November 8, 2024 • 62 mins
Join us for an insightful conversation with theologian Dr. Craig Keen as he shares how the Book of Acts became a beacon of guidance in his life during the turbulent year of 1968, amidst the Vietnam War. Reflecting on his journey of faith within a conservative environment, Dr. Keen reveals the profound impact Acts had on his understanding of nonviolence and pacifism. We uncover his introspective exploration of scripture, which shaped his life decisions and spiritual commitments amidst societal challenges.
Our dialogue extends beyond traditional notions of violence, exploring its subtleties in power dynamics and political processes. Dr. Keen and I discuss the essential role of grace in striving for nonviolence while navigating a world riddled with complexities. The conversation emphasizes the delicate balance between confronting violence when necessary and adhering to a life inspired by the gospel. We reflect on the concept of Shalom, advocating for peace that intertwines with justice and community, and the practical challenges of living these ideals daily.
We also dive into the intricate relationship between independence and interconnectedness, examining how societal notions of freedom can lead to isolation. Through stories of community and the church's mission to embrace marginalized individuals, we highlight the beauty and challenges of unity. Inspired by the early Christian community in Acts, our discussion underscores the transformative power of welcoming those who seem different and the irresistible joy that stems from a life of faith and shared purpose.
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Episode Transcript
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Chris Nafis (00:00):
Hi and welcome back to the Current.
This is Pastor Chris Nafis ofLiving Water and today very glad
to have Dr Craig Keene join us.
Craig is a theologian, taughttheology at various universities
for 30-plus years.
He's been a member of LivingWater Church for a long time
sort of theology in residencefor us and just a sort of
profoundly deep thinker.
(00:20):
Today we start by talking aboutthe Book of Acts, which had a
profound influence on his lifeand the direction of his life.
In theology we talk aboutpassivism, commitment to
nonviolence.
We talk about the messiness oflife together and the calling to
live life as a prayer.
I hope that this will be aninspiring, challenging and
enjoyable conversation here.
(00:41):
It is Well, craig.
It's always really good to seeyou and glad to see you healthy
(01:01):
and just to get a chance to justto talk, I mean it's always
good talking, theology with youhow are you doing today?
Dr. Craig Keen (01:07):
I'm doing well.
I think I'm very much on themend from a significant heart
procedure.
Chris Nafis (01:15):
Yeah, yeah, well, you look well, like you said
before we started, you look likeyou've got color back a bit and
, yeah, it's really good to seeyou.
So, as you know, we've beenworking through the Book of Acts
.
So on this podcast I've beeninterviewing people who are
doing interesting things in theworld and who are in academia or
like doing practical things inthe world that are interesting,
and then on my own, I've beengoing through the Book of Acts.
(01:35):
You happen to have like someinteresting things that are in
both of those things, and so wewere thinking we would start out
by just talking about Acts andhow it affected.
You've told the story in mypresence a number of times, but
how reading Acts was like a kindof a crisis, pivotal moment in
your life and in your theology.
Could you just share a littlebit about that?
Dr. Craig Keen (01:54):
Yeah, I'd be very happy to, and this will
give some insight into a verycrucial moment in my personal
history, just sort of generallyspeaking.
The moment was in 1968.
It was after my freshman year.
The summer after my freshmanyear, I was working in the
(02:15):
desert of Southwest Texas in alittle town called, actually
just outside of Goldsmith Texas,and I was rooming with a close
friend of mine, Arvis Wells, ata nearby town of Kermit Texas, a
much larger town.
Chris Nafis (02:32):
Kermit sounds large , sounds like a big town.
A big green town, I think Okay.
Dr. Craig Keen (02:39):
And so I would work changing oil and greasing
Phillips Petroleum Company carsall day, and then I would join
Arvis and Kermit and we would,you know, hang out and sleep and
go back to work the next day.
And so we decided that it wouldbe a good time.
(02:59):
We went to the same church andall that in Hobbs, new Mexico.
We're going to larger andlarger cities and we both
decided that it would be a goodmoment for us to sort of get
more serious about ourChristianity, and so we thought
we would study the Bibletogether.
So two 18-year-olds who wereextremely naive, no critical
(03:28):
skills, and we decided we wouldread the Bible.
The next question was what arewe going to read?
And we decided it would besomething in the New Testament,
and the most obvious choicewould be something from the
Gospels, probably.
But we decided that the momentwas very important for us to
figure out what we are to do,and, of course, the Gospels are
about Jesus, and Jesus is God,and so let's read the book of
(03:51):
Acts, which is about people.
I mean, that's how naive wewere.
Chris Nafis (03:55):
I mean, it's a surprisingly wise decision for a
couple of naive 18-year-olds.
It's a good choice.
Dr. Craig Keen (04:00):
And so we started reading the book, and it
was one of those very intensekind of naive studies.
So we would read a phrase, atmost a sentence, and stop and
ask what is that saying to us?
And of course we would talkabout it very seriously and
(04:20):
reach conclusions that werepivotal for our lives.
I mean we were deciding what wewould do with our lives, the
rest of our lives.
I mean it was a very, veryserious time.
And so we slowly worked our way, verse by verse, phrase by
phrase, through Acts.
I'm not sure how far we got bythe end of the summer, but
(04:42):
that's how we proceeded.
Got by the end of the summer,but that's how we proceeded.
And again, this was 1968, whichwas the heat of the Vietnam War.
And so it was impossible to goanywhere or do anything without
being confronted by headlinesand newscasts.
And at that time they say thatthe television news was not too
(05:08):
careful about protecting thepublic from the gory and bloody
aspects of war.
And so we were just constantlyconfronted by the reality of
violence in this violent world.
And it became impossible,certainly for me and I think
also for Arvis, to escape thequestion while we're reading the
(05:31):
Book of Acts.
Would it be faithful for us tojoin the US forces in Vietnam
and fight for our country andfor freedom and for democracy
and all those other one-linersthat were thrown around?
Chris Nafis (05:47):
How would you have thought about that before you
started reading Acts Like whereyou came from?
You're from Oklahoma, I'm fromOklahoma.
Dr. Craig Keen (05:54):
My parents are both from Oklahoma.
I was raised in a veryconservative home.
I mean it was a working classhome.
I mean I don't think classyconservative, I think down home,
like grease under thefingernails, conservative
America and very patriarchalpatriarchal, I think actually,
it's true but patriotichousehold.
(06:16):
My father was a veteran ofWorld War Two, which very deeply
affected him.
He was constantly bringing upvague references to his time in
the war.
He was stationed in NorthAfrica during the Second World
War.
The whole time.
He was in the whole time untilSouthern Europe was liberated.
(06:36):
Then he came home in 1944.
And so I went into this thinkingvery patriotic patriotically
it's very hard to keep that wordstraight that it was my duty,
when the time came, to putmyself at the beck and call of
my nation to serve America anyway I could, and that would
(06:57):
include, for an 18 year old,once I finished college or
whatever, being a part of thatconflict and perhaps I would
need to drop out of college andgo do it.
I mean it was very seriousabout doing what is responsible,
what is ethical, what is myduty.
But here we were, confronted bythe war in Vietnam.
My own inclination was to thinkthat it was a noble and just
(07:21):
war.
It's not like I was doing lotsof reading about how unjust this
war was.
It's not true.
Was doing lots of reading abouthow unjust this war was.
It's not true.
It's too naive to think thingslike that.
And I began to ask myself, notwhat would Jesus do in this case
, but what would the apostles do?
And although I had no troubleimagining kind of the villains
of Acts, you know, engaging inbloody warfare, I could not find
(07:47):
any way at all to imagine anyof the faithful characters in
the Book of Axe lettingthemselves be shipped overseas
to fight for some nation state.
And so I struggled with that,agonized over it, thought over
it, arvis and I talked about itand we both came to the
(08:09):
conclusion that to be faithfulin the way someone like Stephen
in the book of Acts is faithfulis to resolve never to shed
blood, certainly not for thesake of a nation state.
Of course I didn't know whatthe term nation state meant.
So it would be not for the sakeof america, right, and the
(08:29):
ideals of america, which I verymuch still loved and respected.
But I could not see a way tofaith to kill faithfully to god,
to the gospel and so out ofthat I.
Chris Nafis (08:42):
So where did you go from there?
Because you hadn't reallystarted school in a serious way
in studying theology yet.
Dr. Craig Keen (08:49):
That's right, my freshman year was very rowdy.
Chris Nafis (08:52):
Yeah.
Dr. Craig Keen (08:52):
I hardly went to class.
I mean, I became shocked in myfirst semester to find that I
had three D's and an F atmidterm time.
So I had to scramble to get mygrades up and all that.
So I was very my freshman yearwas very much.
I was very much sort of a party.
I mean imagine there I wasn'tin a fraternity but if you would
imagine, sort of animal houseor something, that's kind of my
(09:15):
freshman year okay.
But yeah, I became much moreserious.
But I was a biology major atthis time.
So I went back my sophomoreyear to continue the study of
biology.
I thought I might be a doctoror a dentist or something, but I
knew is that I liked biology.
I continue to have very seriousquestions about what all of life
might mean.
(09:36):
I found that I was now apacifist.
I found out what that word wasfor, what I decided life was
about.
And I found when I went back tocollege and it was a
conservative college of theChurch of the Nazarene what's
now called Southern NazareneUniversity was Bethany Nazarene
College in Oklahoma City raisedthe question of pacifism to my
(10:02):
Christian friends, which were aminority of my friends actually.
They would become very anxiousand think that there was
something seriously wrong withmy thinking.
But I found that mynon-Christian friends, many of
whom were hippie-ish, were verywilling to listen and think and
some of them just agreed with me, and so that sort of lured me
(10:25):
in the direction of thecounterculture very slowly.
I was still very conservative.
In fact, had I voted in thepresidential election in 1968,
and it was not legal for an18-year-old to do that in 1968,
I would have voted for RichardNixon.
You know the conservativecandidate at the time.
And of course if Nixon werearound now he would be wildly
(10:46):
liberal.
But in those days he was a veryconservative politician and so
I gravitated toward thecounterculture.
I continued as a biology major,but the following year, my, my
June, my junior year.
Then I changed my major tophilosophy because of these
(11:06):
questions that I had.
They were theological questions, but I didn't know that.
I mean, I didn't know that Iprobably should be a religion
major because I figured that'sjust for people who are planning
to be a preacher, and I had nointention at all to be a
preacher.
But I decided I'd be aphilosophy major and so I went
back and did another semester atBethany and Azarine College, I
(11:30):
met the person who would be mywife in a few months after that,
alicia, and after the end of myfirst semester at Bethany, I
decided to transfer away fromthis sort of den of vipers, this
school of hypocrites, and weweren't sure what we're going to
do.
So I enrolled in a state schoolin the panhandle of Texas and
(11:51):
then decided in the middle ofthat semester that I just needed
to be a religion major, becausemy questions were all about God
and that was the only place Icould do that.
So at the end of that semesterwe returned to Bethany Nazarene
College, this time as I wentback as a religion major and my
vocational goals were soambiguous that when they asked
(12:14):
me on one of those forms what Iwas planning to do after I
graduated, I put down I will bean apostle.
Chris Nafis (12:22):
Interesting.
So yeah, so no vocational.
Dr. Craig Keen (12:26):
No sort of job plans at all.
Yeah.
Chris Nafis (12:29):
Well, and how did so?
As you came back and began tostudy philosophy, religion, like
, how did you so?
I mean, I feel like one of theprimary ways that you're known
in theology.
Well, you have like a verydistinct sort of style in your
theology.
I don't know if style is theright word, like a very distinct
sort of style in your theology.
I don't know if style is theright word, but a big part of it
, at least among Nazarenes, isthis commitment to nonviolence.
(12:50):
And so how did that get like?
Was that just like there onceyou read Acts that one summer?
Or did that get kind ofentrenched as you searched with
these questions, as you wentalong, like, how did you kind of
fall into that.
Dr. Craig Keen (13:03):
I sometimes describe my becoming a pacifist
as my first theological act, andthat's because I put into
practice something that occurredto me to be both
counterintuitive and demanded bythe gospel.
And so I mean I certainly hadall these sort of quote-unquote
(13:24):
theological ideas before that.
I mean I've been attendingNazarene churches since I was
about eight years old, not withmy parents, they didn't go with
me, they dropped me off.
So that's another oddity aboutmy biography.
But it became a significanttheological act because
everything I learned gotfiltered through it.
(13:45):
Now, it's not that I stoppedthinking about the question of
pacifism, whether or not it wasin fact a kind of sound
conclusion to reach from thegospel, but I mean I continued
to examine it critically.
But it was sort of a test casefor ideas that came my way.
