll throw another book
recommendation at you.
And I'll throw another bookrecommendation at you.
If you all don't know thisscholar, james KA Smith.
He's one of my favorites, butthis book On the Road with St
Augustine is incredibly helpful,super preachable for anybody
listening to this who is apreacher.
But he's got a chapter in there, I think, where he references
(11:22):
an author named.
I think her last name isjameson um.
I could be wrong, but she wrotea book about addiction and she
really talks about thisconnection of freedom and
addiction and freedom in thesense that we mean it like
liberation, the freedom fromsense, right, the negative kind
of freedom, right released from,release from captivity, bondage
(11:45):
, chains, ball and chain,whatever Right Is is supposed to
be a good thing in our veryenlightenment, informed age.
Right I talked already aboutthrowing off the from her is
(12:05):
that freedom in that sensebecomes a negative, not just in
the freedom from sense, but inthe sense that it becomes
exhaustion.
I'm too free, right, I can doanything I want.
The choices are so many thatmaking a choice becomes a burden
.
Yeah, it's like going becomes aburden.
Yeah, it's like going to abuffet, right.
(12:27):
None of us can eat everythingthat's there.
We've all had this experience.
I hope my wife thinks buffetsare gross because too many
people are able to touch thefood.
I feel that.
But if you've ever been to abuffet, there are too many
things to eat, right.
It's almost a waste of time forpeople our age to go to a
(12:48):
buffet because we just can'tsample everything like a
teenager could, right, there wasa time when my metabolism
allowed for such a visit, butnot today.
That kind of freedom, with allof these choices, becomes a
burden, and I think what heargues for, and this addiction
scholar argues for, isboundaries, guardrails, guidance
(13:09):
, that sort of funnels us in away to be free.
Bonhoeffer, famously, would saysomething that's very
counterintuitive Our bondage inservice, our call to love and
serve our neighbor, our bondageto our neighbor right, is not a
kind of slavery.
It is the definition of freedom, but in the positive sense it's
(13:31):
freedom, for he writes aboutthat, I think, in his couple of
chapters on creation and fall.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
One of the best quotes I heard was from Dr
Corbin, one of his books thatsaid Christian freedom is the
freedom to relax in God'spresence.
Hebin, one of his books thatsaid Christian freedom is the
freedom to relax in God'spresence.
He was like, wow, that is sopowerful.
And apart from that identitythat's put on you by God, you
cannot have that.
That is not something you canhave.
It just doesn't exist right.
It's that gifted identity thatallows that.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Heck.
Yeah, it's kind of like how welike to say at times in our
church sanctification is gettingused to justification.
Right, both of those thingsthat you said.
Right, learning to rest inGod's will.
I can't remember exactly howyou said it, just now God's
presence.
Yeah, god's presence.
Both of those are somethingthat we are constantly learning,
(14:23):
right, constantly learning.
It is definitive, I think, ofthe life of the Christian in a
certain way.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Isn't it kind of funny?
Let's get existential here justa bit.
Humans live as if we're nevergoing to die Like.
And how frivolous even thisquest for affirmation.
You say celebrity we want.
I think the root of that wordis we want to be celebrated,
right?
(14:51):
So there are these people that,like collectively, we celebrate
and yet we spend all this timeto, like, keep death from coming
.
When inevitable suffering, loss, trial, trauma come, we wonder
one, where's God?
And you know you can go to thenihilistic or the hedonistic
(15:14):
kind of pursuit eat, drink, bemerry, kind of tomorrow we die,
but God uses.
You spent some time in the book, in this chapter, talking about
suffering.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
What is?
Speaker 2 (15:20):
the role of suffering connected to our identity.
You refer to Viktor Frankl andMan's Search for Meaning.
Those who had kind of thishigher meaning, this higher
sense of calling, you could sayvocation, were the ones who were
able to kind of make it through, make it through concentration
camps and, for those of us today, can make it through inevitable
suffering and trial.
(15:41):
Speak to the role of sufferingand our identity, dr LaPiece.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Yeah, I think his story is really great.
I learned it from David Brooksin his book the Road to
Character is where I first cameacross that story and the way
that he framed it really hit meand has stuck with me for a long
time.
That Frankl discovered in themidst of the concentration camps
the difference between thosewho would often commit suicide
(16:08):
in order to escape what theyknew was coming right the gas
chambers or some other gruesomedeath at the hands of the Nazis,
versus those who hung on, notknowing whether or not they
would be able to live to seefreedom again from the captivity
that they were experiencing.
They continued to live onbecause he recognized in them,
they believed they had somethingto live for, something bigger
(16:32):
than above, beyond, greater thanjust their own life, and that
began his research.
It wasn't the sort of directionthat he wanted to go with his
life as a psychologist, and Ithink that's what he was but he
became a scholar of suffering,and so Man's Search for Meaning,
that really classic book thatyou can read, documents a lot of
(16:55):
what he found as he moved intothat scholarship.
But that isn't the life that heplanned for, right, being a Jew
, being captive and taken awayfrom his family, losing all that
he lost.
He would say this isn't thelife that I planned for.
And that's, I think, a greatcharacteristic of how we could
describe suffering in a waythat's safe, validates the pain,
(17:19):
acknowledges it this isn't thelife that we planned for,
acknowledges it this isn't thelife that we planned for.
But out of it, you know hisstory.
He says, becoming a scholar, ofsuffering, despite not being
the life that I planned for, wasa life upon which I could not
turn my back.
And, and I think, whatever itis that, that life in our
(17:43):
various roles and callings,right, from which we derive a
real, true sense of identity,whatever life drags us through
as we participate in that, it'sgoing to include a lot of
suffering.
Right, tentatio is a criticalpart of how we talk about our
tradition and it's a cyclicalthing.
(18:04):
Right, it takes you back to Godand prayer and then it takes
you further into reflection andand you know, luther
characterized this, this, as thelife of a disciple.
Um, and I think from there, um,we realized that, however hard
this thing is, that God hascalled me to do, it's a gifted
(18:30):
calling, whether that's theburden of being a parent and
changing diapers, or the burdenof being a parent and having a
child who has just recently runaway, as we've been seeing
across all of our social mediaplatforms the last couple of
days, a fellow pastor in ourchurch body, his daughter, had
(18:50):
run away.
Thankfully, just this morningwe found out that she's been
found.
Right, but being a parent in somany ways is burdensome, right.
It's taking on the stewardshipof another life.
It means you have to say no toyourself so often, right, and
that's the dying to self partthat goes with being a follower
(19:12):
of Jesus in the kingdom.
It determines what kinds ofways we're going to pursue
livelihood in the world.
Livelihood in the world Are wegoing to take on jobs that
produce exploitation of peoplefor us to be able to win, or
should we choose something else?
(19:33):
Or, when we find out that theway that we're living is off the
backs of exploitation of people, what do we do?
Yeah, these are all challengingburdens, right, and our
suffering is marked by varyingdegrees.
None of us quite share it thesame way.
But knowing that the roles andresponsibilities that God has
(19:55):
called us to in terms of ouridentity, right, our callings,
our vocations, they are placeswhere we're going to feel pain,
but they're also places uponwhich if God has gifted this to
me we cannot turn our backs onit.
We cannot turn our backs on itjust because it's painful.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Yeah, amen, and I mean a lot of your book is
talking about how Christians mayactively maybe it's
subconsciously cause respectivepain trauma.
We're just walking through atrauma series right now.
Unintentionally cause trauma bycould be by labeling, by
(20:35):
judging people based on and youuse a word that I hadn't seen
before a little bit later on inthe book essentializing like
saying people are this oneidentity.
If you associate with this onedifferent group, or if you're of
this one race or ethnicity,whatever, then that's the
entirety of who you are.
That causes an existentialcrisis and I think I mean
(20:59):
personally, just for me.
I kind of live with, I feellike some in our church that I
don't know in our church becausewe're a larger church body, a
few million or whatnot, becauseI've said things in a certain
way on the podcast.
I'm maybe more edgy than othersand maybe I should have been
(21:20):
kinder, reframed, whatever thestatement was that I'm the sum
total of, like that viewpointand that if you disagree with me
on one topic, maybe aroundpastoral formation, like then
you disagree with the entiretyof who I am and we human beings.
Maybe this is where I can getlanded and let you kind of run
off.
We love to work from places ofdifference rather than places of
(21:44):
commonality, even in our churchbody.
This is we become more tribalaround.
You can have this perspectiveon a how.
If I differ on the how, then Idiffer on the gospel of Jesus
Christ and for me that makes nosense.
Logically, like we, we have waymore that we agree on,
especially in our tribe, thanthan we disagree on as we're
working toward.
What does the future look likein our church body?
(22:06):
So we essentialize one anotherdown into these small little
identity markers Anything more,because the big identity marker
is I'm a baptized child of God,son of the king, just like both
of you and just like everyonebaptized here.
That should be the drivingunifying factor in uniting us
together, united to Christ,united to one another.
We commune around the sametogether, united to Christ,
united to one another.
We commune around the sametable, united to Christ,
(22:29):
forgiven of our sins, and thenunited to one another as the
church, as messy as it is, towalk together.
So go off on essentializing alittle bit more there, dr LaKeys
.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Yeah, I think it's just a.
It's reductionistic is theproblem, but it's.
It's convenient and helpful asas a tool for thinking and kind
of organizing it that it worksthat way or is used that way,
(23:02):
especially to the people whohave to live underneath labels
that they cannot remove fromthemselves.
But that's why we do it right.
We try to find ways in just howwe organize our thinking and
perspective on the world to keepit simple, and we do that with
these sorts of labels.
But the outcome isessentializing is reductionistic
(23:25):
, right, and and some of whathas come out of, I would say
helpfully, out of criticaltheory I know a scary thing to
announce on a podcast of thissort, but I think most people
who criticize it probably don'treally know what it is very well
, nor where it comes from, and Iwouldn't put myself in that
(23:46):
camp.
I'm not going to use it in anunmeasured or inaccurate sort of
way, but I think one of thethings that comes out of there
right is a term calledintersectionality and this is
going back from the 70s and itcomes out of legal argumentation
going back from the 70s and itcomes out of legal argumentation
(24:08):
.
But it's a way of recognizingthat there's so much more to a
singular individual than just asingle identity.
Right, none of us are justheterosexual white men.
We are dads right, we areservants of the church, we are
husbands.
We've got a number of otherroles and maybe a variety of
(24:30):
ethnicities, via blood that comeinto the background, that are
often not visible these daysanymore, because of the ways
that you know racially andethnically we've we've
intermixed our families.
You know, racially andethnically, we've we've
intermixed our families and youcan't figure it out on the basis
of someone's last name.
I learned that the hard waywhen I was a professor at a
university.
Right, I've got somebody with aHispanic last name and they
(24:56):
have literally no Hispanicbackground in their blood.
