Has The Church Forgotten Justice?

Why has justice become synonymous with being woke liberal or on the left? What does it really mean according to the Bible? And how should followers of Jesus be fighting for it? In today's episode, I got to talk to author and co-host of the popular podcast The Holy Post Sky Jatani. He is awesome. He loves Jesus and he's unafraid to tell the truth. It's been five years since we've had him on the podcast and this conversation was awesome. We talked about the latest installment of his What If Jesus Was Serious book series. In this case, what if Jesus was serious about justice? We talked about division in and outside of the church, political polarization, and just generally how the entire discourse around justice has been skewed and polluted by our divisive political times, and how to reclaim a biblical understanding of what justice is. You're gonna love this topic, I promise. It's going to provoke you, inspire you, and just generally be an encouragement to your faith. So check out this whole conversation. As always, this podcast is part of Steiger, a global missions movement active in over two hundred and sixty cities around the world. That's right. The number continues to grow. God continues to move. He is raising up a generation of young missional leaders who are starting grassroots evangelism and discipleship movements, and eventually teams all over the world. You can check out our brand new website by going to npr.org. You can find out more how you can plug in and get involved. All right. Before we get on to the episode, I just want to say thank you, as always for your faithful support of this podcast. We have plowed past the six hundred episode mark, and daily we are praying about how to make this more compelling, better quality, more inspiring, and just in general spur you and ourselves on to be more faithful for Jesus outside of the church. Really appreciate all of you that support this. Who share it with others means the world to me. Let's continue to grow this community and strive to be like Jesus in and outside of the church. All right, that's it. Hope you enjoy my conversation with author, podcaster, and just all around deep thinker Skye Jatani. You're listening to the Provoke and Inspire podcast. Skye. The last time we did this was August twenty twenty. The world was a very different place, needless to say. Isn't that wild? When I was thinking about this, I was like, oh, it must have been a year or two ago. No, it's been that long. So the world has changed. I'm sure we've changed. And I'm just so grateful for this opportunity to talk to you again. Thanks for coming on the podcast, man. I'm grateful to be back. And yeah, it has been a long time. Yeah. It's wild. So much is going on and, uh, you have been busy as you always are, and you had a book come out in February. You are currently working on a book that is being released slowly in a very unique way. I want to talk about both. Uh, but I thought the a good place to start would be with the book that you had come out, which was the latest installment of a series that you've been working on that I've really enjoyed and been blessed by. It's what if Jesus was serious about dot, dot, dot and in this case it's justice. So I was just wanting to start with asking, what has the reaction been to this latest installment of your series? Uh, I don't know entirely what the reaction has been. Um, I guess there's different metrics you can use to determine that. How many copies have been sold, what are what are reviews on Amazon? Whatever. Um, I think what's fascinating is this is the fifth book in this series, and the first one was just What if Jesus was serious? Then I did about prayer, then about the church, then about heaven, and now about justice. And when you look at those, the two that have probably gotten the smallest response are the one on prayer and the one on justice. Wow. And I think that that's revealing. Um, it is. Yeah. And I've talked to other friends of mine who've written books, and one who also around the same time I wrote the book on prayer, wrote a book on, I think it was on the Lord's Prayer. And he said, yeah, it's my worst selling book because the market just doesn't care about prayer. And I think there's a significant, uh, part of the American Christian book buying market that isn't particularly interested in justice. But that's fine. That's I didn't write it because I thought there was a huge market for it. I wrote it because I think it's an important topic. But, uh, yeah. And I think it's central to our faith. It's central. I mean, you can't the problem is we tend to define justice so narrowly in our in twenty first century America, when people use the word justice, they think social justice, they think, you know, culture wars, they think, uh, economics or race or some of these other so-called justice issues. And I'm like, well, you know, the the cross is about justice. It's about, you know, payment for sins. It's there's a very judicial way of interpreting the gospel that some traditions use, but we somehow don't think of that as justice. We talk about that as righteousness. Or we talk about that as wrath, or we talk about that as vengeance. But like the biblical word for this is justice, this permeates our faith. But we've bifurcated these things so much in our culture that we associate justice with cultural issues. And there's a lot of the church that just doesn't want to deal with it. Right. Yeah, I'm actually kind of surprised because as much as it's indicting, the prayer doesn't move the needle, which even