And it was because of the sortof ramifications of nonviolence
(14:10):
that I came slowly to understandthe significance of grace,
because I mean, if you're goingto approach an extremely violent
world nonviolently and not doit with a, you know, with sort
of a rosy view of the world,thinking that people will see
your kindness and return yourkindness with kindness, I mean
(14:31):
when you understand that to be apacifist is to step into your
own mortality and those of thepeople around you, then it's a
very significant sort of sends ashockwave through your whole
system and in my case, since I'minclined to engage in probably
overly serious thinking, it senta shockwave through all of my
thinking and it took a long.
(14:53):
I'm still working through whatthose implications are, but
everything I encountered seemedboth to call pacifism into
question and also to reinforceit at the same time.
I mean it called it intoquestion because it's a very
impractical approach to life.
Right, the world is set up forthe inhabitants of the world to
(15:14):
be violent.
I mean maybe subtly violent,and I think much of the social
fragmentation of America is away to keep us as nonviolent as
possible while under the thumbof a very violent political
order.
But it is a violent world.
(15:40):
Teens, early 20s, stepping outinto my adult life believing
that everything henceforth wouldbe tinged with a significant
amount of insecurity, that mysecurity would have to come from
God.
Thus the importance of gracefor me.
Chris Nafis (16:02):
Yeah, and I think like just to pause on that for a
minute because I think that'ssomething significant.
I see that's different in whatI read and hear from you than
maybe what I read and hear fromother sort of nonviolent spaces,
because I feel like a lot ofpeople approach nonviolence,
pacifism from like a strategicstandpoint.
Like this is the way that weaccomplish things.
(16:23):
It's more helpful to benonviolent than it is to be
violent, and I feel like youknow you kind of confess that
that's just not true, or atleast it doesn't need to be true
.
Could you say a little bitabout that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean.
Dr. Craig Keen (16:37):
I'm not against people being careful, I'm not
against people making plans.
In fact, I think we have tomake plans.
We have to determine whichthings are relatively good and
we have to aim for those.
Avoid the things that arerelatively bad, try to avoid
those.
And we imagine a future takingin everything we have to take in
(17:00):
around us.
We imagine a future that willperhaps be better, or at least
no worse than the present thatwe're involved in now.
I think all that is true and Isupport, you know, policy
changes and I support politicalmovements that want to put
together certain kinds ofpolicies in local and state and
(17:21):
federal government and elsewhere.
But my hope is not built on anyof that, and so I think all of
that strategizing will partaketo some degree in the violence
of this violent world.
Even if it's a very subtlething like voting is extremely
(17:42):
subtly violent, but it is soviolent.
I mean, it's a contest in whichI want my side to prevail over
your side and we count votes todetermine who wins.
I mean, and there are politicalcampaigns and the metaphors we
use about these things arelargely military metaphors, but
(18:04):
I understand that this is, youknow, this is largely sublimated
violence, and so it's kind ofgentle and although people get
angry and upset and there isn'tthat much bloodletting
surrounding elections althoughthere certainly is some- and I
would say that January 6th, Ithink, is just sort of some of
(18:28):
that previously subtle violencebreaking out into the open.
I think that's kind of how weoperate, but we're usually more
polite than thoseinsurrectionists were.
Chris Nafis (18:39):
Right, and so just to pause, it seems like you're
using violence in a way that noteverybody might Like.
When people hear violence, Ithink they're thinking physical
violence, killing, I don't knowpunching.
You know there's particularimages that come to mind for me
when I hear the word violenceand I feel like you're using a
little more broadly.
I think those, the threat ofthose things, sort of underlies
(19:02):
a larger power system.
The threat of those things sortof underlies a larger power
system.
Dr. Craig Keen (19:06):
Yeah, that's true.
I mean I should say that when Iand I don't like the word
violence actually to speak ofnonviolence or violence, I think
that's it's not quite nuancedenough.
I mean you walk into a room,you have a significant impact on
the people.
Well, I mean more or lesssignificant.
I mean you affect the people inthe room and in ways that they
(19:26):
have no control over.
So I don't think nonviolence isjust sort of allowing the other
to be a free moral agent orsomething like that.
I mean we impose things on eachother, so there's something
violent about that and I don'tobject to that.
I think there's this kind ofviolence which is actually very
humane.
I mean I want people to getinto me, I want people to break
(19:48):
in, and when I don't necessarilywant them to, I mean I want to
be, I want the unwanted.
You know that's what I'm tryingto say.
But when I do speak of the kindof nonviolence that I pursue, I
am finally thinking of avoidingkilling.
I mean killing is sort of theparadigmatic case.
But the question is what kindsof activities and attitudes and
(20:12):
ideas incline to killing?
I mean, which ones of thesethings, if we gave them free
reign, would result in death,the death of other human beings,
and that I think we have tokind of play with.
I mean, since we are in a veryviolent world and since our
options are always limited, I dothink we have to flirt with
(20:34):
violence.
I think it's unavoidable.
And again, there are some verypositive things, like if someone
confronts me, tells me my ideasare off or that I've said
something rude and I need to askfor forgiveness, or whatever.
I mean, it sort of breaks intome and jars me a bit and I'm
grateful for that.
There's a certain violence tothat, but I'm happy about that.
(20:54):
And if I had to hurt someone tostop them from hurting or
killing someone else, I would dothat.
And even then there's thedanger of hurting the person too
much, so the person'sincapacitated or killed.
But just the nature of life isthat these kinds of things will
happen.
But the task that the gospelcalls us to, I think, is to live
(21:18):
a life that will not kill.
And I need to put thisdifferently because I don't want
to set this up as if I amtrying to formulate some kind of
basic ethical principle orsomething.
In fact, I do think that thegospel calls us to a kind of
life that many profoundlyethical people would find to be
(21:39):
unethical.
Not only the bad Romans hatedthe gospel.
Good and noble and just Romanshated it too.
Not only the bad emissaries ofthe temple in Jerusalem hated
the gospel.
The good and faithful oneshated it too.
So we need to remember that.
(21:59):
So I'm not setting up some kindof morality here, although what
I am talking about is moralityadjacent.
I think what I want to say isthat, in a violent world, we
proceed with the call of thegospel ringing in our ears, and
that is a call to step out intothe grace of God, and that means
(22:21):
to live by faith.
And the question is, what doesthat mean?
It means, of course, trustingthe grace of God, and that means
to live by faith.
And the question is, what doesthat mean?
It means, of course, trustingthe grace of God, being faithful
to God's faithfulness to us,but it means most of all, I
think, that we are to liveprayerfully, in other words,
live out toward the one whom wetrust, taking steps, calling out
(22:44):
to the God who calls out to us,making plans, calling out to
the God who calls out to us,recognizing that if this God
responds significantlyperceptibly, let's say.
That's a problematic term, butlet's go with it.
If this God responds perceptibly, it may be in ways that I don't
(23:05):
expect at all, and so that'sone of the reasons why our plans
have always to be tentative.
We must make plans.
Life is set up in such a waythat we have to make plans.
I would never find my way outof the room if I didn't know
where the door was, if I didn'taim for an open space to go out
to the hall, etc.
I've got to determine what isgood, what is to be done, but
(23:28):
those plans are to be held veryloosely, because the response of
God's grace may be no, may bethis way, and if my response is,
but there's a wall there, theresponse of God may be, I know,
but my response is to be okay,and I don't know what that means
(23:49):
.
As I hit my head against thewall, I may call out again how
long, oh Lord how long, and sothis kind of nonviolence that
I'm talking about is anonviolence of prayer.
So what am I to do now?
I'm aiming toward nobloodletting, I'm aiming toward
(24:10):
no killing.
I'm aiming toward letting in myneighbor, my enemy, letting
them into me in ways that willunsettle, perhaps hurt me,
perhaps seriously incapacitateme, perhaps kill me.
But my prayer is that I willmove out into that, and that's
(24:30):
not to say that I will always befaithful either.
I mean, this is not, this isnot what I'm talking about, is
not sort of, you know, aboutramping up your willpower or
something you know.
Be determined that, no matterwhat, I will not do X, y and Z.
I've thought about these thingsand I know that these things I
must never do.
I mean, I think that certainideas, imagining certain
(24:52):
situations, is a very wise thingto do and to imagine what I
might do there.
But the thing about prayer isthat it doesn't make demands.
It lays out my imagined futurebefore God, and it asks and
waits but never demands andalways ends with, nevertheless,
(25:14):
not what I want, but what youwant, god, and the gospel is all
about this.
I mean, that's precisely whatJesus is praying in the Garden
of Gethsemane before hiscrucifixion.
I mean, he doesn't want to go,he doesn't want to be crucified,
he doesn't want to behumiliated, he doesn't want to
be turned into the very thingwhich the covenant of Israel
(25:39):
declares God cannot love.
He doesn't want to be turnedinto something despicably
unclean, disgustingly profane,something that has been turned
into a defiled mass of mutilatedflesh.
But he says nevertheless, yourwill be done, and that is the
(25:59):
prayer I think of every step ofthe way, which means that even
my first theological act is tobe held loosely and I will not
make the demand of God never putme into a situation in which I
will not be tempted, beyond whatI can bear, to kill.
(26:22):
I have to be open to everything, otherwise it's not faith and
it's not grace.
So what I'm trying to say here,I guess, is the kind of
nonviolence if I may use thatunfortunate phrase the kind of
pacifism.
That's a better phrase, but Iwish there were a shalomism, I
mean, I'd be much happier withthat.
(26:44):
But the kind of pacifism thatI'm advocating here is a
pacifism that is also a prayerwithout demand.
I don't demand that God keep mefree from violence, but I live
my life praying that God willkeep me free from violence and
will keep everyone close to mefree from violence, and that the
(27:06):
world will come to be free fromviolence.
Chris Nafis (27:09):
And when you say free from violence, you mean
free from committing acts ofviolence, as well as free from
having violence done to you.
Dr. Craig Keen (27:17):
Yeah, it's both, and that's another thing about
the gospel I think we have tolearn at least most of us, I
think, have not learned it thatthe gospel is not just about
what Jesus did and willed andwhat he was determined to do and
all that.
The gospel is about what wasdone to him.
I mean, if we can use the wordsactive and passive here, he was
(27:40):
both an actor and a patient.
I mean, he's an agent and apatient, an actor and a
recipient of action, and theaction done upon him is
indistinguishable from who he is.
We can't think of him apartfrom his crucifixion, and he
didn't nail himself up there.
He may have set his face onJerusalem, he may have gone into
(28:02):
Jerusalem expecting to becrucified, but he did not
crucify himself.
That was done to him, and hisresurrection is also a gift
given to him by his father.
He is fully human and fully Godbecause his father embraces him
.
Chris Nafis (28:18):
Yeah, yeah, and of course that's the human
experience, right, like we'reboth actors and recipients of,
like whatever the world throwsat us.
And I guess like where my mindgoes with this.
So I feel like you've been oneof the primary theological
influences on me.
Influences on me and a big partof your work has been working
(28:43):
away from like an abstracttheology that has.
You know, that's sort ofprimarily metaphysical it's,
it's like imagined ways of theworld is is structured in cosmic
ways and stuff and really likea push towards like an embodied
theology and in some ways likeeven your theology itself.
It sometimes feels like it kindof floats, like the concepts
are so large that it's likethere's this gap in some ways
(29:06):
between the possibility of doingthe things that you're saying
we need to do and like theactual ability to live in the
flesh and blood with otherpeople and all the frustrating
things.
Like you know, I like the.
I like the.
I don't think I've heard youtalk about Shalomism, but I like
that because there's like apeace that like Shalom is this
word that has like, it has bodyto it.
Dr. Craig Keen (29:27):
Yes, it does, there's like a wholeness.
Chris Nafis (29:29):
There's a communal nature to it.
It's not like peace as a lackof violence.
It's peace as like a positivething that you experience in the
world with one another.
You know, there's like somepretty vivid images of shalom
that we can find in scripturePeace is not the absence of
violence, but the presence ofjustice.
Dr. Craig Keen (29:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah , as it's said by Martin Luther
King Jr, among others.
Yeah, I like that a lot.
Chris Nafis (29:53):
So I guess you know how do you get from like the
conceptual.
I got to give myself away.
I've got to live as a prayer.
I've got to walk into a wall tolike all right, I also need to
like cook dinner for the kidstonight.
You know how do you do it.
How do you bridge those gaps?
As a theologian who also has abody and lives in the world.
Dr. Craig Keen (30:16):
As you know, by far the most significant thinker
to me is Soren Kierkegaard.
I discovered him as a younggraduate student.
I tried to write a master'sthesis on him once.