It's just come down over aseries of generations to be that
way, and it's an easy way tomake a category mistake.
I think then, when we have beenessentialized in one way or
another, the outcome is itreally prevents getting some
(25:19):
good work done in the future.
Right, it doesn't actuallysolve any of the problems that
we might have one to another bythrowing those sorts of labels
out.
They're also a weakness in thelabels themselves, some of them
that are used right, liberal andconservative, for example,
right.
They're relative in the senseof liberal compared to what
(25:40):
conservative compared to whatConservative compared to what
Right.
So it allows us to get awaywith being very inaccurate and
assume then when I use thatlabel I mean the same thing that
everybody else means by thatlabel.
But it functions much more likea master signifier.
So the Slovenian philosopherSlavoj Žižek talks about master
(26:02):
signifiers and I think ourchurch body has a couple of them
and I'm not going to say whatthey are.
But liberal and conservative aregood enough, right.
They're master signifiers in thesense that they function as
kind of a big banner under whichall of us who use the label can
gather with the assumption thatall of us mean the same thing
by the label, with theassumption that all of us mean
(26:24):
the same thing by the label,until we come to find out by
working with one another that wedon't actually mean the same
thing by the label and we've gotall of these external,
extraneous, contingentconnections outside of this
group that uses the label.
That starts to reveal that Idon't share necessarily what
this person means by the labelor what that person means by the
label, and similarly with them,and it becomes really messy and
(26:46):
just reveals the sloppiness ofthose labels and those
gatherings underneath which wecome together, is also
simultaneously a critique ofkind of that essentializing
effort.
It's reductionistic and it justmisses.
(27:07):
It misses the much widerpicture of the reality of things
.
So, yeah, that was totally whyI would advise against it.
Right, it's just better to diginto the more complex, the more
concrete um parts of ofindividual human lives, really
(27:28):
listen to where they're comingfrom the way I've experienced.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
That is, it seems like there's a lot of um
segmenting into things that Iwould consider to be false
dichotomies.
Um, that, okay, you believethis, that means you're now
making all these assumptions andthat you're also not this, and
it's like, no, I'm this and thisat the same time, right, and,
but there's this tendency towant to pull these things into
(27:53):
these dichotomies that aren'tnecessarily true dichotomies, or
doesn't?
Speaker 3 (27:57):
or let's say it doesn't have to be, but we
insist on making it that wayright yes, yes, I think one of
the fears that you can detectbehind this tendency to label,
or be to be too quick at timesto label, is a fear, um, that to
(28:20):
accept someone over here that Idon't fully agree with on this
thing, right, if I were to dothat, it's we.
We run with a slippery slopeargument.
To give an inch is to give amile, right, and so it's just
better to disassociate and cutoff my relationship and
connection with this person, asopposed to sort of whatever the
(28:42):
outcome I'm worried about mightbe right.
Asking what people are afraidof, um, is a huge way of kind of
getting at an understanding ofhow they operate, because all of
us are operating from the basisof protecting ourselves against
what it is that we're worriedabout.
(29:03):
And I'm trying to remember thephilosopher's name.
Iris Murdoch talked this wayabout philosophers, right, you
want to understand why aphilosopher argues the way they
are or the way they do, ask whatthey're afraid of, and my Dr
Father, joe Locomoto, appliedthat and he's like well, I think
we should ask that oftheologians too, and I think
(29:26):
he's right.
But then, to go just a stepfurther, in a much broader and
wider, I think you can ask thatof just about anybody.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
What are you afraid of?
That's going to help youunderstand another person's
behavior, able to kind of figureout how to work with them in a
way to move forward beyondpreventing all the time or
protecting ourselves from whatwe're afraid of, to finding a
way through.
Um, I also think thedifferences between us are good
(29:57):
things, right, they often canfunction as corrective measures.
When you think about how theAmerican government was put
together, with three branches ofgovernment, the so-called
version of Republican andDemocrat that existed at that
(30:17):
time, the views of those peopleand the way that they were meant
to carry forth the business ofgoverning, was meant to function
as a corrective, right.
Yes, in a sense they were atloggerheads, but it just meant
that none of them was ever ableto get into the extremes because
they always had the other onekind of pulling and jostling
(30:38):
them in the other direction, andit might be a little far over
here for a while, or a littlefar over here, but it swings
back and forth in a more limiteddirection, and so I think
that's one of the ways that wecan anticipate our difference is
actually having a positivefunction for us, right?
(31:00):
I don't know everything, neitherdo you, right, so I'm going to
have my ideas, you're going tohave your ideas, because we
disagree doesn't make us badpeople and we should stop our
relationships, hate each otherand consider one another
nefarious and talk terriblyabout each other to others.
In fact, we can maybe see thatthese differences play a
(31:21):
functionally helpful role inkeeping us a little more
balanced, a little more tightlybound together.
As a member of the groups thatwe walk with, hey, so good, so
good.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Let's let's talk about some of our last podcast
spent a fair amount of time.
If you didn't listen, go backand listen of time.
If you didn't listen, go backand listen how we engage our
neighbors, who are spirituallyattuned but they're at different
places on their journey.
On page 185, you draw out threedifferent and then you
(31:55):
extrapolate on it, you go deeperinto this three different kinds
of human experiences, and Ithink this is James K Smith,
some of his work, but the one,the pole, of being haunted with
our own mortality.
The second one is the religiousimpulse and the third one is
waiting for the cracks in thesecular for holy moments this is
(32:16):
CS Lewis for holy moments tokind of break through.
So how do we use that as kindof a framework for starting
evangelical conversations withour neighbors, dr?
Speaker 3 (32:24):
LaKeith.
I mean, that's a, that's a turnin this conversation towards
something totally different thanwhat we've been talking about.
Is that okay?
No, that's great, that's greatcool.
Um, I think one of thechallenges is, as we try to
think about evangelism andoutreach in our time, um, what
we want to be able to control,how it happens.
(32:46):
But none of us can control howGod shows up or when.
Right, we can't, we're not incharge of how the Holy Spirit
operates.
Right, the wind of the Spiritblows where and when he pleases,
and so what I try to do in thissection is really just open up
a space to talk about threedifferent kinds of opportunities
(33:07):
.
So, when I talk about someonewho's haunted, yes, I'm
borrowing from Jamie Smith.
He talks about that a littlebit in his book how Not to Be
Secular, which is an accessibleversion of Charles Taylor's
argument in a secular age,charles Taylor's argument in a
secular age, and I I highlight,you know, some of the the, the
work, not the work.
I highlight some of theexperiences of what happens when
(33:31):
we have to encounter andwrestle through the big
questions.
What happens when I die?
Why am I here, right?
So the purpose question um, howis anything that actually
exists, where did it come from?
Question?
How is anything that actuallyexists, where did it come from?
Why is it here in the firstplace?
Those sorts of things when theyhit us and they don't always
hit us and we find really goodways of being distracted and
(33:53):
avoiding them, right, you know,scrolling through reels helps
when those questions hit us.
They are an opportunity for usto be, you know, uh, what my
friend Peter Meyer would callalongsideers.
Right, we can walk along withthem in those moments and, as
(34:15):
the Holy Spirit leads, be ableto speak into those moments from
a Christian and biblicalperspective, offering answers to
those questions.
You still got to wrestle withthem, right?
Another one why is theresuffering?
You know, that's a reallychallenging question for us to
answer as theologians of thecross.
Right, what we have to offer isreally unsatisfying.
(34:37):
We're just kind of stuckperpetually wrestling with it.
So we're haunted by thosethings.
I think we're haunted by thosethings.
I think we're haunted by otherthings.
If you've not noticed just howpopular in the last 20 years
it's been that fantasy movies,lord of the Rings, cs Lewis's
Chronicles of Narnia, star Wars,game of Thrones, harry Potter
(35:01):
we could probably name manyothers, how popular they've
become and just how wildlydevoured they've become and how
many spinoff universes and so onthey've created, and even
dystopian novels and fiction andvideo games, television series.
It's incredible and I wonder ifthey're so popular.
(35:22):
It's incredible and I wonder ifthey're so popular.
I'm borrowing this from the UKtheologian, graham Ward.
I wonder if they're so popularbecause they depict a variety of
versions of an enchanted world,and the world in which we live
(35:48):
in a secular age, is shaped verymuch by a scientific
imagination where we can explainaway the rainbow.
Richard Dawkins has a booktitled something similar.
Unweaving the Rainbow is whatit's called, and essentially
we've done that.
The rainbow for us asChristians, followers of Jesus,
bible readers, is symbolic ofGod's promise from the Old
Testament.
See, I put my bow in the sky.
I will never condemn humanityto that kind of gruesome end
(36:11):
again.
Right, it's a promise.
It's enchanted.
Right, there's a magicalness toit, if you will, and I know
Christians are sometimes afraidof the word magic.
I don't mean it in that way.
I mean it much more in theenchanted sense that there's
more than meets the eye to thisreality that we live in.
But in our scientific age we'veunweaved the rainbow, right,
(36:32):
dawkins is right.
It's nothing more than therefraction of light waves
through water droplets suspendedin the sky.
Well, you know how's that for abuzzkill right and crushing
your spirits?
It's kind of life-sucking.
So these movies, these films,these stories, these books, tv
(36:55):
series, video games, that showan enchanted world, I think, and
our love for them, reveal maybewe're haunted by the fact that
we were made for that kind ofreality and we miss it.
We love those depictionsbecause we were made for that
kind of reality and we miss it.
Now, what kind of an end and anentry point would that be for
(37:17):
us in our churches to talk aboutthose movies, talk about those
stories, talk about those TVshows?
Now, I know there's all kindsof depictions in those shows
that we don't necessarily like.
There's nudity, graphicviolence, bad language, right.
So how would we carry this out?
I don't know, y'all have got tofigure that out in your
particular context and maybeit's going to be a risk, but
(37:42):
maybe it's going to open a spaceto talking about.
Well, let me tell you thisstory, right, for example I mean
, the safest ones are Narnia,lord of the Rings.
Let me tell you the story thatthese two guys is writing and
thinking about how tocommunicate the gospel.
We're trying to recreate animaginary enchanted world on the
(38:04):
basis and on the back of thereal one.
Our reality is really enchanted.
Let me tell you how right andhow.
Could we have discussions aboutthat and get at that?
I think that's an entry point,right.
That's one of the cracks in thesecular, these hauntings, the
religious impulse idea.
I wasn't sure if readers wouldreally like that or get that.
(38:27):
It sounds Catholic to me, right, like we're always trying to
kind of reach up to God, and Ithink there is a sense of that
when I talk about the seeking ofaffirmation in the section on
confession.
But in another sense, you know,there's the God coming down to
us with miraculous experiences.
(38:48):
You know, I felt like I wassaved when I shouldn't have been
.