saying that sentence out loud is wild. I guess I can get it in the sense that it feels rudimentary to people like, oh, here comes another book on prayer, you know? But justice would at least seem to lean in to some of the divisiveness that does get clicks, that does move the needle. It depends who you're talking about. But at least the white evangelical church in America for over a century, the message has been Christians who care about justice aren't real Christians, right? And so when you put out a book about what's Jesus serious about justice to a huge segment of the American book buying Christian audience. They're going, oh, they write that off immediately. That is not part of my faith. I shouldn't care about that thing. And it's not. It's not just about what's happening in the twenty twenties in America. It's about what's happened since the nineteen twenties in the American church. We have just erased this part of our faith. And so, um, I don't know what the what would be an equivalent, but it would almost be like if you said, uh, here's a Christian book about necromancy, right? Speaking to the dead, there would be a huge segment of people going like, that's not a Christian thing. I'm not going to read that book. I'm not going to that's that's terrible. You shouldn't have a Christian book about. Right? It's demonic or whatever. And there's a sizable chunk of the Christian public in America that says a Christian book about justice. That's not Christian, that's it's become so politicized that that's what woke people believe in. That's what non-Christians do. That's what secularists do. That's what liberal Christians do. It's not something that, you know, Bible believing Orthodox or evangelical Christians believe in. And again, it comes from our heritage and history, not from an actual reading of Scripture. Right? So they almost see it as a rhetorical question in the sense that I know what he thought. He didn't care. Right? Like what? What do you why are you bringing this up? I have a fully formed opinion on this issue, and it's that he he does not care. So is it a definitional problem? I know you pointed to that a little bit, and I think we could expand on that more. But what is with this whole social justice versus the gospel? Like, it feels like that argument, that conversation has been around for a long time. It has it feels like it's morphed more from its earlier roots of being more of a no, we need to preach the gospel. No, we need to serve people's needs. And it was that false dichotomy, and now it's morphed into more of a no. You are flat out on the wrong side. If you are advocating for justice now, you are part of a woke liberal agenda. How dare you do that there? I just threw out many different reasons. but could you help us understand more fundamentally why this is seen as a inherently, intrinsically axiomatically negative thing? Like, how is that even possible from your background and more exposure globally? You know that this is not how the global church thinks. This is a uniquely American problem, and it's rooted in American history. Again, you go back one hundred years and the modernist fundamentalist controversy, as historians refer to it is. There was a debate going on in the American church with the influx of modern ideas, sort of anti supernaturalist ideas. You know, there wasn't really a resurrection from the dead. That's ridiculous. And the Bible isn't really inspired. And all these ideas are coming in to early twentieth century American Christianity. And there's a big argument in a lot of Christian institutions about this, and there's a rift. And one side who wants to accommodate to these modern ideas, says all the supernatural claims of the gospel. All that stuff is kind of ridiculous. Well, What we need to do is just love our neighbors and care for people and seek justice in the world. That's what it means to be Christian. Let's leave all the other stuff aside. In reaction to that, the fundamentalists came along and said, no, no, no, no. The virgin birth and the resurrection of the dead and the inspiration of Scripture. Those things really, really matter. We're going to hang on to those quote unquote, fundamentals of orthodox Christianity. But then in reaction to the modernists, they said, and we're not going to be involved in all this social justice work because that's now associated with people who don't believe in these supernatural claims of Christianity. And instead, we're going to narrowly focus our attention on preaching the gospel and saving souls. And so the American church unnaturally bifurcated these things. And because social engagement became associated with liberal theology, Orthodox theology became associated with not engaging in societal issues. And we're still living with the residue of that one hundred years later. And there are some people who think, if you care about economics or racism or social inequality or poverty or any of these others, if you really care about those things as a Christian, then you must not take the supernatural claims of the Bible seriously. And again, you go to other parts of the world. You talk to Christians in other parts of the world and they look at you like, are you nuts? Of course these things go together. Of course, we believe in the resurrection of Jesus, and we believe in alleviating poverty. Like these things are not mutually exclusive. So it's the residue of a uniquely broken American history that we are still living with these arguments and fighting about this stuff. Why are we so incapable of nuance and gray area and living with two