Why Self-Help Always Fails in the End | Josh Porter

All right. Well, Josh, here we are. Uh, we're already the the little red button is already going in my top left of my

screen here. So, that means we're live. Everything you say can and will be used together.

I'm used to it. None of those things. No. Uh, what is that? What's the word I'm looking for? Uh, Miranda. What What's the word that

they What's the things they say when they arrest? I think that's it. The Miranda writes. Miranda writes. So, no, I'm not reading you your Miranda writes. This is a

conversation. I'm excited, dude. I have your book, but I wasn't I wasn't sure if this conversation was going to happen

today. So, it is at home. It is not with me. I trust you. Yeah. No, I you know, I there's kind of

a good face showing of like, hey, you know. Yeah. But, but you know, it's been a chaotic day. We made this work and uh I'm

grateful for the time, man. Thanks for being here. Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me. So, uh your new book, it's uh artistic

and awesome and challenging as they always are. So, what led you to write

this latest book, How to Die? Hit us with the the the motivation, the

inspiration. What What brought this into being? Well, it started years and years ago

before I wrote any Christian non-fiction. I thought like I had this um idea to rewrite

uh the sermon on the mount in through a different voice and and attempt to just recapture the uh

some of the subversive like how provocative the the sermon is by you

know injecting all the historical scholarship that you would have to

footnote you know or or consult a commentary but somehow um inject that back into the the teaching itself. And I

messed with it for a little while and and found it to be too challenging at the time. I went and wrote a bunch of

other stuff and sort of came back around to this idea. By that time it evolved into an idea for more of a robust book

on disciplehip and I pitched it to the publisher as like a teaching book, you

know, as like a more essay style, which I've done before. The certainly the book

I wrote on art is very like essay like in in that it presents arguments in a

structured way to come to a conclusion to convince the reader of a point or

several points that I'm trying to make and the how did I started that way as more like a sermony teaching kind of

book and the more that I wrote in that direction the more it bored me and I I

thought oh man if this is boring to me it's going to bore a reader to tears good lord

Uh, and I fought against it and struggled with it for weeks of the the

initial draft and was like every day I'd go away to write and uh I'd go on these

writing breaks and from work and attempt to get some pages done and then I'd be sending messages to my wife being like

this thing sucks. I can't I can't find I can't find it. Um and then at some point

I gave my or I had the inclin I had written a piece um that became a chapter

in the book called a short note on the history of life and death which is sort of a summation of the entire story of

the Bible. Very big broad strokes but the major points and themes of the entire meta narrative of the Bible.

And I was like oh I like I like this. I think that this is working but I was like where does this even go in a book?

It's so different from all the teaching stuff that I had written. And so then I had the idea to

uh attempt to write something the entire draft the the uh entire book without

footnotes. That was my first idea was like what if you could finish the whole thing with no annotations because

footnotes you know like uh all my other books are filled with them. They're good. But uh that essentially means that

you you're referencing other sources and so the text is not um in a sense

self-sufficient. You're quoting other people. You're bringing in citations from statistics or commentaries or

whatever it might be. So what if you could write something with no footnotes? And then I thought like what if I could write something that has no teaching

voice at all? The entire book is just in more like a literary pros. Mhm.

Um and I and then that became very interesting to me and I was no longer bored writing but the whole time I was

writing I was having a blast. I was like this is really fun. The the most entertaining

um thing to me was finding ways to reward biblical stories, teachings of

Jesus and especially the parables of Jesus uh in a different voice. certainly

not intended to improve upon them in any way, but just offer like a different angle that would hopefully like wake the

reader up to something that's become deeply familiar to them. As soon as I gave my position to or myself permission

to write like that, the whole thing became very exciting to me and a lot of fun. But I was like, I have no idea if

this is going to work. I have no idea if I'm going to hand this back to the publisher and they're going to be like, what in the world is this? What did you do? I sat with a pastor friend of mine

yesterday who has the book. He hasn't read it yet, but he was like, I started to like look through it and I was like,

what in the world is this? Like, this is the most uh weirdly formatted Christian

non-fiction that I've ever He's like, how did you look get that? He's an author, too. He's like, how did you get the publisher to let you do this? Um,

and that doesn't mean it's necessarily good or bad, but it certainly means that it's uh unlike a lot of unlike stuff

that I've written in the past, unlike the kind of traditional Christian non-fiction format. So it started as a

book on disciplehip and then became like an attempt to do something. I think to to wake people up to old stories and

make them provocative again, you have to do something really different. So that's where How to Die came from.

