May 13, 2025 • 51 mins
If you're like me, you probably know what it feels like to chase after a never-ending to-do list, trying to squeeze every bit of productivity out of your days, only to end up exhausted and wondering if you're missing something vital. Today's conversation might be exactly what you need. My guest is theologian and author Kelly Kapic. Kelly is a professor at Covenant College and the author of the deeply encouraging books You're Only Human and the brand-new 40-day devotional, You Were Never Meant to Do It All. Kelly reminds us today that our limitations aren't problems to overcome, they're actually a part of God's good design for us. He gently challenges our obsession with productivity, individualism, and endless hustle, calling us instead into rhythms of rest, dependence, and real community. In this episode, Kelly and I explore what it means to truly embrace our human limits as a gift rather than a burden. We talk about sleep and Sabbath as practices that help us reconnect to God’s gracious pace, how genuine community keeps us honest about our needs, and how gratitude and lament can help us live fully human lives, rich with meaning. If you’re tired of feeling like you're never quite enough, this conversation is for you. So slow down, take a deep breath, and join us as Kelly Kapic guides us into the beauty of being joyfully and authentically human.
Kelly M. Kapic (PhD, King's College, University of London) is professor of theological studies at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, where he has taught since 2001. He is a popular speaker and the award-winning author or editor of more than fifteen books, including the devotional You Were Never Meant to Do It All, The God Who Gives, and the Christianity Today Book Award winners You're Only Human and Embodied Hope: A Theological Meditation on Pain and Suffering. Kapic has been featured in Christianity Today and The Gospel Coalition and has worked on research teams funded by the John Templeton Foundation. He also contributes to the Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care and various other journals.
Kelly's Books:
You Were Never Meant to Do It All
Kelly's Recommendation:
Subscribe to Our Substack: Shifting Culture
Connect with Joshua: jjohnson@allnations.us
Go to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.
Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTube
Consider Giving to the podcast and to the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link below
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kelly Kapic (00:00):
In this culture, as we're saying, like this radical
(00:01):
individualism, the idea is youbecome who you are through this
isolation, through thisautonomy, when biblically, the
idea is from the beginning, Adamand Eve were made to be
dependent on God, to bedependent on their neighbor, and
to be dependent on creation.
Joshua Johnson (00:33):
Hello and welcome to the shifting culture
podcast in which we haveconversations about the culture
we create and the impact we canmake. We long to see the body of
Christ look like Jesus. I'm yourhost. Joshua Johnson, well, if
you're anything like me, youprobably know what it feels like
to chase after a never ending todo list, trying to squeeze every
bit of productivity out of yourdays, only to end up exhausted
(00:55):
and wondering if you're missingsomething vital. Well, today's
conversation might be exactlywhat you need. My guest is
Kelly. Capic Kelly is aprofessor at covenant College
and the author of the deeplyencouraging books you're only
human and the brand new 40 daydevotional you were never meant
to do it all. Kelly reminds ustoday that our limitations
(01:16):
aren't problems to overcome.
They're actually part of God'sgood design for us, he gently
challenges our obsession withproductivity, individualism and
endless hustle, calling usinstead into rhythms of rest,
dependence and real community.
In this episode, Kelly and Iexplore what it means to truly
embrace our human limits as agift rather than a burden. We
(01:38):
talk about sleep and Sabbath aspractices that help us reconnect
to God's gracious pace, howcommunity keeps us honest about
our needs, and how gratitude andlament can help us live fully
human lives rich with meaning.
If you're tired of feeling likeyou've never been enough, this
conversation is for you, so slowdown, take a deep breath and
(01:58):
join us as Kelly guides us intothe beauty of being joyfully and
authentically human. Here is myconversation with Kelly. Capic
Kelly, welcome to shiftingculture. Excited to have you on
thanks for joining me. Oh, it'sgreat to be with you. Thanks for
having me. Yeah, I'm excited todive into both you're only
(02:19):
human, and you were never meantto do it all. I really love that
you're you're bringing in theconcepts and everything that you
had in your book. You're onlyhuman into this devotional that
actually helps bring aboutpractical application into our
lives, so that we could becomewhat we were meant to be all
along. One of the big thingsthat you, I mean, you're talking
(02:42):
about here, is limits, and weare creatures of limits. What
was your relationship with yourlimits? How did you start to
discover that limits were goodin your life?
Unknown (02:56):
Yeah, it's a it's a great question. I mean, often
how these things work, isn't itthe case? Whether you're writing
on prayer or you're writingwhatever, it's often something
you struggle with yourself,right? And I just think, I don't
know if it's, you know, I thinkthere's some theological and
personal and you know, variousreasons that shape and you know,
sometimes it's upbringing andcertain views of what work
(03:19):
should look like and whatsuccess looks like. And for
various reasons, I just think Ireally had this idea of, I
should, I should be able to gohard all the time, I think, and
just pretty unrealistic goalsand that that is that that can
sound lofty. It's as simple asevery day, at the end of the
day, looking at the to do listand thinking, you know, I'd sit
(03:42):
around the table with my familyand we'd ask each other, how was
our day. And I started torealize when they would ask me,
I'd be like, Ah, it's okay. Ididn't really get and it's
always about not getting doneall I thought I should get done.
And at some point you realizemaybe I've got this narrative
screwed up. Maybe I don'tunderstand,
Joshua Johnson (03:59):
yeah, and so then you were starting to not
understand that. How did you getpushed then to your own limit
and go?
Unknown (04:08):
There it is, yeah. I mean, that's an interesting
question to ask because it's alonger story, but the short
version is, my wife and I gotmarried in 1993 and we didn't
have kids for almost nine years,and then in 2008 she while our
kids were still young, and shewas in, I'm very young, and she
was still in her 30s at thetime, she was diagnosed with
cancer, and then for years, sowas declared cancer free. And we
(04:32):
thought we got through it, andwe had to narrow our life quite
a bit, cut, cut, cut, but still,you know, we're both kind of
driven or whatever. But wethought, God, you were faithful,
God. And then, and then,starting in the summer of 2010
and to this day, there's neverbeen a day that she hasn't dealt
with chronic pain and fatigue.
And so that led to just ushaving to cut more. And the
(04:53):
result was I ended up, with herencouragement, writing a book on
pain and suffering to help methink through that. Help us
think through it, and this is along way to get to the answer,
only after really coming tobelieve in the importance of
lament and being honest abouthow hard life is and that kind
of thing, did I finally feellike I could talk about the
(05:14):
goodness of limits andunderstand them in my own life.
Joshua Johnson (05:17):
So then, how does lament help that like, what
is like, what is the process oflament that really helps us move
to say, Oh, this is good,
Unknown (05:26):
yeah. I mean, the the lament became important because
it, it was amazing, the kind oflevel of honesty that you find
in the Psalms with God. Like,where are you God? How long? Oh,
Lord, all of these kind ofthings. Lament is it can, to an
outsider, look like a lack offaith, but actually it's a
(05:47):
profound expression of faith,because you're saying, I really
am not in control. I never wasin control. Now it's really
clear, and so I'm upset with youGod, or I'm asking you
questions, because you are thesovereign one, right? And in
many ways, lament is anexpression of faith and our
dependence on God and ourlimits. And like God, I can't
(06:09):
make this better. Why don't youmake it better? Those kind of
things? So I really found lamentand gratitude are two sides of
the same coin. Gratitude isrecognizing all good and perfect
gifts come from above. I can'tgenerate all of this. Whether or
not I I express gratitude, Ishould be grateful, because they
are gifts, and lament is theflip side. Both of them are
(06:31):
showing dependence on God.
Joshua Johnson (06:33):
That's so good.
I love how you articulatedlament. I think that actually is
a profound move of faith that Ihaven't actually thought of
before, thinking thinking ofgrief and lament like, Okay,
this is good things. There's areason why the Psalms, we have,
a book of Lamentations likelament is good but realizing,
Oh, it is an act of faith thatit doesn't depend on me, I'm not
(06:57):
in control, that we're relyingon God to be able to do this.
That's beautiful articulation.
It's
Unknown (07:05):
and even thanks for saying that, even as we talk
about it, it makes me think youknow, one of the unspoken things
is, when the people of God havenot been equipped to learn how
to just honestly lament,particularly in our western
American culture, then thesubtle message is, you really
should make it better. Andlament is like complaining and
(07:27):
Oh, you shouldn't do that. Youshould just and all sudden, it
really is more of this. You needto pull yourself up from your
bootstraps. You're you'restruggling because of you. And
there's never a sense of and itcontinues to be, even though we
would never say yes, I think I'mGod. The underlying belief
(07:47):
really is we really are God. Wereally should be in control.
Where
Joshua Johnson (07:51):
do you think that the hyper individuality of
our American culture,particularly where the most
individualistic culture in theworld? Yeah, and saying that we
could do this, everything isabout productivity. You have
life hacks, you have time hacks,you have all these hacks so that
you could get better, that youcan actually do it all yourself.
(08:14):
How is that all wrapped up inthe place where we find
ourselves going? Man, I don'tknow if I could actually do all
this, where anxiety, depression,loneliness, all of this stuff
comes into play, because wethink we have to do it. Yeah,
Unknown (08:30):
yeah. And, and you're right to approach it in terms of
kind of the radicalindividualism, or hyper
individualism, where we aretold, I mean, the one of the big
messages is, if you want to knowwho you are, actually look
inside of you, and that's so nowdeep in us that we don't even
realize what a modern phenomenathat was like in the middle ages
(08:52):
or around the world. To thisday, much of the world and
throughout much most of history.
If you ask someone who they are,they would say, well, here are
my people, here's my land,here's my tribe, here's my
vocation, all these externalthings. But now sudden, we live
in a time that know who you are.
You have to find it inside ofyou. That's a very unstable kind
(09:13):
of thing. And again, it's themyth that you and I are in more
control than we really are.
Right? We know our DNA shapesus, our family structures shape
us, our our economics, all thesethings, all these outside
forces, are quite significant,and when we downplay it, we do
buy into this myth that we havemore control, which then breeds
more anxiety, because weactually don't have control, and
(09:35):
and we come to realize it. Soone of the beautiful things
about learning to embrace ourlimits is to recognize we never
were in control. God didn't evenmake us to be in control and and
we can talk about this more ifyou want, but to discover that
that these limits are part ofthe goodness in how God made us,
rather than deficiency.
Joshua Johnson (09:58):
And then talk to me. Yeah, I. Are we human? What
does it mean to be human? Andwhy did God create us with these
creaturely limits? Yeah.
