February 15, 2021 • 53 mins
We live in a secular age where distraction is all the rage. So says Alan Noble, author of the book Disruptive Witness. He discusses the forces in our society that make contemplation of spiritual matters difficult and gives some ideas for how Christians can break through the distractions to provide a powerful witness the world. Also in this episode: We find out about the glorious career Alan might have had if things turned out differently.
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Jon Guerra (00:07):
I have a heart full of questions quieting all my
suggestions.
What is the meaning of Christianin this American life?
I'm feeling awfully foolishspending my life on a message.
I look around and I wonder everif I heard it right.
Amy Mantravadi (00:27):
Welcome to the (A)Millennial podcast, where we
have theological conversationsfor today's world.
I'm your host, Amy Mantravadi,coming to you from Dayton, Ohio,
home to the nation's onlyproduction brewery in a museum.
If you're Southern Baptist, nowwould be a good time to cover
your ears.
The Carillon Brewing Company isa living history museum that
uses the techniques andequipment of the 1850s to
(00:48):
produce its beers.
These are served in a hall whereyou can see the brewers at work
in period clothing.
It Is also a full servicerestaurant offering up foods
reflective of Dayton's Germanimmigrant heritage.
I don't drink beer myself, but Ivery much enjoy their soups.
If you're in town, be sure tostop by and tell them I sent you
just so you can hear them say,"Who?" Today, I'll be speaking
with Alan Noble, author of thebook Disruptive Witness:
(01:10):
Speaking Truth in a DistractedAge.
In it, he considers some of thechallenges that the modern world
presents for sharing theChristian faith, not the least
of which is that people are toodistracted to give much thought
to the deep things of life.
He has some suggestions for howwe can break through the
never-ending distractions ofthis age to provide a beneficial
disruption to the mindsets ofthose who do not know Christ.
He also has some ideas for howwe can better orient Christian
(01:33):
practice to focus ourselves onthe eternal.
At this point in the podcast, Itypically read a passage of
scripture that relates to theday's topic, but I'm going to
deviate ever so slightly fromthat pattern today.
I will read to you instead froma 12th century devotional work
by Bernard of Clairvaux calledOn Loving God.
In it, he said something that Ithink is very applicable to our
modern world and the points Alanraises in his book.
(01:57):
"If you wish to attain to theconsummation of all desire so
that nothing unfulfilled will beleft, why weary yourself with
fruitless efforts running hitherand thither only to die long
before the goal is reached?
It is so that these impious oneswander in a circle, longing
after something to gratify theiryearnings, yet madly rejecting
that which alone can bring themto their desired end, not by
(02:19):
exhaustion, but by attainment.
They wear themselves out in vaintravail without reaching their
blessing consummation, becausethey delight in creatures, not
in the Creator.
They want to traverse creation,trying all things one by one,
rather than think of coming tohim, who is Lord of all.
And if their utmost longing wererealized so that they should
have all the world for theirown, yet without possessing him
(02:41):
who was the author of all being,then the same law of their
desires would make them condemnwhat they had and restlessly
seek him whom they still lack: that is, God himself. (02:47):
undefined
Rest is in him alone.
Man knows no peace in the world,but he has no disturbance when
he is with God." Bernard isright.
When we chase after the millionthings of this world that occupy
our attention, we end up weariedand unsatisfied.
But when we place our hope inand direct our worship toward
(03:08):
the one who created us, we havelasting peace.
Keeping that in mind, let's moveon to today's discussion.
Jon Guerra (03:12):
[MUSIC PLAYS]
Amy Mantravadi (03:24):
And I'm here with Dr.
Alan Noble.
He received his bachelor's andmaster's degrees at California
State University- Bakersfieldand his PhD from Baylor
University.
He's the editor-in-chief ofChrist and Pop Culture.
He's on the leadership councilof The AND Campaign, and his
writing has been published byBuzzfeed, The Atlantic, The
(03:45):
Gospel Coalition, Vox,Christianity Today, Modern
Reformation, and First Things,and he is currently the
assistant professor of Englishat Oklahoma Baptist University.
You can find him on Twitter andMedium@thealannoble and on
Facebook and Instagram@oalannoble.
So thank you so much for joiningme today.
(04:07):
I'm really looking forward totalking about your book.
Alan Noble (04:10):
Yeah, I'm excited.
Thanks.
Amy Mantravadi (04:12):
It's my understanding that before you
were a professor of English andevangelical thought leader, you
were somewhat of a big deal inthe world of hip hop.
Is that correct?
Alan Noble (04:26):
Very little of that is correct, but it's true that I
did record two hip hop albumsbefore I got my PhD.
Yes, that is true.
And we performed some shows, butno big deal.
Unfortunately, it was not to be.
Amy Mantravadi (04:49):
Oh, well, I'm sorry to hear that.
But I mean, if ever thisevangelical thought leader thing
doesn't work out for you, atleast you have a fallback
career.
Alan Noble (05:01):
I mean, for real though, every once in a while,
when grading gets overwhelming,I think wistfully, you know,
"It'd be nice to just spend$10,000, which I don't have, on
recording equipment and maybe dohip hop or produce or post-rock
post-punk, or, you know- I don'tknow.
(05:21):
Various genres interest me thatI would love to be in
instrumental music and things,and then I realize that I've got
to pay bills, and so I'm like,"Iguess I'll grade some- fix these
comma splices."
Amy Mantravadi (05:32):
Well, it's just nice to hear about people's past
lives before they became what weknow them as today.
If at any point today, you wantto deliver your answer in the
form of a rap or some otherspoken word genre, feel free to
do so.
Alan Noble (05:51):
Yeah.
Thanks.
Amy Mantravadi (05:53):
So getting now to the real topic of our
discussion today, in this book,you draw a lot upon the writings
of the philosopher CharlesTaylor, whose work A Secular
Age, published in 2007, has beenparticularly influential on
Christian scholars in theReformed and evangelical world.
Taylor uses a couple of termsthat pop up often in your own
book (06:15):
one is"immanent frame," and the other is"buffered self."
So particularly for those of uswho maybe aren't as familiar
with that book, could youprovide some basic definitions
for those terms and explain howthey fit in with your book?
Alan Noble (06:32):
Yes.
So they are related concepts.
What Taylor is trying to do isgive an account of how it is the
case that we could go in theWest from a situation in which
in, let's say 1500, it wasperfectly natural and the basic
assumption that you'd be raisedChristian, to the point where we
(06:55):
are today, in the year 2021,where belief in God is possible,
but it's only one of manypossible belief systems
available to us.
And he says something like it'sincreasingly the less plausible
for most people.
So he's trying to give anaccount of what happened.
How did things change?
(07:15):
One of the ways he sees thingschanging, as he says that for
virtually all modern people, welive in what he calls the
"immanent frame," and you canthink about this as the natural
world or the strictly materialworld.
Now he talks about it as a framebecause he says even Christians
(07:37):
and other people who believe insomething transcendent- the
spiritual realm, that humans arebody and spirit, somebody who
believes in a magic let's say,or any kind of supernatural or
transcendent ideas- they'restill in the immanent frame.
It's just that he says thatthese people live in what would
he call the"open immanentframe." The example I like to
(07:59):
give is of rainbows.
I found this to be a helpfulexample.
When contemporary people,Christian or non-Christian, see
a rainbow, I think they havethree basic reactions.
The first is they sort of elbowwhoever's next to them and say,
"Hey, look, there's a rainbow."So just a recognition of awe in
the face of beauty.
(08:19):
The second possibility is theytake out their phone and take a
picture and post on social mediaand say,"Hey, look, here's a
rainbow," and so there we'remediating our experience with
nature.
And the third possibility is wemight say,"Oh, wow, rainbows.
I remember from third grade howrainbows are made.
I think it's something likelight reflecting and humidity or
(08:42):
water." I'm not really sure.
I teach English and I washomeschooled, so I don't
actually know how rainbows aremade, but I think that we think
of the natural explanation ofit, right?
What am I seeing?
How is it caused?
What causes it, physically?
What's interesting is I think,as I said, secular people,
people who are not Christiansand Christians, have those
(09:03):
similar reactions to rainbows,even though for Christians, the
rainbow is literally a sign fromGod to us.
And I think if you were to ask aChristian, you're asking the
average evangelical in yourchurch,"Hey, is the rainbow a
sign from God, that he's notgoing to flood the entire earth
again?" they'd say,"Yeah.
Yeah.
I remember that because Iremember that in Sunday school
(09:24):
or I remember reading thatpassage." So yes, conceptually,
we see that.
Okay.
But when they experience therainbow, when they experience
the physical world, theyexperience it not as something
that has a direct connection tothe transcendent- to God- but as
something in this world, purelyimmanent, purely in this
(09:45):
immanent frame.
So that's the immanent frame.
It's our default setting (09:48):
the default way we move through our
modern world.
We tend to think of things inpurely physical, materialist
terms.
Even if we believe in religiousideas, our default setting is
not to think about them astouching the transcendent.
And that's a problem with- Wewant to believe in the existence
(10:10):
of a living, loving God, who isa personal God who interacts
with us.
The buffered self is related tothis.
The immanent frame is part ofwhat allows for the buffered
self.
The best way to understand thebuffered self is to think about
what Taylor calls"the porousself," which is the sort of
medieval and ancientunderstanding of what it meant
(10:31):
to be a person in those times.
You would expect that there arethings that could, we could say,
get to you.
So for example, if you went tocertain places, spirits could
affect you.
If you did certain things, youcould have some sort of a
spiritual reaction movingthrough the world.
For example, there would besacred times and sacred places,
(10:53):
cathedrals, sites, saints'bones, all these things that
could affect you.
Now, what happens with the riseof the Enlightenment is that
people become, Taylor says, moreand more stuck in our heads so
that we're more rationalist.
And as a result, we tend tothink of ourselves as buffered,
(11:14):
as protected.
So we can allow things toinfluence us if we choose, but
it's always a choice.
There's nothing out there thatcan force me to believe in
certain things.
And so one example that I liketo think of is Communion.
When I take the Lord's Supper, Ibelieve that it's a means of
grace (11:33):
that God is Christ is actually ministering to me in
some spiritual sense, and Idon't understand exactly what
that is and it's not dependentupon me understanding it.
God is affecting me whether Iunderstand it properly or not.
And I think sometimes I've takencommunion, not in doubt, but in
(11:55):
a kind of ignorance orconfusion, feelings of guilt.
Am I good enough to take this,right?
Which is bad theology, but wedon't always believe good
theology.
We don't always feel goodtheology, I should say.
So many times I've come to thetable and I've thought.
"I'm not good enough to receivethis." And the beautiful thing,
(12:16):
is that in taking the Lord'sSupper, God is ministering to
me, even though there's nothingI'm doing to earn it.