Yeah. I I feel like your obviously your artist instincts kicked in there. The

risktaking side I'm sure that you've had uh throughout the various things that you've tried. How much do you feel like

we are boxed in because you know the industry of publishing and the demands

of things being recognizable and sort of in a box that people can put themselves into or or even the citation thing is

interesting to me because there's an insecurity I think that can drive a writer to think well why would people

just listen to me right surely I've got to put in some CS Lewis quotes for anyone to take this seriously. So I

don't know it just do you feel like that's limited the kind of array of

healthy and good books and and across all of the mediums probably not just books that are being produced because we

are limited by our own insecurities or the trappings of the industry and I don't want to be sound over overly

pjorative but do you know you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, you know, as well as a writer, it's like there's certain expectations

for um Christian quote unquote content. And

you know, I've talked about this ad nauseium and and in the the book about Christian art, but it does become

an inevitable box for the the Christian artist that that in some cases I think

probably provides helpful structure and and in other cases and maybe more cases

becomes shackles, you know, that inhibit creative freedom and thus inhibit the

amount of like sincere inspiration. or you know like that you can get across to the listener, the reader, the

audience, whoever that might be. And I think that there's a time and a place to

implement structure based on expectation and it works very well. I mean like I I happen

to and this sounds like I'm trying to like hype, you know, or like pretentious or something. I really don't mean it that way, but I'm wired a aesthetically

I like to try to go against trend, whatever that to to a

fault. You know what I mean? Like um so that's where my mind goes anyway, which is like, well, how do I do it not

like someone else or or what the expectation is or what has been done? That's not always a great thing. it can

work against the artist as well and it certainly can work against the audience. But I think that um the kind of format

that we've come to expect from Christian non-fiction is actually really similar to the format we've come to expect from

Christian music um certainly worship music which is like there's a template there's a an expectation a standard to

which the artist must adhere. And if you kind of paint outside those lines then you run the inevitable risk of someone

saying like that's not worship music. Why is it not worship music? Well, it doesn't sound like

one of the three megaurch conglomerates that have established the template of worship, modern worship music. Well,

that doesn't sound like Christian, whatever that might be. Sure. Um the same is true of Christian non-fiction in which uh you come to

basically expecting the guidelines that have been established by um non-Christian self-help books. Uh, in

that you're going to get some cutesy stories from the author's life. You're going to get like a an organized

argument based on like an essay format, like a, you know, grad school essay format. Usually at least colloquialized

to the degree that it's not super boring to read because we have academic uh, wings of publishers for those kinds of

things. Yeah. and you read it because you want to get the content to make the

application to better your life by the end of the thing. So if it's a book on slowing down, then by the end of it,

you're going to have some tips and tricks for slowing down. If it's a book for organization or for certain practice, you know, you know that what

I'm getting at. And if you're writing a book about like the big story of

Christianity, there is no there is no like little packet of takeaway information at the end short of this is

this incredible devastating story and now you have to decide what you do with it. You know what I mean? Um, and so

part of me like the the I approach these things usually like when it's done

whether it's an album or a book like when it's done how do I want that thing

to be received not just in the specifics of like reading or listening like oh it sounds like but like when people

people who experience it when their minds go to that book or that record what is like the the feeling or the like

how do they categorize it in their thinking? and feeling, you know, because that's what I do. I think of like, oh, this is the record that makes me feel

this way that these are the visuals that it invokes in my imagination, that kind of thing. And how to die uh was way less practical

than a books that like books that I've previously written like you know the art thing, the book on art is like intended

to serve a very specific purpose. uh and so I want to convince people of my arguments or I wrote a book on death or

uh deconstruction called death of deconstruction and that's you know like it's it's meant to address a certain

conversation. So this these aren't bad things. But with with How to Die, I had this like thing in my mind that was

like, what if it could somehow read like, you know, I think the the the word

picture I made up was like someone was like renovating a monastery and they like moved a bench and found like a box

and there was a journal in the box and inside was like some anonymous monk had written out like stories from the Bible