Unknown (10:08):
I mean, it's a fascinating thing, because in
this culture, as we're saying,like this radical individualism,
the idea is you become who youare through this isolation,
through this autonomy, whenbiblically, the idea is from the
beginning, Adam and Eve weremade to be dependent on God, to
be dependent on their neighborand to be dependent on creation,
(10:31):
dependent on God, neighbor andcreation. Now think about that's
part of the goodness ofcreation, that's not part of the
fall, that's before there's anysin or fall. Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, in the early 20thcentury talked about this, and
he understood dependence is nota result of the of sin or the
fall, but what the what sin inthe fall does is twist those
dependencies, undermine thehealthy dependence, right? And
(10:55):
so now we see each other as athreat, either to overcome or to
ignore that kind of thing,rather than the goodness of
being a creature is growing inhealthy dependence. And just
think about culturally, when dowe ever use the word dependence
as a positive if I've likeJoshua? Yeah, like people say,
Hey, you met Joshua. What do youthink I'm like, he seemed really
(11:16):
nice, but he seems like he'sreally dependent on a lot of
people, right? That's never acompliment, but biblically, you
and I and so how do you doChristian discipleship when the
word dependence is negative,when actually discipleship is
learning healthy, robustdependence on God, right?
Healthy, I don't meandysfunctional dependence, but
healthy dependence on eachother, and even recognizing how
(11:38):
dependent we are in the rest ofcreation. That
Joshua Johnson (11:40):
means then I could then put myself into a
place where I could rightlysituate myself, where I belong,
yeah? Or I say, you know, I'mindependent. I could do it all
on my own, like it's a loftyview of who I am, yeah? But when
I'm dependent on God, I have aright view of myself and then a
right view of God, yep, take usinto a place of, how does
(12:02):
humility play into us realizingwho we are? What is humility and
what? What is it not?
Unknown (12:09):
Yeah, that's great, and that I do think that's this is
the right context to even askthat kind of question. Because
in the history of the church,and in some of our circles and
my tradition, struggles withthis. Sometimes we really get
humility wrong, and I think ithurts us. So if you ask
Christians, kind of without anyprep, you say, Why should we be
(12:30):
humble? Our gut response oftenis, well, we should be humble
because we're sinners. Well, Iactually do think we're sinners.
I think our sin is complex, andto be honest, I think we're
probably more sinful than weeven have a clue about. So what
I'm going to say is in notdenying that, but if you and the
fact that we are sinners, shouldcontribute to us being humble,
(12:51):
but if you build humility on thefoundation of sin, it distorts
the whole thing, so it gets usback to what we're talking
about, here's the quickest way,without all the technical
discussion, is this Adam and Evebefore the fall? Should they
have been humble? And the answeris actually yes, because they
should be humble, because theywere dependent on God, dependent
(13:14):
on each other, and dependent onthe rest of creation. And that
dependence is a sign ofhumility, of right on rightly
under one understanding oneselfand the rest of creation and
God. So here's here's a reallypractical way. It works out in
our lives. When we thinkhumility is built on sin. Then
as Christians, we often know,gosh, I am not humble like I
(13:35):
should be. And then people say,Okay, I want to grow in
humility. So the way weencourage them to grow in
humility is by focusing on whata bad sinner they are, which
ironically makes them still thefocus of the whole thing. It's
self absorbed, but it soundspious, so you're like, Okay, so
I'm all for appropriate times ofintrospection and analysis and
(13:56):
repentance. I'm all for that,but that can undermine it. So
really with humility, you cangrow in humility by learning to
look at the gifts God has givenother people, to learn to
celebrate and delight in otherpeople like those are
constructive things andpractices you can put into place
that will grow and fosterhumility and and it's funny,
(14:17):
because to even say somethinglike that, Sometimes people
like, well, that sounds wrong.
That sounds arrogant to say,which betrays it the fact we
kind of assume either you'rehumble or you're not, either you
got the gene or you don't. Butactually we can grow in humility
as we grow in our recognition ofwho we are and our love and
delight in other people and inGod and and that kind of thing.
(14:37):
My
Joshua Johnson (14:40):
wife always throws a joke at me because I'm
telling her how great I am, andshe talks about, oh, and you're
really humble as well, yeah. Butyou know, I do say I have some
good things in me, like, and Ihave limits as well, but I don't
want to, like, focus on me as.
Sinner and the sin andintrospection and like, have
(15:02):
this false sense of humility.
I'm trying to get to this placein my relationships, knowing
that man, I could actually beokay, and like, be confident,
and God has created me to be inrelationship to the world and to
one another in community and tohim and still be humble at the
(15:24):
same time. Yeah, he only doesn'tmean a lack of confidence,
Unknown (15:27):
right? Yeah, I do think, I think one of the keys
there is, as we start to Idon't, I'm not trying to
encourage people to falselyflatter or lie. Don't tell your
kid they're great at soccer whenthey suck, right? That's
actually not what I'm saying.
I'm saying though all good andperfect gifts come from above,
and as we look and everybodyreally does have gifts, I know
(15:51):
we think it's cheesy to almosttalk that way, but, but we don't
tend to know our gifts. We don'ttend to recognize our gifts. And
so I don't think these days ittakes a lot of time for me to
convince people we need peoplewho are different than us to
help us see our blind spots. Ithink Thankfully we're finally
there to realize that, but Ithink we've missed the opposite.
(16:13):
We also need people who aredifferent to help us see our
strengths, because our strengthscome so naturally. Even though
they still require work anddevelopment, they come more
naturally. We start to assumeeverybody has them. So if you're
great working with children, youjust kind of think, what are you
a monster if you're not right?
(16:35):
But the reality is, it may bethat these are part of your
gifts. If you're great withhospitality, and you walk up and
people just relax. When you'rethere, you kind of assume that's
what everyone brings, but theydon't. So other people can help
you see what God has given you,which is a delight. And as you
learn to delight in others, I dojust a circle back to what you
(16:57):
said. I then think you can be ina more honest place, where you
can go there's all kinds ofthings I'm not very good at, but
it does seem like God has givenme this and this, and then also
you can be God doesn't want youto lie about yourself and say
you're terrible at somethinghe's given you gifts at. It's
just to recognize you're just acreature. You're really
important, but you're a reallysmall creature. And we need each
(17:19):
other, and so we can delight inwhat we have, even as we delight
and recognize what we don'thave.
Joshua Johnson (17:24):
So in this, this dependence on God and others and
creation, to know that we'rehuman, part of what you you
really talk about is an embodiedexperience of being, knowing our
bodies, being in relationship toother bodies, even in physical
touch. I think, you know, forme, I feel human and alive when
(17:47):
my feet are in the dirt, increation. Yeah, I'm also, you
know, a part of that anddependent on this creation. How
does our bodies help us realizewho we are?
Unknown (18:00):
Yeah, oh, it's such a good question. We do have this
phenomena where we often look inthe mirror and we say, That's
not who I am, right? Whetherit's like we've gained some
weight or, you know, whatever,this disassociation from our
body, both in the church andoutside of the church, is, is a
really strong temptation. Butour bodies, especially with, you
(18:21):
know, we all have phones. We canall, quote, unquote, be multiple
places at the same time, but wecan't actually, we have a body,
we have a brain, we havephysical senses. And so learning
to recognize the importance of,as you said, like being where
our feet are, becomes verysignificant, and we devalue the
(18:43):
body in ways that hurt us. Sofor example, I'm a college
professor. That's my full time,uh, job. And one of the things I
found I've been teaching atcovenant College on lookout
mount Georgia since 2001 it'sgreat school, but I so I've
gotten to know a lot of alum youknow, who come back. And one of
the things that surprises them,especially the first year to
three years, is they most Missphysical touch, and they didn't
(19:07):
expect it. But basically whathappens is they had so many of
them had really good friends.
They'd wrestle in the grass.
They sit right next to eachother on the couch. They gather,
they greet each other in thehall. Constant hugs, just being
next to each other, laughing allsudden, they're supposed to be
quote, unquote, grown ups. Theygo move into an apartment by
(19:27):
themselves, go to a professionalenvironment in a workplace, and
it terrifies them, because alsothey'll realize days, weeks
sometimes go by and they'venever had physical touch. And
I'm talking about healthy,appropriate physical touch,
which makes us all the morevulnerable to unhealthy touch.
(19:48):
And so I think that we go toextremes here, where we act like
touch is everything, or touch isnothing, right, because it's so
important to actually being ahuman, it's part of. Why we can
be manipulated and hurt in thisway. And so the church needs to
really be clear about sexualabuse, inappropriate touch, all
of that. But the church shouldnot over correct and fail to
(20:12):
realize just how significant,healthy, appropriate, godly
touch is. And so this whetherit's singles, children, all of
the like, we need importantchild protection policies, but
don't think the answer is tonever hug a kid, right? And I've
seen these kind of extremes.
Joshua Johnson (20:29):
There was a huge difference when I went to go
live in Jordan in the MiddleEast, like one Hey, their
concept of time is differentthan my concept of time. Their
concept of of physical touch isdifferent than mine, yeah,
concept of hospitality andcommunity is, Yeah, mine and all
of it is a communal culture inwhich I actually then would
(20:51):
would come into people'sfamilies. Men are kissing men on
the cheek. You know, women,we're hugging each other. I I've
never seen like more men holdhands in a black way than in the
Middle East, like their Arabslove to hold hands. Yeah, and
it's not sexualized, and it'snot sexual
Unknown (21:10):
and I remember, I remember being in eat. I think
this is Egypt. My wife and I arein Egypt, and we look and there
are these two soldiers withtheir like, AK 47 driver
walking, holding hands, right?
But they're just friends. It'svery sweet. But we just, yeah,
we've so sexualized
Joshua Johnson (21:27):
everything. How do we practically then do that?
How do we foster a community orplaces where we can actually see
healthy physical touch andhealthy community?
Unknown (21:38):
It's interesting. One of the areas of research when I
was working on your only humanand some of this comes out in
the book, you were never meantto do it all in the devotional
but is to, you know, you read inthe New Testament about greet
one another with a holy kiss.
And we kind of just joke aboutthat. And I remember thinking,
Oh, that's That's funny. Andyes, we live in different
cultures, but when I started tostudy it in the ancient church,
like after the the, you know,post apostolic period, it was
(22:02):
actually quite significantstill. In fact, you have some
early church fathers who willsay things like, without the
kiss, you're not sure if theprayers are heard and and in
some ways, it was just so tiedtogether. And there was, there
was a volume originallypublished Princeton University
(22:22):
Press by the sociologist who Idon't think was actually a
Christian at the time, but sinceit's become a Christian. And he
studied how in the world, didthis little group of Christians
become a global power, right?
And one of the arguments was theway the early church treated
women and children, becausesocially, women and children
(22:46):
were often just used for theirbodies and horrendous, like, you
know, without getting into even,like we talk about tutor the
tutor system, trust me, backthen, it's not what you think,
right? It's pretty terrible. Soall of a sudden in the church,
your body was respected, and themetaphor changed. So all sudden
(23:07):
in the church, you are mysister, my child, my brother, my
father, my mother. So these arefamilial languages, language. So
now all sudden, you'vedesexualized it. And the idea is
the church is watching likethis. It needs to be holy, but
you greet one another with aholy kiss, as you would saying
(23:29):
hello and goodbye to yourgrandparents or to your sister
or brother. And so that's quitesignificant, where all of a
sudden, the safety of thatcommunity really honors bodies
in ways that brings back dignityand allows people to then resist
some of the problems socially.