Even when I have these doubtsabout my own worth, God has
ministered to me because he'sthe one that's acting.
He's the one that's faithful.
So that's a porous self.
That's the idea of the porousself instead of the buffered
self.
(12:36):
The buffered self goes to thetable and says,"Well, if I elect
to this will have a certaineffect, if I don't elect, then
it won't," right?
The buffered self imagines thatyour human consciousness is in
command of your feelings, youremotions, your experiences, your
meaning, your value, all ofthese sorts of things.
Yes.
(12:56):
So those are those two terms.
Amy Mantravadi (13:00):
Yeah, thank you.
I think that makes it a lot moreclear and you do discuss some of
that in your book, of course,but I just thought given their
importance in your book, thosewould be two good terms to focus
on.
Another scholar you draw from isJames K.A.
Smith, whose Cultural Liturgiesseries makes the argument that,
in the words of another one ofhis books, You Are What You
(13:20):
Love.
Like him, you make the pointthat our habits influence our
loves and in turn our beliefs.
How have some of the changesthat have occurred in Church
practice over the past centuryor so influenced the overall
mindset and loves of Christians?
Alan Noble (13:36):
Yeah, this is a great question because for a
couple of reasons, but one isthat it ties back to this idea
of the buffered self.
So if we think of ourselves asbuffered, then really the only
important thing is what goes onin our heads.
It doesn't really matter whatour habits are, our practices.
I mean, we shouldn't be sinning,let's say: all right, we all
agree about that.
But our church practices or whatwe do, our liturgy, isn't really
(14:00):
important.
What's really important is theideas.
That's how contemporary peopletoo often think, and that is
directly related to whatTaylor's talking about with this
buffered self.
If we are buffered selfs, allthat matters is that we have
right thinking or rightdoctrine, and what we do with
our bodies doesn't reallymatter.
And what Smith and others arepointing to is that actually
(14:23):
liturgy does matter.
What we do with our bodies isimportant- that it shapes what
we love.
As an example, there are so manyin the Church and in church
services, but I think thepassing of the peace or greeting
one another, hugging one anotherin church.
I mean, we're still in themiddle of the pandemic, so it
(14:43):
kind of feels weird- it feelswrong.
But that vulnerability oflooking at your neighbor, your
brother and sister in Christ andembracing them, and
acknowledging,"The peace ofChrist be with you, I'm passing
the peace of Christ.
We are sharing in this.
We are united through Christ andthere is something physical to
that." And it helps shape ourloves because quite honestly, it
(15:07):
is the case, at least for me-sometimes you look at the pew
next to you and you think,"Idon't particularly like those
people.
I mean, I don't hate them oranything, but you know, they're
not my people.
Yeah, we're not into the samethings.
They have different politicalviews than me.
We go to the same church.
Hey, that's great, but I don'twant to greet them.
(15:30):
I don't want to hug them.
I don't want to shake theirhands either.
But here, this part of theliturgy breaks us out of ourself
and says,"No, you know what?
It doesn't really matter whatyou think, ok?
It doesn't matter what you feel.
You are a part of this body."Singing is a similar thing.
Singing is bodily, right?
We're using our voices.
(15:52):
And Paul calls us to encourageone another: to exhort each
other with hymns and spiritualsongs.
And so that means that I don'thave the option to just be in my
head when it's worship time.
I'll tell you, when I wasyounger and attending a very
different church in California,the music was so loud and
(16:13):
frankly so tacky that I foundmyself thinking,"I don't
actually need to sing.
Why am I singing?
I don't even like the lyrics.
The music is corny.
It's way too loud.
My neighbors can't hear my voiceanyway.
I'm just not going to sing, andto avoid having really bitter
thoughts, because I don't likethis worship style, I'm just
(16:33):
going to pray or I'm going tosay the words of a song in my
head that I do agree with." Sofor me at that time, this is
what Charles Taylor calls"excarnation." The only part of
the worship that mattered wasthe part that happened in my
brain, right?
The worship just happened in mybrain.
It had no external manifestationat all, but since then, I've
(16:53):
come to realize that that'sdisobedient.
I am called to sing.
Now, that means that the musichas to be quiet enough or the
volume has to be low enough thatother people can hear each other
singing, so that we canencourage each other.
But there is something thathappens when we do that.
There is something powerful thathappens.
It does shape our loves.
Amy Mantravadi (17:16):
Yeah, I think those are some good examples.
One phenomenon that I'vedefinitely witnessed in having
conversations with people isthat they often seem to have
little sense of the backgroundphilosophical assumptions behind
their declarations and how thoseassumptions may in fact
contradict one another.
And as someone who's on Twittera lot, this is something that
(17:38):
comes up on Twitter a lot.
So you discuss this in your bookand note that our distraction is
partly to blame because we'retaking in so much information at
such a pace and responding soemotionally to it all that
there's little room left fordeep thought, and we tend to
pick up bits and pieces ofbelief here and there resulting
(17:58):
in a hodgepodge system.
You also hit on the fact thatmuch of what we do is actually
about signaling our identity toothers as much as anything else.
For example, you write that,"Identity formation becomes the
central concern in our beliefs,or just another way we
articulate that identity.
Since we hold these beliefsloosely, we have less cognitive
(18:22):
dissonance when picking andchoosing beliefs that contradict
one another.
A lack of reflection makes iteasier for us to hold
contradictory beliefs, but nowwe see that our secular age
contributes to this condition byleveling beliefs." Obviously
this has an impact on how weshare our faith with others and
help them to understand thetruths of Christianity.
(18:44):
How might such a conversation bedifferent in the 21st century
than it was in the 19th or evenin the 20th century?
Alan Noble (18:54):
In the beginning 20th century, you still had a
great number of people who sawChristianity as a viable belief
system, and who still believedin the possibility of there
being truth that is accessiblethrough reason and reflection
(19:17):
and meditation- these sorts ofthings.
In other words, you still hadpeople- and I'm thinking of the
literature because that's what Ido- the modernist poets, someone
like T.S.
Eliot or novelists like Faulkneror F.
Scott Fitzgerald, they might notknow what the transcendent truth
is, but they believed it was outthere: like we could, if we work
(19:39):
hard enough- maybe we can getthere.
And what happens through the20th century through
postmodernism, which is less amovement than a description of
what our society goes through, Ithink most people lose that
faith that there is an ultimatetruth out there, and instead we
(19:59):
do have our subjectiveexperiences and values.
So I think in the we're in theearlier 20th century, it would
be easier to have aconversation, and also the 19th
century, certainly easier tohave a meaningful conversation
with somebody about the truthsof faith, and maybe h ere formal
(20:21):
apologetics would be or what wethink of traditional apologetics
would be helpful (20:25):
talking about reliability of scriptures and
these sorts of things, argumentsfor the existence of God.
Those might've been, I think,more effective, but my fear is
that today, when people hearthose traditional arguments,
that they don't actuallyinterpret what we're saying as
(20:47):
an argument for objective truth-this is the one truth- but
instead they s ee, as I say inthe book, us posturing a
lifestyle.
What we're really saying- theyinterpret us- is that this is
what we find very satisfying,and so maybe you would find it
satisfying, just like peoplewill say- people who are into
CrossFit w ill be like,"Hey,come on.
(21:10):
This changed my life.
You've got to come join this."And there's a kind of evangelism
that goes on, r ight?
A proselytizing.
"Hey, come.
This is o kay.
" Or the other one I'd like topick on is essential oils.
"You got to try this.
This will revolutionize yourlife." And our appeal is,"This w
orked for me, so it's g oing t owork for you." And I'm not
(21:33):
saying that that when Christiansevangelize, that is the
conversation that we areintending to have, but I do
suspect that many times, that ishow we are heard when we g o
give testimonies.
People perceive them as anothermarketing pitch, as another
lifestyle on offering beforethem, which they can pick up if
(21:56):
it sounds appetizing orappealing or not, and so that
creates the challenge.
That's at the heart of thisbook: the argument of creating a
kind of disruptive witness,which isn't a specific thing.
There's not a specific method ofdoing this, although I give some
suggestions.
Instead, it involves, I think,the recognition that our hearers
(22:21):
are probably not going to hearthings the way we intend them,
because we live in a secular ageand they don't think in terms of
God actually existing.
And so part of our challengewith that background information
is inviting them to questiontheir presuppositions, inviting
them to- as you read thatpassage about the fact that we f
(22:45):
ail to reflect- inviting peopleto reflect intentionally.
Saying,"Consider this.
Spend some time just meditating-considering this possibility."
But I also think we need to lookfor opportunities where the
cracks in the secular world arerevealed.
Taylor says that all modernpeople feel across pressure.
(23:10):
So on one hand, we're being pulled towards secularism.
We want to think in just interms of the immanent frame:
there is no God, it's just usdown here living our lives,
living our best l ives.
But then he says t hat we'realso always pulled to the fact
that this is inadequate, that itdoesn't satisfy us, t hat
there's a kind of emptiness, akind of longing.
Well, I think for Christianspointing to that longing,
(23:33):
pointing to that pole,emphasizing a nd inviting people
to spend time in it a s anopportunity to disrupt their way
of thinking about faith, andwhether that is- in the book, I
talk a lot about- beauty andsuffering, I think are two of
the most potent ways- when you experience great beauty or joy in
(23:53):
life, then you recognize, Ithink, that what you're
experiencing is not just animmanent thing.
It's not just a this worldthing.
It can't just be explainedthrough evolutionary biology and
psychology.
I think that the birth of achild, for example, i s this
kind of experience where youthink,"This means something that
I can't articulate, and I coulddescribe all the medical things
(24:16):
that are going on, all thebiological things that are going
on right now, and I couldexplain the process of how
evolution brought us to this,but it still would not get at
the meaning of this event, thebirth of this human being.
And death, I think- this issimilar t o suffering.
Suffering i s similar.
You can say,"Well, here's therational, empirical explanation
(24:36):
of what death is," but you'releft feeling that something is
missing.
And I think those areopportunities for Christians to
step in and say,"Well, you feelsomething's missing because
something is missing, and thething is God, b ecause he made
you for eternity and he made youin his image." And that's why
birth is so miraculous and deathis tragic in a specific way."
Amy Mantravadi (25:01):
You write that in many cases in our culture,
Christianity is considered, asyou just noted, another
lifestyle choice among manyrather than something rooted in
historical fact with eternalimplications.
It seems to me that certaintendencies of the evangelical
church have tended to exacerbatethis, such as our abandonment of
(25:22):
traditional forms of worship andemphasis on doctrine, and those
are two things that you've alsomentioned here.
The standard narrative that hastaken hold in recent decades is
that people are abandoningtraditional established
denominations fornon-denominational or broadly
evangelical churches, butthere's also a move of people in
the opposite direction (25:41):
out of more generically evangelical
churches and into those thatseem to have more of a
connection with historictheology and practice along with
more of a high church liturgy.