truths in a healthy tension, like, why have we become so binary with absolutely everything that we do? Here's a this is an oversimplification. I don't think it's that we're binary. I think it's that we are tribal. Most people get a sense of their own identity from the group they belong to. And when your group has certain totems, certain symbols, certain ideas or beliefs that identify you as part of that group, we are all reluctant to, uh, to not conform to those expectations. And again, for one hundred years, the expectation was if you're an evangelical, Bible believing Christian, you care about certain things and you don't care about other things. And that in-group instinct is so strong that when you step up and go, uh, actually, yes, I do believe in the authority of Scripture, and I believe in the resurrection, and I believe in the divinity of Jesus. I believe in all these things. And I really believe God is calling us to care for the poor and to fight injustice and to overcome racism. All that that puts you at odds with your group and that desire to be included and in the in-group is so strong that we we are willing to overlook parts of Scripture that God is calling us to, to not overlook. Um, this is a strange connection, but tomorrow morning I got to do a talk on this, so it's on my mind. But Paul talks about this dynamic in Galatians a lot, but he applies it to the issue of circumcision. And we cut this out of the of the interview if you don't want to include this, but I think it's fascinating, pun intended. But anyway, so what was going on in the ancient world is, of course, Jews were identified through the mark of circumcision. Gentiles generally were not circumcised. And in Jewish culture you do not associate with Gentiles in the church. Of course, there's Jews and Gentiles associating with one another. And Paul's upset because there's this message coming through that, hey, all you Gentile believers, you need to be circumcised. But the reason was because the Jewish believers in Jesus were being persecuted by other Jews, saying, why are you hanging out with Gentiles? That's unacceptable and wrong. And so these Jewish Christians were saying to their Gentile brothers, hey, can you guys all just be circumcised so it can look like we all belong to the same group, and it doesn't upset anybody, right? In a weird way, that's what's going on here. There are a lot of faithful evangelicals who believe in justice, who believe in fighting these things, but they don't want to speak up about it because it puts them on the outs with people whose affirmation they really, really want. And so they either remain quiet or they they just don't talk about it because they're worried about getting criticized from their own side. And I think that's why we're still stuck in this. There's a lot of people who read the Bible and they see these things clearly, but they won't speak up about it because they don't want to be criticized by their own side. They don't want to be taken down by, you know, the talking heads on social media who claim to be advocating Christian values and go after anybody who sniffs any fragrance of wokeness. And it's the same thing that was happening two thousand years ago with circumcision. Now it's happening with other things. Right, right. It's this instinct to abdicate some of your your instincts, moral intuitions, your faithfulness to Scripture in the name of of fitting in. It's the no different than in middle school. We we still have those same strong inclinations and they seem to stick. I always think of the Braveheart quote that now I'm realizing I'm getting older, and I'm quoting movies that, like my dad that nobody gets. So it's a little demoralizing. But, uh, you know, the idea where if you make enemies on both sides, you end up dead. That's kind of the advice given to William Wallace. And that's how I feel sometimes. Like I'm like, I don't resonate with you. I don't resonate with you. Yeah. How am I supposed to live as this sort of nomad? And it speaks a little bit to the book that you're writing now to your adult children, which I think is so cool because so many of us, I think, feel that way. We're like, where do I fit in all of this? Because I just feel like I'm it's it's like a magnified version of the political binary. I don't want to choose either side. Yeah, I think that's exactly it. And, you know, you would think with the with the advent of the internet and digital communication where you can find anything in anyone these days that there would be a sense of an open spectrum of viewpoints. And yet, why do we feel more polarized than ever? Like you have to be squarely in the left camp or squarely in the right camp, and that's the only thing that's acceptable. The dynamic we've just talked about also exists on the left, right. So I've been in communities of Christians who are engaged in justice work and partnering with people on that, and yet they're scared to speak up and say anything about their views on sexuality or their views on marriage or their views on, you know, the exclusivity of the gospel or something like that, because that will put them on the outs with that progressive group. And so it works both ways. I just think we need to be people who are courageous or courageous enough to put our identity in Christ, and where the groups we are a part of don't conform to that to be okay with it. I know I'm going to be an oddball. That's all right. Right? Right. And even the paradox of what you were alluding to as a potential solution in the internet because of algorithms, and AI actually just