Joshua Johnson (23:48):
You know, one of the things that I find that has
creeped into western church isour concept of productivity and
time, and we just have to striveto be to be better, to do all of
the thing we do have a laddermentality of trying to get to
God. Just pervasive, I think, inthe church, where it's really
(24:12):
about us, right? It's up to usto be able to do something so
that we could please God. Andpart of it, I think we have to
get everything into this limitedamount of time that we have, so
we have to really work at ourproductivity. What is this,
then, our relationship withtime? And how do we as humans
(24:32):
relate to time? Or how should werelate to time? Is the question,
oh, it's such a good
Unknown (24:38):
question, and it's interesting talking to you about
it because you you have livedoverseas, you've lived in
Jordan. So another area that Ireally learned about doing
research is scholarship. Willtalk about, I didn't even know
there was a field ofsociologists of time, but there
is right. But anyway, scholarswill talk in this field will
make a distinction between whatthey'll call contextual time
(24:59):
and. On contextual time. Andcontextual time is basically you
understand time in terms of yourcontext. The sun is up, it's
bright. This you can see it'sdown. Your body chemistry is
changing, right? Or it's a timeof war. It's someone's pregnant,
someone's sick. All of thesekind of things affect the
(25:21):
context, affects your view oftime. That is how most of the
world lived until very recently,like we're talking the last 100
years, especially, there's afamous essay in in, um, I think
it was 1946 called the tyrannyof the clock. And he basically
says, said at the time, this is1946 think about how much has
(25:41):
changed since then. And hebasically and he basically said,
the most significant factor thatthat shows the difference
between us now and most of theancient world and much of the
world is our view of time,right? And and what he calls
clock time. And so clock time isnon contextual time, and that
means there are 24 hours. Everyhour is just an hour. Every
(26:03):
minute's just a minute. So whatthat looks like, practically,
is, if you have an hour of workto do and it's 11pm Well, we
have electricity, turn on thelight, open your laptop and
start working, because you havean hour of work to do, and you
have an hour that is totallyignoring the blood sugar levels
in your body. It's ignoring thatthe kid in the back of your
(26:25):
house might have COVID. It'signoring the It's ignoring
everything that the sun is down,all it because all time is the
same. And this, you know, it's amuch longer conversation, but
this then contributes to whywhen you're driven by clock
time. You should always be ableto get more done. There's
always, you know. How do youthink of time? It doesn't take
(26:47):
into account rhythms of life,seasons of life, body chemistry,
all that
Joshua Johnson (26:52):
stuff. It stresses me out just thinking
about it. But this is the, thisis the the way that we live now.
How do we then start to thinkabout maybe think about time
differently. This is thequestion I I've been thinking
about. I think God is outside oftime, and it's not bound by
time, but we're also made in theimage of God. And so because of
(27:16):
that, is, should I have adifferent relationship with
time, or should I view timedifferently as somebody who
reflects God, who is outside oftime.
Unknown (27:26):
Yeah, that's great that. So that reminds me, you're
putting it more in a moresophisticated way. But maybe
this will help listeners I had,I was talking about this to a
group of high school kids asummer or two ago, you know. And
I love Q and A afterwards, atthese kind of conferences, and
after I was explaining this ideathat we are finite, it's not
really word you and I have usedyet, but just to make sure
(27:47):
listeners are following, theidea of finitude is a fancy word
for limits, right? We're finite.
We're limited in space, time,knowledge and power. So finitude
means limits, limits, orfinitude, or fancy way for what
Christians just meant bycreature. So anyways, I'm
talking about the goodness ofour limit. So I had the student
raised his hand at the you know,and he said, I got three
questions. I could tell he'supset with me, which I loved,
(28:08):
you know, my God, this is great.
I'm really proud of this kid. Sohe's like, three questions. Dr
gavid, number one, he said, is,Does God have limits? And, you
know, I'm a theologian, soasking me a question like that,
I don't kind of want to saywhat. Want to say, Well, I mean,
he can't sin. Is that a limit?
But I knew that's not what hewanted. So I said, No, God has
no limits. And he started tosmile. And he said, number two,
(28:29):
are we made in the image of God?
And then I start smiling. I'mlike, Yep, I knew where he
started. And then he literally,as best as I can represent. I
think this is almost word forword. What he said? He said,
number three, then how in theworld can you say we should have
limits? And then he said, Showme the verse which I loved. I
(28:53):
love, like, I'm not telling thestory to make fun of this kid. I
actually think it representssome deeper assumptions. Like,
in other words, that kid didn'tcome up with that on his own.
He's trying to make sense ofwhat he's been catechized in,
whether or not they called it,that he's been shaped in the
church, in the world. And so I,you know, as gently as I could
basically, how do you say tothis kid, it's not a verse here
(29:15):
or there, it's in the it's everypage of the Bible. It's what we
actually call the Creatorcreature, distinction. And so
the idea is God alone isinfinite. He really is
everywhere. Knows everything,but we are finite, and to
collapse those two is a form ofidolatry. So to be made in God's
(29:36):
image does not mean that we'reTrinitarian. It doesn't mean
we're infinite in all thesekinds of ways to be made in
God's image. Actually, you go,Well, we're made in God's image.
Jesus Christ is God's image. Soif you actually want to know
what the image looks like, youlooked at Jesus, and what that
image of being in the image ofGod as a human best looks like
(29:57):
in Christ, it looks likeperfect, right? Love of the
Father, right, right, communionand relations with the rest of
humanity and rightly relating tocreation like Jesus becomes that
model. So it's never meant tomake us Gods. Something else is
going on there. So
Joshua Johnson (30:14):
if I want to embody Jesus, then in our day
and age, I'm thinking of Jesus,right? Jesus walked everywhere.
You know he things were wereslower in his age. Things are a
lot quicker in our age, andthey're speeding up. That feels
like everything's going fasterand faster, and we can't keep
up. And so now I feel so if Iwant to be like Jesus, yeah,
(30:37):
body Jesus in the world, and ifI'm discipled to him. How do you
think that Jesus then would livein our age of like a sped up
time? Yeah, what would Jesus bedoing to help us then see, what
is our relationship with ourworld today? Yeah, I love, I
love that
Unknown (30:57):
question. I really do.
Because in some ways, like, Ithink people talk about
apologetics, which it doesn'tmean apologizing for but making
a defense of the faith. Andoften it becomes like, well, we
should give arguments for God'sexistence. But actually, in
light of your question, it'spart of what I would say is the
best apologetic, the bestargument the gospel, one of the
best gifts that the church cangive the world right now is a
(31:19):
fresh vision of what it means tobe human. That is actually, it
makes God more believable. Itmakes so and that like to
understand Jesus like part ofwhat it means is to learn to
value, yes, what I'm saying isnot about sloth, but to to learn
to value rest, to learn to valueSabbath, right? That word,
(31:43):
depending on people'sbackground, can be very
legalistic. I'm not interestedin legalism, but there is
something profound in thischaotic world about entering a
one in seven pattern wherethere's a day where you're like,
you know, you can sleep, andthen you worship with God's
people, and you feast, and youget time in God's creation and
(32:05):
just to slow down and enjoy God.
And I find people who are like,No, that's too good to be true.
You're like, no, that's actuallyone of the 10 Commandments. But
for various reasons, we actedlike that. One doesn't matter
anymore, and we are dehumanizingourselves. So again, I'm not
interested in legalism, but oneof the one of the gifts, is to
(32:27):
learn. We work hard and we learnto rest, and we ultimately rest
in God. I mean, another area Iwould go to is I've really
because I've wrestled with thismy own life, and part of the
research and writing help me seeI now think of sleep as a
spiritual discipline. Becauseevery day you go and you say,
God, I can't keep going. I amnow entrusting you into this.
(32:51):
And it's interesting, if you'rein war and on the front lines,
you can't sleep unless you havea friend who's awake and has
your back. And you realizebiblically, the whole argument
for why we sleep is because Godnever sleeps, and so sleep is a
daily practice of remindingourselves we are creatures, and
(33:11):
God is the Creator and Sustainerof the world, and it is not all
upon us that He is the one,which is why we lament when
things are not going well, andwhy we're grateful when they
are. How do we structure ourdays? Yeah, you need to
structure in a five minuteincrement. Yeah, exactly.
Joshua Johnson (33:28):
So this is what we're asked about constantly,
like, how do we do this is andstructure it. But I want to be
human. I don't want to just,like, be a machine. I think
we're we're wanting to be moreand more machine like than
human. So what do days looklike? Yeah, other than rest as
humans and not machines, that isfive minute increments, yeah?
Unknown (33:53):
I mean, it's a very fair question. It's interesting.
Sometimes I'm asked to come tocolleges, but also like high
schools, because this is amassive issue. I mean, you know,
in your only human I begin withthe story of just a regular day
of high school for for most kidsthese days, they'll have me talk
to the to the parents and or thestudents. And inevitably, we get
(34:14):
to Q and A, the parents willinevitably get to some version
of like, we love what you'reselling. Sign me up. But it then
comes down to So how can we haveeverything we're doing and this
right, and be more humane andrest and not kill our kids, not
kill ourselves? We're all wornout. And it's funny, because
that's the reality. Is youcan't. And we kind of know the
(34:37):
answer, but we don't. We'restill looking for the hack. So
part of what I love is there's aguy, there's a guy named Oliver
Berkman, New York Times bestselling author. He's not a
Christian. He's very thoughtful.
He's read Augustine and otherChristians, but he's written on
time management for years,right? And he wrote a book
called 4000 weeks and the ahamoment. Berkman. As writing this
(34:58):
book, 4000 weeks is the averagelifespan of someone in the
Western world. And Berkmanrealizes, oh, all of us in time
management are basically in thebusiness of selling the myth
that we're not mortal, and thatif you just arrange your life
well enough, you can do it all.