I failed to finish it but atleast I did a lot of work and I
found him to be a very apt guide, and in part because he was a
(30:38):
pietist and I, you know, beingraised indirectly, not from my
folks but at least when Iattended church in the Church of
the Nazarene, a profoundlypietistic tradition I found that
those two, the Church of theNazarene, john Wesley for
example, and Kierkegaard, sortof fed each other in my work.
(30:58):
But Kierkegaard was extremelygood at sort of putting flesh
and bones onto very loftyconcepts and one of his many
foci focuses is this conflictbetween the kind of I don't know
kind of the abstract and theconcrete, or as he put it.
(31:20):
I mean there's a tensionbetween infinity and finitude,
there's a tension betweenfreedom and necessity.
I mean there's certain thingsthat are just going to happen,
but you know, there's this otherside of us that's like I'm not
going to do that and there's asense in which we are kind of
(31:41):
wrapped up in the eternal butthere's no getting out of time.
I mean it's not just a timeline, I mean we're like moments of
time, it's like the past.
Moments are clinging to me Now.
I can't shake them off, I can'tscrape them off.
They've got their roots into me.
You can't unscramble the eggfrom the cake batter or
(32:02):
something.
It's in there.
And the future is so profoundlyimportant to me that I can't
remove it also from the presentthat I'm living.
In fact, that sort of I don'tknow kind of earthy past and
earthy future are so much a partof me that they seem more real
even than what I want to callthe present, or at least, what I
(32:24):
call the present is so wrappedup in those that we should not
distinguish the three orsomething.
So Kierkegaard is all about thatand the way he talks.
He talks about it in variousways, but one of his books,
called Fear and Trembling, isprobably his most widely read
book.
It's a book that deals with thestory of Abraham and in
(32:45):
particular Abraham's taking hisson, his only son, his child of
old age, his only heir, his onlyhope of immortality, taking his
son up to the mountain inMoriah to sacrifice him to God
because God has asked him to.
And so Kierkegaard talks aboutthe faith of Abraham and how
very strange that faith is.
(33:06):
I mean he trusts in God and Godhas promised to create from
Abraham a mighty nation.
You know descendants morenumerous than the grains of sand
on all the beaches of all theworld.
And here God has asked him toremove the hope of his future,
(33:29):
to remove his future from hislife, to end his life in despair
, without any heir, without anydescendant.
And so Kierkegaard talks abouthow Abraham makes both of these
movements at once.
He calls them the movement offinitude, which is he's right
there with Isaac.
I mean he takes Isaac with himon like a three-day journey to
(33:52):
the place of sacrifice, andthat's living on the ground.
I mean that's as concrete asyou get.
You know they gather firewoodand all that, but every step of
the way Abraham is expectingthat he will sacrifice Isaac, he
will kill him, and we talkabout you know that.
You know how horrible it is fora father to kill a son, and it
(34:13):
is I mean the Kierkegaard knowsthat but it's also a suicide.
I mean this is not likeindividualistic America, where
you have your own identity andyour children have their
identity, and if you kill achild.
That's just this horrible thingyou've done to a child.
No in this case, who Abraham isis completely inseparable from
(34:35):
who Isaac is.
So for Abraham to kill Isaac ashorrible as it would be for any
father to kill a son, andKierkegaard knows that it is
also a suicide.
And so Abraham makes both ofthese movements, this movement
of infinity, where he throwseverything away, he renounces
everything in his life, hiswhole future, and he's there
(34:57):
with his son.
I mean, if his son were to falloff his horse and cut his arm,
he would wrap it up and putmedicine on it or whatever would
help him up the mountain orwhatever.
And so every step of the way,it's that concrete, that earthy,
that particular, that finite.
And when it comes down to it,and Abraham has his son bound on
(35:17):
the altar and is raising hisknife, I mean think of all the
finitude of that, all theconcreteness of that.
You know tightening muscles inthe arm, the grip of your fist
on the handle of the knife.
You know the momentum ofraising your arm, getting ready
to bring it down, and suddenlyGod says never mind.
That shows the sort of horrorand what majesty or something,
(35:43):
of living before a free God,living by faith, living by
prayer.
And so every step of the wayAbraham is praying, anticipating
a future, hoping in a differentfuture, but expecting a future
much more tragic than what he'shoping for, and the end is given
to him.
And so that's how you do it.
(36:07):
I mean, and there is no how-tomanual to pray, and everybody
who's had like an impendingtragedy and prays you know
pending tragedy and prays, youknow mightily, with tears and
with trembling and sleeplessnights toward this event
(36:27):
understand something of that,especially if you've learned
that the outcome is notdependent upon the intensity of
your faith and prayers, it'sdependent on God.
And so if you know, ifsomeone's obviously dying from
something horrible and at thelast minute the doctors come in
and say, wow, all the signs ofthe disease are gone We've heard
(36:50):
those stories Then it's time torejoice and praise God for that
.
But most of us find that theperson does not get better and
all of our intense prayers arefollowed by a very sad outcome.
And it should be added thatnobody gets out of here alive.
So, no matter how many timesGod has intervened to save some
(37:14):
loved one from some terribledisorder you know has prevailed,
contrary to the doctor's wishes, Eventually that person is
going to be dead.
And how do we approach that?
Well, you know, the same wayJesus approaches Good Friday in
the Garden of Gethsemane, youpray and you act and you work
and you hope and you expect andyou say nevertheless.
Chris Nafis (37:39):
Yeah, so you're talking about the Kierkegaard
story, the Abraham story.
Ellen Davis, who I had on herea couple episodes ago, has a
chapter in one of her books onthat story and she points to
these two.
Rembrandt, have you seen theRembrandt depictions of the
binding?
Dr. Craig Keen (37:56):
of Isaac.
Chris Nafis (37:56):
Yeah, the first one , rembrandt maybe I can put a
picture on there.
Uh, for those who are watchingthis on youtube, you can google
them.
The first one is was done inhis youth as an artist and it's
full of drama and movement andand abraham is sort of full of
like zeal.
And the second one is done, Ithink, late in rembrandt's life
(38:18):
and it's and it's just, it'sblack and white, if I think it
might even be an etching, andyou just see this look of just
like just exhaustion anddistraughtness on abraham's face
as he like does this thing andyou can almost see like the
relief as like the angel grabshis, his arm and stops him from,
uh, you know, thrusting theknife.
And I don't know there'ssomething in that second one,
(38:40):
particularly of like this kindof faithful life of hope that's
so filled with stress.
I don't know, like you knowthere's something in trying to
live out, like to live into thefaith.
You know there are thesemoments of zeal and I feel like
sometimes in my and I even as Iget older, like my younger days,
it was easier to be full ofzeal and hope that like, yeah,
(39:02):
I'm going to live this life.
That's alternative to the lifethat I would have lived,
otherwise right, if I had notheard the gospel, if I had not
given my life to Christ.
You know, I can imagine thiswhole different life that I
would have had, and as I getolder I feel like I'm more in
that.
You know, there's likesomething exhausting about it,
but there's also like a reliefand a hopefulness of it.
(39:22):
Because you're hoping insomething that is that like
almost has to be I mean, it's amiracle, right Like it has to be
impossible in some way.
I don't know what I'm trying tosay.
Dr. Craig Keen (39:34):
I think what you're saying is right.
I mean this shalom-ism that Iwas talking about.
I mean in the gospel.
This is a huge thing too.
Sometimes this is turned intojust sort of like added drama to
the notion of peace orsomething.
But shalom, peace in the gospelpasseth understanding.
I mean it rupturesunderstanding.
(39:55):
To use another image, it's allover the gospel Shalom.
I mean when Jesus walks into theupper room with his body still
shredded.
I mean, put your hands in thewounds, thomas.
The marks of crucifixion areall over him, the marks of
scourging we have to imagine,also all over him.
(40:15):
He walks into the room and weshould think of a bloody mess, I
mean leaving footprints ofblood, you know.
So we should think of.
And he says to his disciplespeace, be unto you.
And although that's very ofteninterpreted as his sort of
saying oh, I hope you.
Hope you're feeling pretty good.
(40:36):
If you're not, I hope you feelbetter soon.
But what he's saying is here Iam, I am peace, I have come unto
you.
And what kind of peace is this?
It's a mutilated body.
What kind of peace could thatbe?
Well, I could never understandthat as peace.
But it is peace.
It's a peace that passethunderstanding and so when we
agonize and it's fine to talk,use that kind of language.
(40:59):
I mean, the Buddhists were notthat far wrong when they said
life is suffering.
I mean it's not only sufferingand we need to also recognize
that laughter is wonderful and Ithink we need to learn to laugh
when other people would cryeven.
I think laughter is a wonderfulthing.
Sometimes I would say we'resaved by grace through laughter.
(41:22):
But life is hard.
My father was not veryphilosophical, did not talk very
often.
He was a very quiet easternOklahoma man.
I think I got my ASD from him,assuming I have ASD, I'm not
sure but one of the things hewould say and he so believed it
he would say it like with hisjaw set or something.
(41:44):
Life is hard.
You know he'd be silent for along time.
Be doing something.
Life is hard to be silent againfor a long time it just is, and
one of the dangers of America isthat it works over time to
convince us that life isn't hard.
It has fractured us into little, lonely bodies, separated from
(42:07):
each other, because there we'reeasier to manage.
We're given all kinds of toolsfor distraction, we're given
things to level out our moods,make us feel happier, but that's
because life is hard.
And as long as we refuse toadmit that and think that life
(42:28):
is supposed to be placid, calm,then I think we will live lonely
, lonely lives.
Chris Nafis (42:36):
Yeah, I mean, I think you're really right on
that.
We've been talking about thatsome in church and Bible studies
and things, because there'sthis myth that we can—I think so
many things have become easierwith technology that we begin to
set our expectation thateverything will be easy.
Dr. Craig Keen (42:53):
Yeah.
Chris Nafis (42:53):
I think we have this really deeply embedded
belief that, like the more, Ican just have what I want in any
moment that I want the easierlife will be, which, if you
think about it for a few minutes, is pretty clearly not true.
It's a lot harder sometimes tohave a million choices all the
time than it is to not, to havea million choices all the time
than it is to not, and we tendto make choices that feel good
(43:16):
for us in the moment, that makeus a little bit more happy or
whatever right now, but that inthe long term, are going to cost
us.
They cost us relationships,they cost us connection, they
cost us meaning.
It's easier to be lazy than itis to be in good shape.
It's easier to be alone formany of us that are introverted
than it is to actually have deepfriendships and community lives
(43:36):
.
Yeah, that's very true.
And you know there's so much toembracing the hardness of life,
and I think this is maybeespecially true in the world of
the church, where so much of themessage people get is aimed at
trying to say like if you followJesus, your life will be just
so good and it'll be so easy.
(43:58):
And there's like this constantcelebration when I don't even
know if that's even the right.
I don't even think that's like,I don't even want to say it's
the opposite of that, becauseit's not.
There is like a deep goodnessin following Christ.
There's like a meaningfulnessto your life.
There's something significantabout that.
But it's not about making iteasy or not easy, Like sometimes
the harder thing is the betterthing, it's the more meaningful
(44:20):
thing.
Dr. Craig Keen (44:21):
I totally agree with that, and this goes back to
that Martin Luther King Jr andothers.
He didn't make it up.
If we understand peace well,it's about the presence of
justice, and we need to becareful with that word too,
because that is one of thefavorite words of America, and
in America the symbol of justiceis this blind woman,
(44:45):
blindfolded woman, holdingscales and a sword.
And so justice in America isgetting even.
I mean, you can take that inthe most negative way or the
most positive way.
It's balancing the scales, butit's also, you know, cutting
somebody's head wide open with asword to get even.
And so the justice of thegospel is not about getting even
(45:08):
.
The word justice, as it's usedin scripture, is a synonym of
the word righteousness.
These words are the same.
Our problem is that we haveturned justice into something
that the police and judges takecare of, and righteousness is
all about my private innerdevotional life or something.
(45:31):
But in fact, righteousness isas out there as justice is, and
justice is as in there asrighteousness is.
And so the coming of the reignof God is the coming of a
justice that is righteousnessand a righteousness that is
justice.
And so that means that the callof the gospel is a call to
(45:52):
righteousness, slash justice.
And if you're living righteouslyand justly, you're living a
social life and you're workingtoward things in this strange
sort of twofold sense of makingplans with expecting the plans
to be disrupted by God.
You're living that way and lifegets complicated.
(46:14):
I mean, if you want to discoverjoy, love someone.
If you want to discoversuffering, love someone.
I mean life becomes very, verycomplicated and it's.
I mean.
I remember I haven't heard thiscliche in a long time, but when
I was a kid it was not uncommonfor marriage to be described as
(46:34):
that old ball and chain.