Have you witnessed this lattertrend, what would be your
thoughts about it, and should weexpect it to increase in the
coming years?
Personally, I've seen ithappening with a lot of my
(26:03):
friends.
Alan Noble (26:05):
Yes, me too.
I mean, that's my story.
I mean, I went to charismaticand non-denominational churches
in California that wereuntethered from tradition, that
had a very low view of doctrine,or if they didn't have a low
view of doctrine, they werestill very shallow
(26:25):
traditionally, so their liturgywas very low church.
We would never recite a creed: the A postle's Creed, the Nicene (26:29):
undefined
Creed.
We would not c ite catechisms.
There was no sense of history.
And I began attending aPresbyterian Church of America
when my wife and I moved to Wacofor- we pursued our graduate
degrees.
(26:50):
And it was weird at first, butit very soon felt like home.
It felt like the right thing.
N ow, I think part of what wasgoing on was that both my wife
and I felt a kind of emptiness,a kind of phoniness, a kind of
plastic plasticity, the thinnessof evangelicalism nod at us- the
(27:13):
thinness of evangelicalism nodat us- and part of that has to
do with the fact that it's soshifting.
There is not a strong corecenter.
There's the Bible, but there'slots of different
interpretations and it doesn'tseem like there's anything
sturdy to it.
(27:33):
And the fact that you have anexploding number of
denominations and non-denominational churches.
I attended a number of churcheswhere people who never went to
seminary- they just read theBible a lot and then decided I'm
going to be a pastor, and thenall of a sudden they were a
pastor.
Those kinds of things to me noware sort of mind boggling.
Well, in the modern world-There's a great philosopher
(27:56):
named Zygmunt Bauman.
He's great, mostly because hisname is Zygmunt Bauman, but he
also has some really good thingsto say.
He wrote a fabulous book calledLiquid Modernity, and in it, he
argues that our time- the bestway to understand the world that
we're living in is as a liquidstate.
Nothing is solid.
Everything is shifting.
Values are shifting.
Beliefs are shifting.
(28:16):
I dentity, belonging, places areshifting.
Everything is constantlyshifting, and so that gives you
a kind of anxiety.
I mean, if you think about beingon a ship, there's a kind of
anxiety.
Why can't I feel safe?
Why can't I feel sturdy andsecure?
Well, that's because everything's shifting under your
feet constantly, and sometimesevangelicalism feels like that.
(28:37):
And so when you're tapping into-whether it's Presbyterianism or
Lutheranism or Anglicanism, or Ihad a number of friends who
became Catholic- I think part ofwhat's happening is they realize
this society is sick.
This unmoored floating beliefsystems that appeal to the
(28:59):
individual, this is not right.
We need something that has a sure foundation, and I would say
more liturgical churches aretapping into that, and I know a
number of Baptist churches whoare trying to recover those
things.
So even though it's not a partof most Southern Baptist
(29:20):
liturgies to recite the creeds,they're saying,"Hey, we need to
go back.
We need to do that.
That needs to be a part of whatwe're doing, because we are part
of this long tradition.
We are grounded in somethingthat goes beyond the
contemporary brandings ofdenominations." So that's my
take on what what's going on.
Amy Mantravadi (29:42):
And of course, there's no such thing as a
perfect church or denomination,so sometimes you'll see the
movement is brought about bypeople who have had particularly
bad experiences, not evenbecause of anything doctrine or
in terms of practice, but justthey've had"church hurt," as
some people put it.
(30:03):
And sometimes looking to thathistoric tradition, it can be
seen as something, like yousaid, that is likely less likely
to give way to one person'sauthoritarianism because it's
rooted in something much deeperwith more accountability.
But I think more even than justlooking at which particular
(30:26):
denominations are gaining orlosing, the fact that people are
feeling the need to go in thesedifferent directions does say
something about what's missingin our overall culture and the
way that we're practicingChristianity in the United
States and beyond.
In your book, you ask Christiansto reconsider how we think about
(30:46):
time.
Although many people may not beaware of it, we've moved away
from the historic Christiannotion of time rooted in the
liturgical calendar and thedivide between the secular and
sacred, or ordinary time andhigher time, into understandings
of time that are entirely rootedin a modern, scientific
understanding championed byIsaac Newton and others.
(31:09):
So this would perhaps be a goodexample of the immanent frame as
opposed to the non-immanentframe.
So you write in your book thatin viewing time as raw material,
we reject the idea that time mayhave meaning in itself: that it
may be more than a measurementof intervals, but contain truths
(31:29):
that place obligations on us toact in certain ways." What have
we lost in relying solely uponmodern notions of time, and how
can the Church take steps torestoring our thinking about
time and eternity?
And I'll just add that assomeone who writes novels set in
the 12th century, and I'mconstantly having to refer to
(31:51):
the liturgical calendar to knowwhat's going on in my
character's life, that's helpedto make me appreciate how
different our thinking abouttime is now than it was then.
So what do you think about thatand what are some steps that
maybe the Church can take, orshould we indeed be trying to go
back to previous notions oftime?
It seems like you feel that weshould.
Alan Noble (32:12):
Yes.
I mean, I would say there'sreally no going back.
This is part of the challenge ofsecularism is that there's no
proper going back, and Taylormakes this pretty clear: that we
can't go back to a state wherethe i mmanent frame is not the
way we think of things.
We can't go t o back to a placewhere everyone thinks of
themselves as a porous self-that these understandings, these
(32:36):
postures, these conceptions oflife are so deeply rooted in our
society, even our technology.
So time is a great example ofthis.
We're not going to get rid ofthe watch, but in t he medieval
world where church bells rangthe times, people thought of
time differently.
(32:57):
They conceive of timedifferently.
We can't go back from that,right?
I mean, even if you becamedictator of the world that said,
"All right, all t he clocks aregone." It just can't happen.
It can't happen.
Amy Mantravadi (33:11):
Yeah.
It seems like there would besome negative consequences of
that, potentially.
Alan Noble (33:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
So what can we do?
Well, I think there are somereasonable things that we can do
that push back, I think- ways ofresisting, I would say, so that
the reign of mechanical timeisn't total over our lives.
That's the way of putting itright.
We want to resist so that thereign of mechanical time is not
total over our lives (33:38):
that there are spaces where we're pushing
back.
I think Sabbath rest is onegreat example of it.
Sabbath rest is- I talk about inthe book- is from a sacred
perspective, absurd.
It's inefficient, it'sgratuitous, it's a waste.
It's prodigal.
(33:59):
It's a waste.
It's a waste of time.
If you spend your Sunday- let'ssay you go to church and you
spend time fellowshipping withfriends, having them over for
dinner, playing together- youknow, kids playing together-
spending time reading, nottrying to work, not trying to
labor, not trying to get aheadand make yourself a better
(34:19):
person or more financiallystable or more accomplished or
more improved in some way.
If you just rest in God's gracefor a day, that's radically
different than what the worldsays, because the world says,
"Look, you're going to die.
You've got very limited time.
You need to use every second tothe maximum advantage.
(34:43):
You constantly g otta beworking.
You constantly have to bestriving, improving yourself,
ok?
Maybe you don't go to work onSunday, but you should be
working out.
You should be reading thingsthat are going to improve your
productivity.
You're going to be doing thingsto make yourself a better
person.
So it's still always aboutefficiency a nd earning your
(35:06):
place in the world, where Ithink Sabbath r ests says,"G
od's got this." You c an justsit down and you c an just chill
and you can enjoy beauty, gooutside, go for a walk, just to
enjoy beauty- spend time withfriends, not in order to network
or not in order to rest yourmind so that you can be more
(35:27):
productive the next day at work,but just because it's good to be
with friends.
And so those are ways- settingtimes where you say, this is
what I'm going to do here, thatthis is a special time.
It's very difficult to do.
I have a hard time with it, tobe quite honest, because the d
emand, because the rest ofsociety does not think that way.
(35:47):
So it's difficult to resistbecause everyone else is like,
"Well, why aren't you working onthis?
Get to work! Do more!" And wehave to be able to say no.
So I think that's something- Ithink a lot of churches I
remember, o r actually, I don'tremember being a kid when I was
younger in evangelical churches,I remember no mention of Advent.
(36:10):
No one practised Advent that Iknew growing up.
It wasn't- Lent was- I neverheard of it, never heard of it
throughout my teenage years, andnow it's much more common i n
evangelical churches that aren'teven very liturgical to
recognize,"Hey, you know what?
(36:30):
The seasons are ways ofremembering, of acknowledging
God and acknowledging his storywith us." And so that's, I
think, another way of pushingback against that mechanical
time.
Amy Mantravadi (36:45):
Yeah.
I think those are a couple goodideas.
And particularly on the Sabbath,like you said, it is very hard,
if you want to be practicing theSabbath, depending on what that
means.
You know, it means differentthings to different people, but
the world around us is not atall set up to have a Sabbath.
So it just puts you into allkinds of practical difficulties
(37:08):
that- When I'm reading writingsby Christians of yore from
centuries past where they'retalking about all the things you
should or shouldn't do on theSabbath, I think,"Yeah, but your
whole society was doing this,"so it became very easy to just
say,"I'm not going to have mybusiness open or I'm not going
to do even things a lot smallerthan that," because everyone
(37:28):
else was doing them.
But now, maybe I have aconviction that I don't want to
be going out to a restaurantSunday, but none of my friends
feel that way, and they're allinviting me out to eat, and if I
say no, they're going to beoffended.
So it puts you into all thesesituations where you do feel
that pressure in both directionsand you have to kind of decide,
(37:50):
what does it look like to livefaithfully and practice the
Sabbath in our society?
Is it different than it wouldhave been in a previous one?
So, yeah, I think you hit onsome good things there.
In your book, particularly inthe latter third or so of the
book, you talk a lot about adouble movement that involves
turning from our observations ofGod's goodness to expressions of
(38:13):
gratitude.
Could you explain that a bitmore?
Alan Noble (38:17):
I wrote the book a long time ago, but here's what I
think I meant.
This has been a great interviewbecause as you read passages,
I'm like,"Hey, you know what,I'm glad I said that.
I believe that.
That's good.
Good for me."
Amy Mantravadi (38:34):
"I'm a pretty good writer.
I'm pretty clever."
Alan Noble (38:34):
"You know what?
That's nice-" Writing a book, asyou know, you just, you have no
idea what you're doing.
I mean, you do, but you don't.
You have no idea if it's aterrible idea or if it's making
any sense and then it's niceafterward.
Amy Mantravadi (38:45):
I have no idea what you're talking about.
I'm totally confident ineverything I'm doing.
Alan Noble (38:51):
But it's a good feeling afterwards, cause
sometimes you will go,"Oh, Iwrote that?
Well, good for me.
How about that?