And so Berkman is not evenChristian. He's just basically
(35:19):
like, No, you have to make harddecisions. You have to say no to
things and try and do the thingsyou need to do and want to, but
then you would just have to,like, the irrationality of all
of this, where I had a studentof mine, when we're I was asking
students to give me feedback onthis, and I had lunch with this
(35:39):
student. She had this sheet ofpaper, and she had made a square
for every hour of the week, soseven days, 24 hours. And she
said, what I did is I took timeto try and put into this week
everything that people Irespect, my pastor, my parents,
my professors tell me I shouldbe doing, and I won't bore you
with all the details, but whatshe discovered as she started
(36:01):
color coding, the whole thing isIt's literally impossible. And I
encourage so actually, what Iwould encourage listeners to do
when you feel utterlyoverwhelmed is map do something
crazy like that, and workmanwho's not a Christian would tell
you, and you know what you'regonna find. You actually can't
do it all. So it's irrational toimagine you can so just either
(36:24):
have the courage and bravery forus to admit this stuff, that
we're creatures, as I would say,as a creation, and God never
wanted us to do it all, orcontinue to live constantly
disappointed, feeling like God'sfrustrated with you unrealistic
expectations. So I do think thisstuff takes tremendous amount of
courage, and the only way youget that courage is starting to
(36:48):
listen for and believe God'sbenediction is over you, and
it's not contingent on how muchyou get done. A
Joshua Johnson (36:54):
lot of this comes down into our identity. I
think one of what you said atthe beginning was that we look
for our identities withinourselves, we also then try to,
you know, hack our way into ouridentities to say, Hey, I'm good
enough in this area. I'm gettingthe things done people are going
to be okay with me. And sooftentimes it seems like we jump
(37:16):
from identity to identity toidentity. And because of that I
feel like I have to go faster. Ihave to do more. I have to like,
transcend my humanness so that Icould be better. Where does
identity come into play, withincommunity and what we receive
from God, so that we can, like,be rooted where we
Unknown (37:38):
are so good. I think one of the things we do face, or
at least me, is when you startto ask the practical questions,
like, how much should you do?
I'm a terrible judge of that inmy own life, right? And it
depends on our background. In mycase, like I will, you know, we
one of the jokes around ourhouse now is sometimes at
Tabitha, my wife will be walkingby, and she'll see me on my
(37:58):
computer at night, she said,Wait, are you working still? You
know. And there are times justlike a farmer when it's harvest
time and you need to put in longhours. And so I think that's
just realistic. The problem is,if you make all of life harvest
time, you will, you will dielike it's killing you. So
anyway, sometimes you'll see meand say, you know, are you
still? What are you doing? Andif I and I sheepishly, it's not
(38:19):
one of those times like, Well,yeah, she's like this. She'll
say, Kelly, done. ESPN, rightnow, and it's a joke for us. But
the reason is because if I wouldhave looked at myself in the
bathroom mirror five minutesearlier and said, Kelly, I think
you need to be done with yourwork, I'd say, are you lazy? You
know, because there is somethingin me, but I trust her. So now,
(38:43):
all sudden, I can do this otherthing and engage and rest and
that kind of stuff. So I find asmall group of people who know
you and love you can reallyhelp, because sometimes they
will say, as they listen to whatyou're doing, this up. Sometimes
they might actually say,actually, Kelly, we feel like
you're put it this way. Theymight not say you're lazy. Might
(39:06):
say you're not engaged, like thecommunity needs you to or your
workplace and we're impoverishedbecause you're not. So it's not
always do less. Sometimes thecommunity can say you're being
negligent. They'll put it nicerthan that, and sometimes they'll
go, Oh my word. This is crazy.
This is too much, and it's mucheasier for us to see it in
(39:28):
others than in ourselves, and weare much more gracious with
other people than we are withourselves. So I really do think
community is the way,particularly small groups, is
the way you get pockets ofshalom in this chaotic world,
and we can start having thecourage and bravery to be more
honest and realistic in howwe're living our lives. And I
(39:50):
think that can point to thebeauty of God, to his kindness
and love. Community is messy,though. Oh, man, they're just
like, I
Joshua Johnson (39:59):
have to actually. Then interact with
people I don't like. I have todo conflicts resolution like I I
don't I can't just run fromevery conflict that I have and
just isolate and be alone. Whyis community good for me? If all
of this mess happens when I'm apart of it, it's
Unknown (40:18):
the dependence part. It is interesting. It's kind of
like Lewis and others, CS, Lewisand others talk about this, but
they're like, there's, you know,I can, I can actually save you
from ever having your heartbroken again. It just don't
enter any relationships, right?
And but the problem is, you turninto a rock, and we are really
made for these relationships.
And this is, this is how weflourish. So unfortunately, love
(40:42):
is always a risk, you know. AndI have a son who's about to get
married, and, you know, theseare terrifying things now. I
mean, he's not saying that, butlike, and now I see it from the
parental perspective, butthere's no other way. Like, this
is what it looks like. You enterin and it's beautiful and it's
really hard, and God often worksin and through those very ways.
(41:05):
Yeah,
Joshua Johnson (41:06):
that's good. You know, one of the things that,
when you said that when we thinkof life as it's always harvest
time, that we're consistentlyworking, you know, my wife leads
the missions organization, andwe're, we're with missionaries a
lot, and that is their, theirtypical view, like, it's always
harvest time, and it has to beharvest time, right? There's an
important work to be done, andwe can't rest like, that's,
(41:31):
that's probably, you know, withmissionaries, that's the the
thing for yes, for missionaries,yeah, they're romanticized,
ideal, yeah. Then how would youthen help people like that,
where they think that what theydo matters so significantly,
they can't rest? What would yousay to people like that?
Unknown (41:49):
This is so great. You put those two questions together
so perfectly. So here's theshort answer, because there is
so much work to be done. It'sall good and necessary work. But
again, we read the Bible soindividualistically so. Think of
Matthew 25 and the sheep and thegoats, right? Sheep go to
heaven, goats go to hell. It'sof judgment scene. And when you
start to read that episode andnot draw everywhere else in
(42:12):
Scripture, the thing thatseparates the sheep and the
goats is, do you feed thehungry? Do you clothe the naked?
Do you do you bring these thingsof healing. Do you like? Are
you? Are you concerned for themarginalized? Are you doing
these things? The problem is,does that mean, then that I
personally must do all of thosethings? And so what's happened
(42:33):
is, you have two responses tothat kind of text, or at least
what it represents. In our day,you have some who, especially in
the last 2530 years, havefinally woken up to the Bible.
Actually does care aboutjustice. It does care about
poverty. It does care aboutthese things. But then they've
taken that and they've becomepure activists, and they feel
like they themselves need to doeverything. And we know how that
(42:57):
works. 10 years later, oftenburnout, and I work with a lot
of nonprofits, and they willtell you many of their employees
who've been doing it for a longtime are some of the most bitter
people you'll ever know, becausethey're like, Why is no one
helping? But then you have theother side, where other side has
seen that, but they were like,Well, Jesus has done it all. I
don't need to do anything,because otherwise, maybe I'm
(43:18):
trying to earn God's favor.
You're like, no, that's not whatthe Bible says either. So it's
either I need to do everythingor I need to do nothing. And I
think when you take that sametext, and you don't read it in a
radical individualistic way, butin a communal context, whether
it's Jordan or the Ancient NearEastern right, all sudden you
realize Jesus isn't screwingaround these things all need to
(43:39):
be done. But, and here's mypunch line, you discover it
takes the entire church to bethe one body of Christ. Takes
the entire church to be one bodyof Christ. Missionaries, because
of some of the rhetoric, startto think, yes, the harvest is
ready. I must personally do it.
No, no, no, you you're youmatter, you're really important,
(44:03):
you're just a person. And sothere's good work for you to do,
but you're not ever meant to doit all. Takes a whole church to
be the one body of Christ. And Ido and and tell some of these
stories. There's some examplesof missionaries actually ending
up in Super dysfunctionalsituations and problems for
(44:23):
these very reasons. So I want usto avoid either thinking I
personally must do it all, ortherefore I don't need to be
engaged at all. No, no, you're apart. You're you're you're a
toe, you're an eye, you're athumb, you matter, but you're
not the body.
Joshua Johnson (44:38):
It's so good this body, this body metaphor
and like we're part of this, thebody of Christ. I'm not the
entire body. I often live like Iam because I have been so
ingrained with thisindividualistic mindset that I
think that, oh, it's up to me tobe all of the body man that.
(45:00):
Hyper dependent, dependence,then on the body of Christ.
Yeah, to do those things, it'sso it's both life giving and
freeing, but it's also scarythat depend on on one another
and each other, yeah?
Unknown (45:15):
And even think about, you know, those of us in
ministry missions, whatever, wewill often say, and there's
truth to this, but we will oftensay, I'm worn out. I don't have
any time, but there is a need,so in faith, I'm gonna trust
that God will give me what theenergy I need to do this next
thing. And God does thatsometimes, but it is as if we
(45:38):
fail to recognize it it can alsobe a legitimate, honest
expression of faith to go I'vebeen doing all these things. I'm
worn out. I have to believe Godloves this person or situation
more than I do, and so he willprovide someone else to do it.
There is an arrogance that cansneak in where we start to think
(45:58):
we're Messiah, and there's onlyone Messiah, and none of us are
him, right? Jesus is Messiah.
So, amen. That's good. Thank youfor actually taking your book,
your only human and then makingthis, this 40 day devotional.
You were never meant to do itall. I think it's going to help
a lot of people to walk throughthose things. And thank you.
What? What is your hope forpeople who pick this up and
(46:21):
actually do walk through these40 days and yeah, devotional, my
hope is people will actually,their shoulders will go down.
They'll, they'll feel morecomfortable in God's love, His
kindness and grace. They'llvalue community more, and
they'll, they'll become moreenter a more humane existence.
So really it was becausebusiness people, actually some
(46:43):
chaplains and prisons, someothers who said, We love you're
only human. But for some people,it's a bit much. So could you
give us a more digestibleversion, something, you know?
And so the 40 day devotionalbecame a way. It's shorter, it's
little bits. So I really doencourage people in small
groups. It seems like it's beenan encouragement to people
(47:03):
that's at least our prayer.
Joshua Johnson (47:06):
I have a couple of quick questions here at the
end. One, right? If you could goback to your 21 year old self,
what advice would you give?
Unknown (47:12):
Oh, that's a great question. I think I'd tell
myself to breathe more deeply,to allow myself to be present in
the moment and not just workingfor what will be anything
Joshua Johnson (47:25):
you've been reading or watching lately, you
could recommend,
Unknown (47:27):
yeah, there's an old book on worship by JJ von Alman
called worship that really it's,it's decades old, but I find it.
I found it quite significant interms of trying to rethink how
corporate worship reallyreflects Jesus and the Gospels
and how Jesus the argument Iwould make is Jesus. This is a
(47:50):
longer conversation. The shortversion is, we don't just
worship Jesus. Jesus is a leaderof our worship, but that's a
different book. But yeah, soanyways, readings on worship
have been significant to melately.
Joshua Johnson (48:01):
Man, that's so good. I think we sometimes we
might have to go back to olderbooks to get a better sense of
where we need to go in worshipand communal worship, you know,
again, it feels like anindividualized style of worship
that we have, oh yeah, in theWestern Church. And so what does
(48:21):
it look like as the body, yeah,be able to do it together, yeah,
I think that would be fantastic.