So you get married and all of asudden you are chained down in
place.
You can't do all the things youused to do, and so it then
becomes well, I don't know ifI'm ready for that.
I'm a little afraid of gettingmarried because I don't want to
be chained down.
But I think really the fear ofmarriage, just as the fear of a
(46:55):
committed friendship, is thefear of the unknown.
It's the fear that my life isgoing to get complicated.
It's the fear that all the joythat I encounter in this other
person a close friend or aspouse or whatever other person,
a close friend or a spouse orwhatever that all of that joy is
also going to involve a lot ofpain, and it does.
(47:16):
I mean the people I love mostare the people who hurt me the
most.
But that's I mean.
I would say it's worth it, butthat's the wrong metaphor
because it's not about someeconomic exchange, it's just.
This wonderful thing is alsopainful.
Chris Nafis (47:32):
Yeah, it's really, I mean, I think that's a really
perfect image for it, because Ireally do think that you know so
people are waiting really longto get married.
In fact, I play on the soccerteam and they're a lot younger
than I am and someone on ourteam had gotten married and
they're, you know, kind of likeI can't believe.
they're just, they're just sortof in shock that uh, someone
that age I think she was like 27, which is pretty old
(47:54):
historically but for our age ispretty young, would get married
and she got pregnant right awayand and you know, and I think
there's for those who were left,who are still single, and kind
of one of them had just got backfrom a trip from Europe and you
know all this stuff there'slike a lack of autonomy in that
marriage that you're settlinginto this life that you no
longer control and that youdon't, you can't.
It's kind of exactly what we'rejust talking about.
(48:15):
You can't just do what you wantwhen you want it all the time.
But I think the idea that thatis the ideal life is is a myth
and I think that we're finding,uh, more and more like that's.
There's people, everyone'sdepressed, everyone's miserable,
everyone's lonely, because ourideals have set us to trying to
maintain this really unhealthyset of independence.
(48:38):
In a certain kind of way, thatdoes this tremendous harm not
only to us as individuals.
It does hurt us as individuals,but it's also fragmenting us as
a community and as a society.
And you know, in some ways andI see this in church too, like
you know I was thinking like,how do we put flesh and blood on
some of these ideas?
Well, at Living Water, you know, we've tried to step into this
(48:58):
call to like towards themarginalized right and to be in
deep community with people whoare really struggling in life.
And as you do it you learn likethis is really hard because
people are messed up.
Dr. Craig Keen (49:10):
You know they're messed up and they're gonna
make it hard, even if it doesn'thave to be the poor you have
with you always, and it may bethe same seven poor people that
you have with you always yeah,yeah and, and, but there's still
something.
Chris Nafis (49:24):
There's this like I don't know worth.
It's maybe the wrong way to sayit, but like it feels like a
prayer, you know to live thislife with people.
It is yeah uh, yeah, uh, whatdo you gotta say yeah?
Dr. Craig Keen (49:37):
I love dogs, dogs, dogs, the creatures, the
animals, yes, yes, uh, youprobably didn't expect me to say
that not at that moment, no,but I didn't know that about you
.
Yeah, um there have been.
Human beings have lived withdogs for at least 10,000 years,
maybe multiples of 10,000 years,maybe 20, 30,000 years.
I mean, the timeline of ourtime with dogs keeps getting
(50:00):
expanded.
So I love dogs so much that Ioften say that you can't really
be a human being if you don'thave a dog.
Not really, and it's for asimilar reason.
You can't be a human being ifyou don't hang out with other
people, if you don't live asocial life of some kind.
It's just the way we're wired.
I mean, you don't even have tobe a theologian to say something
like that Just the way we'vebeen.
And so you know why did dogsand human beings ever get
(50:24):
together?
Well, it appears that theyfound themselves sort of
mutually supported by each other, and so human beings threw
their garbage around and this isgoing to disgust everyone, so
maybe your brother will cut thisone out.
Apparently there is the sameamount of protein in chicken as
(50:46):
there is in human excrement.
So dogs also benefited fromthat.
Various things we threw awaythey made use of, and so dogs
kind of wandered around wherepeople went, and so people
started having them hang outwith them and there's more and
more intimately connected, andhuman beings actually never had
a good night's sleep until theyhad dogs, because they didn't
(51:08):
know what might be approachingthe campfire.
The dogs would bark and wakethem up if something, an animal
or some other people withviolent designs were on their
way and life was really, reallyhard.
I mean, you needed the help ofdogs.
You already had the help ofother human beings, without whom
you wouldn't be able to make ita week.
(51:28):
All of the work that youengaged in was work that needed
someone else to help you.
There weren't adequate tools orresources for you to put
together to make shelteradequately, day after day, week
after week, year after year,without having help.
If you try to do it alone, youdo it for a while, making use of
(51:52):
skills you learned from otherhuman beings anyway, and so
we've always lived this.
I describe it as a precariouslife, which means not only a
dangerous life, but it comesfrom a word meaning prayer.
So we've lived a life in whichwe've stepped out into a future
that is very, very uncertain andcalling out to something.
(52:14):
I mean, the gospel tells us theone to call out to, but you
know, people have always calledout to something, because life
is precarious and it is onlywhen let me put it this way
human life expectancies havebeen low forever.
Human life expectancies havebeen low forever.
I mean about 30.
Decade after decade, centuryafter century, millennium after
(52:37):
millennium, until about 1870.
No-transcript lived to about 30.
That's the average huge childmortality rates.
But you had some older people.
But 30 was a good ripe age.
I've lived to 75 and I'm toldI've lived a full life.
If you made it to 30, you'dlived a full life, like in the
(53:00):
year 1800.
But in some places where soilwas bad, prospect of drought and
flood, pestilences of variouskinds, just sort of very
terribly subsistence, agrarianlives, you know, you may never
meet anyone over 30.
But in 1870, something happenedand life expectancy started, for
(53:24):
the first time in the historyof the world, to get longer.
For the first time in thehistory of the world to get
longer.
And now we assume that in amodern, industrialized nation,
even one struggling to figureout what to do with health care
like this one, you will live.
If you make it to 70, you'regoing to be like just about
everyone else, but then youprobably will make it to 75.
You make it to 75, you probablymake it to 85, you make it to
(53:46):
85, etc.
So it's not hard to imaginewhat's already happening.
More and more and more peopleevery year make it to 100.
And that's because life is veryprotected, very sheltered.
We're kept in safe spaces,we're given what we want when we
ask.
But this is, I mean we'retalking about, you know, 150
(54:07):
years, in fact less than that,because most of the last 150
years life was still hard, eventhough life expectancies were
getting higher.
And so if we take ourselves outof the situation where the
prospect of death becomes moreand more abstract and put
ourselves back in the wholeprevious, entire history of the
(54:27):
world and think that death issomething that we encounter all
the time, I mean, if you live ina city, you will encounter
someone dying every week atleast.
In a village, maybe not quiteso often, but that's only
because you may have only 50people there, but everybody, you
see, if you're young's going tobe dead before you are that
(54:48):
kind of life.
There is no question, but thatyou have to lean on others.
There are no individuals.
You know, I've got a name,you've got a name.
We know the difference, but wearen't individuals.
We're not undivided from eachother.
We are so entangled in oneanother that there is no hope
(55:08):
for me without you.
And so for us now to live as ifwe were individual identities
is to go, if nothing else,contrary to the entire history
of the world before 1870 andmuch of it after that.
But in the case of the gospel?
The gospel calls us to live akind of life where we are
(55:31):
absolutely dependent upon otherswho are absolutely dependent
upon us as we together, pray,pray together like
congregational prayer out intoGod's future.
That will inevitably surpriseus.
Chris Nafis (55:47):
Yeah, and of course I mean we are like if there
wasn't someone harvesting wheatright now.
Dr. Craig Keen (55:53):
I wouldn't have any food in a couple of months.
Chris Nafis (55:55):
You know like we are completely interdependent on
one another.
I mean, if someone didn'treplace the valve in your heart?
Dr. Craig Keen (56:01):
a few weeks ago, we might not be having this
conversation, and the cow thatgraciously donated that to me.
Chris Nafis (56:08):
Yeah, but we just don't.
It's all hidden from us.
You know, like we have thisagain.
Dr. Craig Keen (56:23):
It's like a myth , you know, a myth in the most
negative way that we'reindependent people that just
make our own decisions.
Very important book for me thebook by William Cavanaugh
entitled Torture and Eucharistmakes the case that it is the
modern nation state thatinvented the category of the
individual.
Now I think it's way more thanthe nation state, I think it's
modern economy and many otherthings, but the case he makes is
a very interesting one that weonly come up with the idea of
(56:45):
the individual when a powerfulbody over us puts us in our
places, make sure that we arescared to do anything contrary
to what will keep thingsrelatively quiet, and then will
tell us we will take care of youif you stay in that place.
And I think that's largely whathas happened.
(57:06):
We are put in our little quietplace.
I mean the statistics for howmany people live alone, yeah, I
mean they're just rising everyyear.
So stay in your little apartment, go out to the bar occasionally
and hang out with some peopleyou kind of know, have some
pleasurable relationships withpeople.
(57:26):
But retreat to your safe spacewhere no one can hurt you, and
we'll give you the chemicals youneed.
We'll give you the sort of thekind of outside distractions
that you need.
We'll keep you busy there andyou'll go to work and we'll make
sure that every little drop ofefficiency is squeezed out of
you so that you put in youreight hours or whatever, however
(57:50):
many hours, go home exhaustedand look for any distraction you
can find.
I mean, that's the way we arebeing trained to live and we
think that's the way to live,but I mean it's true that it's,
you know, kind of.
There's less and less whatshould we call it?
Sort of acute pain, but there'smore and more and more dull,
(58:14):
aching pain that sort of staysdown below the surface.
Give me something to make me nolonger aware of what's going on
down there.
Chris Nafis (58:24):
Right, right, right .
And to bring it full circle, Ithink the calling of the gospel
is to risk being out there inthe world.
I mean, I think part of whatwe're afraid of is just the
violence, the difficulty, thesuffering of life lived together
.
The call is to go to step intothat life, together and
(58:44):
interdependent on one another.
interdependent on one anotherbut without this sort of
protection of like a violentability to make my will done in
that community, but to give upat least a part of that so that
we can actually live well withone another, aiming for the
peace of God, the shalom of Godin this kind of unified life
(59:05):
that we hopefully call thechurch right.
I don't know how well weactually ever do that Like if
that ever actually happens in away that's recognizable, but
like I think there are ways thatin most little communities that
are trying to do that you cansee some semblance of like this
kind of hope and prayer of alife together.
Dr. Craig Keen (59:24):
I think it's very true and I think you know I
almost always advise people ifyou're looking for a church,
find a little crappy one, youknow, one that doesn't seem to
be making any significant impacton the world.
If it's little, you won't beable to hide, and the more you
get involved, the more of thelife of that church you will let
into your body and that bodywill let you into.
(59:48):
And I think I think I mean,when we think of justice and
righteousness, we should thinkof people letting each other
into their bodies yeah, and, ofcourse, bringing it back to acts
.
Chris Nafis (59:57):
I mean, that's what we see happening again and
again because people who areunified in ways that are like
shocking as you read them, likewhat they?
They sold all their stuff andshared it.
They were spent their entirelife together feeding and taking
care of the poor and each otherand continually inviting in
more and more people who wouldhave seemed like a threat to
(01:00:17):
them, who would have seen kindof religiously, socially,
politically, other than themthat we should not keep.
Why are we going to let Paulback in this community?
Dr. Craig Keen (01:00:26):
He was just trying to kill us last week.
Chris Nafis (01:00:28):
I know, or why should we let these Gentiles in?
Or how we're going to go tothis new place and this new
people is full of like idolatersand the people that we think of
as the worst of the worst.
This is the scary communitythat we've tried to insulate
ourselves from for thousands ofyears.
This is who we are as a people.
We are not them.
I know, and then to say nope,they are invited into this work
(01:00:50):
of Christ.
We're going to give up our sortof defense of ourselves and our
identity.
Dr. Craig Keen (01:00:55):
It's an abandonment of identity.
I give myself away to thefuture that is disclosed in the
glorified, mutilated body ofJesus.
Chris Nafis (01:01:06):
Man, it's good, it's hard, it's a challenging
calling, but there's somethingso beautiful about it that it's
irresistible and it's importantto learn to laugh through it.
Dr. Craig Keen (01:01:15):
I think it's very important to do that.
Chris Nafis (01:01:17):
Yeah, well, I think we've made it, maybe completed
the circle all the way throughand back to the life of pacifism
, peacemakingaking, and into thebook of Acts.