What do you know?" In anycase...Yeah, so the idea of the
double movement- I'm trying topush back against the immanent
frame, and at the same time,push it back against our
distracted age, and both of whatthose things do is they keep us
(39:13):
in our heads.
They keep us from recognizingGod's presence in the world,
which should lead us togratitude and repentance and
dependence upon him.
And so in thinking through thesetwo problems, I couldn't come up
with- There's not a five pointplan to overcome secularism or a
(39:33):
five point plan to overcomedistraction, but it seemed to me
that there was one truthunderneath both of those
problems that I could recommend,and that is that if we make a
practice- a conscious,intentional practice of being
grateful to God for things- thatpractice pushes back against the
(39:55):
immanent frame, because it says,"This is not all that there is."
Okay?
And it also pushes back againstthis constant mediated, constant
distracted culture, which says,"Just focus on the immediate,
right?
Just focus on what's in front ofyou, what's on your screen,
what's on your plate.
What do you need to be workingon next?" So on and so forth.
(40:16):
And I guess what I would say isthat in our contemporary
culture, we're good at the firststep- so observing something
beautiful, something enjoyable,participating in something that
gives us pleasure.
But that second step, which iswe draw our eyes up to God in
gratitude, and we say,"Okay, nowI know where this good gift
comes from,"- I think secularismand distraction work against
(40:39):
that second movement.
We're less likely to do thatinstead.
We just reflect on our ownpleasure, our own enjoyment.
Yeah.
So that's what the doublemovements is about.
It's nothing mystical.
It's nothing revolutionary.
It's merely pointing out thefact that a major challenge of
living in the modern world isthat we are going to be
(41:01):
encouraged not to feel God'spresence, and so we are going to
have to be more intentionalabout recognizing when God's
presence is felt.
Amy Mantravadi (41:13):
Imagine that you were speaking to the mother of a
young child who also happens towrite novels and run a podcast
and who finds her opportunitiesfor the much prized quiet time
with God to be minimal.
How might such a hypotheticalperson find ways to break
through life's continualdistractions and focus on the
(41:34):
spiritual?
And I think this is the partwhere I'm supposed to say, you
know,"Asking for a friend."
Alan Noble (41:40):
I mean, I'll ask the same thing.
So one of the interesting- I'vegot two days, I think, to finish
my next book, and part of theinspiration for the second book
comes from that very question,because I've been asked it many
times, and as I thought about itand I reflected on it, it gave
(42:03):
me serious pause, because Irealized I don't have these
things figured out either.
And so then I began askingmyself,"Well, why is that the
case?" So I think some of it isbecause of a lack of willpower,
lack of self-control, sloth onmy own part.
Okay.
That's true.
But sometimes it's because thecontemporary world is- what I'm
(42:28):
going to argue in this next book- a fundamentally inhuman world
that demands- it puts upon usthe anxieties, it puts upon us
the worries, the obligationsthat puts upon us are incredibly
draining and stressful andanxiety producing.
And as a result, we're allrunning around frantically
(42:49):
trying to keep our livestogether, and we're exhausted.
I talk in the book about aphrase that keeps echoing in my
own head that I tell myself asalmost as a kind of prayer.
I always say to myself,"I justneed to..." So it might be
something like,"I just need todo the dishes and then I'll have
time to read my kids," or,"Ijust need to grade this stack of
papers, and then I'll get backto reading the Bible in the
(43:11):
morning." You know,"I just needto get through this and then
I'll exercise and then I'll feelbetter about myself.""I just
need to..." And it never ends.
It's always,"I just need to, Ijust need to," and there's never
- that next day- that nevercomes.
So that has drawn me to theconclusion that one of the
(43:32):
things we'd need to do is havegrace for ourselves because God
has grace for us.
We need to understand that oneof the things that makes it
difficult- it's not just ourlaziness.
It's not just our sin nature.
It's also that the structures ofour society are not made for
humans designed in the image ofGod, and because of that, it's
really hard to live a humanlife.
(43:52):
It's really hard to live inhonor of God, and you gave a
great example of that with theSabbath, when the entire
structure of society demandsthat you stay busy on Sunday too
, it's difficult.
It's hard to push back.
And so we need to have grace forourselves and recognize, okay,
I'm striving, I'm workingtowards this, but it's only in
(44:14):
God's grace.
Amy Mantravadi (44:16):
One of the quotes you included from Charles
Taylor that really struck achord with me was where you
quoted him as saying,"All joystrives for eternity, because it
loses some of its sense if itdoesn't last." You reflect on
that quote by noting thatsuffering and tragedy have an
ability to break through ourdistraction and force us to
consider things beyond ourpresent moment.
(44:37):
As you mentioned earlier in thisdiscussion, the coronavirus
pandemic has placed the entireworld in one such situation over
the past year, and it's been mycontinual observation that
rather than causing people tocontemplate their mortality and
the things of eternity, we'vefound all kinds of ways to
remain distracted by lessermatters.
(45:00):
How can we as Christians usethis present situation to call
people to a joy that lasts?
Alan Noble (45:06):
That's a great point.
Yeah.
I think your analysis is exactlyright, and sometimes the lesser
things are actually debatesabout the pandemic itself.
I mean, that's been the chiefdistraction, right?
So 4,000 people a day are dyingand what are we still debating?
Well, should we be wearingmasks, right?
Or, you know, policy arguments,frantic policy arguments that
(45:29):
are important.
I'm not saying that they don'tmatter.
Whether we should open schoolsor not- these things matter.
But what I am saying is thatwhen our consciousness, when our
imagination primarily conceivesof this pandemic in terms of
policies and the culture war,which I think that is- for a
significant portion of societyin America, that is how they are
(45:52):
imagining this crisis.
They are imagining it in termsof the culture war of right
versus left, liberty versusliberalism, whatever it might be
, oppressive scientists versusentrepreneurs and free
Americans.
And so when that happens, itmediates our experience of the
(46:12):
pandemic so that it doesn't feelentirely real.
I don't think a day has gone bywhere I've really felt that
4,000 people have died or whereit's like hit me, like,"Oh,
that's a lot of people whodidn't need to die.
This is a tragedy.
This is, you know, the deathtoll of 9/11 every day now." It
(46:34):
feels- there's a sense ofunreality to it, and that
protects us.
You're right.
We're not thinking aboutmortality.
So this is difficult.
What can we do?
Well, as the pandemic continuesto grow, I think one natural
reaction is that it hits closerto home, that we know people who
(46:56):
are hospitalized, that we knowpeople who have lost family
members, and those areopportunities for us to step in
and point out and walk alongsidepeople in love.
And as I say in the book, it'snot that you want to encourage
people to suffer needlessly, butI think when we come alongside
people who are suffering in themodern world, often our response
(47:19):
is,"How do we get them to stopmourning as quickly as possible?
Do they need medication?
Do we need to distract them?
I'll take them out to themovies.
What do I need to do so theydon't feel this way?" Well,
that's not a Christian response.
A Christian response is"momentomori," which is remembering
death, remembering it, that it'scoming for you.
And that should turn us toChrist and remember that this
(47:42):
life is not all there is.
Again, it's pushing back againstthe immanent frame.
So I think as we're walkingalongside people who are
experiencing mourning, firststep is don't be a part of the
group that encourages them tojust quickly get over it and
stop thinking about it and stopfeeling that's bad.
Okay.
Second is find ways of lovingthem, inviting them to consider
(48:07):
the significance of this, allowthem to think about the meaning,
allow them to feel it- not totorture them, not to manipulate
them, but because it is real andbecause you don't want them to
hide from the truth.
So those things I think areimportant.
I think publicly Christiansought to be some of the people
(48:28):
who are being solemn about thiscrisis, who are recognizing this
solemnity, the tragedy of it,right?
So instead of being distractedwith all these policy debates,
some of which are important, butinstead we ought to be a force
pushing back and saying,"Thousands of people are dying.
What are we doing to mourn this?
(48:48):
What are we doing to care forthe people who've lost loved
ones?" We can treat this as amore human crisis.
We have the biblical frameworkto do that, and I think that
would maybe help our neighborsrecognize, like you're saying,
"Hey, this is real.
People are dying.
I'm going to die.
What does that mean for mylife?"
Amy Mantravadi (49:11):
I've been seeing on social media, this hashtag:
#hcqa1.
Does that mean anything to you?
Alan Noble (49:22):
Yes, good plug.
So this is the HeidelbergCatechism first question and
answer, which is what is ouronly comfort in life and death:
that we are not our own butbelong body and soul, in life
and in death, to our faithfulSavior, Jesus Christ.
And that is the heart of my nextbook, which is tentatively
titled something like"You Arenot Your Own," in which I'm
(49:45):
going to argue that thefundamental inhumanity of our
contemporary society, which Imentioned earlier, stems from
the fact that we have a falseanthropology.
Our society is built for acertain kind of human.
It assumes we're certain kindsof beings.
It assumes that we are our ownand we belong to ourselves, and
(50:06):
so our institutions, oursystems, our laws are myths.
Our stories, our values, ourmarkets all assume that we are
people who belong to ourselves,not to God, and the
ramifications of that areinnumerable, and they lead to a
(50:27):
society that is inhuman.
I mean, all societies are builtassuming what a human being is,
what they're for and what itmeans to have human flourishing.
So if we have a society thatgets that question wrong, that
doesn't actually build a societyfor humans as God created us,
then we're going to be walkingaround in a place that doesn't
work for us- that doesn't fit,that treats us wrong- and we're
(50:50):
going to feel terrible, which Ithink a lot of people do.
And the response to that is thetrue anthropology, the biblical
anthropology, which is thatcatechism answer, that we are
not our own but belong body andsoul, in life and death to
Christ, and that I think changesthings.
Amy Mantravadi (51:09):
Well, thanks for sharing about that.
I'm really looking forward toyour new book.
I enjoyed the first one, sohopefully the second one will be
just as good.
I'm looking forward to it.
Thank you so much, Alan Noble,for joining me to talk today.
It's been a pleasure.
Alan Noble (51:25):
Thank you.
Yes.
I've had a great time.
Jon Guerra (51:52):
[inaudible]
Amy Mantravadi (51:55):
It was an honor to speak with Alan today about
his book, Disruptive Witness,which is available from
InterVarsity Press.
I hope the discussions on thispodcast provoke a lot of
positive thought for you as theydo for me.
The music you've been hearing isthe song"Citizens" by Jon Guerra
off his album Keeper of Days.
He will be my guest on thepodcast next week, so be sure to
listen and hear him explain whatled him to write this song and
(52:18):
what we can expect from him inthe near future.
"Now to him who is able to dofar more abundantly beyond all
that we ask or think, accordingto the power that works within
us, to him be the glory in thechurch and in Christ Jesus to
all generations, forever andever." Amen.
Have a great week.
Jon Guerra (52:36):
Is there a way to live always living in enemy
hallways?