amplifies our polarization. Right? That's the sadness is that in theory, you have an endless array of places to find your tribe and to fit in, but you have to work very, very hard for that not to become another form of isolation because of the technology, the pernicious technology that's built into it. So it's a challenge for sure. So I heard you say something that I thought was really interesting. It was more in the political space, but I think it applies here, which is you said, I want to see a healthy left and I want to see a healthy right. And I think about this entire issue of justice. And no, you got to preach the gospel. No, you got to fight for justice from the lens of a body of Christ issue in the sense of we are called in certain ways with certain passions, giftings. How much of this is just an unhealthy body that we need to be those of us who are inclined in a certain way, our job not only to meet those needs, but to, you know, awaken the rest of the body to say, hey, this matters. Let's stay in tension here. Let's yes, fight for this, but also fight for this and keep this holistic approach to justice more intact. Yeah. It is. It is a sign of an unhealthy body. It's probably a sign of political idolatry, right. Where? And again, it exists on both sides. Where to be a Christian, I think fundamentally means we've given our allegiance to Jesus Christ. And if that's our primary allegiance, then any political allegiance must submit to that. And I think in an awful lot of the American church, we've given our allegiance to our political identity rather than our Christian identity. Yeah. And I think where we find some, some guidance in this is going back to, to what does it mean to pursue justice? The word justice, both in Greek and in Hebrew, in the Bible is the same as the word righteousness, and the word simply means the right ordering of relationships. That's all it is. So one part of the church talks a lot about the importance of having a rightly ordered relationship with God. Right to repent of your sins, to accept Jesus as your Savior. To trust him for your salvation, to live in communion with God. To follow and obey his commands. That's that's living in right relationship righteousness with God. Great. And we we pursue that by proclaiming the gospel to those who haven't heard, by discipling people into what does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus and to obey everything he commanded, all that's wonderful and good. But then there's also a horizontal aspect to properly ordered relationships. We also care about rightly ordering our relationships with one another. And in some parts of the church, we talk about what that looks like in a marriage, or what that looks like in a household, or in our home, or with our children or in our churches. And all the scriptures are saying is, if you're going to have a rightly ordered relationship with God, you cannot separate that from a rightly ordered relationship with the people around you, including the poor, the foreigner, people who look different than you, people who live differently than you. Act like you need to have those relationships rightly ordered as well. And that's what we've split in the church. And I just think to have our identity in Christ rather than our politics is to say, I care that people have a rightly ordered relationship with their maker. And I also care that people have a rightly ordered relationship with each other. That's all right. And it's all the same word. It's righteousness. It's justice. That's what it is to be a follower of Jesus. And when we separate those two things, that's when we get into trouble. Right. I think that in some ways, as counterintuitive as this sounds, our faith becomes just so propositional. It becomes so about a certain set of truths or ideas that it can become divorced from people in a weird sort of way. And so even in our own context, it's just me and God, and it's the things I believe and I I'm firm in those beliefs. And yes, if there are others around me who believe similarly, great, you can be part of my my sort of spiritual ecosystem. But as it relates to to the messiness of other people and the different kinds of views that they might bring in and having to parse through that, and where are they closer to what is faithful to Jesus. And where have I gotten off? That requires a certain humility, right? That I think in our individualistic, individualized age of spirituality, it's just kind of easier to just have it all contained within here in my mind, in this relationship I have with God, is that some of the reason why we might be hesitant to do this? Yeah, I think so. And this is ironic because it's a it's something that is acceptable both on the right and on the left. And here's what I mean. On the conservative right. There's this idea of it's just me and Jesus, right. I have this personal, as you were describing this personal relationship with God. And that's fine. And that's all there is. And it it allows me to behave one way in my Christian life and say another way in my professional life, or another way in my political life. I can worship Jesus on Sunday, and I can treat people like garbage online on Monday who disagree with me politically, because there's this bifurcation between the vertical and horizontal. Ironically, on the on the political left, they're perfectly fine with this as well, because the attitude there is, oh, you're a Christian, you believe in Jesus. You have, you know, the authority of Scripture. Great. That's wonderful. Please keep that in your private life. Don't bring