So give it to us. Let us. Letus. You got another record in
November, yeah, so how canpeople go out and get you were
never meant to do it all, andyou're only human as well, to go
and actually walk through these,these limits that we have. And
(48:46):
what does it means to be human?
How can people get those? And isthere anywhere else you'd like
to point people to?
Unknown (48:52):
Yeah, thanks. It's pretty funny, given what I'm
writing about, I'm actually noton social media, so I don't have
Facebook, I'm not on Twitter.
I'm not on threads or anything.
But it to get the book, Amazon,any, any place sells it, but and
and Baker bras sells it. Butalso, if they want to get in
touch with me, I mean, Speakersomething, if you just type in
my name, it takes you tocovenant college. And there's a
(49:12):
there's a link in a little formyou can fill out and stuff. So
thank you, Fern. Well,
Joshua Johnson (49:17):
thank you so much. It was a fantastic
conversation, and now I feellike I could be human again. So
thank you. I
Unknown (49:23):
appreciate you. Have a good rest of your day. You
Joshua Johnson (49:25):
too. Bye, bye.
You.
In this culture, as we're saying, like this radical
(00:01):
individualism, the idea is youbecome who you are through this
isolation, through thisautonomy, when biblically, the
idea is from the beginning, Adamand Eve were made to be
dependent on God, to bedependent on their neighbor, and
to be dependent on creation.
Joshua Johnson (00:33):
Hello and welcome to the shifting culture
podcast in which we haveconversations about the culture
we create and the impact we canmake. We long to see the body of
Christ look like Jesus. I'm yourhost. Joshua Johnson, well, if
you're anything like me, youprobably know what it feels like
to chase after a never ending todo list, trying to squeeze every
bit of productivity out of yourdays, only to end up exhausted
(00:55):
and wondering if you're missingsomething vital. Well, today's
conversation might be exactlywhat you need. My guest is
Kelly. Capic Kelly is aprofessor at covenant College
and the author of the deeplyencouraging books you're only
human and the brand new 40 daydevotional you were never meant
to do it all. Kelly reminds ustoday that our limitations
(01:16):
aren't problems to overcome.
They're actually part of God'sgood design for us, he gently
challenges our obsession withproductivity, individualism and
endless hustle, calling usinstead into rhythms of rest,
dependence and real community.
In this episode, Kelly and Iexplore what it means to truly
embrace our human limits as agift rather than a burden. We
(01:38):
talk about sleep and Sabbath aspractices that help us reconnect
to God's gracious pace, howcommunity keeps us honest about
our needs, and how gratitude andlament can help us live fully
human lives rich with meaning.
If you're tired of feeling likeyou've never been enough, this
conversation is for you, so slowdown, take a deep breath and
(01:58):
join us as Kelly guides us intothe beauty of being joyfully and
authentically human. Here is myconversation with Kelly. Capic
Kelly, welcome to shiftingculture. Excited to have you on
thanks for joining me. Oh, it'sgreat to be with you. Thanks for
having me. Yeah, I'm excited todive into both you're only
(02:19):
human, and you were never meantto do it all. I really love that
you're you're bringing in theconcepts and everything that you
had in your book. You're onlyhuman into this devotional that
actually helps bring aboutpractical application into our
lives, so that we could becomewhat we were meant to be all
along. One of the big thingsthat you, I mean, you're talking
(02:42):
about here, is limits, and weare creatures of limits. What
was your relationship with yourlimits? How did you start to
discover that limits were goodin your life?
Unknown (02:56):
Yeah, it's a it's a great question. I mean, often
how these things work, isn't itthe case? Whether you're writing
on prayer or you're writingwhatever, it's often something
you struggle with yourself,right? And I just think, I don't
know if it's, you know, I thinkthere's some theological and
personal and you know, variousreasons that shape and you know,
sometimes it's upbringing andcertain views of what work
(03:19):
should look like and whatsuccess looks like. And for
various reasons, I just think Ireally had this idea of, I
should, I should be able to gohard all the time, I think, and
just pretty unrealistic goalsand that that is that that can
sound lofty. It's as simple asevery day, at the end of the
day, looking at the to do listand thinking, you know, I'd sit
(03:42):
around the table with my familyand we'd ask each other, how was
our day. And I started torealize when they would ask me,
I'd be like, Ah, it's okay. Ididn't really get and it's
always about not getting doneall I thought I should get done.
And at some point you realizemaybe I've got this narrative
screwed up. Maybe I don'tunderstand,
Joshua Johnson (03:59):
yeah, and so then you were starting to not
understand that. How did you getpushed then to your own limit
and go?
Unknown (04:08):
There it is, yeah. I mean, that's an interesting
question to ask because it's alonger story, but the short
version is, my wife and I gotmarried in 1993 and we didn't
have kids for almost nine years,and then in 2008 she while our
kids were still young, and shewas in, I'm very young, and she
was still in her 30s at thetime, she was diagnosed with
cancer, and then for years, sowas declared cancer free. And we
(04:32):
thought we got through it, andwe had to narrow our life quite
a bit, cut, cut, cut, but still,you know, we're both kind of
driven or whatever. But wethought, God, you were faithful,
God. And then, and then,starting in the summer of 2010
and to this day, there's neverbeen a day that she hasn't dealt
with chronic pain and fatigue.
And so that led to just ushaving to cut more. And the
(04:53):
result was I ended up, with herencouragement, writing a book on
pain and suffering to help methink through that. Help us
think through it, and this is along way to get to the answer,
only after really coming tobelieve in the importance of
lament and being honest abouthow hard life is and that kind
of thing, did I finally feellike I could talk about the
(05:14):
goodness of limits andunderstand them in my own life.
Joshua Johnson (05:17):
So then, how does lament help that like, what
is like, what is the process oflament that really helps us move
to say, Oh, this is good,
Unknown (05:26):
yeah. I mean, the the lament became important because
it, it was amazing, the kind oflevel of honesty that you find
in the Psalms with God. Like,where are you God? How long? Oh,
Lord, all of these kind ofthings. Lament is it can, to an
outsider, look like a lack offaith, but actually it's a
(05:47):
profound expression of faith,because you're saying, I really
am not in control. I never wasin control. Now it's really
clear, and so I'm upset with youGod, or I'm asking you
questions, because you are thesovereign one, right? And in
many ways, lament is anexpression of faith and our
dependence on God and ourlimits. And like God, I can't
(06:09):
make this better. Why don't youmake it better? Those kind of
things? So I really found lamentand gratitude are two sides of
the same coin. Gratitude isrecognizing all good and perfect
gifts come from above. I can'tgenerate all of this. Whether or
not I I express gratitude, Ishould be grateful, because they
are gifts, and lament is theflip side. Both of them are
(06:31):
showing dependence on God.
Joshua Johnson (06:33):
That's so good.
I love how you articulatedlament. I think that actually is
a profound move of faith that Ihaven't actually thought of
before, thinking thinking ofgrief and lament like, Okay,
this is good things. There's areason why the Psalms, we have,
a book of Lamentations likelament is good but realizing,
Oh, it is an act of faith thatit doesn't depend on me, I'm not
(06:57):
in control, that we're relyingon God to be able to do this.
That's beautiful articulation.
It's
Unknown (07:05):
and even thanks for saying that, even as we talk
about it, it makes me think youknow, one of the unspoken things
is, when the people of God havenot been equipped to learn how
to just honestly lament,particularly in our western
American culture, then thesubtle message is, you really
should make it better. Andlament is like complaining and
(07:27):
Oh, you shouldn't do that. Youshould just and all sudden, it
really is more of this. You needto pull yourself up from your
bootstraps. You're you'restruggling because of you. And
there's never a sense of and itcontinues to be, even though we
would never say yes, I think I'mGod. The underlying belief
(07:47):
really is we really are God. Wereally should be in control.
Where
Joshua Johnson (07:51):
do you think that the hyper individuality of
our American culture,particularly where the most
individualistic culture in theworld? Yeah, and saying that we
could do this, everything isabout productivity. You have
life hacks, you have time hacks,you have all these hacks so that
you could get better, that youcan actually do it all yourself.
(08:14):
How is that all wrapped up inthe place where we find
ourselves going? Man, I don'tknow if I could actually do all
this, where anxiety, depression,loneliness, all of this stuff
comes into play, because wethink we have to do it. Yeah,
Unknown (08:30):
yeah. And, and you're right to approach it in terms of
kind of the radicalindividualism, or hyper
individualism, where we aretold, I mean, the one of the big
messages is, if you want to knowwho you are, actually look
inside of you, and that's so nowdeep in us that we don't even
realize what a modern phenomenathat was like in the middle ages
(08:52):
or around the world. To thisday, much of the world and
throughout much most of history.
If you ask someone who they are,they would say, well, here are
my people, here's my land,here's my tribe, here's my
vocation, all these externalthings. But now sudden, we live
in a time that know who you are.
You have to find it inside ofyou. That's a very unstable kind
(09:13):
of thing. And again, it's themyth that you and I are in more
control than we really are.
Right? We know our DNA shapesus, our family structures shape
us, our our economics, all thesethings, all these outside
forces, are quite significant,and when we downplay it, we do
buy into this myth that we havemore control, which then breeds
more anxiety, because weactually don't have control, and
(09:35):
and we come to realize it. Soone of the beautiful things
about learning to embrace ourlimits is to recognize we never
were in control. God didn't evenmake us to be in control and and
we can talk about this more ifyou want, but to discover that
that these limits are part ofthe goodness in how God made us,
rather than deficiency.
Joshua Johnson (09:58):
And then talk to me. Yeah, I. Are we human? What
does it mean to be human? Andwhy did God create us with these
creaturely limits? Yeah.
Unknown (10:08):
I mean, it's a fascinating thing, because in
this culture, as we're saying,like this radical individualism,
the idea is you become who youare through this isolation,
through this autonomy, whenbiblically, the idea is from the
beginning, Adam and Eve weremade to be dependent on God, to
be dependent on their neighborand to be dependent on creation,
(10:31):
dependent on God, neighbor andcreation. Now think about that's
part of the goodness ofcreation, that's not part of the
fall, that's before there's anysin or fall. Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, in the early 20thcentury talked about this, and
he understood dependence is nota result of the of sin or the
fall, but what the what sin inthe fall does is twist those
dependencies, undermine thehealthy dependence, right? And
(10:55):
so now we see each other as athreat, either to overcome or to
ignore that kind of thing,rather than the goodness of
being a creature is growing inhealthy dependence. And just
think about culturally, when dowe ever use the word dependence
as a positive if I've likeJoshua? Yeah, like people say,
Hey, you met Joshua. What do youthink I'm like, he seemed really
(11:16):
nice, but he seems like he'sreally dependent on a lot of
people, right? That's never acompliment, but biblically, you
and I and so how do you doChristian discipleship when the
word dependence is negative,when actually discipleship is
learning healthy, robustdependence on God, right?