Maybe it's a good.
Hopefully you'll join me againon this sometime and we can talk
about other stuff, just let meknow but we should probably give
our listeners a break and letthem, you know, do something
(01:01:39):
else for a moment sounds good,but Craig, thank you so much.
It's always just a joy achallenge, a pleasure.
It's so engaging talking to youabout really about anything, so
thanks for doing it publiclywith me.
Dr. Craig Keen (01:01:52):
You're very welcome.
I'm glad to do it.
I love you and it's really niceto be with you.
Thanks, greg, love you too.
Chris Nafis (01:01:58):
All right, See you later For those who are
listening.
We'll catch you next time andthanks for joining us.
Hi and welcome back to the Current.
This is Pastor Chris Nafis ofLiving Water and today very glad
to have Dr Craig Keene join us.
Craig is a theologian, taughttheology at various universities
for 30-plus years.
He's been a member of LivingWater Church for a long time
sort of theology in residencefor us and just a sort of
profoundly deep thinker.
(00:20):
Today we start by talking aboutthe Book of Acts, which had a
profound influence on his lifeand the direction of his life.
In theology we talk aboutpassivism, commitment to
nonviolence.
We talk about the messiness oflife together and the calling to
live life as a prayer.
I hope that this will be aninspiring, challenging and
enjoyable conversation here.
(00:41):
It is Well, craig.
It's always really good to seeyou and glad to see you healthy
(01:01):
and just to get a chance to justto talk, I mean it's always
good talking, theology with youhow are you doing today?
Dr. Craig Keen (01:07):
I'm doing well.
I think I'm very much on themend from a significant heart
procedure.
Chris Nafis (01:15):
Yeah, yeah, well, you look well, like you said
before we started, you look likeyou've got color back a bit and
, yeah, it's really good to seeyou.
So, as you know, we've beenworking through the Book of Acts
.
So on this podcast I've beeninterviewing people who are
doing interesting things in theworld and who are in academia or
like doing practical things inthe world that are interesting,
and then on my own, I've beengoing through the Book of Acts.
(01:35):
You happen to have like someinteresting things that are in
both of those things, and so wewere thinking we would start out
by just talking about Acts andhow it affected.
You've told the story in mypresence a number of times, but
how reading Acts was like a kindof a crisis, pivotal moment in
your life and in your theology.
Could you just share a littlebit about that?
Dr. Craig Keen (01:54):
Yeah, I'd be very happy to, and this will
give some insight into a verycrucial moment in my personal
history, just sort of generallyspeaking.
The moment was in 1968.
It was after my freshman year.
The summer after my freshmanyear, I was working in the
(02:15):
desert of Southwest Texas in alittle town called, actually
just outside of Goldsmith Texas,and I was rooming with a close
friend of mine, Arvis Wells, ata nearby town of Kermit Texas, a
much larger town.
Chris Nafis (02:32):
Kermit sounds large , sounds like a big town.
A big green town, I think Okay.
Dr. Craig Keen (02:39):
And so I would work changing oil and greasing
Phillips Petroleum Company carsall day, and then I would join
Arvis and Kermit and we would,you know, hang out and sleep and
go back to work the next day.
And so we decided that it wouldbe a good time.
(02:59):
We went to the same church andall that in Hobbs, new Mexico.
We're going to larger andlarger cities and we both
decided that it would be a goodmoment for us to sort of get
more serious about ourChristianity, and so we thought
we would study the Bibletogether.
So two 18-year-olds who wereextremely naive, no critical
(03:28):
skills, and we decided we wouldread the Bible.
The next question was what arewe going to read?
And we decided it would besomething in the New Testament,
and the most obvious choicewould be something from the
Gospels, probably.
But we decided that the momentwas very important for us to
figure out what we are to do,and, of course, the Gospels are
about Jesus, and Jesus is God,and so let's read the book of
(03:51):
Acts, which is about people.
I mean, that's how naive wewere.
Chris Nafis (03:55):
I mean, it's a surprisingly wise decision for a
couple of naive 18-year-olds.
It's a good choice.
Dr. Craig Keen (04:00):
And so we started reading the book, and it
was one of those very intensekind of naive studies.
So we would read a phrase, atmost a sentence, and stop and
ask what is that saying to us?
And of course we would talkabout it very seriously and
(04:20):
reach conclusions that werepivotal for our lives.
I mean we were deciding what wewould do with our lives, the
rest of our lives.
I mean it was a very, veryserious time.
And so we slowly worked our way, verse by verse, phrase by
phrase, through Acts.
I'm not sure how far we got bythe end of the summer, but
(04:42):
that's how we proceeded.
Got by the end of the summer,but that's how we proceeded.
And again, this was 1968, whichwas the heat of the Vietnam War.
And so it was impossible to goanywhere or do anything without
being confronted by headlinesand newscasts.
And at that time they say thatthe television news was not too
(05:08):
careful about protecting thepublic from the gory and bloody
aspects of war.
And so we were just constantlyconfronted by the reality of
violence in this violent world.
And it became impossible,certainly for me and I think
also for Arvis, to escape thequestion while we're reading the
(05:31):
Book of Acts.
Would it be faithful for us tojoin the US forces in Vietnam
and fight for our country andfor freedom and for democracy
and all those other one-linersthat were thrown around?
Chris Nafis (05:47):
How would you have thought about that before you
started reading Acts Like whereyou came from?
You're from Oklahoma, I'm fromOklahoma.
Dr. Craig Keen (05:54):
My parents are both from Oklahoma.
I was raised in a veryconservative home.
I mean it was a working classhome.
I mean I don't think classyconservative, I think down home,
like grease under thefingernails, conservative
America and very patriarchalpatriarchal, I think actually,
it's true but patriotichousehold.
(06:16):
My father was a veteran ofWorld War Two, which very deeply
affected him.
He was constantly bringing upvague references to his time in
the war.
He was stationed in NorthAfrica during the Second World
War.
The whole time.
He was in the whole time untilSouthern Europe was liberated.
(06:36):
Then he came home in 1944.
And so I went into this thinkingvery patriotic patriotically
it's very hard to keep that wordstraight that it was my duty,
when the time came, to putmyself at the beck and call of
my nation to serve America anyway I could, and that would
(06:57):
include, for an 18 year old,once I finished college or
whatever, being a part of thatconflict and perhaps I would
need to drop out of college andgo do it.
I mean it was very seriousabout doing what is responsible,
what is ethical, what is myduty.
But here we were, confronted bythe war in Vietnam.
My own inclination was to thinkthat it was a noble and just
(07:21):
war.
It's not like I was doing lotsof reading about how unjust this
war was.
It's not true.
Was doing lots of reading abouthow unjust this war was.
It's not true.
It's too naive to think thingslike that.
And I began to ask myself, notwhat would Jesus do in this case
, but what would the apostles do?
And although I had no troubleimagining kind of the villains
of Acts, you know, engaging inbloody warfare, I could not find
(07:47):
any way at all to imagine anyof the faithful characters in
the Book of Axe lettingthemselves be shipped overseas
to fight for some nation state.
And so I struggled with that,agonized over it, thought over
it, arvis and I talked about itand we both came to the
(08:09):
conclusion that to be faithfulin the way someone like Stephen
in the book of Acts is faithfulis to resolve never to shed
blood, certainly not for thesake of a nation state.
Of course I didn't know whatthe term nation state meant.
So it would be not for the sakeof america, right, and the
(08:29):
ideals of america, which I verymuch still loved and respected.
But I could not see a way tofaith to kill faithfully to god,
to the gospel and so out ofthat I.
Chris Nafis (08:42):
So where did you go from there?
Because you hadn't reallystarted school in a serious way
in studying theology yet.
Dr. Craig Keen (08:49):
That's right, my freshman year was very rowdy.
Chris Nafis (08:52):
Yeah.
Dr. Craig Keen (08:52):
I hardly went to class.
I mean, I became shocked in myfirst semester to find that I
had three D's and an F atmidterm time.
So I had to scramble to get mygrades up and all that.
So I was very my freshman yearwas very much.
I was very much sort of a party.
I mean imagine there I wasn'tin a fraternity but if you would
imagine, sort of animal houseor something, that's kind of my
(09:15):
freshman year okay.
But yeah, I became much moreserious.
But I was a biology major atthis time.
So I went back my sophomoreyear to continue the study of
biology.
I thought I might be a doctoror a dentist or something, but I
knew is that I liked biology.
I continue to have very seriousquestions about what all of life
might mean.
(09:36):
I found that I was now apacifist.
I found out what that word wasfor, what I decided life was
about.
And I found when I went back tocollege and it was a
conservative college of theChurch of the Nazarene what's
now called Southern NazareneUniversity was Bethany Nazarene
College in Oklahoma City raisedthe question of pacifism to my
(10:02):
Christian friends, which were aminority of my friends actually.
They would become very anxiousand think that there was
something seriously wrong withmy thinking.
But I found that mynon-Christian friends, many of
whom were hippie-ish, were verywilling to listen and think and
some of them just agreed with me, and so that sort of lured me
(10:25):
in the direction of thecounterculture very slowly.
I was still very conservative.
In fact, had I voted in thepresidential election in 1968,
and it was not legal for an18-year-old to do that in 1968,
I would have voted for RichardNixon.
You know the conservativecandidate at the time.
And of course if Nixon werearound now he would be wildly
(10:46):
liberal.
But in those days he was a veryconservative politician and so
I gravitated toward thecounterculture.
I continued as a biology major,but the following year, my, my
June, my junior year.
Then I changed my major tophilosophy because of these
(11:06):
questions that I had.
They were theological questions, but I didn't know that.
I mean, I didn't know that Iprobably should be a religion
major because I figured that'sjust for people who are planning
to be a preacher, and I had nointention at all to be a
preacher.
But I decided I'd be aphilosophy major and so I went
back and did another semester atBethany and Azarine College, I
(11:30):
met the person who would be mywife in a few months after that,
alicia, and after the end of myfirst semester at Bethany, I
decided to transfer away fromthis sort of den of vipers, this
school of hypocrites, and weweren't sure what we're going to
do.
So I enrolled in a state schoolin the panhandle of Texas and
(11:51):
then decided in the middle ofthat semester that I just needed
to be a religion major, becausemy questions were all about God
and that was the only place Icould do that.
So at the end of that semesterwe returned to Bethany Nazarene
College, this time as I wentback as a religion major and my
vocational goals were soambiguous that when they asked
(12:14):
me on one of those forms what Iwas planning to do after I
graduated, I put down I will bean apostle.
Chris Nafis (12:22):
Interesting.
So yeah, so no vocational.
Dr. Craig Keen (12:26):
No sort of job plans at all.
Yeah.
Chris Nafis (12:29):
Well, and how did so?
As you came back and began tostudy philosophy, religion, like
, how did you so?
I mean, I feel like one of theprimary ways that you're known
in theology.
Well, you have like a verydistinct sort of style in your
theology.
I don't know if style is theright word, like a very distinct
sort of style in your theology.
I don't know if style is theright word, but a big part of it
, at least among Nazarenes, isthis commitment to nonviolence.
(12:50):
And so how did that get like?
Was that just like there onceyou read Acts that one summer?
Or did that get kind ofentrenched as you searched with
these questions, as you wentalong, like, how did you kind of
fall into that.
Dr. Craig Keen (13:03):
I sometimes describe my becoming a pacifist
as my first theological act, andthat's because I put into
practice something that occurredto me to be both
counterintuitive and demanded bythe gospel.
And so I mean I certainly hadall these sort of quote-unquote
(13:24):
theological ideas before that.
I mean I've been attendingNazarene churches since I was
about eight years old, not withmy parents, they didn't go with
me, they dropped me off.
So that's another oddity aboutmy biography.
But it became a significanttheological act because
everything I learned gotfiltered through it.
(13:45):
Now, it's not that I stoppedthinking about the question of
pacifism, whether or not it wasin fact a kind of sound
conclusion to reach from thegospel, but I mean I continued
to examine it critically.
But it was sort of a test casefor ideas that came my way.
And it was because of the sortof ramifications of nonviolence
(14:10):
that I came slowly to understandthe significance of grace,
because I mean, if you're goingto approach an extremely violent
world nonviolently and not doit with a, you know, with sort
of a rosy view of the world,thinking that people will see
your kindness and return yourkindness with kindness, I mean
(14:31):
when you understand that to be apacifist is to step into your
own mortality and those of thepeople around you, then it's a
very significant sort of sends ashockwave through your whole
system and in my case, since I'minclined to engage in probably
overly serious thinking, it senta shockwave through all of my
thinking and it took a long.
(14:53):
I'm still working through whatthose implications are, but
everything I encountered seemedboth to call pacifism into
question and also to reinforceit at the same time.