Don't know my foes from myfriends and don't know my
friends anymore.
Power has several prizes.
Handcuffs can come in all sizes.
Love has a million disguises,but winning is simply not one.
I have a heart full of questions quieting all my
suggestions.
What is the meaning of Christianin this American life?
I'm feeling awfully foolishspending my life on a message.
I look around and I wonder everif I heard it right.
Amy Mantravadi (00:27):
Welcome to the (A)Millennial podcast, where we
have theological conversationsfor today's world.
I'm your host, Amy Mantravadi,coming to you from Dayton, Ohio,
home to the nation's onlyproduction brewery in a museum.
If you're Southern Baptist, nowwould be a good time to cover
your ears.
The Carillon Brewing Company isa living history museum that
uses the techniques andequipment of the 1850s to
(00:48):
produce its beers.
These are served in a hall whereyou can see the brewers at work
in period clothing.
It Is also a full servicerestaurant offering up foods
reflective of Dayton's Germanimmigrant heritage.
I don't drink beer myself, but Ivery much enjoy their soups.
If you're in town, be sure tostop by and tell them I sent you
just so you can hear them say,"Who?" Today, I'll be speaking
with Alan Noble, author of thebook Disruptive Witness:
(01:10):
Speaking Truth in a DistractedAge.
In it, he considers some of thechallenges that the modern world
presents for sharing theChristian faith, not the least
of which is that people are toodistracted to give much thought
to the deep things of life.
He has some suggestions for howwe can break through the
never-ending distractions ofthis age to provide a beneficial
disruption to the mindsets ofthose who do not know Christ.
He also has some ideas for howwe can better orient Christian
(01:33):
practice to focus ourselves onthe eternal.
At this point in the podcast, Itypically read a passage of
scripture that relates to theday's topic, but I'm going to
deviate ever so slightly fromthat pattern today.
I will read to you instead froma 12th century devotional work
by Bernard of Clairvaux calledOn Loving God.
In it, he said something that Ithink is very applicable to our
modern world and the points Alanraises in his book.
(01:57):
"If you wish to attain to theconsummation of all desire so
that nothing unfulfilled will beleft, why weary yourself with
fruitless efforts running hitherand thither only to die long
before the goal is reached?
It is so that these impious oneswander in a circle, longing
after something to gratify theiryearnings, yet madly rejecting
that which alone can bring themto their desired end, not by
(02:19):
exhaustion, but by attainment.
They wear themselves out in vaintravail without reaching their
blessing consummation, becausethey delight in creatures, not
in the Creator.
They want to traverse creation,trying all things one by one,
rather than think of coming tohim, who is Lord of all.
And if their utmost longing wererealized so that they should
have all the world for theirown, yet without possessing him
(02:41):
who was the author of all being,then the same law of their
desires would make them condemnwhat they had and restlessly
seek him whom they still lack: that is, God himself. (02:47):
undefined
Rest is in him alone.
Man knows no peace in the world,but he has no disturbance when
he is with God." Bernard isright.
When we chase after the millionthings of this world that occupy
our attention, we end up weariedand unsatisfied.
But when we place our hope inand direct our worship toward
(03:08):
the one who created us, we havelasting peace.
Keeping that in mind, let's moveon to today's discussion.
Jon Guerra (03:12):
[MUSIC PLAYS]
Amy Mantravadi (03:24):
And I'm here with Dr.
Alan Noble.
He received his bachelor's andmaster's degrees at California
State University- Bakersfieldand his PhD from Baylor
University.
He's the editor-in-chief ofChrist and Pop Culture.
He's on the leadership councilof The AND Campaign, and his
writing has been published byBuzzfeed, The Atlantic, The
(03:45):
Gospel Coalition, Vox,Christianity Today, Modern
Reformation, and First Things,and he is currently the
assistant professor of Englishat Oklahoma Baptist University.
You can find him on Twitter andMedium@thealannoble and on
Facebook and Instagram@oalannoble.
So thank you so much for joiningme today.
(04:07):
I'm really looking forward totalking about your book.
Alan Noble (04:10):
Yeah, I'm excited.
Thanks.
Amy Mantravadi (04:12):
It's my understanding that before you
were a professor of English andevangelical thought leader, you
were somewhat of a big deal inthe world of hip hop.
Is that correct?
Alan Noble (04:26):
Very little of that is correct, but it's true that I
did record two hip hop albumsbefore I got my PhD.
Yes, that is true.
And we performed some shows, butno big deal.
Unfortunately, it was not to be.
Amy Mantravadi (04:49):
Oh, well, I'm sorry to hear that.
But I mean, if ever thisevangelical thought leader thing
doesn't work out for you, atleast you have a fallback
career.
Alan Noble (05:01):
I mean, for real though, every once in a while,
when grading gets overwhelming,I think wistfully, you know,
"It'd be nice to just spend$10,000, which I don't have, on
recording equipment and maybe dohip hop or produce or post-rock
post-punk, or, you know- I don'tknow.
(05:21):
Various genres interest me thatI would love to be in
instrumental music and things,and then I realize that I've got
to pay bills, and so I'm like,"Iguess I'll grade some- fix these
comma splices."
Amy Mantravadi (05:32):
Well, it's just nice to hear about people's past
lives before they became what weknow them as today.
If at any point today, you wantto deliver your answer in the
form of a rap or some otherspoken word genre, feel free to
do so.
Alan Noble (05:51):
Yeah.
Thanks.
Amy Mantravadi (05:53):
So getting now to the real topic of our
discussion today, in this book,you draw a lot upon the writings
of the philosopher CharlesTaylor, whose work A Secular
Age, published in 2007, has beenparticularly influential on
Christian scholars in theReformed and evangelical world.
Taylor uses a couple of termsthat pop up often in your own
book (06:15):
one is"immanent frame," and the other is"buffered self."
So particularly for those of uswho maybe aren't as familiar
with that book, could youprovide some basic definitions
for those terms and explain howthey fit in with your book?
Alan Noble (06:32):
Yes.
So they are related concepts.
What Taylor is trying to do isgive an account of how it is the
case that we could go in theWest from a situation in which
in, let's say 1500, it wasperfectly natural and the basic
assumption that you'd be raisedChristian, to the point where we
(06:55):
are today, in the year 2021,where belief in God is possible,
but it's only one of manypossible belief systems
available to us.
And he says something like it'sincreasingly the less plausible
for most people.
So he's trying to give anaccount of what happened.
How did things change?
(07:15):
One of the ways he sees thingschanging, as he says that for
virtually all modern people, welive in what he calls the
"immanent frame," and you canthink about this as the natural
world or the strictly materialworld.
Now he talks about it as a framebecause he says even Christians
(07:37):
and other people who believe insomething transcendent- the
spiritual realm, that humans arebody and spirit, somebody who
believes in a magic let's say,or any kind of supernatural or
transcendent ideas- they'restill in the immanent frame.
It's just that he says thatthese people live in what would
he call the"open immanentframe." The example I like to
(07:59):
give is of rainbows.
I found this to be a helpfulexample.
When contemporary people,Christian or non-Christian, see
a rainbow, I think they havethree basic reactions.
The first is they sort of elbowwhoever's next to them and say,
"Hey, look, there's a rainbow."So just a recognition of awe in
the face of beauty.
(08:19):
The second possibility is theytake out their phone and take a
picture and post on social mediaand say,"Hey, look, here's a
rainbow," and so there we'remediating our experience with
nature.
And the third possibility is wemight say,"Oh, wow, rainbows.
I remember from third grade howrainbows are made.
I think it's something likelight reflecting and humidity or
(08:42):
water." I'm not really sure.
I teach English and I washomeschooled, so I don't
actually know how rainbows aremade, but I think that we think
of the natural explanation ofit, right?
What am I seeing?
How is it caused?
What causes it, physically?
What's interesting is I think,as I said, secular people,
people who are not Christiansand Christians, have those
(09:03):
similar reactions to rainbows,even though for Christians, the
rainbow is literally a sign fromGod to us.
And I think if you were to ask aChristian, you're asking the
average evangelical in yourchurch,"Hey, is the rainbow a
sign from God, that he's notgoing to flood the entire earth
again?" they'd say,"Yeah.
Yeah.
I remember that because Iremember that in Sunday school
(09:24):
or I remember reading thatpassage." So yes, conceptually,
we see that.
Okay.
But when they experience therainbow, when they experience
the physical world, theyexperience it not as something
that has a direct connection tothe transcendent- to God- but as
something in this world, purelyimmanent, purely in this
(09:45):
immanent frame.
So that's the immanent frame.
It's our default setting (09:48):
the default way we move through our
modern world.
We tend to think of things inpurely physical, materialist
terms.
Even if we believe in religiousideas, our default setting is
not to think about them astouching the transcendent.
And that's a problem with- Wewant to believe in the existence
(10:10):
of a living, loving God, who isa personal God who interacts
with us.
The buffered self is related tothis.
The immanent frame is part ofwhat allows for the buffered
self.
The best way to understand thebuffered self is to think about
what Taylor calls"the porousself," which is the sort of
medieval and ancientunderstanding of what it meant
(10:31):
to be a person in those times.
You would expect that there arethings that could, we could say,
get to you.
So for example, if you went tocertain places, spirits could
affect you.
If you did certain things, youcould have some sort of a
spiritual reaction movingthrough the world.
For example, there would besacred times and sacred places,
(10:53):
cathedrals, sites, saints'bones, all these things that
could affect you.
Now, what happens with the riseof the Enlightenment is that
people become, Taylor says, moreand more stuck in our heads so
that we're more rationalist.
And as a result, we tend tothink of ourselves as buffered,
(11:14):
as protected.
So we can allow things toinfluence us if we choose, but
it's always a choice.
There's nothing out there thatcan force me to believe in
certain things.
And so one example that I liketo think of is Communion.
When I take the Lord's Supper, Ibelieve that it's a means of
grace (11:33):
that God is Christ is actually ministering to me in
some spiritual sense, and Idon't understand exactly what
that is and it's not dependentupon me understanding it.
God is affecting me whether Iunderstand it properly or not.
And I think sometimes I've takencommunion, not in doubt, but in
(11:55):
a kind of ignorance orconfusion, feelings of guilt.
Am I good enough to take this,right?
Which is bad theology, but wedon't always believe good
theology.
We don't always feel goodtheology, I should say.
So many times I've come to thetable and I've thought.
"I'm not good enough to receivethis." And the beautiful thing,
(12:16):
is that in taking the Lord'sSupper, God is ministering to
me, even though there's nothingI'm doing to earn it.
Even when I have these doubtsabout my own worth, God has
ministered to me because he'sthe one that's acting.
He's the one that's faithful.
So that's a porous self.
That's the idea of the porousself instead of the buffered
self.