and blah blah blah. And so it was like this personal thing but also this like uh um really impactful thing because

it's stories from the Bible, right? And it feels like something almost like am I supposed to have this? It feels

like scandalous in some way. Yeah. And I was like oh that that is cool. I can

that that's something I can understand. Not another because there's a million books on disciplehip and a lot of them

are very good. Right. So I didn't feel like I had like another No. No. I've got the angle everyone else

missed on disciplehip. So yeah, it's a matter of like uh giving

yourself permission I think personally and um to uh break away and publisher

publishing houses and publishers they adhere to these templates and formats for very good reason. They exist to sell

books and and these a lot of these people actually do care about books but at the end of the day if they don't sell the books they don't get to be a

publishing house anymore. Yeah. And so they have marketing considerations and marketing considerations are usually about

adhering to the template. So the author's responsibility is to somehow see how much they can get away with,

right? Yeah. Without breaking the the pact between the two, right? And I guess the million-doll

sweet spot is is if you can harness that authenticity and it happens to resonate,

that's probably when you become very very successful. Because I think what I love about your approach is that it's

authentic, right? And it could be a trope, but it is like if I tried to do what you did, it wouldn't work. But you

have a unique role to play in the body of Christ and your maybe subversive instincts or instincts to kind of go what is not being said or

how is it not being done? That's part of who you are. But you know, we we wanted Tim Keller to be Tim

Keller, right? we wanted to be. And so it's it's probably less about, you know, cuz punk is not punk anymore

when you're trying to be punk in a weird paradoxical sense. So you almost just have to be like, what what is God asking

me to say? What what stirs my heart? And then as someone who's trying to produce

whatever, if it's music or a book, do that as authentically as you can. And then you better hope it resonates.

Otherwise, you know, you and your grandmother will read it and that's about it. Yeah. I think that's the that's exactly

the the challenge is that the fear of the artist is that if I don't consider

the audience's expectations and they I will alienate the audience and the audience will become uninterested and

now I'm speaking into a void. But we ironically know from experience that the

best art is is has always been made without concern for the audience and

then that means the most to the audience because I want my favorite author to

write what they want to write. I've come to trust their instincts, you know, and I don't want them to write what if

otherwise it would be me writing the book. I don't want you know um you feel Flannry O' Conor to have

been like well I don't know would Josh like this you know so we end up stifling our own instincts

for the sake of the audience and then in in effect um rob the audience of the experience that because you put we

believe that like we have a role to play within the body of Christ and so the unique role that I've been given or the

you know the much more important role that someone like Tim Keller has been given. Um I don't want didn't want Tim

Keller to write books like I write or vice versa. Like he writes those books and I'm grateful for them

and I write these books and I'm and you know like I hope maybe someone will be grateful for them. I think that, you know, there

when you're entrusting someone with like gospel stuff, of course, you have a like

a respons a spiritual responsibility to tell the truth and to um have like a

certain amount of concern for the audience in the sense that I want them to know about Jesus. So, it's not just

like me unhinged doing whatever I want in the whole world. It's Christian non-fiction. It's not a novel. It's not

like a rock record. Um but beyond that, you still have such a depth of freedom

um embodied by Jesus, you know, like even just retelling the parables of

Jesus, you realize like the sophistication of his genius um in communicating these little stories

that effortlessly translate across time and space. Crazy. uh in ways that are just as

provocative, you know, um and how fun it is. And every time that I would sit down, the

parables were my favorite things to redo. And every time I'd sit down with, you know, I made a list of the ones I

wanted to work with that I felt like best captured the essence of the themes of the parables. And um some of them

really small, some of them like the I do a very long version of the prodigal son. uh you sit down to work with them and

realize like there's a hundred different ways that you could retell this with without um compromising the essence of

the story at all. Like uh that's how like you know like there's a reason that you know Asop's fables or Greek

mythology have like been able to be recapitulated over time. Mhm. Um and and Jesus is just like a guy up

on a hill be you know what I mean telling these stories that continue to

provoke the imagination of people all over the world. Uh which is in incredible. So like if that's the kind

of like freedom he affords himself to tell some stories that are cryptic and

strange and divisive and then some that are just like no I you know that's a very thinly veiled metaphor and I get