Healthy, I don't meandysfunctional dependence, but
healthy dependence on eachother, and even recognizing how
(11:38):
dependent we are in the rest ofcreation. That
Joshua Johnson (11:40):
means then I could then put myself into a
place where I could rightlysituate myself, where I belong,
yeah? Or I say, you know, I'mindependent. I could do it all
on my own, like it's a loftyview of who I am, yeah? But when
I'm dependent on God, I have aright view of myself and then a
right view of God, yep, take usinto a place of, how does
(12:02):
humility play into us realizingwho we are? What is humility and
what? What is it not?
Unknown (12:09):
Yeah, that's great, and that I do think that's this is
the right context to even askthat kind of question. Because
in the history of the church,and in some of our circles and
my tradition, struggles withthis. Sometimes we really get
humility wrong, and I think ithurts us. So if you ask
Christians, kind of without anyprep, you say, Why should we be
(12:30):
humble? Our gut response oftenis, well, we should be humble
because we're sinners. Well, Iactually do think we're sinners.
I think our sin is complex, andto be honest, I think we're
probably more sinful than weeven have a clue about. So what
I'm going to say is in notdenying that, but if you and the
fact that we are sinners, shouldcontribute to us being humble,
(12:51):
but if you build humility on thefoundation of sin, it distorts
the whole thing, so it gets usback to what we're talking
about, here's the quickest way,without all the technical
discussion, is this Adam and Evebefore the fall? Should they
have been humble? And the answeris actually yes, because they
should be humble, because theywere dependent on God, dependent
(13:14):
on each other, and dependent onthe rest of creation. And that
dependence is a sign ofhumility, of right on rightly
under one understanding oneselfand the rest of creation and
God. So here's here's a reallypractical way. It works out in
our lives. When we thinkhumility is built on sin. Then
as Christians, we often know,gosh, I am not humble like I
(13:35):
should be. And then people say,Okay, I want to grow in
humility. So the way weencourage them to grow in
humility is by focusing on whata bad sinner they are, which
ironically makes them still thefocus of the whole thing. It's
self absorbed, but it soundspious, so you're like, Okay, so
I'm all for appropriate times ofintrospection and analysis and
(13:56):
repentance. I'm all for that,but that can undermine it. So
really with humility, you cangrow in humility by learning to
look at the gifts God has givenother people, to learn to
celebrate and delight in otherpeople like those are
constructive things andpractices you can put into place
that will grow and fosterhumility and and it's funny,
(14:17):
because to even say somethinglike that, Sometimes people
like, well, that sounds wrong.
That sounds arrogant to say,which betrays it the fact we
kind of assume either you'rehumble or you're not, either you
got the gene or you don't. Butactually we can grow in humility
as we grow in our recognition ofwho we are and our love and
delight in other people and inGod and and that kind of thing.
(14:37):
My
Joshua Johnson (14:40):
wife always throws a joke at me because I'm
telling her how great I am, andshe talks about, oh, and you're
really humble as well, yeah. Butyou know, I do say I have some
good things in me, like, and Ihave limits as well, but I don't
want to, like, focus on me as.
Sinner and the sin andintrospection and like, have
(15:02):
this false sense of humility.
I'm trying to get to this placein my relationships, knowing
that man, I could actually beokay, and like, be confident,
and God has created me to be inrelationship to the world and to
one another in community and tohim and still be humble at the
(15:24):
same time. Yeah, he only doesn'tmean a lack of confidence,
Unknown (15:27):
right? Yeah, I do think, I think one of the keys
there is, as we start to Idon't, I'm not trying to
encourage people to falselyflatter or lie. Don't tell your
kid they're great at soccer whenthey suck, right? That's
actually not what I'm saying.
I'm saying though all good andperfect gifts come from above,
and as we look and everybodyreally does have gifts, I know
(15:51):
we think it's cheesy to almosttalk that way, but, but we don't
tend to know our gifts. We don'ttend to recognize our gifts. And
so I don't think these days ittakes a lot of time for me to
convince people we need peoplewho are different than us to
help us see our blind spots. Ithink Thankfully we're finally
there to realize that, but Ithink we've missed the opposite.
(16:13):
We also need people who aredifferent to help us see our
strengths, because our strengthscome so naturally. Even though
they still require work anddevelopment, they come more
naturally. We start to assumeeverybody has them. So if you're
great working with children, youjust kind of think, what are you
a monster if you're not right?
(16:35):
But the reality is, it may bethat these are part of your
gifts. If you're great withhospitality, and you walk up and
people just relax. When you'rethere, you kind of assume that's
what everyone brings, but theydon't. So other people can help
you see what God has given you,which is a delight. And as you
learn to delight in others, I dojust a circle back to what you
(16:57):
said. I then think you can be ina more honest place, where you
can go there's all kinds ofthings I'm not very good at, but
it does seem like God has givenme this and this, and then also
you can be God doesn't want youto lie about yourself and say
you're terrible at somethinghe's given you gifts at. It's
just to recognize you're just acreature. You're really
important, but you're a reallysmall creature. And we need each
(17:19):
other, and so we can delight inwhat we have, even as we delight
and recognize what we don'thave.
Joshua Johnson (17:24):
So in this, this dependence on God and others and
creation, to know that we'rehuman, part of what you you
really talk about is an embodiedexperience of being, knowing our
bodies, being in relationship toother bodies, even in physical
touch. I think, you know, forme, I feel human and alive when
(17:47):
my feet are in the dirt, increation. Yeah, I'm also, you
know, a part of that anddependent on this creation. How
does our bodies help us realizewho we are?
Unknown (18:00):
Yeah, oh, it's such a good question. We do have this
phenomena where we often look inthe mirror and we say, That's
not who I am, right? Whetherit's like we've gained some
weight or, you know, whatever,this disassociation from our
body, both in the church andoutside of the church, is, is a
really strong temptation. Butour bodies, especially with, you
(18:21):
know, we all have phones. We canall, quote, unquote, be multiple
places at the same time, but wecan't actually, we have a body,
we have a brain, we havephysical senses. And so learning
to recognize the importance of,as you said, like being where
our feet are, becomes verysignificant, and we devalue the
(18:43):
body in ways that hurt us. Sofor example, I'm a college
professor. That's my full time,uh, job. And one of the things I
found I've been teaching atcovenant College on lookout
mount Georgia since 2001 it'sgreat school, but I so I've
gotten to know a lot of alum youknow, who come back. And one of
the things that surprises them,especially the first year to
three years, is they most Missphysical touch, and they didn't
(19:07):
expect it. But basically whathappens is they had so many of
them had really good friends.
They'd wrestle in the grass.
They sit right next to eachother on the couch. They gather,
they greet each other in thehall. Constant hugs, just being
next to each other, laughing allsudden, they're supposed to be
quote, unquote, grown ups. Theygo move into an apartment by
(19:27):
themselves, go to a professionalenvironment in a workplace, and
it terrifies them, because alsothey'll realize days, weeks
sometimes go by and they'venever had physical touch. And
I'm talking about healthy,appropriate physical touch,
which makes us all the morevulnerable to unhealthy touch.
(19:48):
And so I think that we go toextremes here, where we act like
touch is everything, or touch isnothing, right, because it's so
important to actually being ahuman, it's part of. Why we can
be manipulated and hurt in thisway. And so the church needs to
really be clear about sexualabuse, inappropriate touch, all
of that. But the church shouldnot over correct and fail to
(20:12):
realize just how significant,healthy, appropriate, godly
touch is. And so this whetherit's singles, children, all of
the like, we need importantchild protection policies, but
don't think the answer is tonever hug a kid, right? And I've
seen these kind of extremes.
Joshua Johnson (20:29):
There was a huge difference when I went to go
live in Jordan in the MiddleEast, like one Hey, their
concept of time is differentthan my concept of time. Their
concept of of physical touch isdifferent than mine, yeah,
concept of hospitality andcommunity is, Yeah, mine and all
of it is a communal culture inwhich I actually then would
(20:51):
would come into people'sfamilies. Men are kissing men on
the cheek. You know, women,we're hugging each other. I I've
never seen like more men holdhands in a black way than in the
Middle East, like their Arabslove to hold hands. Yeah, and
it's not sexualized, and it'snot sexual
Unknown (21:10):
and I remember, I remember being in eat. I think
this is Egypt. My wife and I arein Egypt, and we look and there
are these two soldiers withtheir like, AK 47 driver
walking, holding hands, right?
But they're just friends. It'svery sweet. But we just, yeah,
we've so sexualized
Joshua Johnson (21:27):
everything. How do we practically then do that?
How do we foster a community orplaces where we can actually see
healthy physical touch andhealthy community?
Unknown (21:38):
It's interesting. One of the areas of research when I
was working on your only humanand some of this comes out in
the book, you were never meantto do it all in the devotional
but is to, you know, you read inthe New Testament about greet
one another with a holy kiss.
And we kind of just joke aboutthat. And I remember thinking,
Oh, that's That's funny. Andyes, we live in different
cultures, but when I started tostudy it in the ancient church,
like after the the, you know,post apostolic period, it was
(22:02):
actually quite significantstill. In fact, you have some
early church fathers who willsay things like, without the
kiss, you're not sure if theprayers are heard and and in
some ways, it was just so tiedtogether. And there was, there
was a volume originallypublished Princeton University
(22:22):
Press by the sociologist who Idon't think was actually a
Christian at the time, but sinceit's become a Christian. And he
studied how in the world, didthis little group of Christians
become a global power, right?
And one of the arguments was theway the early church treated
women and children, becausesocially, women and children
(22:46):
were often just used for theirbodies and horrendous, like, you
know, without getting into even,like we talk about tutor the
tutor system, trust me, backthen, it's not what you think,
right? It's pretty terrible. Soall of a sudden in the church,
your body was respected, and themetaphor changed. So all sudden
(23:07):
in the church, you are mysister, my child, my brother, my
father, my mother. So these arefamilial languages, language. So
now all sudden, you'vedesexualized it. And the idea is
the church is watching likethis. It needs to be holy, but
you greet one another with aholy kiss, as you would saying
(23:29):
hello and goodbye to yourgrandparents or to your sister
or brother. And so that's quitesignificant, where all of a
sudden, the safety of thatcommunity really honors bodies
in ways that brings back dignityand allows people to then resist
some of the problems socially.