I mean it called it intoquestion because it's a very
impractical approach to life.
Right, the world is set up forthe inhabitants of the world to
(15:14):
be violent.
I mean maybe subtly violent,and I think much of the social
fragmentation of America is away to keep us as nonviolent as
possible while under the thumbof a very violent political
order.
But it is a violent world.
(15:40):
Teens, early 20s, stepping outinto my adult life believing
that everything henceforth wouldbe tinged with a significant
amount of insecurity, that mysecurity would have to come from
God.
Thus the importance of gracefor me.
Chris Nafis (16:02):
Yeah, and I think like just to pause on that for a
minute because I think that'ssomething significant.
I see that's different in whatI read and hear from you than
maybe what I read and hear fromother sort of nonviolent spaces,
because I feel like a lot ofpeople approach nonviolence,
pacifism from like a strategicstandpoint.
Like this is the way that weaccomplish things.
(16:23):
It's more helpful to benonviolent than it is to be
violent, and I feel like youknow you kind of confess that
that's just not true, or atleast it doesn't need to be true
.
Could you say a little bitabout that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean.
Dr. Craig Keen (16:37):
I'm not against people being careful, I'm not
against people making plans.
In fact, I think we have tomake plans.
We have to determine whichthings are relatively good and
we have to aim for those.
Avoid the things that arerelatively bad, try to avoid
those.
And we imagine a future takingin everything we have to take in
(17:00):
around us.
We imagine a future that willperhaps be better, or at least
no worse than the present thatwe're involved in now.
I think all that is true and Isupport, you know, policy
changes and I support politicalmovements that want to put
together certain kinds ofpolicies in local and state and
(17:21):
federal government and elsewhere.
But my hope is not built on anyof that, and so I think all of
that strategizing will partaketo some degree in the violence
of this violent world.
Even if it's a very subtlething like voting is extremely
(17:42):
subtly violent, but it is soviolent.
I mean, it's a contest in whichI want my side to prevail over
your side and we count votes todetermine who wins.
I mean, and there are politicalcampaigns and the metaphors we
use about these things arelargely military metaphors, but
(18:04):
I understand that this is, youknow, this is largely sublimated
violence, and so it's kind ofgentle and although people get
angry and upset and there isn'tthat much bloodletting
surrounding elections althoughthere certainly is some- and I
would say that January 6th, Ithink, is just sort of some of
(18:28):
that previously subtle violencebreaking out into the open.
I think that's kind of how weoperate, but we're usually more
polite than thoseinsurrectionists were.
Chris Nafis (18:39):
Right, and so just to pause, it seems like you're
using violence in a way that noteverybody might Like.
When people hear violence, Ithink they're thinking physical
violence, killing, I don't knowpunching.
You know there's particularimages that come to mind for me
when I hear the word violenceand I feel like you're using a
little more broadly.
I think those, the threat ofthose things, sort of underlies
(19:02):
a larger power system.
The threat of those things sortof underlies a larger power
system.
Dr. Craig Keen (19:06):
Yeah, that's true.
I mean I should say that when Iand I don't like the word
violence actually to speak ofnonviolence or violence, I think
that's it's not quite nuancedenough.
I mean you walk into a room,you have a significant impact on
the people.
Well, I mean more or lesssignificant.
I mean you affect the people inthe room and in ways that they
(19:26):
have no control over.
So I don't think nonviolence isjust sort of allowing the other
to be a free moral agent orsomething like that.
I mean we impose things on eachother, so there's something
violent about that and I don'tobject to that.
I think there's this kind ofviolence which is actually very
humane.
I mean I want people to getinto me, I want people to break
(19:48):
in, and when I don't necessarilywant them to, I mean I want to
be, I want the unwanted.
You know that's what I'm tryingto say.
But when I do speak of the kindof nonviolence that I pursue, I
am finally thinking of avoidingkilling.
I mean killing is sort of theparadigmatic case.
But the question is what kindsof activities and attitudes and
(20:12):
ideas incline to killing?
I mean, which ones of thesethings, if we gave them free
reign, would result in death,the death of other human beings,
and that I think we have tokind of play with.
I mean, since we are in a veryviolent world and since our
options are always limited, I dothink we have to flirt with
(20:34):
violence.
I think it's unavoidable.
And again, there are some verypositive things, like if someone
confronts me, tells me my ideasare off or that I've said
something rude and I need to askfor forgiveness, or whatever.
I mean, it sort of breaks intome and jars me a bit and I'm
grateful for that.
There's a certain violence tothat, but I'm happy about that.
(20:54):
And if I had to hurt someone tostop them from hurting or
killing someone else, I would dothat.
And even then there's thedanger of hurting the person too
much, so the person'sincapacitated or killed.
But just the nature of life isthat these kinds of things will
happen.
But the task that the gospelcalls us to, I think, is to live
(21:18):
a life that will not kill.
And I need to put thisdifferently because I don't want
to set this up as if I amtrying to formulate some kind of
basic ethical principle orsomething.
In fact, I do think that thegospel calls us to a kind of
life that many profoundlyethical people would find to be
(21:39):
unethical.
Not only the bad Romans hatedthe gospel.
Good and noble and just Romanshated it too.
Not only the bad emissaries ofthe temple in Jerusalem hated
the gospel.
The good and faithful oneshated it too.
So we need to remember that.
(21:59):
So I'm not setting up some kindof morality here, although what
I am talking about is moralityadjacent.
I think what I want to say isthat, in a violent world, we
proceed with the call of thegospel ringing in our ears, and
that is a call to step out intothe grace of God, and that means
(22:21):
to live by faith.
And the question is, what doesthat mean?
It means, of course, trustingthe grace of God, and that means
to live by faith.
And the question is, what doesthat mean?
It means, of course, trustingthe grace of God, being faithful
to God's faithfulness to us,but it means most of all, I
think, that we are to liveprayerfully, in other words,
live out toward the one whom wetrust, taking steps, calling out
(22:44):
to the God who calls out to us,making plans, calling out to
the God who calls out to us,recognizing that if this God
responds significantlyperceptibly, let's say.
That's a problematic term, butlet's go with it.
If this God responds perceptibly, it may be in ways that I don't
(23:05):
expect at all, and so that'sone of the reasons why our plans
have always to be tentative.
We must make plans.
Life is set up in such a waythat we have to make plans.
I would never find my way outof the room if I didn't know
where the door was, if I didn'taim for an open space to go out
to the hall, etc.
I've got to determine what isgood, what is to be done, but
(23:28):
those plans are to be held veryloosely, because the response of
God's grace may be no, may bethis way, and if my response is,
but there's a wall there, theresponse of God may be, I know,
but my response is to be okay,and I don't know what that means
(23:49):
.
As I hit my head against thewall, I may call out again how
long, oh Lord how long, and sothis kind of nonviolence that
I'm talking about is anonviolence of prayer.
So what am I to do now?
I'm aiming toward nobloodletting, I'm aiming toward
(24:10):
no killing.
I'm aiming toward letting in myneighbor, my enemy, letting
them into me in ways that willunsettle, perhaps hurt me,
perhaps seriously incapacitateme, perhaps kill me.
But my prayer is that I willmove out into that, and that's
(24:30):
not to say that I will always befaithful either.
I mean, this is not, this isnot what I'm talking about, is
not sort of, you know, aboutramping up your willpower or
something you know.
Be determined that, no matterwhat, I will not do X, y and Z.
I've thought about these thingsand I know that these things I
must never do.
I mean, I think that certainideas, imagining certain
(24:52):
situations, is a very wise thingto do and to imagine what I
might do there.
But the thing about prayer isthat it doesn't make demands.
It lays out my imagined futurebefore God, and it asks and
waits but never demands andalways ends with, nevertheless,
(25:14):
not what I want, but what youwant, god, and the gospel is all
about this.
I mean, that's precisely whatJesus is praying in the Garden
of Gethsemane before hiscrucifixion.
I mean, he doesn't want to go,he doesn't want to be crucified,
he doesn't want to behumiliated, he doesn't want to
be turned into the very thingwhich the covenant of Israel
(25:39):
declares God cannot love.
He doesn't want to be turnedinto something despicably
unclean, disgustingly profane,something that has been turned
into a defiled mass of mutilatedflesh.
But he says nevertheless, yourwill be done, and that is the
(25:59):
prayer I think of every step ofthe way, which means that even
my first theological act is tobe held loosely and I will not
make the demand of God never putme into a situation in which I
will not be tempted, beyond whatI can bear, to kill.
(26:22):
I have to be open to everything, otherwise it's not faith and
it's not grace.
So what I'm trying to say here,I guess, is the kind of
nonviolence if I may use thatunfortunate phrase the kind of
pacifism.
That's a better phrase, but Iwish there were a shalomism, I
mean, I'd be much happier withthat.
(26:44):
But the kind of pacifism thatI'm advocating here is a
pacifism that is also a prayerwithout demand.
I don't demand that God keep mefree from violence, but I live
my life praying that God willkeep me free from violence and
will keep everyone close to mefree from violence, and that the
(27:06):
world will come to be free fromviolence.
Chris Nafis (27:09):
And when you say free from violence, you mean
free from committing acts ofviolence, as well as free from
having violence done to you.
Dr. Craig Keen (27:17):
Yeah, it's both, and that's another thing about
the gospel I think we have tolearn at least most of us, I
think, have not learned it thatthe gospel is not just about
what Jesus did and willed andwhat he was determined to do and
all that.
The gospel is about what wasdone to him.
I mean, if we can use the wordsactive and passive here, he was
(27:40):
both an actor and a patient.
I mean, he's an agent and apatient, an actor and a
recipient of action, and theaction done upon him is
indistinguishable from who he is.
We can't think of him apartfrom his crucifixion, and he
didn't nail himself up there.
He may have set his face onJerusalem, he may have gone into
(28:02):
Jerusalem expecting to becrucified, but he did not
crucify himself.
That was done to him, and hisresurrection is also a gift
given to him by his father.
He is fully human and fully Godbecause his father embraces him
.
Chris Nafis (28:18):
Yeah, yeah, and of course that's the human
experience, right, like we'reboth actors and recipients of,
like whatever the world throwsat us.
And I guess like where my mindgoes with this.
So I feel like you've been oneof the primary theological
influences on me.
Influences on me and a big partof your work has been working
(28:43):
away from like an abstracttheology that has.
You know, that's sort ofprimarily metaphysical it's,
it's like imagined ways of theworld is is structured in cosmic
ways and stuff and really likea push towards like an embodied
theology and in some ways likeeven your theology itself.
It sometimes feels like it kindof floats, like the concepts
are so large that it's likethere's this gap in some ways
(29:06):
between the possibility of doingthe things that you're saying
we need to do and like theactual ability to live in the
flesh and blood with otherpeople and all the frustrating
things.
Like you know, I like the.
I like the.
I don't think I've heard youtalk about Shalomism, but I like
that because there's like apeace that like Shalom is this
word that has like, it has bodyto it.
Dr. Craig Keen (29:27):
Yes, it does, there's like a wholeness.
Chris Nafis (29:29):
There's a communal nature to it.
It's not like peace as a lackof violence.
It's peace as like a positivething that you experience in the
world with one another.
You know, there's like somepretty vivid images of shalom
that we can find in scripturePeace is not the absence of
violence, but the presence ofjustice.
Dr. Craig Keen (29:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah , as it's said by Martin Luther
King Jr, among others.
Yeah, I like that a lot.
Chris Nafis (29:53):
So I guess you know how do you get from like the
conceptual.
I got to give myself away.
I've got to live as a prayer.
I've got to walk into a wall tolike all right, I also need to
like cook dinner for the kidstonight.
You know how do you do it.
How do you bridge those gaps?
As a theologian who also has abody and lives in the world.
Dr. Craig Keen (30:16):
As you know, by far the most significant thinker
to me is Soren Kierkegaard.
I discovered him as a younggraduate student.
I tried to write a master'sthesis on him once.
I failed to finish it but atleast I did a lot of work and I
found him to be a very apt guide, and in part because he was a
(30:38):
pietist and I, you know, beingraised indirectly, not from my
folks but at least when Iattended church in the Church of
the Nazarene, a profoundlypietistic tradition I found that
those two, the Church of theNazarene, john Wesley for
example, and Kierkegaard, sortof fed each other in my work.
(30:58):
But Kierkegaard was extremelygood at sort of putting flesh
and bones onto very loftyconcepts and one of his many
foci focuses is this conflictbetween the kind of I don't know
kind of the abstract and theconcrete, or as he put it.
(31:20):
I mean there's a tensionbetween infinity and finitude,
there's a tension betweenfreedom and necessity.