exactly what he's saying because he said at the beginning this is what God is like and then tells a story. Uh then we

have freedom to do that you know like allow ourselves that same amount of room in which to operate. Yeah, it's

obviously a bit of a cliche subject, but it's or question, but it's the the heart of the book, which is what are the major

disciplehip issues facing the modern western person, which I presume would be

the majority of those reading this or just the church in general. What are what's the thing that needs to

die in me? What is the challenges that aren't my culture? What's the patterns and that that are impressing upon me to

that are pulling me away from disciplehip to Jesus? I think that the the answer's kind of in

the question. It seems to me and obviously, you know, what do I know? I'm still have so much to learn and um so

much to experience. Uh but I think that the invitation to self-denial

is as divisive now as it was in the first century. It seems to me that the invitation towards

self-denial provokes the human condition the same way in every culture in every

time and place. And now there are unique expressions of self-denial that come easy to one person or come easy in

certain cultures and and more difficult in you know to others. But

the unique expression of those self-denials, uh, those change and evolve over time. You know what I mean?

Or the way that we confront them and how much they confront us changes over time.

Jesus, you know, when he first said, "If anyone wants to follow me, they they

have to take up their cross first, deny themselves, and then come follow." you

know, uh, he said that into an audience that didn't know anything about distractions of touchscreens and, you

know, the commodification of pornography, all this kind of crazy stuff. But that was an affront to them in the

same way that it's an affront to us. I mean, and and even in like sociopolitical discourse, it's amazing

to me how much of the vitriol and the infighting and the debates you can

distill down, go all the way down the layers and be like at the end of each conversation is a core defiance against

the idea of giving yourself away for the sake of someone else. um it's so intrinsic to like the the the

crappiness of of humanity that we just don't we don't want to deny ourselves and we don't believe that self-denial is

an actual pathway to freedom. Um that was the I think that maybe

that's why for Jesus self-denial is the prerequisite to disciplehip. Not I mean

of course we continue to learn what it means to deny ourselves along the road of faithfulness to Jesus but there has

to be some level it's why you know I called the book what I called it and it's why it begins with an epigraph a

bonhaofer quote that's you know when Christ calls man he bids him come and die is because for Jesus you know the like

if anyone wants to follow me first deny yourself take up your cross um in at

least one you know gospel story like daily you know it happens s again and again again and then come follow me and

then there's more self-denial that happens along the journey of of disciplehip and then in that a person is

discovering what it actually means to be human what it actually means to experience freedom what it actually

means to experience what Jesus called life to the fullest or the life that is really life um and that never changes

that never goes anywhere there's no like niche angle there's no like self-helpy

gimmicky way of putting it um that that encapsulates it so much better than you

know like uh it's just the same old story and I think maybe that's like at the heart of the book and what I'm

facing in this season of being like a pastor too is like the the people the

especially in like the modern western world and the American like we we are very eager especially in a post2020

world for the next like what's the next thing what are we doing what's the next

like inspirational thing that you're going to give me to overcome these

pressing timely obstacles in my life. And because we've been fed a ton of them, we've been fed a lot of like uh

Christian interpretations of self-help. It's like, oh well, the reason your life sucks is because you're not doing these

practice, these spiritual practices the way that you should have been doing them. And if you do, your life won't suck anymore. Or the reason that your

life sucks is because you didn't pray the right way. you didn't understand this verse that in the correct context.

Um, there's always a trick. There's a secret and I've got it for you. And and like even in a church context, people

come into the environment of the church uh looking up to the sermon or the

culture of the church and being like, "So, what's the next trick that's going to get me going like, oh man, this is so

inspiring. I'm ready to go. ready to go until it starts to get old and then you need the new trick again because we're

kind of a a content trained culture and and the you know quote unquote

secular culture is replete with these kinds of things. It's like oh the next

thing that's going to unlock your best life now is this fat diet, this cold

plunge, this ri rhythm, this sunlight thing or whatever. And there's some good things in a lot of these. Not saying

this is all dumb or all bad. Obviously, there's a lot of wisdom in things like

fitness or, you know, like general rhythms of life and dismas blah blah blah. But we are often presented these

things not as like, oh, here's some generally helpful things for a healthier lifestyle, but more like this is the one