I'm alive today, but what Ijust experienced I shouldn't be
here anymore or the birth of achild, or, you know, the healing
, miraculously and surprisingly,from a disease that would have
put me terminal, otherwise right, the world around us doesn't
have a lot of explanations forthis sort of thing.
(39:10):
We've got a language, a parlancethat very easily equips us to
speak into those moments whensomeone's just overcome with the
sense of either tragedy ormiracle, where God is opening a
space for his voice to be heardright In our pains.
(39:31):
God shouts, cs Lewis says, andI think, are you listening?
And as we get to walk alongwith these people, right, and
here's where it comes to theagain, this is absolutely out of
our control.
I don't know when someone'sgoing to fall into a tragic
situation.
I know roughly when someone'splanning to deliver a child,
(39:54):
right, roughly right, we play,you know, meteorologists in the
hospital looking at all themeasurements and the weight of
the child and blah, blah, blah,and roughly how long gestation
occurs.
But my first daughter, right ontime, my second daughter, three
and a half weeks early, whoknew?
And everything was okay.
(40:14):
And my wife and I were able togive a name to that right,
fearfully and wonderfully made,knit together in secret in your
mother's womb.
How many people don't have thatlanguage?
And it's an opportunity for usto speak into that.
(40:35):
So that's just some examples.
I'm actually working on somemore that I want to eventually
be talking about out in publicjust to give a few more avenues
to help just trigger this kindof thinking in people.
It's a bit of a paradigm shift.
As I argued when I said we'vegot to think about our secular
age as an age of implausibility,where it's difficult to believe
(40:56):
.
What I'm trying to do inchapter seven with how to reach
out in a secular age and talkingabout the cracks in the secular
, is how do you find theseopportunities where belief and
faith actually become plausible,when we can maybe best be set
(41:16):
up to deliver the goods in a waythat are going to be sticky?
Speaker 4 (41:38):
that's good, Jack, and around in the skull is like
I don't see how I find meaningand purpose in that at all.
Right, that's a.
That's a very nihilistic way ofviewing my own existence.
And then I think about Luther,how he talks about the first
commandment like a God isanything that you're putting
your hope in.
And what he's kind of saying is, like human beings have this
(42:00):
God shaped void that only Godcan fill, and if God's not
filling it, then we're fillingit with something that's
functioning as God for us.
And you know, in some cases thatis a scientific theories that
becomes my God.
Or social justice becomes myGod, or some other type of thing
.
You know, some sort of quest tomanufacture my identity becomes
(42:22):
my God.
But the whole point is thatbecomes my religion, and you
will see people suspenddisbelief because they're so
committed to that God.
Right, you know, I mean, thisis why we have people creating
so many genders right now,because I'm on a quest to
manufacture myself.
Right, let's set aside science.
(42:44):
Or, you know, I'm going tocreate my own view, I'm going to
put my hope in this thing,right, Yep.
So it seems to me like this isbaked into the nature of the
human being and to me, like oneof the most fascinating
questions to ask people is likewell, what are you putting your?
You talked about earlier, whatare you afraid of?
To me, it's like what are youputting your?
You talked about earlier, whatare you afraid of?
(43:04):
To me, it's like what are you?
Speaker 3 (43:05):
putting your hope in Right.
Speaker 4 (43:06):
Yeah, what are you putting your hope in?
And when people answer thatquestion, they are revealing
what their God is.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, jamie Smith argues that way in
Desiring the Kingdom, which is areally helpful book, or a more
accessible version of that, isyou are what you love.
So you're kind of making aparallel argument you are what
you hope for, or your God iswhat you hope for, or something
like that.
Yeah, and we can see thethrough line of that argument
(43:36):
and thinking, because Luther wasan Augustinian monk and so he
simply derived the way that hetalked from Augustine in that
way, and so is Jamie Smith anAugustinian scholar.
I was trying to remember what Iwas going to add to your point.
Oh, oh, oh, nope, I'veforgotten it again.
It almost came to me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got a goodfollow up.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
I've talked a lot.
No, Well, this is why we haveyou on.
This has been fantastic.
No, well, this is why we haveyou on.
This has been fantastic.
You're kind of, as you talkabout story and the hero's
journey, you know what's kind ofhard this like meta story.
I believe there's a lot thereto that.
And then the mystery of there,because there's a part on the
(44:21):
hero's journey where you're likeI don't know exactly how this
is going to turn out and I'mopen.
The crack in the secular me isI'm open for divine,
providential, mysteriousencounters, for God to do
something when all appears lost,all the hero's journey, when
all appears lost and they're atthe very, very end, something
extraordinary happens, Forinstance, a guy rising from the
(44:44):
dead, Right.
So there's this, there's thisother dimension.
I so I wanted I don't know wegot a lot of time on this, but
we have one of our leaders inour community whose way he's a,
he's a mathematician and kind ofdabbles in physics and Jesus in
the third and the fourthdimension and I think a lot of
people today are wrestling withwhat are these AEPs or what are
(45:07):
the UFO type encounters Like?
There are things that arepopping in from outside of us
there's another realm that'svery evident.
Right, we're actually headinginto a spiritual warfare book,
Like how does the spiritualworld demons, angels, that God
is over all of it how does thatintersect with the physical
realities of time and space forus in the here and now, and I'm
(45:31):
kind of, I think, the third tothe fourth dimension Jesus kind
of define those boundaries,those physical limitations,
especially in his resurrectedreality.
He just pops into a room, right?
I think there's a fair amount ofthe mind can be open.
The crack in the secular isthere's way more that I.
(45:51):
There's a lot that I don't know, and there are things that are
above me, beyond me, that I'veyet to discover and probably
will never fully discover all ofit.
But I'm on this grand quest.
Anything more to say about anyof that, dr With the Keys.
Speaker 3 (46:06):
Yeah, I mean, I think part of what you're signaling
is the spiritual openness that Italked about before.
Right, there's a willingness, agreater willingness to think
there's more than meets the eye,right, that there's something
transcendent, something beyond,something unseen.
There's more than meets the eye, right, that there's something
transcendent, something beyondsomething unseen, a greater
willingness to sense that welive in an enchanted world and
(46:31):
we don't have to be soantagonistic to all of these
encounters of various sorts ofreligious practice that we come
across.
Right, go out to California andyou experience a lot of
crystals, people wanting toengage in that.
The Pacific Northwest, where Iused to live, wicca and a kind
of neo-paganism is still thereand I'd much rather look at that
as an opportunity than a threat.
And for a long time at large,the Christian church has
(46:52):
considered that a threat.
But in our time it's just partof what Charles Taylor calls the
Nova effect.
But in our time it's just partof what Cheryl Stahler calls the
Nova effect.
Right, the explosion of newways of believing, or what Tara
Isabella Burton will talk aboutin her book Strange Rites.
Right, intuitive religion andhow we encounter people kind of
remixing things from a littleover here in Christianity a
(47:14):
little over here in Kabbalah,judaism and a little over here
and Neo-Paganism and then therest of it, with some crystals
or soul cycle, right andexercise and just sort of the
things that we commit our livesto and certain other ways.
There's an openness to thisthat gives us a space to connect
(47:41):
, to reach in in ways thatsimply have to be friendly,
antagonistic, non-antagonisticand curious, rather than, you
know, always trying to come atthese people and be like, well,
you're wrong, you're wrong, Ican't talk to you until you fix
your views, or or simply to beafraid of talking with them at
all because you're worried thatthey're going to infect you.
I, I love the idea of the powergoing out from Jesus in the
(48:02):
encounter with the hemorrhagingwoman.
She touched his cloak and hefelt it.
I wonder if us Christians mightnot be better off taking a
different tact, that, as theHoly Spirit leads us, power
might go out from us toinfluence and affect these lives
.
We confess the word neverreturns to God, void.
(48:22):
Let's just try it out, you know.
Let's preach the word, let'sshare the word, let's introduce
people to Jesus in subtle,winsome, gentle ways, right, not
shove it down your throat sortsof ways Be attuned to when
they're ready right.
Use your God-given gifts ofdiscernment and empathy, but use
(48:43):
those opportunities right.
Paul advises us to do that.
Don't miss an opportunity.
Be wise in the way that youwalk toward outsiders.
And so I wonder about thespiritual openness of our age,
and and what a more ancient,more truthful, more stable story
(49:03):
might do for people whoexperienced this sort of
openness.
I don't know if that's entirelyan answer to the question that
you set me up with, tim, but ahundred percent.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
No, it's great.
Well, we're just about at time.
Um, you need to get the booklistener.
He goes into as I listened toyou.
How many books has this guy?
Speaker 4 (49:22):
read.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
You are so well read Chad, it's so amazing.
Anyway, how to avoid mistakesthat prevent engagement.
I'd love for you to just talkjust briefly on one of these.
So one of the mistakes we needto keep in mind is that love
does not always equalaffirmation.
Keep in mind is that love doesnot always equal affirmation.
(49:43):
Another one is disagreementdoes not equal hate I'm flipping
through here.
The other one is people.
We talked about this in theother podcast.
People do not equal their ideas, opinions or beliefs.
That's the third.
You got a couple more.
Association does not equaladvocacy for that person and
engagement does not equalendorsement.
Any of those that you're like,I don't think we've talked at
(50:03):
any depth on one or more of them.
Can you talk about one of them?
Just cliff note version that wehaven't touched on.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
Yeah, I mean real quick.
What was the fourth one?
Association does not equaladvocacy.
Advocacy, yep, yeah.
I think there are a lot ofChristians who are afraid and
very confused about what to dowhen it comes to relating to
somebody in their life that'sLGBTQIA, etc.
Right, especially when it's afamily member or a close friend.
(50:31):
Do I go to that wedding?
Do I have them over for dinner?
Do we stay friends?
Like what do we do?
I think we've not been great inthe church at large of giving
guidance to that and to me.
The primary thing that I seefrom Jesus is he never let an
issue prevent a relationship.
Right, I don't have to agree,but I don't have to stop
(50:51):
associating with them, and myassociation with them doesn't
mean that I am all rah-rah forthe thing that they want me to
be for when, if they take me forwho I am and my authenticity
and I'm taking them for who theyare and their authenticity.
Here's where we are at themoment at a point of
disagreement, but they know,ultimately, that I haven't cut
off my relationship with them,because I deeply love them and
care for them, and maybe myrelationship with them over the
(51:15):
long haul is one of the onlyauthentic gospel witnesses that
they're going to have in theirlife.
Who am I to cut them off fromaccess to the Father in that way
?
And so I just want to, you know, help people feel free not to
cut those sorts of relationshipsoff, and do it for the sake of
keeping a relationship, becauseit might be a gateway for God to
(51:39):
share his love with them.
Association doesn't equaladvocacy.
It's a category mistake, butit's based, I think, on the fear
of that slippery slope that Italked about earlier.