(12:36):
The buffered self goes to thetable and says,"Well, if I elect
to this will have a certaineffect, if I don't elect, then
it won't," right?
The buffered self imagines thatyour human consciousness is in
command of your feelings, youremotions, your experiences, your
meaning, your value, all ofthese sorts of things.
Yes.
(12:56):
So those are those two terms.
Amy Mantravadi (13:00):
Yeah, thank you.
I think that makes it a lot moreclear and you do discuss some of
that in your book, of course,but I just thought given their
importance in your book, thosewould be two good terms to focus
on.
Another scholar you draw from isJames K.A.
Smith, whose Cultural Liturgiesseries makes the argument that,
in the words of another one ofhis books, You Are What You
(13:20):
Love.
Like him, you make the pointthat our habits influence our
loves and in turn our beliefs.
How have some of the changesthat have occurred in Church
practice over the past centuryor so influenced the overall
mindset and loves of Christians?
Alan Noble (13:36):
Yeah, this is a great question because for a
couple of reasons, but one isthat it ties back to this idea
of the buffered self.
So if we think of ourselves asbuffered, then really the only
important thing is what goes onin our heads.
It doesn't really matter whatour habits are, our practices.
I mean, we shouldn't be sinning,let's say: all right, we all
agree about that.
But our church practices or whatwe do, our liturgy, isn't really
(14:00):
important.
What's really important is theideas.
That's how contemporary peopletoo often think, and that is
directly related to whatTaylor's talking about with this
buffered self.
If we are buffered selfs, allthat matters is that we have
right thinking or rightdoctrine, and what we do with
our bodies doesn't reallymatter.
And what Smith and others arepointing to is that actually
(14:23):
liturgy does matter.
What we do with our bodies isimportant- that it shapes what
we love.
As an example, there are so manyin the Church and in church
services, but I think thepassing of the peace or greeting
one another, hugging one anotherin church.
I mean, we're still in themiddle of the pandemic, so it
(14:43):
kind of feels weird- it feelswrong.
But that vulnerability oflooking at your neighbor, your
brother and sister in Christ andembracing them, and
acknowledging,"The peace ofChrist be with you, I'm passing
the peace of Christ.
We are sharing in this.
We are united through Christ andthere is something physical to
that." And it helps shape ourloves because quite honestly, it
(15:07):
is the case, at least for me-sometimes you look at the pew
next to you and you think,"Idon't particularly like those
people.
I mean, I don't hate them oranything, but you know, they're
not my people.
Yeah, we're not into the samethings.
They have different politicalviews than me.
We go to the same church.
Hey, that's great, but I don'twant to greet them.
(15:30):
I don't want to hug them.
I don't want to shake theirhands either.
But here, this part of theliturgy breaks us out of ourself
and says,"No, you know what?
It doesn't really matter whatyou think, ok?
It doesn't matter what you feel.
You are a part of this body."Singing is a similar thing.
Singing is bodily, right?
We're using our voices.
(15:52):
And Paul calls us to encourageone another: to exhort each
other with hymns and spiritualsongs.
And so that means that I don'thave the option to just be in my
head when it's worship time.
I'll tell you, when I wasyounger and attending a very
different church in California,the music was so loud and
(16:13):
frankly so tacky that I foundmyself thinking,"I don't
actually need to sing.
Why am I singing?
I don't even like the lyrics.
The music is corny.
It's way too loud.
My neighbors can't hear my voiceanyway.
I'm just not going to sing, andto avoid having really bitter
thoughts, because I don't likethis worship style, I'm just
(16:33):
going to pray or I'm going tosay the words of a song in my
head that I do agree with." Sofor me at that time, this is
what Charles Taylor calls"excarnation." The only part of
the worship that mattered wasthe part that happened in my
brain, right?
The worship just happened in mybrain.
It had no external manifestationat all, but since then, I've
(16:53):
come to realize that that'sdisobedient.
I am called to sing.
Now, that means that the musichas to be quiet enough or the
volume has to be low enough thatother people can hear each other
singing, so that we canencourage each other.
But there is something thathappens when we do that.
There is something powerful thathappens.
It does shape our loves.
Amy Mantravadi (17:16):
Yeah, I think those are some good examples.
One phenomenon that I'vedefinitely witnessed in having
conversations with people isthat they often seem to have
little sense of the backgroundphilosophical assumptions behind
their declarations and how thoseassumptions may in fact
contradict one another.
And as someone who's on Twittera lot, this is something that
(17:38):
comes up on Twitter a lot.
So you discuss this in your bookand note that our distraction is
partly to blame because we'retaking in so much information at
such a pace and responding soemotionally to it all that
there's little room left fordeep thought, and we tend to
pick up bits and pieces ofbelief here and there resulting
(17:58):
in a hodgepodge system.
You also hit on the fact thatmuch of what we do is actually
about signaling our identity toothers as much as anything else.
For example, you write that,"Identity formation becomes the
central concern in our beliefs,or just another way we
articulate that identity.
Since we hold these beliefsloosely, we have less cognitive
(18:22):
dissonance when picking andchoosing beliefs that contradict
one another.
A lack of reflection makes iteasier for us to hold
contradictory beliefs, but nowwe see that our secular age
contributes to this condition byleveling beliefs." Obviously
this has an impact on how weshare our faith with others and
help them to understand thetruths of Christianity.
(18:44):
How might such a conversation bedifferent in the 21st century
than it was in the 19th or evenin the 20th century?
Alan Noble (18:54):
In the beginning 20th century, you still had a
great number of people who sawChristianity as a viable belief
system, and who still believedin the possibility of there
being truth that is accessiblethrough reason and reflection
(19:17):
and meditation- these sorts ofthings.
In other words, you still hadpeople- and I'm thinking of the
literature because that's what Ido- the modernist poets, someone
like T.S.
Eliot or novelists like Faulkneror F.
Scott Fitzgerald, they might notknow what the transcendent truth
is, but they believed it was outthere: like we could, if we work
(19:39):
hard enough- maybe we can getthere.
And what happens through the20th century through
postmodernism, which is less amovement than a description of
what our society goes through, Ithink most people lose that
faith that there is an ultimatetruth out there, and instead we
(19:59):
do have our subjectiveexperiences and values.
So I think in the we're in theearlier 20th century, it would
be easier to have aconversation, and also the 19th
century, certainly easier tohave a meaningful conversation
with somebody about the truthsof faith, and maybe h ere formal
(20:21):
apologetics would be or what wethink of traditional apologetics
would be helpful (20:25):
talking about reliability of scriptures and
these sorts of things, argumentsfor the existence of God.
Those might've been, I think,more effective, but my fear is
that today, when people hearthose traditional arguments,
that they don't actuallyinterpret what we're saying as
(20:47):
an argument for objective truth-this is the one truth- but
instead they s ee, as I say inthe book, us posturing a
lifestyle.
What we're really saying- theyinterpret us- is that this is
what we find very satisfying,and so maybe you would find it
satisfying, just like peoplewill say- people who are into
CrossFit w ill be like,"Hey,come on.
(21:10):
This changed my life.
You've got to come join this."And there's a kind of evangelism
that goes on, r ight?
A proselytizing.
"Hey, come.
This is o kay.
" Or the other one I'd like topick on is essential oils.
"You got to try this.
This will revolutionize yourlife." And our appeal is,"This w
orked for me, so it's g oing t owork for you." And I'm not
(21:33):
saying that that when Christiansevangelize, that is the
conversation that we areintending to have, but I do
suspect that many times, that ishow we are heard when we g o
give testimonies.
People perceive them as anothermarketing pitch, as another
lifestyle on offering beforethem, which they can pick up if
(21:56):
it sounds appetizing orappealing or not, and so that
creates the challenge.
That's at the heart of thisbook: the argument of creating a
kind of disruptive witness,which isn't a specific thing.
There's not a specific method ofdoing this, although I give some
suggestions.
Instead, it involves, I think,the recognition that our hearers
(22:21):
are probably not going to hearthings the way we intend them,
because we live in a secular ageand they don't think in terms of
God actually existing.
And so part of our challengewith that background information
is inviting them to questiontheir presuppositions, inviting
them to- as you read thatpassage about the fact that we f
(22:45):
ail to reflect- inviting peopleto reflect intentionally.
Saying,"Consider this.
Spend some time just meditating-considering this possibility."
But I also think we need to lookfor opportunities where the
cracks in the secular world arerevealed.
Taylor says that all modernpeople feel across pressure.
(23:10):
So on one hand, we're being pulled towards secularism.
We want to think in just interms of the immanent frame:
there is no God, it's just usdown here living our lives,
living our best l ives.
But then he says t hat we'realso always pulled to the fact
that this is inadequate, that itdoesn't satisfy us, t hat
there's a kind of emptiness, akind of longing.
Well, I think for Christianspointing to that longing,
(23:33):
pointing to that pole,emphasizing a nd inviting people
to spend time in it a s anopportunity to disrupt their way
of thinking about faith, andwhether that is- in the book, I
talk a lot about- beauty andsuffering, I think are two of
the most potent ways- when you experience great beauty or joy in
(23:53):
life, then you recognize, Ithink, that what you're
experiencing is not just animmanent thing.
It's not just a this worldthing.
It can't just be explainedthrough evolutionary biology and
psychology.
I think that the birth of achild, for example, i s this
kind of experience where youthink,"This means something that
I can't articulate, and I coulddescribe all the medical things
(24:16):
that are going on, all thebiological things that are going
on right now, and I couldexplain the process of how
evolution brought us to this,but it still would not get at
the meaning of this event, thebirth of this human being.
And death, I think- this issimilar t o suffering.
Suffering i s similar.
You can say,"Well, here's therational, empirical explanation
(24:36):
of what death is," but you'releft feeling that something is
missing.
And I think those areopportunities for Christians to
step in and say,"Well, you feelsomething's missing because
something is missing, and thething is God, b ecause he made
you for eternity and he made youin his image." And that's why
birth is so miraculous and deathis tragic in a specific way."
Amy Mantravadi (25:01):
You write that in many cases in our culture,
Christianity is considered, asyou just noted, another
lifestyle choice among manyrather than something rooted in
historical fact with eternalimplications.
It seems to me that certaintendencies of the evangelical
church have tended to exacerbatethis, such as our abandonment of
(25:22):
traditional forms of worship andemphasis on doctrine, and those
are two things that you've alsomentioned here.
The standard narrative that hastaken hold in recent decades is
that people are abandoningtraditional established
denominations fornon-denominational or broadly
evangelical churches, butthere's also a move of people in
the opposite direction (25:41):
out of more generically evangelical
churches and into those thatseem to have more of a
connection with historictheology and practice along with
more of a high church liturgy.
Have you witnessed this lattertrend, what would be your
thoughts about it, and should weexpect it to increase in the
coming years?
Personally, I've seen ithappening with a lot of my
(26:03):
friends.