thing you've been missing, and if you have this one thing, it's going to fix everything. and the Christian kind of uh

cultural industry, however you want to describe it, has picked up on a lot of this and sort of parodyied them back to

church cultures. This is the one thing you've been missing. I've got the angle. It's when you propose a book to a

publisher, you have to present it as exactly that. Like, why is your book the

one book? And you know, and the reality is it's not like there's a zillion books. I of course don't have anything

new to say. Um, and you know, the reality of

coming to terms with it just, you know, it is what it is. As as silly as that

sounds, that's kind of what I've been embracing as a pastor who who has been

entrusted with people who are looking for the next trick. as an author who's being asked to write about the next big

trick is I'm embracing the like there is no trick you know like it's the same exact story that started with in the

beginning God created and our predicament is the same predicament as

Peter as Paul you know our heart condition is the same heart condition as Thomas as Judas as

you know Moses and Joshua like there's a reason that there's a timelessness to these stories It doesn't mean that

there's no new context. Of course there is. Of course there's new ways to bring

these things to bear on our time and place that are important. I'm not knocking like themed books again. I've

written them. They're important. Um but you know like the invitation to come and die is just the same the same

invitation. And there's a beauty there's a beauty in step being like that's still our story and we step in to that story

and there's a timelessness to the invitation a timelessness to the struggle of being a human being.

Yeah. Yeah. And of course barriers and distractions or impediments to the

process of self-denial might change. You know now Yeah. We might be more busy than we ever

were or more distracted than we ever were, but but ultimately putting a, you

know, time management app on your phone, that might be helpful in some senses,

but that's not addressing the core issue, you know, and and that's that's where we're looking for the next

band-aid. And and we got this sort of tumor of selfishness that requires a more complex and invasive

process to deal with. And so how do we you know because again I I I don't want

to the irony of me saying oh say what's the trick to not fall into the prey of just wanting the next trick right it

becomes like circular so what does one do how do you lay out the process

without again your book being too like here are the 10 steps what does one do to create the environment the space the contemplation

required the what what do we do to to actually get at the root of the problem Because as you said and I think of James

where it talks about how do quarrels come about. Well, is it not the selfishness that war is within you and you look at when you have little kids,

you especially see it, right? It's so crystal clear. Are the worst? Well, they don't even hide it, right? They're just like like my son will just

be fighting with his sisters over some thing that he just knows. He just even admit like, I don't need this, but I

want this and I'm not going to give it up and it's going to cause a fight and that's what we're going to do. And we

just get better at masking that. It really is the same thing manifest in more complex ways. So, how do we remove

that tumor? You know, I think that part of

beating the u the self-help fad or overcoming the intrinsic

desire for the trick because, you know, I'm not above it either. I'm just as susceptible. You you we are

cold punched. I I I will admit it. Yeah, I've It sucks. Yeah, me as well. And again, you know,

like there I like the way that you put it because uh it the time management app

is a great example. Is the time management app a good thing? It can be for sure. And I'm sure for, you know,

like a a lot of people, a lot of these peripheral things have been contributive

to, you know, a better overall lifestyle direction if that if that makes sense.

So, you know, like I kind of poke fun at some of these and

I do this in sermons and stuff. I don't know why people have come to expect it. But it's like uh and I and yet I have

like a regimented life style in some sense. You know, I wake up early and exercise. It's like it's not like I'm

saying like, "Oh, these things are dumb because they don't do the ultimate thing, right?"

Um what I'm saying is they don't do the ultimate thing. You you know what I mean? And part of

uh coming to terms with that limitation, the limitation of all self-help, the

limitation of all um life hacks and fad diets and you know circadian rhythms is

that is mortality. Is that you know there's a great um

comic strip I've got to contextualize like this. can't just say there's a great uh issue of or I guess strip from

outland which is an outgrowth of a comic strip called Bloom County by an author called Berkeley uh Breth. So the and in

the 90s comic strips were a thing people probably their touchdown point is Calvin and Hobbs as the transcendent comic

strip format. Um Outland and Bloom County were kind of like just beneath

that tier of great or popularity. Uh, and there were in the '9s, these were

things that would be on t-shirts and coffee mugs, the Far Side, Outland, you know, Calvin and Hobbs, uh, which was