Give an inch, you give a mileRight.
And the labeling, the quickcategorization that tends to
happen.
The labeling, the quickcategorization that tends to
(52:02):
happen.
And so people are afraid tomaintain relationships because
they don't want other people toget the wrong idea about who
they are and what they think orbelieve.
Golly, how many of us are likethat right?
How many of us areself-censoring in our time, not
sharing all that we think orbelieve because we don't want to
be misread, misinterpreted andmislabeled?
It's tough, these are darktimes, in a sense like that, and
(52:25):
so I'm trying to shine somelight.
Speaker 2 (52:27):
Yeah, no.
And I think if you just hangout with people that like see
the world the exact same way,that agree on everything and
you're like in lockstep, thatsounds remarkably boring to me
thing.
And you're like in lockstep,that sounds remarkably boring to
me Like I think it's boring toJesus.
Like Jesus chose this group ofa variety of different
characters, you know, from theover the top Peter to the money
(52:50):
strategist.
And like Jesus chose these guys.
Peter's a zealot, for goodnesssake.
You know he's way far from thekingdom and yet Jesus drew him
near.
The Holy Spirit changed them.
Was the early church messy?
Is our church still messy today?
Do we live and do ministry?
I remember getting out Chad andhaving a number of pastors,
professors, say hey, man, youlearned a lot of great stuff,
(53:11):
it's good, but watch out right,the devil's in the details of
how that word, those, thosetruths get lived out.
Will it be a heavy handed,dictatorial, control ridden
perspective, like that doesn'twork in a local church.
Or will it be a kind,hospitable, like I can say the
right thing in the wrong way?
And Grandma Schmitke, everychurch has a Grandma Schmitke.
(53:34):
And Grandma Schmitke like slapsme up.
She doesn't really slap, butlike verbally, slaps me.
Like you need to be kind, tim,you need to be, and you close
with these three kind of goalsfor the resilient church.
I think it's so helpful.
You need to be tolerant ofdifferent perspectives, you need
to be humble.
You may know a little about alittle.
You don't know a lot about alot.
(53:54):
So you've got a lot more tolearn, son, and then patient
with one another.
Anything more to add to thosethree kind of goals for closing?
Speaker 3 (54:03):
this conversation.
Yeah, the one that I was mostworried about and as I wrote
that you know that would bemisinterpreted is the language
of tolerance, is another one ofthose dangerous things to talk
about.
It's kind of a swear wordwithin, you know, conservative
Christendom, and it has been fora while, but I come from it
from this angle.
We live in a pluralistic world.
(54:23):
It's just an empirical realitythat we cannot do away with.
So we've got to find a waythrough it, and so I think if we
want to be able to have theright to share the gospel and
preach the good news and tellthe truth in the way that we do,
to live as authentic Christians, faithfully before Jesus and
before the eyes of the watchingworld, then the only way that we
(54:46):
can rightfully ask for that isto make space for other people
to live in completely contraryways.
Right, and I think we get themodel of this from God himself.
He is not insecure, he's justnot right.
He lets us ask him questions,he lets us yell at him, he lets
us be angry with his ways, andstill he challenges us to follow
(55:12):
and believe anyway.
And then you get Jesus whocomes along and, just like you
said he called a bunch of frail,fickle, feeble, weak human
beings to be the ones whostarted his movement and spread
the good news in that part ofthe world.
And you know what?
He's shockingly called us frail, feeble, fickle, weak, fallible
(55:39):
human beings to do the samedarn thing.
It's not going to look pretty,but somehow God's going to use
our mess to get his work done.
Speaker 2 (55:48):
Amen, amen.
This has been so much fun, chad.
Thank you for the last twohours we've got to spend
together.
Time has flown by, jack.
Any final comments on ourconversation today?
It's been fun flown by Jack.
Speaker 4 (56:00):
Any final comments on our conversation today?
It's been fun.
No, I mean just on these lastcomments here.
You know, sinners belong inchurch and because I belong in
church, I'm a sinner.
I belong there, right?
So we need to show that samelove and kind of recognize, in
humility, whatever type of sin aperson's carrying along in
their life, including, you know,different belief backgrounds
and people just trying to learnwhat it means to believe in God.
(56:22):
Like we should be the mostinviting place.
And, like you said, invitationis not affirmation, right, yeah,
yeah, yeah, you know,hospitality does not mean that
we are approving, that weendorse any type of sin,
including our own sins, right,it just means we are inviting
(56:44):
sinners into church, where everysingle one belongs, and that's
our goal.
You know a vision to see everysinner in church.
Speaker 3 (56:51):
I absolutely agree.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
Yeah, hey, this has been great.
If you haven't picked up thebook, please do so.
How the Light Shines ThroughResilient Witness in Dark Times,
and it's been a joy.
This is lead time.
Please, like, subscribe, please, please do hit the subscribe
button wherever it is thatyou're taking this in.
Youtube continues to work on thealgorithm and for the book, if
(57:14):
you would go and leave a Googlereview, an Amazon review, all
those types of things, thatreally, really helps get the
message of this needed work ofliterature out into the wider,
wider church and I'm praying,beyond.
Again, I applaud CPH Great.
I know they were awesome towork with Great people over
there.
That influences not just theLutheran Church Missouri Synod
(57:34):
but even beyond the LutheranChurch Missouri Synod, just our
work in the world, especiallyhere in the West, as we're
walking through dark, hard times.
The light of Jesus he is thelight of the world and then we
have been called to be a lightset on a hill to shine the light
of Christ out into the darkness, and we do so with love and
respect and I'm praying that,based on this conversation,
(57:57):
humility just wins the day as weenter into conversation with
people who are on their way toJesus pre-Christians.
They're on the way to Jesus.
They're not the pagan, outlier,secular person.
They're a person for whom Jesusloves, for whom his image has
been placed upon, for whom theGod of the universe wants a
relationship with.
And somehow he wants to use usfeeble, weak.
I love that.
(58:18):
As you're closing, yeah, smallpeople to do his great, great
work.
It's a humbling thing.
It's a good day.
Go make it a great day.
Wonderful work, jack.
Thanks, chad.
Speaker 3 (58:28):
God bless you.
Thanks for having me, tim andJack.
It was such a greatconversation.
I really enjoyed it, privilegedto be here, likewise.
Speaker 1 (58:34):
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The ULC's mission is tocollaborate with the local
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Subscribe to our channel, thengo to theuniteleadershiporg to
create your free login forexclusive material and resources
(58:57):
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Thanks for listening and staytuned for next week's episode.
This is Lead Time.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman.
Here it is part two withReverend Dr Chad LaKeys, and
Jack Kauberg is also in for thisconversation.
How are you doing, jack?
I'm doing fantastic.
How are you doing, sir?
Yeah, I know, loving every day,man, it's a true privilege to
get to hang out with leaders.
(00:24):
I just got done recording withDr Dale Meyer.
He's such a hilarious,hilarious man and he knows you,
dr the Keys, and speaks veryhighly of you.
So we're going to last episode.
We kind of gave an overview ofthe kind of light and dark, the
culture this one's going to be alot more.
I guess pointed on the secondhalf of the book, how the Light
(00:46):
Shines Through Resilient Witnessin Dark Times.
So I'm going to start off justa question based on chapter five
how to find yourself in an age,how to find yourself in an age
of authenticity.
So what is the role, dr LaKeys,of identity and story in an age
of authenticity and story in anage of authenticity?
(01:08):
Those are two huge topicsidentity and story in an age
where people are trying to findthemselves.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Air quotes.
Well, I think they relatedirectly in a really simple sort
of way.
I think, in our time, identityis the story I tell myself about
myself and then, therefore,that's the story I want to tell
other people about myself, andso that's really how they come
closely into alignment.
The challenge, I think, is, inthe time in which we live,
(01:36):
identity has become something ofa task.
Right, I've got to figure itout, I've got to discover it,
I've got to.
In some sense, it feels like aburden that I've got to carry,
right, and, and there arepitfalls.
Right, if I don't kind of findmy way in the right sort of way,
right, am I going to live alife full of regrets?
(01:58):
What am I going to be missingout on if I don't sort of land
in exactly the right place?
That, you know, is really thetrue, authentic me, and that's
the challenge of our time is inan age of authenticity.
I think it's been put out therethat we've got to search for
this, we've got to chase downthis task, and there's really no
(02:20):
guidance for how to come to anyconclusions that we can be
confident in, because it'sconstantly a look inside here,
listen to what you hear and feel, and and if anybody challenges
that, that's a no, no, becauseour feelings in our time are
completely sacrosanct, right,and we live in a time when it's
(02:42):
forbidden to forbid.
So to look in here and followyour heart Right, march to the
beat of your own drummer, you doyou All of these things.
A number of cultural mantras,some of them are encouraged in
popular media.
I think I use the Burger Kingexample, right, have it your way
.
And the even longer littledescription that they've got on
(03:05):
some of their old posters, and Ijust think that's going to be a
really exhausting sort ofjourney, and so I'm trying to
help people find a way out ofthat.
I want them to know that thereare other stories that exist
outside of themselves that havecome down through the ages and
(03:27):
have provided wisdom andguidance to people for many,
many years.
I love GK Chesterton's line ofdon't rip up the fences if you
don't know why they were putthere in the first place, and
he's talking about fences interms of something like moral
boundaries, guidance of thatsort.
(03:51):
And you know, we've kind of comethrough this age of
enlightenment in the last 250years where we've sloughed off a
lot of the wisdom of religion,and that's Christianity, but it
includes a number of otherreligious ideas.
Right, we've thought that as weproceed in a technological age,
we'll have more and morecontrol over our time.
(04:12):
We won't need religion and it'smythological, meaning false
stories in that sense to fill inthe gaps that we can't answer.
We're going to be able tofigure it out.
Right.
It's a very man is the measureof all things kind of story.
So we've gotten rid of all ofthese ancient pieces of wisdom
and we're out here sort offloating around, scrambling,
(04:35):
living fairly aimlessly, notknowing what to do.
Right, what I want to do oftenis a competition with what you
want to do and think is best foryour life.
There's no arbiter, then, forthose situations.
How do we fix this?
Let's lean back on some oldwisdom, and that's all I've
(04:55):
tried to do is open the space toreconsider the Christian story
again and see that it's got somewisdom right, see that your
life is a gift, your roles are agift.
What you are called to do is agift.
What you are called to do is agift and it's freeing from this
burden of identity as task tobecome identity as gift.
That was a long answer.
I hope that's what you'researching for.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
That is awesome.
I love that.
This is something that needs tobe talked about a lot.
I think you really hit the.
You know, you really hit theright nail here.
That identity is the mainnarrative that people are
walking through right now, andis it something that we have to
create for ourselves or is itsomething that's put on us?
And if it's something that wehave to create, boy, that is a
(05:36):
huge burden.