Joshua Johnson (23:48):
You know, one of the things that I find that has
creeped into western church isour concept of productivity and
time, and we just have to striveto be to be better, to do all of
the thing we do have a laddermentality of trying to get to
God. Just pervasive, I think, inthe church, where it's really
(24:12):
about us, right? It's up to usto be able to do something so
that we could please God. Andpart of it, I think we have to
get everything into this limitedamount of time that we have, so
we have to really work at ourproductivity. What is this,
then, our relationship withtime? And how do we as humans
(24:32):
relate to time? Or how should werelate to time? Is the question,
oh, it's such a good
Unknown (24:38):
question, and it's interesting talking to you about
it because you you have livedoverseas, you've lived in
Jordan. So another area that Ireally learned about doing
research is scholarship. Willtalk about, I didn't even know
there was a field ofsociologists of time, but there
is right. But anyway, scholarswill talk in this field will
make a distinction between whatthey'll call contextual time
(24:59):
and. On contextual time. Andcontextual time is basically you
understand time in terms of yourcontext. The sun is up, it's
bright. This you can see it'sdown. Your body chemistry is
changing, right? Or it's a timeof war. It's someone's pregnant,
someone's sick. All of thesekind of things affect the
(25:21):
context, affects your view oftime. That is how most of the
world lived until very recently,like we're talking the last 100
years, especially, there's afamous essay in in, um, I think
it was 1946 called the tyrannyof the clock. And he basically
says, said at the time, this is1946 think about how much has
(25:41):
changed since then. And hebasically and he basically said,
the most significant factor thatthat shows the difference
between us now and most of theancient world and much of the
world is our view of time,right? And and what he calls
clock time. And so clock time isnon contextual time, and that
means there are 24 hours. Everyhour is just an hour. Every
(26:03):
minute's just a minute. So whatthat looks like, practically,
is, if you have an hour of workto do and it's 11pm Well, we
have electricity, turn on thelight, open your laptop and
start working, because you havean hour of work to do, and you
have an hour that is totallyignoring the blood sugar levels
in your body. It's ignoring thatthe kid in the back of your
(26:25):
house might have COVID. It'signoring the It's ignoring
everything that the sun is down,all it because all time is the
same. And this, you know, it's amuch longer conversation, but
this then contributes to whywhen you're driven by clock
time. You should always be ableto get more done. There's
always, you know. How do youthink of time? It doesn't take
(26:47):
into account rhythms of life,seasons of life, body chemistry,
all that
Joshua Johnson (26:52):
stuff. It stresses me out just thinking
about it. But this is the, thisis the the way that we live now.
How do we then start to thinkabout maybe think about time
differently. This is thequestion I I've been thinking
about. I think God is outside oftime, and it's not bound by
time, but we're also made in theimage of God. And so because of
(27:16):
that, is, should I have adifferent relationship with
time, or should I view timedifferently as somebody who
reflects God, who is outside oftime.
Unknown (27:26):
Yeah, that's great that. So that reminds me, you're
putting it more in a moresophisticated way. But maybe
this will help listeners I had,I was talking about this to a
group of high school kids asummer or two ago, you know. And
I love Q and A afterwards, atthese kind of conferences, and
after I was explaining this ideathat we are finite, it's not
really word you and I have usedyet, but just to make sure
(27:47):
listeners are following, theidea of finitude is a fancy word
for limits, right? We're finite.
We're limited in space, time,knowledge and power. So finitude
means limits, limits, orfinitude, or fancy way for what
Christians just meant bycreature. So anyways, I'm
talking about the goodness ofour limit. So I had the student
raised his hand at the you know,and he said, I got three
questions. I could tell he'supset with me, which I loved,
(28:08):
you know, my God, this is great.
I'm really proud of this kid. Sohe's like, three questions. Dr
gavid, number one, he said, is,Does God have limits? And, you
know, I'm a theologian, soasking me a question like that,
I don't kind of want to saywhat. Want to say, Well, I mean,
he can't sin. Is that a limit?
But I knew that's not what hewanted. So I said, No, God has
no limits. And he started tosmile. And he said, number two,
(28:29):
are we made in the image of God?
And then I start smiling. I'mlike, Yep, I knew where he
started. And then he literally,as best as I can represent. I
think this is almost word forword. What he said? He said,
number three, then how in theworld can you say we should have
limits? And then he said, Showme the verse which I loved. I
(28:53):
love, like, I'm not telling thestory to make fun of this kid. I
actually think it representssome deeper assumptions. Like,
in other words, that kid didn'tcome up with that on his own.
He's trying to make sense ofwhat he's been catechized in,
whether or not they called it,that he's been shaped in the
church, in the world. And so I,you know, as gently as I could
basically, how do you say tothis kid, it's not a verse here
(29:15):
or there, it's in the it's everypage of the Bible. It's what we
actually call the Creatorcreature, distinction. And so
the idea is God alone isinfinite. He really is
everywhere. Knows everything,but we are finite, and to
collapse those two is a form ofidolatry. So to be made in God's
(29:36):
image does not mean that we'reTrinitarian. It doesn't mean
we're infinite in all thesekinds of ways to be made in
God's image. Actually, you go,Well, we're made in God's image.
Jesus Christ is God's image. Soif you actually want to know
what the image looks like, youlooked at Jesus, and what that
image of being in the image ofGod as a human best looks like
(29:57):
in Christ, it looks likeperfect, right? Love of the
Father, right, right, communionand relations with the rest of
humanity and rightly relating tocreation like Jesus becomes that
model. So it's never meant tomake us Gods. Something else is
going on there. So
Joshua Johnson (30:14):
if I want to embody Jesus, then in our day
and age, I'm thinking of Jesus,right? Jesus walked everywhere.
You know he things were wereslower in his age. Things are a
lot quicker in our age, andthey're speeding up. That feels
like everything's going fasterand faster, and we can't keep
up. And so now I feel so if Iwant to be like Jesus, yeah,
(30:37):
body Jesus in the world, and ifI'm discipled to him. How do you
think that Jesus then would livein our age of like a sped up
time? Yeah, what would Jesus bedoing to help us then see, what
is our relationship with ourworld today? Yeah, I love, I
love that
Unknown (30:57):
question. I really do.
Because in some ways, like, Ithink people talk about
apologetics, which it doesn'tmean apologizing for but making
a defense of the faith. Andoften it becomes like, well, we
should give arguments for God'sexistence. But actually, in
light of your question, it'spart of what I would say is the
best apologetic, the bestargument the gospel, one of the
best gifts that the church cangive the world right now is a
(31:19):
fresh vision of what it means tobe human. That is actually, it
makes God more believable. Itmakes so and that like to
understand Jesus like part ofwhat it means is to learn to
value, yes, what I'm saying isnot about sloth, but to to learn
to value rest, to learn to valueSabbath, right? That word,
(31:43):
depending on people'sbackground, can be very
legalistic. I'm not interestedin legalism, but there is
something profound in thischaotic world about entering a
one in seven pattern wherethere's a day where you're like,
you know, you can sleep, andthen you worship with God's
people, and you feast, and youget time in God's creation and
(32:05):
just to slow down and enjoy God.
And I find people who are like,No, that's too good to be true.
You're like, no, that's actuallyone of the 10 Commandments. But
for various reasons, we actedlike that. One doesn't matter
anymore, and we are dehumanizingourselves. So again, I'm not
interested in legalism, but oneof the one of the gifts, is to
(32:27):
learn. We work hard and we learnto rest, and we ultimately rest
in God. I mean, another area Iwould go to is I've really
because I've wrestled with thismy own life, and part of the
research and writing help me seeI now think of sleep as a
spiritual discipline. Becauseevery day you go and you say,
God, I can't keep going. I amnow entrusting you into this.
(32:51):
And it's interesting, if you'rein war and on the front lines,
you can't sleep unless you havea friend who's awake and has
your back. And you realizebiblically, the whole argument
for why we sleep is because Godnever sleeps, and so sleep is a
daily practice of remindingourselves we are creatures, and
(33:11):
God is the Creator and Sustainerof the world, and it is not all
upon us that He is the one,which is why we lament when
things are not going well, andwhy we're grateful when they
are. How do we structure ourdays? Yeah, you need to
structure in a five minuteincrement. Yeah, exactly.
Joshua Johnson (33:28):
So this is what we're asked about constantly,
like, how do we do this is andstructure it. But I want to be
human. I don't want to just,like, be a machine. I think
we're we're wanting to be moreand more machine like than
human. So what do days looklike? Yeah, other than rest as
humans and not machines, that isfive minute increments, yeah?
Unknown (33:53):
I mean, it's a very fair question. It's interesting.
Sometimes I'm asked to come tocolleges, but also like high
schools, because this is amassive issue. I mean, you know,
in your only human I begin withthe story of just a regular day
of high school for for most kidsthese days, they'll have me talk
to the to the parents and or thestudents. And inevitably, we get
(34:14):
to Q and A, the parents willinevitably get to some version
of like, we love what you'reselling. Sign me up. But it then
comes down to So how can we haveeverything we're doing and this
right, and be more humane andrest and not kill our kids, not
kill ourselves? We're all wornout. And it's funny, because
that's the reality. Is youcan't. And we kind of know the
(34:37):
answer, but we don't. We'restill looking for the hack. So
part of what I love is there's aguy, there's a guy named Oliver
Berkman, New York Times bestselling author. He's not a
Christian. He's very thoughtful.
He's read Augustine and otherChristians, but he's written on
time management for years,right? And he wrote a book
called 4000 weeks and the ahamoment. Berkman. As writing this
(34:58):
book, 4000 weeks is the averagelifespan of someone in the
Western world. And Berkmanrealizes, oh, all of us in time
management are basically in thebusiness of selling the myth
that we're not mortal, and thatif you just arrange your life
well enough, you can do it all.
And so Berkman is not evenChristian. He's just basically
(35:19):
like, No, you have to make harddecisions. You have to say no to
things and try and do the thingsyou need to do and want to, but
then you would just have to,like, the irrationality of all
of this, where I had a studentof mine, when we're I was asking
students to give me feedback onthis, and I had lunch with this
(35:39):
student. She had this sheet ofpaper, and she had made a square
for every hour of the week, soseven days, 24 hours. And she
said, what I did is I took timeto try and put into this week
everything that people Irespect, my pastor, my parents,
my professors tell me I shouldbe doing, and I won't bore you
with all the details, but whatshe discovered as she started
(36:01):
color coding, the whole thing isIt's literally impossible. And I
encourage so actually, what Iwould encourage listeners to do
when you feel utterlyoverwhelmed is map do something
crazy like that, and workmanwho's not a Christian would tell
you, and you know what you'regonna find. You actually can't
do it all. So it's irrational toimagine you can so just either
(36:24):
have the courage and bravery forus to admit this stuff, that
we're creatures, as I would say,as a creation, and God never
wanted us to do it all, orcontinue to live constantly
disappointed, feeling like God'sfrustrated with you unrealistic
expectations. So I do think thisstuff takes tremendous amount of
courage, and the only way youget that courage is starting to
(36:48):
listen for and believe God'sbenediction is over you, and
it's not contingent on how muchyou get done. A
Joshua Johnson (36:54):
lot of this comes down into our identity. I
think one of what you said atthe beginning was that we look
for our identities withinourselves, we also then try to,
you know, hack our way into ouridentities to say, Hey, I'm good
enough in this area. I'm gettingthe things done people are going
to be okay with me. And sooftentimes it seems like we jump
(37:16):
from identity to identity toidentity. And because of that I
feel like I have to go faster. Ihave to do more. I have to like,
transcend my humanness so that Icould be better. Where does
identity come into play, withincommunity and what we receive
from God, so that we can, like,be rooted where we
Unknown (37:38):
are so good. I think one of the things we do face, or
at least me, is when you startto ask the practical questions,
like, how much should you do?