Alan Noble (26:05):
Yes, me too.
I mean, that's my story.
I mean, I went to charismaticand non-denominational churches
in California that wereuntethered from tradition, that
had a very low view of doctrine,or if they didn't have a low
view of doctrine, they werestill very shallow
(26:25):
traditionally, so their liturgywas very low church.
We would never recite a creed: the A postle's Creed, the Nicene (26:29):
undefined
Creed.
We would not c ite catechisms.
There was no sense of history.
And I began attending aPresbyterian Church of America
when my wife and I moved to Wacofor- we pursued our graduate
degrees.
(26:50):
And it was weird at first, butit very soon felt like home.
It felt like the right thing.
N ow, I think part of what wasgoing on was that both my wife
and I felt a kind of emptiness,a kind of phoniness, a kind of
plastic plasticity, the thinnessof evangelicalism nod at us- the
(27:13):
thinness of evangelicalism nodat us- and part of that has to
do with the fact that it's soshifting.
There is not a strong corecenter.
There's the Bible, but there'slots of different
interpretations and it doesn'tseem like there's anything
sturdy to it.
(27:33):
And the fact that you have anexploding number of
denominations and non-denominational churches.
I attended a number of churcheswhere people who never went to
seminary- they just read theBible a lot and then decided I'm
going to be a pastor, and thenall of a sudden they were a
pastor.
Those kinds of things to me noware sort of mind boggling.
Well, in the modern world-There's a great philosopher
(27:56):
named Zygmunt Bauman.
He's great, mostly because hisname is Zygmunt Bauman, but he
also has some really good thingsto say.
He wrote a fabulous book calledLiquid Modernity, and in it, he
argues that our time- the bestway to understand the world that
we're living in is as a liquidstate.
Nothing is solid.
Everything is shifting.
Values are shifting.
Beliefs are shifting.
(28:16):
I dentity, belonging, places areshifting.
Everything is constantlyshifting, and so that gives you
a kind of anxiety.
I mean, if you think about beingon a ship, there's a kind of
anxiety.
Why can't I feel safe?
Why can't I feel sturdy andsecure?
Well, that's because everything's shifting under your
feet constantly, and sometimesevangelicalism feels like that.
(28:37):
And so when you're tapping into-whether it's Presbyterianism or
Lutheranism or Anglicanism, or Ihad a number of friends who
became Catholic- I think part ofwhat's happening is they realize
this society is sick.
This unmoored floating beliefsystems that appeal to the
(28:59):
individual, this is not right.
We need something that has a sure foundation, and I would say
more liturgical churches aretapping into that, and I know a
number of Baptist churches whoare trying to recover those
things.
So even though it's not a partof most Southern Baptist
(29:20):
liturgies to recite the creeds,they're saying,"Hey, we need to
go back.
We need to do that.
That needs to be a part of whatwe're doing, because we are part
of this long tradition.
We are grounded in somethingthat goes beyond the
contemporary brandings ofdenominations." So that's my
take on what what's going on.
Amy Mantravadi (29:42):
And of course, there's no such thing as a
perfect church or denomination,so sometimes you'll see the
movement is brought about bypeople who have had particularly
bad experiences, not evenbecause of anything doctrine or
in terms of practice, but justthey've had"church hurt," as
some people put it.
(30:03):
And sometimes looking to thathistoric tradition, it can be
seen as something, like yousaid, that is likely less likely
to give way to one person'sauthoritarianism because it's
rooted in something much deeperwith more accountability.
But I think more even than justlooking at which particular
(30:26):
denominations are gaining orlosing, the fact that people are
feeling the need to go in thesedifferent directions does say
something about what's missingin our overall culture and the
way that we're practicingChristianity in the United
States and beyond.
In your book, you ask Christiansto reconsider how we think about
(30:46):
time.
Although many people may not beaware of it, we've moved away
from the historic Christiannotion of time rooted in the
liturgical calendar and thedivide between the secular and
sacred, or ordinary time andhigher time, into understandings
of time that are entirely rootedin a modern, scientific
understanding championed byIsaac Newton and others.
(31:09):
So this would perhaps be a goodexample of the immanent frame as
opposed to the non-immanentframe.
So you write in your book thatin viewing time as raw material,
we reject the idea that time mayhave meaning in itself: that it
may be more than a measurementof intervals, but contain truths
(31:29):
that place obligations on us toact in certain ways." What have
we lost in relying solely uponmodern notions of time, and how
can the Church take steps torestoring our thinking about
time and eternity?
And I'll just add that assomeone who writes novels set in
the 12th century, and I'mconstantly having to refer to
(31:51):
the liturgical calendar to knowwhat's going on in my
character's life, that's helpedto make me appreciate how
different our thinking abouttime is now than it was then.
So what do you think about thatand what are some steps that
maybe the Church can take, orshould we indeed be trying to go
back to previous notions oftime?
It seems like you feel that weshould.
Alan Noble (32:12):
Yes.
I mean, I would say there'sreally no going back.
This is part of the challenge ofsecularism is that there's no
proper going back, and Taylormakes this pretty clear: that we
can't go back to a state wherethe i mmanent frame is not the
way we think of things.
We can't go t o back to a placewhere everyone thinks of
themselves as a porous self-that these understandings, these
(32:36):
postures, these conceptions oflife are so deeply rooted in our
society, even our technology.
So time is a great example ofthis.
We're not going to get rid ofthe watch, but in t he medieval
world where church bells rangthe times, people thought of
time differently.
(32:57):
They conceive of timedifferently.
We can't go back from that,right?
I mean, even if you becamedictator of the world that said,
"All right, all t he clocks aregone." It just can't happen.
It can't happen.
Amy Mantravadi (33:11):
Yeah.
It seems like there would besome negative consequences of
that, potentially.
Alan Noble (33:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
So what can we do?
Well, I think there are somereasonable things that we can do
that push back, I think- ways ofresisting, I would say, so that
the reign of mechanical timeisn't total over our lives.
That's the way of putting itright.
We want to resist so that thereign of mechanical time is not
total over our lives (33:38):
that there are spaces where we're pushing
back.
I think Sabbath rest is onegreat example of it.
Sabbath rest is- I talk about inthe book- is from a sacred
perspective, absurd.
It's inefficient, it'sgratuitous, it's a waste.
It's prodigal.
(33:59):
It's a waste.
It's a waste of time.
If you spend your Sunday- let'ssay you go to church and you
spend time fellowshipping withfriends, having them over for
dinner, playing together- youknow, kids playing together-
spending time reading, nottrying to work, not trying to
labor, not trying to get aheadand make yourself a better
(34:19):
person or more financiallystable or more accomplished or
more improved in some way.
If you just rest in God's gracefor a day, that's radically
different than what the worldsays, because the world says,
"Look, you're going to die.
You've got very limited time.
You need to use every second tothe maximum advantage.
(34:43):
You constantly g otta beworking.
You constantly have to bestriving, improving yourself,
ok?
Maybe you don't go to work onSunday, but you should be
working out.
You should be reading thingsthat are going to improve your
productivity.
You're going to be doing thingsto make yourself a better
person.
So it's still always aboutefficiency a nd earning your
(35:06):
place in the world, where Ithink Sabbath r ests says,"G
od's got this." You c an justsit down and you c an just chill
and you can enjoy beauty, gooutside, go for a walk, just to
enjoy beauty- spend time withfriends, not in order to network
or not in order to rest yourmind so that you can be more
(35:27):
productive the next day at work,but just because it's good to be
with friends.
And so those are ways- settingtimes where you say, this is
what I'm going to do here, thatthis is a special time.
It's very difficult to do.
I have a hard time with it, tobe quite honest, because the d
emand, because the rest ofsociety does not think that way.
(35:47):
So it's difficult to resistbecause everyone else is like,
"Well, why aren't you working onthis?
Get to work! Do more!" And wehave to be able to say no.
So I think that's something- Ithink a lot of churches I
remember, o r actually, I don'tremember being a kid when I was
younger in evangelical churches,I remember no mention of Advent.
(36:10):
No one practised Advent that Iknew growing up.
It wasn't- Lent was- I neverheard of it, never heard of it
throughout my teenage years, andnow it's much more common i n
evangelical churches that aren'teven very liturgical to
recognize,"Hey, you know what?
(36:30):
The seasons are ways ofremembering, of acknowledging
God and acknowledging his storywith us." And so that's, I
think, another way of pushingback against that mechanical
time.
Amy Mantravadi (36:45):
Yeah.
I think those are a couple goodideas.
And particularly on the Sabbath,like you said, it is very hard,
if you want to be practicing theSabbath, depending on what that
means.
You know, it means differentthings to different people, but
the world around us is not atall set up to have a Sabbath.
So it just puts you into allkinds of practical difficulties
(37:08):
that- When I'm reading writingsby Christians of yore from
centuries past where they'retalking about all the things you
should or shouldn't do on theSabbath, I think,"Yeah, but your
whole society was doing this,"so it became very easy to just
say,"I'm not going to have mybusiness open or I'm not going
to do even things a lot smallerthan that," because everyone
(37:28):
else was doing them.
But now, maybe I have aconviction that I don't want to
be going out to a restaurantSunday, but none of my friends
feel that way, and they're allinviting me out to eat, and if I
say no, they're going to beoffended.
So it puts you into all thesesituations where you do feel
that pressure in both directionsand you have to kind of decide,
(37:50):
what does it look like to livefaithfully and practice the
Sabbath in our society?
Is it different than it wouldhave been in a previous one?
So, yeah, I think you hit onsome good things there.
In your book, particularly inthe latter third or so of the
book, you talk a lot about adouble movement that involves
turning from our observations ofGod's goodness to expressions of
(38:13):
gratitude.
Could you explain that a bitmore?
Alan Noble (38:17):
I wrote the book a long time ago, but here's what I
think I meant.
This has been a great interviewbecause as you read passages,
I'm like,"Hey, you know what,I'm glad I said that.
I believe that.
That's good.
Good for me."
Amy Mantravadi (38:34):
"I'm a pretty good writer.
I'm pretty clever."
Alan Noble (38:34):
"You know what?
That's nice-" Writing a book, asyou know, you just, you have no
idea what you're doing.
I mean, you do, but you don't.
You have no idea if it's aterrible idea or if it's making
any sense and then it's niceafterward.
Amy Mantravadi (38:45):
I have no idea what you're talking about.
I'm totally confident ineverything I'm doing.
Alan Noble (38:51):
But it's a good feeling afterwards, cause
sometimes you will go,"Oh, Iwrote that?
Well, good for me.
How about that?
What do you know?" In anycase...Yeah, so the idea of the
double movement- I'm trying topush back against the immanent
frame, and at the same time,push it back against our
distracted age, and both of whatthose things do is they keep us
(39:13):
in our heads.