that into the public square. Don't bring that into politics. Don't bring that into the way you vote or the or the legislation you want to advocate for. They want it to be acceptable in the private sphere, but not the public sphere. Both sides are okay with that for different reasons. And yet that's not what we're called to in Christ. I mean, where would we be as a country if the leaders of the civil rights movement said, you know what, we're not going to bring our Christianity into the public square. Where would we be as a society if the reformer, the prison reformers of the late nineteenth century, said, we're not going to bring our Christianity in the public square. It'd be ridiculous. But that's where we are in the twenty first century is both the far right and far left are saying, just be a Christian personally and be a total A-hole if necessary, in the public square to achieve the things we want to achieve. That's not what we're called to in Christ, and frankly, it's an impossibility. Like your worldview inevitably impacts the way that you treat others right. So to be able to even compartmentalize it in that sense is completely unrealistic. What has to happen to to change? I mean, because on one level, you said we just have to be willing to be oddballs. And I agree. But fundamentally, in my heart, in the hearts of followers of Jesus in general, what do I have to do to break down those divisions in the polarities and the tribalism? Is it humility? What do you say to those that are like, well, I, I'm so convinced of the truth of what I believe. I. What do we what do we do? What does that look like practically? I guess we could talk about it personally, but I think I think part of the reason we are where we are is because our shepherds lack courage. I think there are a lot of women and men in ministry leadership who know what's right and are afraid to speak up and in their silence, in the vacuum, they are surrendering their sheep to be shaped in their faith by their media consumption, rather than the pastoral voices who are supposed to be guiding them. And they're quiet. They're silent because they don't want to rock the boat. They don't want to lose donors. They don't want to create controversies in their churches or ministries. And so they just stay quiet. And yes, there are things we as individual Christians probably can do and should do, but I think leaders are there for a reason. They're there to guide the flock, to protect the flock, and a lot. There's some very faithful women and men that are courageously doing good work right now, and I'm grateful for them. But frankly, I think there's a lot who fear people more than they fear God. And therefore they're not saying what needs to be said. They're not calling out the political idolatry. They're not standing up for, um, the the horizontal and vertical justice being linked of the way you show your love for God is by loving your neighbor. Or as John says in his epistle, you cannot say you love God and hate your brother. Like the voices, there are voices who know that truth, who are not saying it because they know the consequence of tackling people's political idolatry. And so, uh, I think a significant reason we can talk about the algorithms and social media and all that stuff. Yes, it's a problem, but it's become a significant problem because the shepherds are not doing what shepherds are supposed to be doing. And I and I sometimes I'm bewildered by that because I don't know why anybody becomes a ministry leader who isn't willing to accept the fact that you will be judged by God more strictly. That should give. I have these conversations frequently with young people who are seeking or sensing a calling into ministry leadership, and I'm probably the worst person for them to talk to because my thing is, are you sure you like you? You think you want to be a ministry leader because you think it makes you more significant and valuable and important in the Kingdom of God. First of all, it doesn't. But secondly, it means you will be judged far more strictly. And are you willing? Do you have the courage to put your fear of God ahead of your acceptance by people? And if you don't, don't do this. And I think we are seeing the fruit of generations of drawing people into ministry for the wrong reason. And we have a lot of very cowardly leaders in the church right now. Yeah, yeah. Wow. I feel like fundamentally, if I consider my own resistance or lack of action in terms of justice, I think so much of it is is even more fundamental in that I'm just selfish, right? That I just don't care the way I should. And when I feel that I have to go back to God and I have to renew my intimacy with him, and I have to make cultivating my intimacy with him the most important thing. And so again, back to what you were saying about confronting political idolatry or maybe cultural Christianity. How much of this is just a we don't really know and love Jesus like we should? Because if we did, you would hope that that that would lead you to seek him and and maybe pick up your book on prayer with more urgency. You would recognize that that is your primary purpose as a branch connected to the vine. It's how you draw on intimacy with Jesus. And then in that place, he begins to shape your heart and produce humility and provide the impetus to want to reach across the aisle and befriend your neighbor, not just be in your silo. Is it oversimplistic to say that we just need a revival? We need to know and love Jesus better? We do, we do. Yes. I'm all for deepening our intimacy with Christ, cultivating prayer, all of that. I think where the missing piece in so much of contemporary Christianity is. I mean, you're familiar with the story in the Gospels of the the expert in the law coming to Jesus and asking him, what's the most important commandment? And I don't think it strikes enough people that Jesus is asked for one commandment, but he responds with two. Right. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commands. Why does Jesus respond with two when he's only asked for one? And this is what we've. This literally goes all the way back to Genesis chapter one, and we can unpack that if you want. But throughout the Bible, throughout the Torah, throughout the law, throughout the prophets, and then into the New Testament, it is impossible to obey the first commandment without obeying the second, because the way we express our love for God is always by loving those made in his image. And in fact, every time God's people tried to separate those two things, it's precisely what he rebukes them for. Read Isaiah chapter one. Isaiah chapter fifty eight. I'm sick of your prayers. I hate your festivals. I don't care about your sacrifices. Why? Because you mistreat the orphan and the widow, the poor and the foreigner. This is what leads to the exile. This is what leads to God's judgment, is the people. We're praising God all the time. They were doing all the right religious rituals and prayers and sacrifices and on and on and on. But they were mistreating the people made in God's image. So what happens in too much of our Christianity is we think, well, if we can just get that first commandment right, if we can just love God more, then everything will be fine, right? No, because the only way we actually love God practically is by loving his image, by caring for his image. And when we divorce those two things, that's where everything goes off the rails. And so, um, I'm all for revival. I'm all for deepening intimacy with with Christ through the Holy Spirit. Amen. But if that doesn't manifest itself In the way we love others, including those who are not like us, including our enemies, including the foreigner, the widow, all those. If it doesn't manifest itself there, then it's it's just vapor. It's it's just pretend. And I think we get two. We focus too much on my emotions. My feelings. Am I on fire for God? Am I feeling intimate with God? All that. Okay. That's great. I love when that happens too. But at the end of the day, it has to be manifest in the way we treat one another. Yeah, and I think that chasm between inspiration or emotionally feeling the emotions of it, and then the actual costly, sacrificial decision to give up my life for the sake of somebody else, and not even just someone that Scripture would describe as someone that is easy to love because they love me. Right. In fact, that doesn't even count. It's for the sake of the one that I wouldn't naturally be drawn to, or maybe is different than me in a myriad of ways. And I guess that is that million dollar tension. I think about anything significant in my life, whether it's my marriage, whether it's the commitments I've made to my kids, whether it's it's it's not. My emotions can only take me so far to the cliff's edge. There is a leaping off point, a risk taking, a sacrificial cost that I still have to be willing to pay. Or I will always get to the edge of that cliff, and then my emotions will recede. And then I'll do that cycle over again, and I will just continue to be ineffective. I agree. I mean, we are so emotionally driven as a culture, but certainly as a as a church. Interesting. Yeah. Like even all the love the Lord your God with all your heart and Jesus, you know, quotes Isaiah to the Pharisees where he says, these people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. When we read those passages as twenty first century Americans, we assume that what's going on there is God's upset that these people don't feel enough emotional, uh, you know, love ooey gooey feelings for God. That's not what he's saying there. Right. Right. Yeah. In the ancient world, hearts were not seen as the seat of emotion. They were seen as the seat of the will. And, I mean, Aquinas put it so beautifully. To love means to will the good of the other. What God is rebuking his people for is not that they don't have enough ooey gooey feelings towards him. It's that they're not choosing to love one another in action. When you read the passage in Isaiah or where Jesus quotes it in in the Gospels, what he's doing is he's rebuking the Pharisees for taking money that they should be using to care for the elderly and using it for more elaborate worship services. And he said, these people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Why are their hearts far from me? Because they're not caring for the elderly, right? They're not caring for their mothers and fathers the way they should be. They're not caring for the poor. Instead, they're making more elaborate worship services with this money. That's what they're being rebuked for. It's not emotions. It's the failure to choose to love the other tangibly. And so I think we've got this heart language so screwed up in the church because we think if we come away from a worship gathering and we're just euphoric, and I felt God's presence and I just, you know, we think that makes God happy. It's not what makes him happy. What makes him happy is when we have such an intimate communion with him that when we look at our neighbor, we see the face of Jesus, and we choose. The way I'm going to worship Jesus is by loving that person, caring for