That is a huge burden for us toactually say like we are the
authors of our own lives, and ithas to be something meaningful
and impressive, you know, andyet there's eight billion people
in the world that you're tryingto compete with from for
meaning and purpose, right, uh,rather than an identity that's
(05:56):
put on you by god, that is likeincredibly special and
incredibly powerful and isshaping you Right, and it's
something that you can findpeace and joy and contentment in
.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Yeah, if I can add to that, I think another thing
that we're searching for is akind of affirmation of our very
being Right.
And so, as we try to craftthese identities that work out
in some way, as you're saying,to get attention amidst the many
, many other human beings thatwe're competing with and we do
(06:30):
it via various kind ofperformances and displays of
ourself, often on social media.
In our time, that becomes inand of itself very challenging.
But I think that underneath thespiritual side of it that I
want to bring up is this searchfor affirmation is very normal.
It's a part of what it means tobe human.
(06:51):
Right, when a child is born andthey make that connection with
their mother and we developattachment with our parents,
right, those are the beginningsof affirmation, the beginnings
of its fulfillment.
Right, god has given us thoserelationships, in part to help
us experience just a glimpse ofwhat his unconditional love is
like.
Right, because none of us canactually do real unconditional
(07:13):
love, but we can see pieces andparts of it.
But I think, spiritually, whatI'm trying to do when I'm
looking for affirmation fromeverybody else is I'm searching
for affirmation in thehorizontal realm and I want to
use that as a proxy for God'saffirmation in this way.
(07:35):
See God, I've got all of theselikes and all of these followers
and all of these people affirmme how could you not?
I don't know if there's anyother way to kind of really
explain it, that kind of breaksit down that simply.
But I think this is what we'reafter and this opens a spiritual
(07:57):
space then for us as pastors,ministers, gospel proclaimers,
to speak into this search in thelives of people that we're
ministering to.
You know, there's all kinds ofdata that says there's spiritual
openness.
That's really characteristic ofour time.
This might be one of thosemoments, but it's a really end
around angle to try to get thereto really say you know, let me
(08:21):
tell you about the ultimate kindof affirmation that's possible
for you as a human being, thegreatest kind, the most
fulfilling kind, the seeminglyimpossible kind.
It's God's affirmation for youin Jesus.
Look what he did and you got tosit back and order.
Why would he ever do that forme?
(08:42):
And that's just the questionthat we get to sit with every
stinking day of our life.
Why would he do that for me?
But it's sort of reveling inthis gift and it's helping
people find a way to fulfillthat search for affirmation and
then be able to set aside someof these, these bad habits.
Right, because there's a greatarticle in the New Yorker from a
(09:06):
handful of years ago by, uh uh,an influencer named Tavi
Gevinson and, um, I think mostrecently she has been, um, an
actress in an HBO televisionseries.
I am not, I am very unculturedwhen it comes to television, so
listeners would have to look herup.
(09:27):
But anyway, this article.
She asks who would I be withoutInstagram?
Because she was one of theearliest influencers on the
platform and she just came torealize how deeply it was
leading and guiding her life,this search for affirmation from
other people on the horizontallevel.
(09:47):
And I think in a sense she'sescaped from that.
She still remains a celebrityand many opportunities are
thrown her way as a result ofthat.
But just the fact that she washonest enough to ask this
question, as I've used that Ithink I've got a sermon where
I've used that example.
It's one of those ways ofopening the space, her story,
(10:08):
her personal kind of confession,and then where she's gone from
there to sort of get out ofthose bad habits of constantly
looking for and measuring hersense of self on the basis of
what all of these other peopleon social media think of her.
It's just a huge shift and itmeans that it's possible.
What all of these other peopleon social media think of her.
It's just a huge shift and itmeans that it's possible for all
(10:28):
of us.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
So I'm having a thought here, as I'm thinking
about these models of identityright, and how they interweave
with how we think about thenotion of freedom, and it seems
to me that the popular model isfreedom is a tool that I use to
create my identity.
But the Christian view isactually God gives me an
(10:50):
identity and that identity givento me is what makes me free.
Do you agree with thatstatement?
Speaker 3 (10:57):
I totally would agree with that.
Hang on just one second andI'll throw another book
recommendation at you.
And I'll throw another bookrecommendation at you.
If you all don't know thisscholar, james KA Smith.
He's one of my favorites, butthis book On the Road with St
Augustine is incredibly helpful,super preachable for anybody
listening to this who is apreacher.
But he's got a chapter in there, I think, where he references
(11:22):
an author named.
I think her last name isjameson um.
I could be wrong, but she wrotea book about addiction and she
really talks about thisconnection of freedom and
addiction and freedom in thesense that we mean it like
liberation, the freedom fromsense, right, the negative kind
of freedom, right released from,release from captivity, bondage
(11:45):
, chains, ball and chain,whatever Right Is is supposed to
be a good thing in our veryenlightenment, informed age.
Right I talked already aboutthrowing off the from her is
(12:05):
that freedom in that sensebecomes a negative, not just in
the freedom from sense, but inthe sense that it becomes
exhaustion.
I'm too free, right, I can doanything I want.
The choices are so many thatmaking a choice becomes a burden
.
Yeah, it's like going becomes aburden.
Yeah, it's like going to abuffet, right.
(12:27):
None of us can eat everythingthat's there.
We've all had this experience.
I hope my wife thinks buffetsare gross because too many
people are able to touch thefood.
I feel that.
But if you've ever been to abuffet, there are too many
things to eat, right.
It's almost a waste of time forpeople our age to go to a
(12:48):
buffet because we just can'tsample everything like a
teenager could, right, there wasa time when my metabolism
allowed for such a visit, butnot today.
That kind of freedom, with allof these choices, becomes a
burden, and I think what heargues for, and this addiction
scholar argues for, isboundaries, guardrails, guidance
(13:09):
, that sort of funnels us in away to be free.
Bonhoeffer, famously, would saysomething that's very
counterintuitive Our bondage inservice, our call to love and
serve our neighbor, our bondageto our neighbor right, is not a
kind of slavery.
It is the definition of freedom, but in the positive sense it's
(13:31):
freedom, for he writes aboutthat, I think, in his couple of
chapters on creation and fall.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
One of the best quotes I heard was from Dr
Corbin, one of his books thatsaid Christian freedom is the
freedom to relax in God'spresence.
Hebin, one of his books thatsaid Christian freedom is the
freedom to relax in God'spresence.
He was like, wow, that is sopowerful.
And apart from that identitythat's put on you by God, you
cannot have that.
That is not something you canhave.
It just doesn't exist right.
It's that gifted identity thatallows that.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Heck.
Yeah, it's kind of like how welike to say at times in our
church sanctification is gettingused to justification.
Right, both of those thingsthat you said.
Right, learning to rest inGod's will.
I can't remember exactly howyou said it, just now God's
presence.
Yeah, god's presence.
Both of those are somethingthat we are constantly learning,
(14:23):
right, constantly learning.
It is definitive, I think, ofthe life of the Christian in a
certain way.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Isn't it kind of funny?
Let's get existential here justa bit.
Humans live as if we're nevergoing to die Like.
And how frivolous even thisquest for affirmation.
You say celebrity we want.
I think the root of that wordis we want to be celebrated,
right?
(14:51):
So there are these people that,like collectively, we celebrate
and yet we spend all this timeto, like, keep death from coming
.
When inevitable suffering, loss, trial, trauma come, we wonder
one, where's God?
And you know you can go to thenihilistic or the hedonistic
(15:14):
kind of pursuit eat, drink, bemerry, kind of tomorrow we die,
but God uses.
You spent some time in the book, in this chapter, talking about
suffering.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
What is?
Speaker 2 (15:20):
the role of suffering connected to our identity.
You refer to Viktor Frankl andMan's Search for Meaning.
Those who had kind of thishigher meaning, this higher
sense of calling, you could sayvocation, were the ones who were
able to kind of make it through, make it through concentration
camps and, for those of us today, can make it through inevitable
suffering and trial.
(15:41):
Speak to the role of sufferingand our identity, dr LaPiece.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Yeah, I think his story is really great.
I learned it from David Brooksin his book the Road to
Character is where I first cameacross that story and the way
that he framed it really hit meand has stuck with me for a long
time.
That Frankl discovered in themidst of the concentration camps
the difference between thosewho would often commit suicide
(16:08):
in order to escape what theyknew was coming right the gas
chambers or some other gruesomedeath at the hands of the Nazis,
versus those who hung on, notknowing whether or not they
would be able to live to seefreedom again from the captivity
that they were experiencing.
They continued to live onbecause he recognized in them,
they believed they had somethingto live for, something bigger
(16:32):
than above, beyond, greater thanjust their own life, and that
began his research.
It wasn't the sort of directionthat he wanted to go with his
life as a psychologist, and Ithink that's what he was but he
became a scholar of suffering,and so Man's Search for Meaning,
that really classic book thatyou can read, documents a lot of
(16:55):
what he found as he moved intothat scholarship.
But that isn't the life that heplanned for, right, being a Jew
, being captive and taken awayfrom his family, losing all that
he lost.
He would say this isn't thelife that I planned for.
And that's, I think, a greatcharacteristic of how we could
describe suffering in a waythat's safe, validates the pain,
(17:19):
acknowledges it this isn't thelife that we planned for,
acknowledges it this isn't thelife that we planned for.
But out of it, you know hisstory.
He says, becoming a scholar, ofsuffering, despite not being
the life that I planned for, wasa life upon which I could not
turn my back.
And, and I think, whatever itis that, that life in our
(17:43):
various roles and callings,right, from which we derive a
real, true sense of identity,whatever life drags us through
as we participate in that, it'sgoing to include a lot of
suffering.
Right, tentatio is a criticalpart of how we talk about our
tradition and it's a cyclicalthing.
(18:04):
Right, it takes you back to Godand prayer and then it takes
you further into reflection andand you know, luther
characterized this, this, as thelife of a disciple.
Um, and I think from there, um,we realized that, however hard
this thing is, that God hascalled me to do, it's a gifted
(18:30):
calling, whether that's theburden of being a parent and
changing diapers, or the burdenof being a parent and having a
child who has just recently runaway, as we've been seeing
across all of our social mediaplatforms the last couple of
days, a fellow pastor in ourchurch body, his daughter, had
(18:50):
run away.
Thankfully, just this morningwe found out that she's been
found.
Right, but being a parent in somany ways is burdensome, right.
It's taking on the stewardshipof another life.
It means you have to say no toyourself so often, right, and
that's the dying to self partthat goes with being a follower
(19:12):
of Jesus in the kingdom.
It determines what kinds ofways we're going to pursue
livelihood in the world.
Livelihood in the world Are wegoing to take on jobs that
produce exploitation of peoplefor us to be able to win, or
should we choose something else?