They keep us from recognizingGod's presence in the world,
which should lead us togratitude and repentance and
dependence upon him.
And so in thinking through thesetwo problems, I couldn't come up
with- There's not a five pointplan to overcome secularism or a
(39:33):
five point plan to overcomedistraction, but it seemed to me
that there was one truthunderneath both of those
problems that I could recommend,and that is that if we make a
practice- a conscious,intentional practice of being
grateful to God for things- thatpractice pushes back against the
(39:55):
immanent frame, because it says,"This is not all that there is."
Okay?
And it also pushes back againstthis constant mediated, constant
distracted culture, which says,"Just focus on the immediate,
right?
Just focus on what's in front ofyou, what's on your screen,
what's on your plate.
What do you need to be workingon next?" So on and so forth.
(40:16):
And I guess what I would say isthat in our contemporary
culture, we're good at the firststep- so observing something
beautiful, something enjoyable,participating in something that
gives us pleasure.
But that second step, which iswe draw our eyes up to God in
gratitude, and we say,"Okay, nowI know where this good gift
comes from,"- I think secularismand distraction work against
(40:39):
that second movement.
We're less likely to do thatinstead.
We just reflect on our ownpleasure, our own enjoyment.
Yeah.
So that's what the doublemovements is about.
It's nothing mystical.
It's nothing revolutionary.
It's merely pointing out thefact that a major challenge of
living in the modern world isthat we are going to be
(41:01):
encouraged not to feel God'spresence, and so we are going to
have to be more intentionalabout recognizing when God's
presence is felt.
Amy Mantravadi (41:13):
Imagine that you were speaking to the mother of a
young child who also happens towrite novels and run a podcast
and who finds her opportunitiesfor the much prized quiet time
with God to be minimal.
How might such a hypotheticalperson find ways to break
through life's continualdistractions and focus on the
(41:34):
spiritual?
And I think this is the partwhere I'm supposed to say, you
know,"Asking for a friend."
Alan Noble (41:40):
I mean, I'll ask the same thing.
So one of the interesting- I'vegot two days, I think, to finish
my next book, and part of theinspiration for the second book
comes from that very question,because I've been asked it many
times, and as I thought about itand I reflected on it, it gave
(42:03):
me serious pause, because Irealized I don't have these
things figured out either.
And so then I began askingmyself,"Well, why is that the
case?" So I think some of it isbecause of a lack of willpower,
lack of self-control, sloth onmy own part.
Okay.
That's true.
But sometimes it's because thecontemporary world is- what I'm
(42:28):
going to argue in this next book- a fundamentally inhuman world
that demands- it puts upon usthe anxieties, it puts upon us
the worries, the obligationsthat puts upon us are incredibly
draining and stressful andanxiety producing.
And as a result, we're allrunning around frantically
(42:49):
trying to keep our livestogether, and we're exhausted.
I talk in the book about aphrase that keeps echoing in my
own head that I tell myself asalmost as a kind of prayer.
I always say to myself,"I justneed to..." So it might be
something like,"I just need todo the dishes and then I'll have
time to read my kids," or,"Ijust need to grade this stack of
papers, and then I'll get backto reading the Bible in the
(43:11):
morning." You know,"I just needto get through this and then
I'll exercise and then I'll feelbetter about myself.""I just
need to..." And it never ends.
It's always,"I just need to, Ijust need to," and there's never
- that next day- that nevercomes.
So that has drawn me to theconclusion that one of the
(43:32):
things we'd need to do is havegrace for ourselves because God
has grace for us.
We need to understand that oneof the things that makes it
difficult- it's not just ourlaziness.
It's not just our sin nature.
It's also that the structures ofour society are not made for
humans designed in the image ofGod, and because of that, it's
really hard to live a humanlife.
(43:52):
It's really hard to live inhonor of God, and you gave a
great example of that with theSabbath, when the entire
structure of society demandsthat you stay busy on Sunday too
, it's difficult.
It's hard to push back.
And so we need to have grace forourselves and recognize, okay,
I'm striving, I'm workingtowards this, but it's only in
(44:14):
God's grace.
Amy Mantravadi (44:16):
One of the quotes you included from Charles
Taylor that really struck achord with me was where you
quoted him as saying,"All joystrives for eternity, because it
loses some of its sense if itdoesn't last." You reflect on
that quote by noting thatsuffering and tragedy have an
ability to break through ourdistraction and force us to
consider things beyond ourpresent moment.
(44:37):
As you mentioned earlier in thisdiscussion, the coronavirus
pandemic has placed the entireworld in one such situation over
the past year, and it's been mycontinual observation that
rather than causing people tocontemplate their mortality and
the things of eternity, we'vefound all kinds of ways to
remain distracted by lessermatters.
(45:00):
How can we as Christians usethis present situation to call
people to a joy that lasts?
Alan Noble (45:06):
That's a great point.
Yeah.
I think your analysis is exactlyright, and sometimes the lesser
things are actually debatesabout the pandemic itself.
I mean, that's been the chiefdistraction, right?
So 4,000 people a day are dyingand what are we still debating?
Well, should we be wearingmasks, right?
Or, you know, policy arguments,frantic policy arguments that
(45:29):
are important.
I'm not saying that they don'tmatter.
Whether we should open schoolsor not- these things matter.
But what I am saying is thatwhen our consciousness, when our
imagination primarily conceivesof this pandemic in terms of
policies and the culture war,which I think that is- for a
significant portion of societyin America, that is how they are
(45:52):
imagining this crisis.
They are imagining it in termsof the culture war of right
versus left, liberty versusliberalism, whatever it might be
, oppressive scientists versusentrepreneurs and free
Americans.
And so when that happens, itmediates our experience of the
(46:12):
pandemic so that it doesn't feelentirely real.
I don't think a day has gone bywhere I've really felt that
4,000 people have died or whereit's like hit me, like,"Oh,
that's a lot of people whodidn't need to die.
This is a tragedy.
This is, you know, the deathtoll of 9/11 every day now." It
(46:34):
feels- there's a sense ofunreality to it, and that
protects us.
You're right.
We're not thinking aboutmortality.
So this is difficult.
What can we do?
Well, as the pandemic continuesto grow, I think one natural
reaction is that it hits closerto home, that we know people who
(46:56):
are hospitalized, that we knowpeople who have lost family
members, and those areopportunities for us to step in
and point out and walk alongsidepeople in love.
And as I say in the book, it'snot that you want to encourage
people to suffer needlessly, butI think when we come alongside
people who are suffering in themodern world, often our response
(47:19):
is,"How do we get them to stopmourning as quickly as possible?
Do they need medication?
Do we need to distract them?
I'll take them out to themovies.
What do I need to do so theydon't feel this way?" Well,
that's not a Christian response.
A Christian response is"momentomori," which is remembering
death, remembering it, that it'scoming for you.
And that should turn us toChrist and remember that this
(47:42):
life is not all there is.
Again, it's pushing back againstthe immanent frame.
So I think as we're walkingalongside people who are
experiencing mourning, firststep is don't be a part of the
group that encourages them tojust quickly get over it and
stop thinking about it and stopfeeling that's bad.
Okay.
Second is find ways of lovingthem, inviting them to consider
(48:07):
the significance of this, allowthem to think about the meaning,
allow them to feel it- not totorture them, not to manipulate
them, but because it is real andbecause you don't want them to
hide from the truth.
So those things I think areimportant.
I think publicly Christiansought to be some of the people
(48:28):
who are being solemn about thiscrisis, who are recognizing this
solemnity, the tragedy of it,right?
So instead of being distractedwith all these policy debates,
some of which are important, butinstead we ought to be a force
pushing back and saying,"Thousands of people are dying.
What are we doing to mourn this?
(48:48):
What are we doing to care forthe people who've lost loved
ones?" We can treat this as amore human crisis.
We have the biblical frameworkto do that, and I think that
would maybe help our neighborsrecognize, like you're saying,
"Hey, this is real.
People are dying.
I'm going to die.
What does that mean for mylife?"
Amy Mantravadi (49:11):
I've been seeing on social media, this hashtag:
#hcqa1.
Does that mean anything to you?
Alan Noble (49:22):
Yes, good plug.
So this is the HeidelbergCatechism first question and
answer, which is what is ouronly comfort in life and death:
that we are not our own butbelong body and soul, in life
and in death, to our faithfulSavior, Jesus Christ.
And that is the heart of my nextbook, which is tentatively
titled something like"You Arenot Your Own," in which I'm
(49:45):
going to argue that thefundamental inhumanity of our
contemporary society, which Imentioned earlier, stems from
the fact that we have a falseanthropology.
Our society is built for acertain kind of human.
It assumes we're certain kindsof beings.
It assumes that we are our ownand we belong to ourselves, and
(50:06):
so our institutions, oursystems, our laws are myths.
Our stories, our values, ourmarkets all assume that we are
people who belong to ourselves,not to God, and the
ramifications of that areinnumerable, and they lead to a
(50:27):
society that is inhuman.
I mean, all societies are builtassuming what a human being is,
what they're for and what itmeans to have human flourishing.
So if we have a society thatgets that question wrong, that
doesn't actually build a societyfor humans as God created us,
then we're going to be walkingaround in a place that doesn't
work for us- that doesn't fit,that treats us wrong- and we're
(50:50):
going to feel terrible, which Ithink a lot of people do.
And the response to that is thetrue anthropology, the biblical
anthropology, which is thatcatechism answer, that we are
not our own but belong body andsoul, in life and death to
Christ, and that I think changesthings.
Amy Mantravadi (51:09):
Well, thanks for sharing about that.
I'm really looking forward toyour new book.
I enjoyed the first one, sohopefully the second one will be
just as good.
I'm looking forward to it.
Thank you so much, Alan Noble,for joining me to talk today.
It's been a pleasure.
Alan Noble (51:25):
Thank you.
Yes.
I've had a great time.
Jon Guerra (51:52):
[inaudible]
Amy Mantravadi (51:55):
It was an honor to speak with Alan today about
his book, Disruptive Witness,which is available from
InterVarsity Press.
I hope the discussions on thispodcast provoke a lot of
positive thought for you as theydo for me.
The music you've been hearing isthe song"Citizens" by Jon Guerra
off his album Keeper of Days.
He will be my guest on thepodcast next week, so be sure to
listen and hear him explain whatled him to write this song and
(52:18):
what we can expect from him inthe near future.
"Now to him who is able to dofar more abundantly beyond all
that we ask or think, accordingto the power that works within
us, to him be the glory in thechurch and in Christ Jesus to
all generations, forever andever." Amen.
Have a great week.
Jon Guerra (52:36):
Is there a way to live always living in enemy
hallways?
Don't know my foes from myfriends and don't know my
friends anymore.
Power has several prizes.
Handcuffs can come in all sizes.
Love has a million disguises,but winning is simply not one.
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