I'm a terrible judge of that inmy own life, right? And it
depends on our background. In mycase, like I will, you know, we
one of the jokes around ourhouse now is sometimes at
Tabitha, my wife will be walkingby, and she'll see me on my
(37:58):
computer at night, she said,Wait, are you working still? You
know. And there are times justlike a farmer when it's harvest
time and you need to put in longhours. And so I think that's
just realistic. The problem is,if you make all of life harvest
time, you will, you will dielike it's killing you. So
anyway, sometimes you'll see meand say, you know, are you
still? What are you doing? Andif I and I sheepishly, it's not
(38:19):
one of those times like, Well,yeah, she's like this. She'll
say, Kelly, done. ESPN, rightnow, and it's a joke for us. But
the reason is because if I wouldhave looked at myself in the
bathroom mirror five minutesearlier and said, Kelly, I think
you need to be done with yourwork, I'd say, are you lazy? You
know, because there is somethingin me, but I trust her. So now,
(38:43):
all sudden, I can do this otherthing and engage and rest and
that kind of stuff. So I find asmall group of people who know
you and love you can reallyhelp, because sometimes they
will say, as they listen to whatyou're doing, this up. Sometimes
they might actually say,actually, Kelly, we feel like
you're put it this way. Theymight not say you're lazy. Might
(39:06):
say you're not engaged, like thecommunity needs you to or your
workplace and we're impoverishedbecause you're not. So it's not
always do less. Sometimes thecommunity can say you're being
negligent. They'll put it nicerthan that, and sometimes they'll
go, Oh my word. This is crazy.
This is too much, and it's mucheasier for us to see it in
(39:28):
others than in ourselves, and weare much more gracious with
other people than we are withourselves. So I really do think
community is the way,particularly small groups, is
the way you get pockets ofshalom in this chaotic world,
and we can start having thecourage and bravery to be more
honest and realistic in howwe're living our lives. And I
(39:50):
think that can point to thebeauty of God, to his kindness
and love. Community is messy,though. Oh, man, they're just
like, I
Joshua Johnson (39:59):
have to actually. Then interact with
people I don't like. I have todo conflicts resolution like I I
don't I can't just run fromevery conflict that I have and
just isolate and be alone. Whyis community good for me? If all
of this mess happens when I'm apart of it, it's
Unknown (40:18):
the dependence part. It is interesting. It's kind of
like Lewis and others, CS, Lewisand others talk about this, but
they're like, there's, you know,I can, I can actually save you
from ever having your heartbroken again. It just don't
enter any relationships, right?
And but the problem is, you turninto a rock, and we are really
made for these relationships.
And this is, this is how weflourish. So unfortunately, love
(40:42):
is always a risk, you know. AndI have a son who's about to get
married, and, you know, theseare terrifying things now. I
mean, he's not saying that, butlike, and now I see it from the
parental perspective, butthere's no other way. Like, this
is what it looks like. You enterin and it's beautiful and it's
really hard, and God often worksin and through those very ways.
(41:05):
Yeah,
Joshua Johnson (41:06):
that's good. You know, one of the things that,
when you said that when we thinkof life as it's always harvest
time, that we're consistentlyworking, you know, my wife leads
the missions organization, andwe're, we're with missionaries a
lot, and that is their, theirtypical view, like, it's always
harvest time, and it has to beharvest time, right? There's an
important work to be done, andwe can't rest like, that's,
(41:31):
that's probably, you know, withmissionaries, that's the the
thing for yes, for missionaries,yeah, they're romanticized,
ideal, yeah. Then how would youthen help people like that,
where they think that what theydo matters so significantly,
they can't rest? What would yousay to people like that?
Unknown (41:49):
This is so great. You put those two questions together
so perfectly. So here's theshort answer, because there is
so much work to be done. It'sall good and necessary work. But
again, we read the Bible soindividualistically so. Think of
Matthew 25 and the sheep and thegoats, right? Sheep go to
heaven, goats go to hell. It'sof judgment scene. And when you
start to read that episode andnot draw everywhere else in
(42:12):
Scripture, the thing thatseparates the sheep and the
goats is, do you feed thehungry? Do you clothe the naked?
Do you do you bring these thingsof healing. Do you like? Are
you? Are you concerned for themarginalized? Are you doing
these things? The problem is,does that mean, then that I
personally must do all of thosethings? And so what's happened
(42:33):
is, you have two responses tothat kind of text, or at least
what it represents. In our day,you have some who, especially in
the last 2530 years, havefinally woken up to the Bible.
Actually does care aboutjustice. It does care about
poverty. It does care aboutthese things. But then they've
taken that and they've becomepure activists, and they feel
like they themselves need to doeverything. And we know how that
(42:57):
works. 10 years later, oftenburnout, and I work with a lot
of nonprofits, and they willtell you many of their employees
who've been doing it for a longtime are some of the most bitter
people you'll ever know, becausethey're like, Why is no one
helping? But then you have theother side, where other side has
seen that, but they were like,Well, Jesus has done it all. I
don't need to do anything,because otherwise, maybe I'm
(43:18):
trying to earn God's favor.
You're like, no, that's not whatthe Bible says either. So it's
either I need to do everythingor I need to do nothing. And I
think when you take that sametext, and you don't read it in a
radical individualistic way, butin a communal context, whether
it's Jordan or the Ancient NearEastern right, all sudden you
realize Jesus isn't screwingaround these things all need to
(43:39):
be done. But, and here's mypunch line, you discover it
takes the entire church to bethe one body of Christ. Takes
the entire church to be one bodyof Christ. Missionaries, because
of some of the rhetoric, startto think, yes, the harvest is
ready. I must personally do it.
No, no, no, you you're youmatter, you're really important,
(44:03):
you're just a person. And sothere's good work for you to do,
but you're not ever meant to doit all. Takes a whole church to
be the one body of Christ. And Ido and and tell some of these
stories. There's some examplesof missionaries actually ending
up in Super dysfunctionalsituations and problems for
(44:23):
these very reasons. So I want usto avoid either thinking I
personally must do it all, ortherefore I don't need to be
engaged at all. No, no, you're apart. You're you're you're a
toe, you're an eye, you're athumb, you matter, but you're
not the body.
Joshua Johnson (44:38):
It's so good this body, this body metaphor
and like we're part of this, thebody of Christ. I'm not the
entire body. I often live like Iam because I have been so
ingrained with thisindividualistic mindset that I
think that, oh, it's up to me tobe all of the body man that.
(45:00):
Hyper dependent, dependence,then on the body of Christ.
Yeah, to do those things, it'sso it's both life giving and
freeing, but it's also scarythat depend on on one another
and each other, yeah?
Unknown (45:15):
And even think about, you know, those of us in
ministry missions, whatever, wewill often say, and there's
truth to this, but we will oftensay, I'm worn out. I don't have
any time, but there is a need,so in faith, I'm gonna trust
that God will give me what theenergy I need to do this next
thing. And God does thatsometimes, but it is as if we
(45:38):
fail to recognize it it can alsobe a legitimate, honest
expression of faith to go I'vebeen doing all these things. I'm
worn out. I have to believe Godloves this person or situation
more than I do, and so he willprovide someone else to do it.
There is an arrogance that cansneak in where we start to think
(45:58):
we're Messiah, and there's onlyone Messiah, and none of us are
him, right? Jesus is Messiah.
So, amen. That's good. Thank youfor actually taking your book,
your only human and then makingthis, this 40 day devotional.
You were never meant to do itall. I think it's going to help
a lot of people to walk throughthose things. And thank you.
What? What is your hope forpeople who pick this up and
(46:21):
actually do walk through these40 days and yeah, devotional, my
hope is people will actually,their shoulders will go down.
They'll, they'll feel morecomfortable in God's love, His
kindness and grace. They'llvalue community more, and
they'll, they'll become moreenter a more humane existence.
So really it was becausebusiness people, actually some
(46:43):
chaplains and prisons, someothers who said, We love you're
only human. But for some people,it's a bit much. So could you
give us a more digestibleversion, something, you know?
And so the 40 day devotionalbecame a way. It's shorter, it's
little bits. So I really doencourage people in small
groups. It seems like it's beenan encouragement to people
(47:03):
that's at least our prayer.
Joshua Johnson (47:06):
I have a couple of quick questions here at the
end. One, right? If you could goback to your 21 year old self,
what advice would you give?
Unknown (47:12):
Oh, that's a great question. I think I'd tell
myself to breathe more deeply,to allow myself to be present in
the moment and not just workingfor what will be anything
Joshua Johnson (47:25):
you've been reading or watching lately, you
could recommend,
Unknown (47:27):
yeah, there's an old book on worship by JJ von Alman
called worship that really it's,it's decades old, but I find it.
I found it quite significant interms of trying to rethink how
corporate worship reallyreflects Jesus and the Gospels
and how Jesus the argument Iwould make is Jesus. This is a
(47:50):
longer conversation. The shortversion is, we don't just
worship Jesus. Jesus is a leaderof our worship, but that's a
different book. But yeah, soanyways, readings on worship
have been significant to melately.
Joshua Johnson (48:01):
Man, that's so good. I think we sometimes we
might have to go back to olderbooks to get a better sense of
where we need to go in worshipand communal worship, you know,
again, it feels like anindividualized style of worship
that we have, oh yeah, in theWestern Church. And so what does
(48:21):
it look like as the body, yeah,be able to do it together, yeah,
I think that would be fantastic.
So give it to us. Let us. Letus. You got another record in
November, yeah, so how canpeople go out and get you were
never meant to do it all, andyou're only human as well, to go
and actually walk through these,these limits that we have. And
(48:46):
what does it means to be human?
How can people get those? And isthere anywhere else you'd like
to point people to?
Unknown (48:52):
Yeah, thanks. It's pretty funny, given what I'm
writing about, I'm actually noton social media, so I don't have
Facebook, I'm not on Twitter.
I'm not on threads or anything.
But it to get the book, Amazon,any, any place sells it, but and
and Baker bras sells it. Butalso, if they want to get in
touch with me, I mean, Speakersomething, if you just type in
my name, it takes you tocovenant college. And there's a
(49:12):
there's a link in a little formyou can fill out and stuff. So
thank you, Fern. Well,
Joshua Johnson (49:17):
thank you so much. It was a fantastic
conversation, and now I feellike I could be human again. So
thank you. I
Unknown (49:23):
appreciate you. Have a good rest of your day. You
Joshua Johnson (49:25):
too. Bye, bye.
You.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.