I mean there's certain thingsthat are just going to happen,
but you know, there's this otherside of us that's like I'm not
going to do that and there's asense in which we are kind of
(31:41):
wrapped up in the eternal butthere's no getting out of time.
I mean it's not just a timeline, I mean we're like moments of
time, it's like the past.
Moments are clinging to me Now.
I can't shake them off, I can'tscrape them off.
They've got their roots into me.
You can't unscramble the eggfrom the cake batter or
(32:02):
something.
It's in there.
And the future is so profoundlyimportant to me that I can't
remove it also from the presentthat I'm living.
In fact, that sort of I don'tknow kind of earthy past and
earthy future are so much a partof me that they seem more real
even than what I want to callthe present, or at least, what I
(32:24):
call the present is so wrappedup in those that we should not
distinguish the three orsomething.
So Kierkegaard is all about thatand the way he talks.
He talks about it in variousways, but one of his books,
called Fear and Trembling, isprobably his most widely read
book.
It's a book that deals with thestory of Abraham and in
(32:45):
particular Abraham's taking hisson, his only son, his child of
old age, his only heir, his onlyhope of immortality, taking his
son up to the mountain inMoriah to sacrifice him to God
because God has asked him to.
And so Kierkegaard talks aboutthe faith of Abraham and how
very strange that faith is.
(33:06):
I mean he trusts in God and Godhas promised to create from
Abraham a mighty nation.
You know descendants morenumerous than the grains of sand
on all the beaches of all theworld.
And here God has asked him toremove the hope of his future,
(33:29):
to remove his future from hislife, to end his life in despair
, without any heir, without anydescendant.
And so Kierkegaard talks abouthow Abraham makes both of these
movements at once.
He calls them the movement offinitude, which is he's right
there with Isaac.
I mean he takes Isaac with himon like a three-day journey to
(33:52):
the place of sacrifice, andthat's living on the ground.
I mean that's as concrete asyou get.
You know they gather firewoodand all that, but every step of
the way Abraham is expectingthat he will sacrifice Isaac, he
will kill him, and we talkabout you know that.
You know how horrible it is fora father to kill a son, and it
(34:13):
is I mean the Kierkegaard knowsthat but it's also a suicide.
I mean this is not likeindividualistic America, where
you have your own identity andyour children have their
identity, and if you kill achild.
That's just this horrible thingyou've done to a child.
No in this case, who Abraham isis completely inseparable from
(34:35):
who Isaac is.
So for Abraham to kill Isaac ashorrible as it would be for any
father to kill a son, andKierkegaard knows that it is
also a suicide.
And so Abraham makes both ofthese movements, this movement
of infinity, where he throwseverything away, he renounces
everything in his life, hiswhole future, and he's there
(34:57):
with his son.
I mean, if his son were to falloff his horse and cut his arm,
he would wrap it up and putmedicine on it or whatever would
help him up the mountain orwhatever.
And so every step of the way,it's that concrete, that earthy,
that particular, that finite.
And when it comes down to it,and Abraham has his son bound on
(35:17):
the altar and is raising hisknife, I mean think of all the
finitude of that, all theconcreteness of that.
You know tightening muscles inthe arm, the grip of your fist
on the handle of the knife.
You know the momentum ofraising your arm, getting ready
to bring it down, and suddenlyGod says never mind.
That shows the sort of horrorand what majesty or something,
(35:43):
of living before a free God,living by faith, living by
prayer.
And so every step of the wayAbraham is praying, anticipating
a future, hoping in a differentfuture, but expecting a future
much more tragic than what he'shoping for, and the end is given
to him.
And so that's how you do it.
(36:07):
I mean, and there is no how-tomanual to pray, and everybody
who's had like an impendingtragedy and prays you know
pending tragedy and prays, youknow mightily, with tears and
with trembling and sleeplessnights toward this event
(36:27):
understand something of that,especially if you've learned
that the outcome is notdependent upon the intensity of
your faith and prayers, it'sdependent on God.
And so if you know, ifsomeone's obviously dying from
something horrible and at thelast minute the doctors come in
and say, wow, all the signs ofthe disease are gone We've heard
(36:50):
those stories Then it's time torejoice and praise God for that
.
But most of us find that theperson does not get better and
all of our intense prayers arefollowed by a very sad outcome.
And it should be added thatnobody gets out of here alive.
So, no matter how many timesGod has intervened to save some
(37:14):
loved one from some terribledisorder you know has prevailed,
contrary to the doctor's wishes, Eventually that person is
going to be dead.
And how do we approach that?
Well, you know, the same wayJesus approaches Good Friday in
the Garden of Gethsemane, youpray and you act and you work
and you hope and you expect andyou say nevertheless.
Chris Nafis (37:39):
Yeah, so you're talking about the Kierkegaard
story, the Abraham story.
Ellen Davis, who I had on herea couple episodes ago, has a
chapter in one of her books onthat story and she points to
these two.
Rembrandt, have you seen theRembrandt depictions of the
binding?
Dr. Craig Keen (37:56):
of Isaac.
Chris Nafis (37:56):
Yeah, the first one , rembrandt maybe I can put a
picture on there.
Uh, for those who are watchingthis on youtube, you can google
them.
The first one is was done inhis youth as an artist and it's
full of drama and movement andand abraham is sort of full of
like zeal.
And the second one is done, Ithink, late in rembrandt's life
(38:18):
and it's and it's just, it'sblack and white, if I think it
might even be an etching, andyou just see this look of just
like just exhaustion anddistraughtness on abraham's face
as he like does this thing andyou can almost see like the
relief as like the angel grabshis, his arm and stops him from,
uh, you know, thrusting theknife.
And I don't know there'ssomething in that second one,
(38:40):
particularly of like this kindof faithful life of hope that's
so filled with stress.
I don't know, like you knowthere's something in trying to
live out, like to live into thefaith.
You know there are thesemoments of zeal and I feel like
sometimes in my and I even as Iget older, like my younger days,
it was easier to be full ofzeal and hope that like, yeah,
(39:02):
I'm going to live this life.
That's alternative to the lifethat I would have lived,
otherwise right, if I had notheard the gospel, if I had not
given my life to Christ.
You know, I can imagine thiswhole different life that I
would have had, and as I getolder I feel like I'm more in
that.
You know, there's likesomething exhausting about it,
but there's also like a reliefand a hopefulness of it.
(39:22):
Because you're hoping insomething that is that like
almost has to be I mean, it's amiracle, right Like it has to be
impossible in some way.
I don't know what I'm trying tosay.
Dr. Craig Keen (39:34):
I think what you're saying is right.
I mean this shalom-ism that Iwas talking about.
I mean in the gospel.
This is a huge thing too.
Sometimes this is turned intojust sort of like added drama to
the notion of peace orsomething.
But shalom, peace in the gospelpasseth understanding.
I mean it rupturesunderstanding.
(39:55):
To use another image, it's allover the gospel Shalom.
I mean when Jesus walks into theupper room with his body still
shredded.
I mean, put your hands in thewounds, thomas.
The marks of crucifixion areall over him, the marks of
scourging we have to imagine,also all over him.
(40:15):
He walks into the room and weshould think of a bloody mess, I
mean leaving footprints ofblood, you know.
So we should think of.
And he says to his disciplespeace, be unto you.
And although that's very ofteninterpreted as his sort of
saying oh, I hope you.
Hope you're feeling pretty good.
(40:36):
If you're not, I hope you feelbetter soon.
But what he's saying is here Iam, I am peace, I have come unto
you.
And what kind of peace is this?
It's a mutilated body.
What kind of peace could thatbe?
Well, I could never understandthat as peace.
But it is peace.
It's a peace that passethunderstanding and so when we
agonize and it's fine to talk,use that kind of language.
(40:59):
I mean, the Buddhists were notthat far wrong when they said
life is suffering.
I mean it's not only sufferingand we need to also recognize
that laughter is wonderful and Ithink we need to learn to laugh
when other people would cryeven.
I think laughter is a wonderfulthing.
Sometimes I would say we'resaved by grace through laughter.
(41:22):
But life is hard.
My father was not veryphilosophical, did not talk very
often.
He was a very quiet easternOklahoma man.
I think I got my ASD from him,assuming I have ASD, I'm not
sure but one of the things hewould say and he so believed it
he would say it like with hisjaw set or something.
(41:44):
Life is hard.
You know he'd be silent for along time.
Be doing something.
Life is hard to be silent againfor a long time it just is, and
one of the dangers of America isthat it works over time to
convince us that life isn't hard.
It has fractured us into little, lonely bodies, separated from
(42:07):
each other, because there we'reeasier to manage.
We're given all kinds of toolsfor distraction, we're given
things to level out our moods,make us feel happier, but that's
because life is hard.
And as long as we refuse toadmit that and think that life
(42:28):
is supposed to be placid, calm,then I think we will live lonely
, lonely lives.
Chris Nafis (42:36):
Yeah, I mean, I think you're really right on
that.
We've been talking about thatsome in church and Bible studies
and things, because there'sthis myth that we can—I think so
many things have become easierwith technology that we begin to
set our expectation thateverything will be easy.
Dr. Craig Keen (42:53):
Yeah.
Chris Nafis (42:53):
I think we have this really deeply embedded
belief that, like the more, Ican just have what I want in any
moment that I want the easierlife will be, which, if you
think about it for a few minutes, is pretty clearly not true.
It's a lot harder sometimes tohave a million choices all the
time than it is to not, to havea million choices all the time
than it is to not, and we tendto make choices that feel good
(43:16):
for us in the moment, that makeus a little bit more happy or
whatever right now, but that inthe long term, are going to cost
us.
They cost us relationships,they cost us connection, they
cost us meaning.
It's easier to be lazy than itis to be in good shape.
It's easier to be alone formany of us that are introverted
than it is to actually have deepfriendships and community lives
(43:36):
.
Yeah, that's very true.
And you know there's so much toembracing the hardness of life,
and I think this is maybeespecially true in the world of
the church, where so much of themessage people get is aimed at
trying to say like if you followJesus, your life will be just
so good and it'll be so easy.
(43:58):
And there's like this constantcelebration when I don't even
know if that's even the right.
I don't even think that's like,I don't even want to say it's
the opposite of that, becauseit's not.
There is like a deep goodnessin following Christ.
There's like a meaningfulnessto your life.
There's something significantabout that.
But it's not about making iteasy or not easy, Like sometimes
the harder thing is the betterthing, it's the more meaningful
(44:20):
thing.
Dr. Craig Keen (44:21):
I totally agree with that, and this goes back to
that Martin Luther King Jr andothers.
He didn't make it up.
If we understand peace well,it's about the presence of
justice, and we need to becareful with that word too,
because that is one of thefavorite words of America, and
in America the symbol of justiceis this blind woman,
(44:45):
blindfolded woman, holdingscales and a sword.
And so justice in America isgetting even.
I mean, you can take that inthe most negative way or the
most positive way.
It's balancing the scales, butit's also, you know, cutting
somebody's head wide open with asword to get even.
And so the justice of thegospel is not about getting even
(45:08):
.
The word justice, as it's usedin scripture, is a synonym of
the word righteousness.
These words are the same.
Our problem is that we haveturned justice into something
that the police and judges takecare of, and righteousness is
all about my private innerdevotional life or something.
(45:31):
But in fact, righteousness isas out there as justice is, and
justice is as in there asrighteousness is.
And so the coming of the reignof God is the coming of a
justice that is righteousnessand a righteousness that is
justice.
And so that means that the callof the gospel is a call to
(45:52):
righteousness, slash justice.
And if you're living righteouslyand justly, you're living a
social life and you're workingtoward things in this strange
sort of twofold sense of makingplans with expecting the plans
to be disrupted by God.
You're living that way and lifegets complicated.
(46:14):
I mean, if you want to discoverjoy, love someone.
If you want to discoversuffering, love someone.
I mean life becomes very, verycomplicated and it's.
I mean.
I remember I haven't heard thiscliche in a long time, but when
I was a kid it was not uncommonfor marriage to be described as
(46:34):
that old ball and chain.
So you get married and all of asudden you are chained down in
place.
You can't do all the things youused to do, and so it then
becomes well, I don't know ifI'm ready for that.
I'm a little afraid of gettingmarried because I don't want to
be chained down.
But I think really the fear ofmarriage, just as the fear of a
(46:55):
committed friendship, is thefear of the unknown.
It's the fear that my life isgoing to get complicated.
It's the fear that all the joythat I encounter in this other
person a close friend or aspouse or whatever other person,
a close friend or a spouse orwhatever that all of that joy is
also going to involve a lot ofpain, and it does.
(47:16):
I mean the people I love mostare the people who hurt me the
most.