(19:33):
Or, when we find out that theway that we're living is off the
backs of exploitation of people, what do we do?
Yeah, these are all challengingburdens, right, and our
suffering is marked by varyingdegrees.
None of us quite share it thesame way.
But knowing that the roles andresponsibilities that God has
(19:55):
called us to in terms of ouridentity, right, our callings,
our vocations, they are placeswhere we're going to feel pain,
but they're also places uponwhich if God has gifted this to
me we cannot turn our backs onit.
We cannot turn our backs on itjust because it's painful.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Yeah, amen, and I mean a lot of your book is
talking about how Christians mayactively maybe it's
subconsciously cause respectivepain trauma.
We're just walking through atrauma series right now.
Unintentionally cause trauma bycould be by labeling, by
(20:35):
judging people based on and youuse a word that I hadn't seen
before a little bit later on inthe book essentializing like
saying people are this oneidentity.
If you associate with this onedifferent group, or if you're of
this one race or ethnicity,whatever, then that's the
entirety of who you are.
That causes an existentialcrisis and I think I mean
(20:59):
personally, just for me.
I kind of live with, I feellike some in our church that I
don't know in our church becausewe're a larger church body, a
few million or whatnot, becauseI've said things in a certain
way on the podcast.
I'm maybe more edgy than othersand maybe I should have been
(21:20):
kinder, reframed, whatever thestatement was that I'm the sum
total of, like that viewpointand that if you disagree with me
on one topic, maybe aroundpastoral formation, like then
you disagree with the entiretyof who I am and we human beings.
Maybe this is where I can getlanded and let you kind of run
off.
We love to work from places ofdifference rather than places of
(21:44):
commonality, even in our churchbody.
This is we become more tribalaround.
You can have this perspectiveon a how.
If I differ on the how, then Idiffer on the gospel of Jesus
Christ and for me that makes nosense.
Logically, like we, we have waymore that we agree on,
especially in our tribe, thanthan we disagree on as we're
working toward.
What does the future look likein our church body?
(22:06):
So we essentialize one anotherdown into these small little
identity markers Anything more,because the big identity marker
is I'm a baptized child of God,son of the king, just like both
of you and just like everyonebaptized here.
That should be the drivingunifying factor in uniting us
together, united to Christ,united to one another.
We commune around the sametogether, united to Christ,
united to one another.
We commune around the sametable, united to Christ,
(22:29):
forgiven of our sins, and thenunited to one another as the
church, as messy as it is, towalk together.
So go off on essentializing alittle bit more there, dr LaKeys
.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Yeah, I think it's just a.
It's reductionistic is theproblem, but it's.
It's convenient and helpful asas a tool for thinking and kind
of organizing it that it worksthat way or is used that way,
(23:02):
especially to the people whohave to live underneath labels
that they cannot remove fromthemselves.
But that's why we do it right.
We try to find ways in just howwe organize our thinking and
perspective on the world to keepit simple, and we do that with
these sorts of labels.
But the outcome isessentializing is reductionistic
(23:25):
, right, and and some of whathas come out of, I would say
helpfully, out of criticaltheory I know a scary thing to
announce on a podcast of thissort, but I think most people
who criticize it probably don'treally know what it is very well
, nor where it comes from, and Iwouldn't put myself in that
(23:46):
camp.
I'm not going to use it in anunmeasured or inaccurate sort of
way, but I think one of thethings that comes out of there
right is a term calledintersectionality and this is
going back from the 70s and itcomes out of legal argumentation
going back from the 70s and itcomes out of legal argumentation
(24:08):
.
But it's a way of recognizingthat there's so much more to a
singular individual than just asingle identity.
Right, none of us are justheterosexual white men.
We are dads right, we areservants of the church, we are
husbands.
We've got a number of otherroles and maybe a variety of
(24:30):
ethnicities, via blood that comeinto the background, that are
often not visible these daysanymore, because of the ways
that you know racially andethnically we've we've
intermixed our families.
You know, racially andethnically, we've we've
intermixed our families and youcan't figure it out on the basis
of someone's last name.
I learned that the hard waywhen I was a professor at a
university.
Right, I've got somebody with aHispanic last name and they
(24:56):
have literally no Hispanicbackground in their blood.
It's just come down over aseries of generations to be that
way, and it's an easy way tomake a category mistake.
I think then, when we have beenessentialized in one way or
another, the outcome is itreally prevents getting some
(25:19):
good work done in the future.
Right, it doesn't actuallysolve any of the problems that
we might have one to another bythrowing those sorts of labels
out.
They're also a weakness in thelabels themselves, some of them
that are used right, liberal andconservative, for example,
right.
They're relative in the senseof liberal compared to what
(25:40):
conservative compared to whatConservative compared to what
Right.
So it allows us to get awaywith being very inaccurate and
assume then when I use thatlabel I mean the same thing that
everybody else means by thatlabel.
But it functions much more likea master signifier.
So the Slovenian philosopherSlavoj Žižek talks about master
(26:02):
signifiers and I think ourchurch body has a couple of them
and I'm not going to say whatthey are.
But liberal and conservative aregood enough, right.
They're master signifiers in thesense that they function as
kind of a big banner under whichall of us who use the label can
gather with the assumption thatall of us mean the same thing
by the label, with theassumption that all of us mean
(26:24):
the same thing by the label,until we come to find out by
working with one another that wedon't actually mean the same
thing by the label and we've gotall of these external,
extraneous, contingentconnections outside of this
group that uses the label.
That starts to reveal that Idon't share necessarily what
this person means by the labelor what that person means by the
label, and similarly with them,and it becomes really messy and
(26:46):
just reveals the sloppiness ofthose labels and those
gatherings underneath which wecome together, is also
simultaneously a critique ofkind of that essentializing
effort.
It's reductionistic and it justmisses.
(27:07):
It misses the much widerpicture of the reality of things
.
So, yeah, that was totally whyI would advise against it.
Right, it's just better to diginto the more complex, the more
concrete um parts of ofindividual human lives, really
(27:28):
listen to where they're comingfrom the way I've experienced.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
That is, it seems like there's a lot of um
segmenting into things that Iwould consider to be false
dichotomies.
Um, that, okay, you believethis, that means you're now
making all these assumptions andthat you're also not this, and
it's like, no, I'm this and thisat the same time, right, and,
but there's this tendency towant to pull these things into
(27:53):
these dichotomies that aren'tnecessarily true dichotomies, or
doesn't?
Speaker 3 (27:57):
or let's say it doesn't have to be, but we
insist on making it that wayright yes, yes, I think one of
the fears that you can detectbehind this tendency to label,
or be to be too quick at timesto label, is a fear, um, that to
(28:20):
accept someone over here that Idon't fully agree with on this
thing, right, if I were to dothat, it's we.
We run with a slippery slopeargument.
To give an inch is to give amile, right, and so it's just
better to disassociate and cutoff my relationship and
connection with this person, asopposed to sort of whatever the
(28:42):
outcome I'm worried about mightbe right.
Asking what people are afraidof, um, is a huge way of kind of
getting at an understanding ofhow they operate, because all of
us are operating from the basisof protecting ourselves against
what it is that we're worriedabout.
(29:03):
And I'm trying to remember thephilosopher's name.
Iris Murdoch talked this wayabout philosophers, right, you
want to understand why aphilosopher argues the way they
are or the way they do, ask whatthey're afraid of, and my Dr
Father, joe Locomoto, appliedthat and he's like well, I think
we should ask that oftheologians too, and I think
(29:26):
he's right.
But then, to go just a stepfurther, in a much broader and
wider, I think you can ask thatof just about anybody.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
What are you afraid of?
That's going to help youunderstand another person's
behavior, able to kind of figureout how to work with them in a
way to move forward beyondpreventing all the time or
protecting ourselves from whatwe're afraid of, to finding a
way through.
Um, I also think thedifferences between us are good
(29:57):
things, right, they often canfunction as corrective measures.
When you think about how theAmerican government was put
together, with three branches ofgovernment, the so-called
version of Republican andDemocrat that existed at that
(30:17):
time, the views of those peopleand the way that they were meant
to carry forth the business ofgoverning, was meant to function
as a corrective, right.
Yes, in a sense they were atloggerheads, but it just meant
that none of them was ever ableto get into the extremes because
they always had the other onekind of pulling and jostling
(30:38):
them in the other direction, andit might be a little far over
here for a while, or a littlefar over here, but it swings
back and forth in a more limiteddirection, and so I think
that's one of the ways that wecan anticipate our difference is
actually having a positivefunction for us, right?
(31:00):
I don't know everything, neitherdo you, right, so I'm going to
have my ideas, you're going tohave your ideas, because we
disagree doesn't make us badpeople and we should stop our
relationships, hate each otherand consider one another
nefarious and talk terriblyabout each other to others.
In fact, we can maybe see thatthese differences play a
(31:21):
functionally helpful role inkeeping us a little more
balanced, a little more tightlybound together.
As a member of the groups thatwe walk with, hey, so good, so
good.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Let's let's talk about some of our last podcast
spent a fair amount of time.
If you didn't listen, go backand listen of time.
If you didn't listen, go backand listen how we engage our
neighbors, who are spirituallyattuned but they're at different
places on their journey.
On page 185, you draw out threedifferent and then you
(31:55):
extrapolate on it, you go deeperinto this three different kinds
of human experiences, and Ithink this is James K Smith,
some of his work, but the one,the pole, of being haunted with
our own mortality.
The second one is the religiousimpulse and the third one is
waiting for the cracks in thesecular for holy moments this is
(32:16):
CS Lewis for holy moments tokind of break through.
So how do we use that as kindof a framework for starting
evangelical conversations withour neighbors, dr?
Speaker 3 (32:24):
LaKeith.
I mean, that's a, that's a turnin this conversation towards
something totally different thanwhat we've been talking about.
Is that okay?
No, that's great, that's greatcool.
Um, I think one of thechallenges is, as we try to
think about evangelism andoutreach in our time, um, what
we want to be able to control,how it happens.
(32:46):
But none of us can control howGod shows up or when.
Right, we can't, we're not incharge of how the Holy Spirit
operates.
Right, the wind of the Spiritblows where and when he pleases,
and so what I try to do in thissection is really just open up
a space to talk about threedifferent kinds of opportunities
(33:07):
.
So, when I talk about someonewho's haunted, yes, I'm
borrowing from Jamie Smith.
He talks about that a littlebit in his book how Not to Be
Secular, which is an accessibleversion of Charles Taylor's
argument in a secular age,charles Taylor's argument in a
secular age, and I I highlight,you know, some of the the, the
work, not the work.
I highlight some of theexperiences of what happens when
(33:31):
we have to encounter andwrestle through the big
questions.
What happens when I die?
Why am I here, right?
So the purpose question um, howis anything that actually
exists, where did it come from?
Question?
How is anything that actuallyexists, where did it come from?