that person, forgiving that person, serving that person, showing them the dignity of being made in the image of God regardless of how they treat me. That is what it means to honor God with our hearts and not just with our lips. Yeah, that's so convicting. I think of in James where it talks about, you know, you can say, right, go in peace, be blessed. You know, it's like it just in very James fashion, just like, come on bro. Like what? What is that? What are you doing? Like, you're gonna give these these spiritual platitudes and then leave somebody's physical needs so unmet. It's incredibly convicting. And I think we know intuitively from any other significant part of our life, if we allow just our emotions, that kind of ooey gooey emotion thing to be the driver. Nothing of significance will happen. And yet in our spiritual lives, we somehow almost make that unspiritual. Like, if I have to just sort of grit my teeth, you know, it's almost like an overreaction. Post Catholic Reformation, like, no, I shouldn't have to. It's not works. I don't I don't shouldn't have to strive in any sort of spiritual sense. It should just naturally flow from from how I feel inside. And it's like, come on, man. Like nothing in life happens. And even the most significant relationships we have don't function that way. So I was talking to one of my colleagues this morning who's got little children, and he was up most of the night with one of his kids who was not feeling well. Oh, yeah, my kids are much older. I remember that season as well. When you get up in the middle of the night with a sick kid, you're doing that not because you want to, not because you feel ooey gooey feelings for your child. You do it because there is just this innate sense of love and care and obligation, and you push aside your emotions, you push aside your exhaustion, and you do it because that's who you are, and it's who they are, right? There's this bond there. It's to will the good of the other. And yes, euphoric feelings of love and sentimentality. Oh that's great. I'm not against it, but it cannot be what we seek to sustain our faith. And that's where that deeper grounding you mentioned. You know, John fifteen earlier of I am the vine, you are the branch. Abide in me. And that abiding, that's where that love of God comes through us. It's in that abiding and it's not a feeling. It's just an intrinsic route to who we are. I can't help but do this for my child. It's unthinkable that I would not help my sick child in the middle of the night. Right. Right. The goal of the Christian life is. It's unthinkable that I wouldn't love my enemy. It's unthinkable that I wouldn't forgive the person who wronged me. It's unthinkable that I wouldn't care for the person who's asking for my help. Because it is the life of God through me that is manifesting itself. And what my feelings are secondary, and certainly my physical inclination to it or not, is secondary to what I know I am and who I'm called to be. Mhm. Yeah I've got a currently five, seven and nine. So I'm emerging, although the younger one is still got some sleep struggles going on. So when you said you know up late last night I'm like yep yep hands raised. Um and yet you like you said I mean you'll you'll deal with bodily fluids in a way that you just for a stranger. You'd be like, what? But with your kid, you're there. You're like, I got. I don't have a choice. I gotta deal with this sick kid. I'm. I'm here, I'm in. And I guess the supernatural part is to do that for those that are not just not related to you, but enemies of you is a. That's where it becomes profoundly supernatural. And that's where it truly changes the world, because it's not just the impact that that has on that person, but the watching world has no, no, no mechanism, no resources to draw upon to produce that kind of action. Which is why it's so sad and pernicious that the enemy has convinced an entire segment of the Christian population that, oh, justice. Nope, out. Not gonna read that book. Like, wow. Like what a scheme of the enemy. Even worse is, it's one thing to say we don't have to care about these things going on in the world, or these people that are suffering in our world. It's one thing to say we don't have to do that, but there's a segment of the church that's gone even further to say, no, no, no, no, we should actively be seeking their harm. That's how warped things have become, because they're seen as our enemy, right? That they're against God or whatever. And so, um, when I, when I kind of got on my soapbox about cowardly shepherds, um, they're the ones who are remaining silent, who are saying not what Scripture is calling us to do. And then there's a whole different category of wolves who I'd say are actually advocating for the antithesis of what Christ calls us to. Um, and that's how off the rails things have gotten in parts of our country and the church. Yeah, yeah. No, it's going to it's going to take courage. You know, even in the whole political system. I heard you talking about this in other spaces. It's like, man, when you're when you're. So to speak, is dependent on a certain paradigm being reinforced. You're in trouble. Right. And so that, I mean, that has a much deeper discussion that we don't have time for. But even just within the church, it's like the paradigm is set up in such a way that you need butts in the seat or seats in the butts. One of those things, you know what I'm saying? There's a butt and there's a seat. The order is confusing. Upton Sinclair had a great quote. He said it's impossible