But that's I mean.
I would say it's worth it, butthat's the wrong metaphor
because it's not about someeconomic exchange, it's just.
This wonderful thing is alsopainful.
Chris Nafis (47:32):
Yeah, it's really, I mean, I think that's a really
perfect image for it, because Ireally do think that you know so
people are waiting really longto get married.
In fact, I play on the soccerteam and they're a lot younger
than I am and someone on ourteam had gotten married and
they're, you know, kind of likeI can't believe.
they're just, they're just sortof in shock that uh, someone
that age I think she was like 27, which is pretty old
(47:54):
historically but for our age ispretty young, would get married
and she got pregnant right awayand and you know, and I think
there's for those who were left,who are still single, and kind
of one of them had just got backfrom a trip from Europe and you
know all this stuff there'slike a lack of autonomy in that
marriage that you're settlinginto this life that you no
longer control and that youdon't, you can't.
It's kind of exactly what we'rejust talking about.
(48:15):
You can't just do what you wantwhen you want it all the time.
But I think the idea that thatis the ideal life is is a myth
and I think that we're finding,uh, more and more like that's.
There's people, everyone'sdepressed, everyone's miserable,
everyone's lonely, because ourideals have set us to trying to
maintain this really unhealthyset of independence.
(48:38):
In a certain kind of way, thatdoes this tremendous harm not
only to us as individuals.
It does hurt us as individuals,but it's also fragmenting us as
a community and as a society.
And you know, in some ways andI see this in church too, like
you know I was thinking like,how do we put flesh and blood on
some of these ideas?
Well, at Living Water, you know, we've tried to step into this
(48:58):
call to like towards themarginalized right and to be in
deep community with people whoare really struggling in life.
And as you do it you learn likethis is really hard because
people are messed up.
Dr. Craig Keen (49:10):
You know they're messed up and they're gonna
make it hard, even if it doesn'thave to be the poor you have
with you always, and it may bethe same seven poor people that
you have with you always yeah,yeah and, and, but there's still
something.
Chris Nafis (49:24):
There's this like I don't know worth.
It's maybe the wrong way to sayit, but like it feels like a
prayer, you know to live thislife with people.
It is yeah uh, yeah, uh, whatdo you gotta say yeah?
Dr. Craig Keen (49:37):
I love dogs, dogs, dogs, the creatures, the
animals, yes, yes, uh, youprobably didn't expect me to say
that not at that moment, no,but I didn't know that about you
.
Yeah, um there have been.
Human beings have lived withdogs for at least 10,000 years,
maybe multiples of 10,000 years,maybe 20, 30,000 years.
I mean, the timeline of ourtime with dogs keeps getting
(50:00):
expanded.
So I love dogs so much that Ioften say that you can't really
be a human being if you don'thave a dog.
Not really, and it's for asimilar reason.
You can't be a human being ifyou don't hang out with other
people, if you don't live asocial life of some kind.
It's just the way we're wired.
I mean, you don't even have tobe a theologian to say something
like that Just the way we'vebeen.
And so you know why did dogsand human beings ever get
(50:24):
together?
Well, it appears that theyfound themselves sort of
mutually supported by each other, and so human beings threw
their garbage around and this isgoing to disgust everyone, so
maybe your brother will cut thisone out.
Apparently there is the sameamount of protein in chicken as
(50:46):
there is in human excrement.
So dogs also benefited fromthat.
Various things we threw awaythey made use of, and so dogs
kind of wandered around wherepeople went, and so people
started having them hang outwith them and there's more and
more intimately connected, andhuman beings actually never had
a good night's sleep until theyhad dogs, because they didn't
(51:08):
know what might be approachingthe campfire.
The dogs would bark and wakethem up if something, an animal
or some other people withviolent designs were on their
way and life was really, reallyhard.
I mean, you needed the help ofdogs.
You already had the help ofother human beings, without whom
you wouldn't be able to make ita week.
(51:28):
All of the work that youengaged in was work that needed
someone else to help you.
There weren't adequate tools orresources for you to put
together to make shelteradequately, day after day, week
after week, year after year,without having help.
If you try to do it alone, youdo it for a while, making use of
(51:52):
skills you learned from otherhuman beings anyway, and so
we've always lived this.
I describe it as a precariouslife, which means not only a
dangerous life, but it comesfrom a word meaning prayer.
So we've lived a life in whichwe've stepped out into a future
that is very, very uncertain andcalling out to something.
(52:14):
I mean, the gospel tells us theone to call out to, but you
know, people have always calledout to something, because life
is precarious and it is onlywhen let me put it this way
human life expectancies havebeen low forever.
Human life expectancies havebeen low forever.
I mean about 30.
Decade after decade, centuryafter century, millennium after
(52:37):
millennium, until about 1870.
No-transcript lived to about 30.
That's the average huge childmortality rates.
But you had some older people.
But 30 was a good ripe age.
I've lived to 75 and I'm toldI've lived a full life.
If you made it to 30, you'dlived a full life, like in the
(53:00):
year 1800.
But in some places where soilwas bad, prospect of drought and
flood, pestilences of variouskinds, just sort of very
terribly subsistence, agrarianlives, you know, you may never
meet anyone over 30.
But in 1870, something happenedand life expectancy started, for
(53:24):
the first time in the historyof the world, to get longer.
For the first time in thehistory of the world to get
longer.
And now we assume that in amodern, industrialized nation,
even one struggling to figureout what to do with health care
like this one, you will live.
If you make it to 70, you'regoing to be like just about
everyone else, but then youprobably will make it to 75.
You make it to 75, you probablymake it to 85, you make it to
(53:46):
85, etc.
So it's not hard to imaginewhat's already happening.
More and more and more peopleevery year make it to 100.
And that's because life is veryprotected, very sheltered.
We're kept in safe spaces,we're given what we want when we
ask.
But this is, I mean we'retalking about, you know, 150
(54:07):
years, in fact less than that,because most of the last 150
years life was still hard, eventhough life expectancies were
getting higher.
And so if we take ourselves outof the situation where the
prospect of death becomes moreand more abstract and put
ourselves back in the wholeprevious, entire history of the
(54:27):
world and think that death issomething that we encounter all
the time, I mean, if you live ina city, you will encounter
someone dying every week atleast.
In a village, maybe not quiteso often, but that's only
because you may have only 50people there, but everybody, you
see, if you're young's going tobe dead before you are that
(54:48):
kind of life.
There is no question, but thatyou have to lean on others.
There are no individuals.
You know, I've got a name,you've got a name.
We know the difference, but wearen't individuals.
We're not undivided from eachother.
We are so entangled in oneanother that there is no hope
(55:08):
for me without you.
And so for us now to live as ifwe were individual identities
is to go, if nothing else,contrary to the entire history
of the world before 1870 andmuch of it after that.
But in the case of the gospel?
The gospel calls us to live akind of life where we are
(55:31):
absolutely dependent upon otherswho are absolutely dependent
upon us as we together, pray,pray together like
congregational prayer out intoGod's future.
That will inevitably surpriseus.
Chris Nafis (55:47):
Yeah, and of course I mean we are like if there
wasn't someone harvesting wheatright now.
Dr. Craig Keen (55:53):
I wouldn't have any food in a couple of months.
Chris Nafis (55:55):
You know like we are completely interdependent on
one another.
I mean, if someone didn'treplace the valve in your heart?
Dr. Craig Keen (56:01):
a few weeks ago, we might not be having this
conversation, and the cow thatgraciously donated that to me.
Chris Nafis (56:08):
Yeah, but we just don't.
It's all hidden from us.
You know, like we have thisagain.
Dr. Craig Keen (56:23):
It's like a myth , you know, a myth in the most
negative way that we'reindependent people that just
make our own decisions.
Very important book for me thebook by William Cavanaugh
entitled Torture and Eucharistmakes the case that it is the
modern nation state thatinvented the category of the
individual.
Now I think it's way more thanthe nation state, I think it's
modern economy and many otherthings, but the case he makes is
a very interesting one that weonly come up with the idea of
(56:45):
the individual when a powerfulbody over us puts us in our
places, make sure that we arescared to do anything contrary
to what will keep thingsrelatively quiet, and then will
tell us we will take care of youif you stay in that place.
And I think that's largely whathas happened.
(57:06):
We are put in our little quietplace.
I mean the statistics for howmany people live alone, yeah, I
mean they're just rising everyyear.
So stay in your little apartment, go out to the bar occasionally
and hang out with some peopleyou kind of know, have some
pleasurable relationships withpeople.
(57:26):
But retreat to your safe spacewhere no one can hurt you, and
we'll give you the chemicals youneed.
We'll give you the sort of thekind of outside distractions
that you need.
We'll keep you busy there andyou'll go to work and we'll make
sure that every little drop ofefficiency is squeezed out of
you so that you put in youreight hours or whatever, however
(57:50):
many hours, go home exhaustedand look for any distraction you
can find.
I mean, that's the way we arebeing trained to live and we
think that's the way to live,but I mean it's true that it's,
you know, kind of.
There's less and less whatshould we call it?
Sort of acute pain, but there'smore and more and more dull,
(58:14):
aching pain that sort of staysdown below the surface.
Give me something to make me nolonger aware of what's going on
down there.
Chris Nafis (58:24):
Right, right, right .
And to bring it full circle, Ithink the calling of the gospel
is to risk being out there inthe world.
I mean, I think part of whatwe're afraid of is just the
violence, the difficulty, thesuffering of life lived together
.
The call is to go to step intothat life, together and
(58:44):
interdependent on one another.
interdependent on one anotherbut without this sort of
protection of like a violentability to make my will done in
that community, but to give upat least a part of that so that
we can actually live well withone another, aiming for the
peace of God, the shalom of Godin this kind of unified life
(59:05):
that we hopefully call thechurch right.
I don't know how well weactually ever do that Like if
that ever actually happens in away that's recognizable, but
like I think there are ways thatin most little communities that
are trying to do that you cansee some semblance of like this
kind of hope and prayer of alife together.
Dr. Craig Keen (59:24):
I think it's very true and I think you know I
almost always advise people ifyou're looking for a church,
find a little crappy one, youknow, one that doesn't seem to
be making any significant impacton the world.
If it's little, you won't beable to hide, and the more you
get involved, the more of thelife of that church you will let
into your body and that bodywill let you into.
(59:48):
And I think I think I mean,when we think of justice and
righteousness, we should thinkof people letting each other
into their bodies yeah, and, ofcourse, bringing it back to acts
.
Chris Nafis (59:57):
I mean, that's what we see happening again and
again because people who areunified in ways that are like
shocking as you read them, likewhat they?
They sold all their stuff andshared it.
They were spent their entirelife together feeding and taking
care of the poor and each otherand continually inviting in
more and more people who wouldhave seemed like a threat to
(01:00:17):
them, who would have seen kindof religiously, socially,
politically, other than themthat we should not keep.
Why are we going to let Paulback in this community?
Dr. Craig Keen (01:00:26):
He was just trying to kill us last week.
Chris Nafis (01:00:28):
I know, or why should we let these Gentiles in?
Or how we're going to go tothis new place and this new
people is full of like idolatersand the people that we think of
as the worst of the worst.
This is the scary communitythat we've tried to insulate
ourselves from for thousands ofyears.
This is who we are as a people.
We are not them.
I know, and then to say nope,they are invited into this work
(01:00:50):
of Christ.
We're going to give up our sortof defense of ourselves and our
identity.
Dr. Craig Keen (01:00:55):
It's an abandonment of identity.
I give myself away to thefuture that is disclosed in the
glorified, mutilated body ofJesus.
Chris Nafis (01:01:06):
Man, it's good, it's hard, it's a challenging
calling, but there's somethingso beautiful about it that it's
irresistible and it's importantto learn to laugh through it.
Dr. Craig Keen (01:01:15):
I think it's very important to do that.
Chris Nafis (01:01:17):
Yeah, well, I think we've made it, maybe completed
the circle all the way throughand back to the life of pacifism
, peacemakingaking, and into thebook of Acts.
Maybe it's a good.
Hopefully you'll join me againon this sometime and we can talk
about other stuff, just let meknow but we should probably give
our listeners a break and letthem, you know, do something
(01:01:39):
else for a moment sounds good,but Craig, thank you so much.
It's always just a joy achallenge, a pleasure.
It's so engaging talking to youabout really about anything, so
thanks for doing it publiclywith me.
Dr. Craig Keen (01:01:52):
You're very welcome.
I'm glad to do it.
I love you and it's really niceto be with you.
Thanks, greg, love you too.
Chris Nafis (01:01:58):
All right, See you later For those who are
listening.
We'll catch you next time andthanks for joining us.
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