Why is it here in the firstplace?
Those sorts of things when theyhit us and they don't always
hit us and we find really goodways of being distracted and
(33:53):
avoiding them, right, you know,scrolling through reels helps
when those questions hit us.
They are an opportunity for usto be, you know, uh, what my
friend Peter Meyer would callalongsideers.
Right, we can walk along withthem in those moments and, as
(34:15):
the Holy Spirit leads, be ableto speak into those moments from
a Christian and biblicalperspective, offering answers to
those questions.
You still got to wrestle withthem, right?
Another one why is theresuffering?
You know, that's a reallychallenging question for us to
answer as theologians of thecross.
Right, what we have to offer isreally unsatisfying.
(34:37):
We're just kind of stuckperpetually wrestling with it.
So we're haunted by thosethings.
I think we're haunted by thosethings.
I think we're haunted by otherthings.
If you've not noticed just howpopular in the last 20 years
it's been that fantasy movies,lord of the Rings, cs Lewis's
Chronicles of Narnia, star Wars,game of Thrones, harry Potter
(35:01):
we could probably name manyothers, how popular they've
become and just how wildlydevoured they've become and how
many spinoff universes and so onthey've created, and even
dystopian novels and fiction andvideo games, television series.
It's incredible and I wonder ifthey're so popular.
(35:22):
It's incredible and I wonder ifthey're so popular.
I'm borrowing this from the UKtheologian, graham Ward.
I wonder if they're so popularbecause they depict a variety of
versions of an enchanted world,and the world in which we live
(35:48):
in a secular age, is shaped verymuch by a scientific
imagination where we can explainaway the rainbow.
Richard Dawkins has a booktitled something similar.
Unweaving the Rainbow is whatit's called, and essentially
we've done that.
The rainbow for us asChristians, followers of Jesus,
bible readers, is symbolic ofGod's promise from the Old
Testament.
See, I put my bow in the sky.
I will never condemn humanityto that kind of gruesome end
(36:11):
again.
Right, it's a promise.
It's enchanted.
Right, there's a magicalness toit, if you will, and I know
Christians are sometimes afraidof the word magic.
I don't mean it in that way.
I mean it much more in theenchanted sense that there's
more than meets the eye to thisreality that we live in.
But in our scientific age we'veunweaved the rainbow, right,
(36:32):
dawkins is right.
It's nothing more than therefraction of light waves
through water droplets suspendedin the sky.
Well, you know how's that for abuzzkill right and crushing
your spirits?
It's kind of life-sucking.
So these movies, these films,these stories, these books, tv
(36:55):
series, video games, that showan enchanted world, I think, and
our love for them, reveal maybewe're haunted by the fact that
we were made for that kind ofreality and we miss it.
We love those depictionsbecause we were made for that
kind of reality and we miss it.
Now, what kind of an end and anentry point would that be for
(37:17):
us in our churches to talk aboutthose movies, talk about those
stories, talk about those TVshows?
Now, I know there's all kindsof depictions in those shows
that we don't necessarily like.
There's nudity, graphicviolence, bad language, right.
So how would we carry this out?
I don't know, y'all have got tofigure that out in your
particular context and maybeit's going to be a risk, but
(37:42):
maybe it's going to open a spaceto talking about.
Well, let me tell you thisstory, right, for example I mean
, the safest ones are Narnia,lord of the Rings.
Let me tell you the story thatthese two guys is writing and
thinking about how tocommunicate the gospel.
We're trying to recreate animaginary enchanted world on the
(38:04):
basis and on the back of thereal one.
Our reality is really enchanted.
Let me tell you how right andhow.
Could we have discussions aboutthat and get at that?
I think that's an entry point,right.
That's one of the cracks in thesecular, these hauntings, the
religious impulse idea.
I wasn't sure if readers wouldreally like that or get that.
(38:27):
It sounds Catholic to me, right, like we're always trying to
kind of reach up to God, and Ithink there is a sense of that
when I talk about the seeking ofaffirmation in the section on
confession.
But in another sense, you know,there's the God coming down to
us with miraculous experiences.
(38:48):
You know, I felt like I wassaved when I shouldn't have been
.
I'm alive today, but what Ijust experienced I shouldn't be
here anymore or the birth of achild, or, you know, the healing
, miraculously and surprisingly,from a disease that would have
put me terminal, otherwise right, the world around us doesn't
have a lot of explanations forthis sort of thing.
(39:10):
We've got a language, a parlancethat very easily equips us to
speak into those moments whensomeone's just overcome with the
sense of either tragedy ormiracle, where God is opening a
space for his voice to be heardright In our pains.
(39:31):
God shouts, cs Lewis says, andI think, are you listening?
And as we get to walk alongwith these people, right, and
here's where it comes to theagain, this is absolutely out of
our control.
I don't know when someone'sgoing to fall into a tragic
situation.
I know roughly when someone'splanning to deliver a child,
(39:54):
right, roughly right, we play,you know, meteorologists in the
hospital looking at all themeasurements and the weight of
the child and blah, blah, blah,and roughly how long gestation
occurs.
But my first daughter, right ontime, my second daughter, three
and a half weeks early, whoknew?
And everything was okay.
(40:14):
And my wife and I were able togive a name to that right,
fearfully and wonderfully made,knit together in secret in your
mother's womb.
How many people don't have thatlanguage?
And it's an opportunity for usto speak into that.
(40:35):
So that's just some examples.
I'm actually working on somemore that I want to eventually
be talking about out in publicjust to give a few more avenues
to help just trigger this kindof thinking in people.
It's a bit of a paradigm shift.
As I argued when I said we'vegot to think about our secular
age as an age of implausibility,where it's difficult to believe
(40:56):
.
What I'm trying to do inchapter seven with how to reach
out in a secular age and talkingabout the cracks in the secular
, is how do you find theseopportunities where belief and
faith actually become plausible,when we can maybe best be set
(41:16):
up to deliver the goods in a waythat are going to be sticky?
Speaker 4 (41:38):
that's good, Jack, and around in the skull is like
I don't see how I find meaningand purpose in that at all.
Right, that's a.
That's a very nihilistic way ofviewing my own existence.
And then I think about Luther,how he talks about the first
commandment like a God isanything that you're putting
your hope in.
And what he's kind of saying is, like human beings have this
(42:00):
God shaped void that only Godcan fill, and if God's not
filling it, then we're fillingit with something that's
functioning as God for us.
And you know, in some cases thatis a scientific theories that
becomes my God.
Or social justice becomes myGod, or some other type of thing
.
You know, some sort of quest tomanufacture my identity becomes
(42:22):
my God.
But the whole point is thatbecomes my religion, and you
will see people suspenddisbelief because they're so
committed to that God.
Right, you know, I mean, thisis why we have people creating
so many genders right now,because I'm on a quest to
manufacture myself.
Right, let's set aside science.
(42:44):
Or, you know, I'm going tocreate my own view, I'm going to
put my hope in this thing,right, Yep.
So it seems to me like this isbaked into the nature of the
human being and to me, like oneof the most fascinating
questions to ask people is likewell, what are you putting your?
You talked about earlier, whatare you afraid of?
To me, it's like what are youputting your?
You talked about earlier, whatare you afraid of?
(43:04):
To me, it's like what are you?
Speaker 3 (43:05):
putting your hope in Right.
Speaker 4 (43:06):
Yeah, what are you putting your hope in?
And when people answer thatquestion, they are revealing
what their God is.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, jamie Smith argues that way in
Desiring the Kingdom, which is areally helpful book, or a more
accessible version of that, isyou are what you love.
So you're kind of making aparallel argument you are what
you hope for, or your God iswhat you hope for, or something
like that.
Yeah, and we can see thethrough line of that argument
(43:36):
and thinking, because Luther wasan Augustinian monk and so he
simply derived the way that hetalked from Augustine in that
way, and so is Jamie Smith anAugustinian scholar.
I was trying to remember what Iwas going to add to your point.
Oh, oh, oh, nope, I'veforgotten it again.
It almost came to me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got a goodfollow up.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
I've talked a lot.
No, Well, this is why we haveyou on.
This has been fantastic.
No, well, this is why we haveyou on.
This has been fantastic.
You're kind of, as you talkabout story and the hero's
journey, you know what's kind ofhard this like meta story.
I believe there's a lot thereto that.
And then the mystery of there,because there's a part on the
(44:21):
hero's journey where you're likeI don't know exactly how this
is going to turn out and I'mopen.
The crack in the secular me isI'm open for divine,
providential, mysteriousencounters, for God to do
something when all appears lost,all the hero's journey, when
all appears lost and they're atthe very, very end, something
extraordinary happens, Forinstance, a guy rising from the
(44:44):
dead, Right.
So there's this, there's thisother dimension.
I so I wanted I don't know wegot a lot of time on this, but
we have one of our leaders inour community whose way he's a,
he's a mathematician and kind ofdabbles in physics and Jesus in
the third and the fourthdimension and I think a lot of
people today are wrestling withwhat are these AEPs or what are
(45:07):
the UFO type encounters Like?
There are things that arepopping in from outside of us
there's another realm that'svery evident.
Right, we're actually headinginto a spiritual warfare book,
Like how does the spiritualworld demons, angels, that God
is over all of it how does thatintersect with the physical
realities of time and space forus in the here and now, and I'm
(45:31):
kind of, I think, the third tothe fourth dimension Jesus kind
of define those boundaries,those physical limitations,
especially in his resurrectedreality.
He just pops into a room, right?
I think there's a fair amount ofthe mind can be open.
The crack in the secular isthere's way more that I.
(45:51):
There's a lot that I don't know, and there are things that are
above me, beyond me, that I'veyet to discover and probably
will never fully discover all ofit.
But I'm on this grand quest.
Anything more to say about anyof that, dr With the Keys.
Speaker 3 (46:06):
Yeah, I mean, I think part of what you're signaling
is the spiritual openness that Italked about before.
Right, there's a willingness, agreater willingness to think
there's more than meets the eye,right, that there's something
transcendent, something beyond,something unseen.
There's more than meets the eye, right, that there's something
transcendent, something beyondsomething unseen, a greater
willingness to sense that welive in an enchanted world and
(46:31):
we don't have to be soantagonistic to all of these
encounters of various sorts ofreligious practice that we come
across.
Right, go out to California andyou experience a lot of
crystals, people wanting toengage in that.
The Pacific Northwest, where Iused to live, wicca and a kind
of neo-paganism is still thereand I'd much rather look at that
as an opportunity than a threat.
And for a long time at large,the Christian church has
(46:52):
considered that a threat.
But in our time it's just partof what Charles Taylor calls the
Nova effect.
But in our time it's just partof what Cheryl Stahler calls the
Nova effect.
Right, the explosion of newways of believing, or what Tara
Isabella Burton will talk aboutin her book Strange Rites.