to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it. And I have been in many settings where the rather than doing what is right, the instinct becomes my primary purpose, goal, mission, whatever is the perpetuation of the ministry that pays me. And again, that I think the root of that is I fear people more than I fear God. I'm sorry, but if I get it, I've been in I've been a pastor. I've been in ministry, I've been in the employ of nonprofits. And the thought of standing up and saying what I believe God is calling me to say might result in me losing my job. Or I may have to resign my job to do like. And what would that do to my family? Okay, I get it. That's really, really hard. Yep, yep. If you are unwilling to entertain that possibility, then you never should have entered ministry in the first place. I mean, we have had sisters and brothers throughout history who have literally laid down their lives. And if you're not willing to lay down a paycheck, then you shouldn't be a ministry leader, right? And I'm not saying everyone has to do that, or I'm not discerning this for anyone else, but like that, there's just a problem there. There's a problem. And, um. Yeah, well, there can't be inner peace either, right? I mean, it's like, by definition, you've been. Oh, I think so. Remember, Jonah. I mean, Jonah ran in the opposite direction of God's calling. And in the middle of a storm, he was the only one on that boat who was sleeping. Somehow he had enough peace to sleep in the storm of that boat. And it wasn't until they woke him up and be like, oh, great. Like, that's. You can be so self-deluded. We haven't. We have an infinite capacity for self-delusion. That's a scary thought. Um. Wow. Okay, well, we could go on this forever, and I would, and I love it. I want to give some time to what you're working on right now. Talk to us about this new project that you're writing. You're releasing it one chapter at a time, which I thought was a really cool, compelling approach. So just tell us about that, where we can get it, how we can be following along the journey. I know we're midstream here, but it's not too late to jump on board. It's never too late. The book is called The World Born in You. Uh, subtitled as letters to a New Generation of American Christians. And we're releasing it as a serial, so roughly one chapter a month, and it's on Holy Post Plus. So if you go to Holy Post.com, you can look at becoming a Holy Post Plus subscriber and you can get access to the book. It's all digital right now. We'll probably end up publishing this in an actual physical book sometime next year. But the book, the conceit of the book is it's a series of letters to my young adult Children, in which it's somewhat a memoir where I'm sharing stories about my formation as a as a Christian and the values that have shaped my faith and why I think they are relevant to my young adult kids and to, frankly, all of us in this moment as we look at the state of the church in America. And so each chapter looks at a different virtue and why it's so difficult to practice it, but why it's so necessary in the world today. And in each chapter, there are stories about critical, formative experiences of my life. And then the other thread through the whole book is the story of Naaman from the Old Testament, who I think illustrates a lot of these, these pieces. Um, so we've written I've written five chapters so far. Five letters. There'll probably be seven total. I have to get the next chapter finished by next week. I am writing this. That's scary approach, right? Because you got I gotta keep moving. Uh, it's writers need deadlines. That's that's how things happen. Um, and it is definitely the most personal book I've written. Um, yeah. You just pulled it up. Yeah, it took me a little bit to find it, which, uh. But if you type the word born in you because I couldn't actually find it very easily through the whole post. Yeah. I'm not. That's a whole nother story. But, yeah, I was going to say I probably don't want to tell you the world born you is dot com is the best place to go. There's a trailer you can see, you can read the introduction. Um, but yeah, it is it is definitely the most personal book I've written. Um, yeah. So here we go October sixth. So chapter five is up. That needs to be updated. So that's there. Yeah I was going to say we're a little chapter five is on integrity. So there's the introduction available. And then the first letter was empathy then courage. Yes. Simplicity joy integrity. And uh preview chapter six is going to be on humility. Um, awesome. That could be the title of this podcast. We need a whole lot of that. So so it's been a it's been challenging writing it. It's, uh, in some cases emotionally exhausting. I'm telling stories that, honestly I've never told before. Um. And it's been good. Yeah. Awesome. Again, I will recommend this before this episode starts in the intro. We'll put it everywhere. Um, Scott, I've been very blessed by you, blessed by this conversation. And, uh, I feel more inspired to be a truth teller in my own context. So I really appreciate your going to bat for that and the courage that you've displayed. You've put your money where your mouth is and I really respect that. So thank you for for jumping on here. And like I prayed before, this starts, I believe God wants to continue to use you. Um, but I pray that it would be even more powerful for the sake of the world that needs it. So thank you very much for doing this. Well, thank you for having me. It's been a great conversation.

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