Right, intuitive religion andhow we encounter people kind of
remixing things from a littleover here in Christianity a
(47:14):
little over here in Kabbalah,judaism and a little over here
and Neo-Paganism and then therest of it, with some crystals
or soul cycle, right andexercise and just sort of the
things that we commit our livesto and certain other ways.
There's an openness to thisthat gives us a space to connect
(47:41):
, to reach in in ways thatsimply have to be friendly,
antagonistic, non-antagonisticand curious, rather than, you
know, always trying to come atthese people and be like, well,
you're wrong, you're wrong, Ican't talk to you until you fix
your views, or or simply to beafraid of talking with them at
all because you're worried thatthey're going to infect you.
I, I love the idea of the powergoing out from Jesus in the
(48:02):
encounter with the hemorrhagingwoman.
She touched his cloak and hefelt it.
I wonder if us Christians mightnot be better off taking a
different tact, that, as theHoly Spirit leads us, power
might go out from us toinfluence and affect these lives
.
We confess the word neverreturns to God, void.
(48:22):
Let's just try it out, you know.
Let's preach the word, let'sshare the word, let's introduce
people to Jesus in subtle,winsome, gentle ways, right, not
shove it down your throat sortsof ways Be attuned to when
they're ready right.
Use your God-given gifts ofdiscernment and empathy, but use
(48:43):
those opportunities right.
Paul advises us to do that.
Don't miss an opportunity.
Be wise in the way that youwalk toward outsiders.
And so I wonder about thespiritual openness of our age,
and and what a more ancient,more truthful, more stable story
(49:03):
might do for people whoexperienced this sort of
openness.
I don't know if that's entirelyan answer to the question that
you set me up with, tim, but ahundred percent.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
No, it's great.
Well, we're just about at time.
Um, you need to get the booklistener.
He goes into as I listened toyou.
How many books has this guy?
Speaker 4 (49:22):
read.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
You are so well read Chad, it's so amazing.
Anyway, how to avoid mistakesthat prevent engagement.
I'd love for you to just talkjust briefly on one of these.
So one of the mistakes we needto keep in mind is that love
does not always equalaffirmation.
Keep in mind is that love doesnot always equal affirmation.
(49:43):
Another one is disagreementdoes not equal hate I'm flipping
through here.
The other one is people.
We talked about this in theother podcast.
People do not equal their ideas, opinions or beliefs.
That's the third.
You got a couple more.
Association does not equaladvocacy for that person and
engagement does not equalendorsement.
Any of those that you're like,I don't think we've talked at
(50:03):
any depth on one or more of them.
Can you talk about one of them?
Just cliff note version that wehaven't touched on.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
Yeah, I mean real quick.
What was the fourth one?
Association does not equaladvocacy.
Advocacy, yep, yeah.
I think there are a lot ofChristians who are afraid and
very confused about what to dowhen it comes to relating to
somebody in their life that'sLGBTQIA, etc.
Right, especially when it's afamily member or a close friend.
(50:31):
Do I go to that wedding?
Do I have them over for dinner?
Do we stay friends?
Like what do we do?
I think we've not been great inthe church at large of giving
guidance to that and to me.
The primary thing that I seefrom Jesus is he never let an
issue prevent a relationship.
Right, I don't have to agree,but I don't have to stop
(50:51):
associating with them, and myassociation with them doesn't
mean that I am all rah-rah forthe thing that they want me to
be for when, if they take me forwho I am and my authenticity
and I'm taking them for who theyare and their authenticity.
Here's where we are at themoment at a point of
disagreement, but they know,ultimately, that I haven't cut
off my relationship with them,because I deeply love them and
care for them, and maybe myrelationship with them over the
(51:15):
long haul is one of the onlyauthentic gospel witnesses that
they're going to have in theirlife.
Who am I to cut them off fromaccess to the Father in that way
?
And so I just want to, you know, help people feel free not to
cut those sorts of relationshipsoff, and do it for the sake of
keeping a relationship, becauseit might be a gateway for God to
(51:39):
share his love with them.
Association doesn't equaladvocacy.
It's a category mistake, butit's based, I think, on the fear
of that slippery slope that Italked about earlier.
Give an inch, you give a mileRight.
And the labeling, the quickcategorization that tends to
happen.
The labeling, the quickcategorization that tends to
(52:02):
happen.
And so people are afraid tomaintain relationships because
they don't want other people toget the wrong idea about who
they are and what they think orbelieve.
Golly, how many of us are likethat right?
How many of us areself-censoring in our time, not
sharing all that we think orbelieve because we don't want to
be misread, misinterpreted andmislabeled?
It's tough, these are darktimes, in a sense like that, and
(52:25):
so I'm trying to shine somelight.
Speaker 2 (52:27):
Yeah, no.
And I think if you just hangout with people that like see
the world the exact same way,that agree on everything and
you're like in lockstep, thatsounds remarkably boring to me
thing.
And you're like in lockstep,that sounds remarkably boring to
me Like I think it's boring toJesus.
Like Jesus chose this group ofa variety of different
characters, you know, from theover the top Peter to the money
(52:50):
strategist.
And like Jesus chose these guys.
Peter's a zealot, for goodnesssake.
You know he's way far from thekingdom and yet Jesus drew him
near.
The Holy Spirit changed them.
Was the early church messy?
Is our church still messy today?
Do we live and do ministry?
I remember getting out Chad andhaving a number of pastors,
professors, say hey, man, youlearned a lot of great stuff,
(53:11):
it's good, but watch out right,the devil's in the details of
how that word, those, thosetruths get lived out.
Will it be a heavy handed,dictatorial, control ridden
perspective, like that doesn'twork in a local church.
Or will it be a kind,hospitable, like I can say the
right thing in the wrong way?
And Grandma Schmitke, everychurch has a Grandma Schmitke.
(53:34):
And Grandma Schmitke like slapsme up.
She doesn't really slap, butlike verbally, slaps me.
Like you need to be kind, tim,you need to be, and you close
with these three kind of goalsfor the resilient church.
I think it's so helpful.
You need to be tolerant ofdifferent perspectives, you need
to be humble.
You may know a little about alittle.
You don't know a lot about alot.
(53:54):
So you've got a lot more tolearn, son, and then patient
with one another.
Anything more to add to thosethree kind of goals for closing?
Speaker 3 (54:03):
this conversation.
Yeah, the one that I was mostworried about and as I wrote
that you know that would bemisinterpreted is the language
of tolerance, is another one ofthose dangerous things to talk
about.
It's kind of a swear wordwithin, you know, conservative
Christendom, and it has been fora while, but I come from it
from this angle.
We live in a pluralistic world.
(54:23):
It's just an empirical realitythat we cannot do away with.
So we've got to find a waythrough it, and so I think if we
want to be able to have theright to share the gospel and
preach the good news and tellthe truth in the way that we do,
to live as authentic Christians, faithfully before Jesus and
before the eyes of the watchingworld, then the only way that we
(54:46):
can rightfully ask for that isto make space for other people
to live in completely contraryways.
Right, and I think we get themodel of this from God himself.
He is not insecure, he's justnot right.
He lets us ask him questions,he lets us yell at him, he lets
us be angry with his ways, andstill he challenges us to follow
(55:12):
and believe anyway.
And then you get Jesus whocomes along and, just like you
said he called a bunch of frail,fickle, feeble, weak human
beings to be the ones whostarted his movement and spread
the good news in that part ofthe world.
And you know what?
He's shockingly called us frail, feeble, fickle, weak, fallible
(55:39):
human beings to do the samedarn thing.
It's not going to look pretty,but somehow God's going to use
our mess to get his work done.
Speaker 2 (55:48):
Amen, amen.
This has been so much fun, chad.
Thank you for the last twohours we've got to spend
together.
Time has flown by, jack.
Any final comments on ourconversation today?
It's been fun flown by Jack.
Speaker 4 (56:00):
Any final comments on our conversation today?
It's been fun.
No, I mean just on these lastcomments here.
You know, sinners belong inchurch and because I belong in
church, I'm a sinner.
I belong there, right?
So we need to show that samelove and kind of recognize, in
humility, whatever type of sin aperson's carrying along in
their life, including, you know,different belief backgrounds
and people just trying to learnwhat it means to believe in God.
(56:22):
Like we should be the mostinviting place.
And, like you said, invitationis not affirmation, right, yeah,
yeah, yeah, you know,hospitality does not mean that
we are approving, that weendorse any type of sin,
including our own sins, right,it just means we are inviting
(56:44):
sinners into church, where everysingle one belongs, and that's
our goal.
You know a vision to see everysinner in church.
Speaker 3 (56:51):
I absolutely agree.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
Yeah, hey, this has been great.
If you haven't picked up thebook, please do so.
How the Light Shines ThroughResilient Witness in Dark Times,
and it's been a joy.
This is lead time.
Please, like, subscribe, please, please do hit the subscribe
button wherever it is thatyou're taking this in.
Youtube continues to work on thealgorithm and for the book, if
(57:14):
you would go and leave a Googlereview, an Amazon review, all
those types of things, thatreally, really helps get the
message of this needed work ofliterature out into the wider,
wider church and I'm praying,beyond.
Again, I applaud CPH Great.
I know they were awesome towork with Great people over
there.
That influences not just theLutheran Church Missouri Synod
(57:34):
but even beyond the LutheranChurch Missouri Synod, just our
work in the world, especiallyhere in the West, as we're
walking through dark, hard times.
The light of Jesus he is thelight of the world and then we
have been called to be a lightset on a hill to shine the light
of Christ out into the darkness, and we do so with love and
respect and I'm praying that,based on this conversation,
(57:57):
humility just wins the day as weenter into conversation with
people who are on their way toJesus pre-Christians.
They're on the way to Jesus.
They're not the pagan, outlier,secular person.
They're a person for whom Jesusloves, for whom his image has
been placed upon, for whom theGod of the universe wants a
relationship with.
And somehow he wants to use usfeeble, weak.
I love that.
(58:18):
As you're closing, yeah, smallpeople to do his great, great
work.
It's a humbling thing.
It's a good day.
Go make it a great day.
Wonderful work, jack.
Thanks, chad.
Speaker 3 (58:28):
God bless you.
Thanks for having me, tim andJack.
It was such a greatconversation.
I really enjoyed it, privilegedto be here, likewise.
Speaker 1 (58:34):
You've been listening listening to Lead Time, a
podcast of the Unite LeadershipCollective.
The ULC's mission is tocollaborate with the local
church to discover, develop anddeploy leaders through biblical
Lutheran doctrine and innovativemethods To partner with us in
this gospel message.
Subscribe to our channel, thengo to theuniteleadershiporg to
create your free login forexclusive material and resources
(58:57):
and then to explore ways inwhich you can sponsor an episode
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Thanks for listening and staytuned for next week's episode.
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