never merchandised, uh, authentically, but blah blah blah. And there's I think

about it all the time. There's an issue from, uh, Outland in which, uh, a bunch

of the Strips characters are on a couch and they're in their underwear and flabby and kind of sprawled out and

wasting the day. And this fitness guy comes by and he across the the strips

eight panels. It's a Sunday strip so it's the big one is like critiquing their lifestyle, judging, you know, like

look at you guys. You're wasting your life. And all the things he's saying are completely true. You It's like uh you

know, and the reader knows this. This guy's like fit and he's got his little weights in the headband and everything

and he's condemning this like look at you. You you're wasting away. you're not taking care of your bodies and the connection between your body and your

mind and and he's like and and in the end I'm going to live longer than you

because you didn't make better decisions. And then he turns around to jog away and a bolt of lightning hits

him and he explodes and the characters on the couch uh look at one another and pass a

ding-dong AC across the couch. and uh which the

and to me that kind of encapsulates the um the self-help

uh you know the finitness of the self-help phenomenon which I think has

you know and I'm not a sociologist but it seems to me that in a post2020 world especially during that really you know

like contentious time and out of it everyone was like uh we need we need

something we need something to make us better than we are. We need something to rise above the crappiness and and and

everyone was saying it from their respective sides of the aisle. They suck so bad. I want to be better than them. How do I do this? And then and then vice

versa. So, everyone's looking for the trick, but all the tricks conclude the

same way, which is you dead. Yeah. You know what I mean? And

to me, as you know, and I make these jokes all the time, and I talk about this all the time. In fact, I told my wife the other day, I'm just put this

somewhere where it'll be documented that I was like the best joke that someone could make at my funeral is uh if in all

the somberness of oh everyone's so sad and then somebody gets up on stage and says well he did say this would happen a

lot you know I think that would really lighten the mood. So I talk about this all the time

but one of the reasons is um it's funny another reason is that uh coming to

terms with mortality has been an important part of the Christian you know tradition of spiritual practice for

centuries upon centuries and the reason is not because they were so morbid in fact Christians are the opposite of

morbid they're like uh obsessed with life you know what I mean and life beyond death but Christians across

history have understood stood that all our best efforts still conclude in death. I mean it's it's and it's across

the old and new testament. This side of resurrection the story concludes for a

period in death before life has the final say. And so all our best efforts

this side of resurrection meet the same punchline. That doesn't mean nothing matters because Christians

aren't nilless. But it does mean that even if we do all the cold plunges you

can possibly imagine and wake up early to lift weights and all the stuff, uh, that bolt of lightning is still coming.

You you know what I mean? And it doesn't it doesn't rob these things of meaning and purpose, but it does sober them. You

know what I mean? And it gives us a sort of like I think healthy wisdom to not

fall into the cycle of like the next trick, the next trick, the next trick. There's a balance between

um sobermindedness uh mort an awareness of your own mortality what we've called you know

across uh centuries momento mory you know remember that you remember death

remember you still have to die and lapsing into despair that's one bad side

you know and the other bad side is denial like the idea that uh my story

doesn't end and no one says that explicitly but infer that subconsciously. We live as if

like all this stuff is somehow going to give me um a longevity that's impossible

and the other side being like well what does really anything matter because it ends in in death. That's not the

Christian perspective either. So the in between is kind of like this idea that

there I am at the mercy of my own limitations that this side of resurrection um I don't beat mortality.

I don't beat sin altogether. Jesus has, but in my own brokenness, I succumb to

cycles of disintegration, back to integration again. And of course, you

grow and mature and everything, but um even the most sagelike uh matured disciple of Jesus fails.

Yeah. You know, even at the end of their story. And I think a lot about Brennan Manning, you know, um, as a writer, he's

he was a huge influence on this book because you and I were we were just talking a minute ago about like if you

can find that sweet spot of like where you're doing what you want to do and it has an impact on people and I think that

Manning kind of exemplifies that uniquely. His books are insane if formatted like they're just like stories

and fireworks and then like scripture and then literature and you know it's

really not formatted the way most Christian non-fiction is and yet he's like iconic in the pantheon of Christian

writers um because you read these books and you're changed like you actually become changed by I defy someone to read

like Obless Child and not come away formed by that work

uh Uh but he did not end well. He his story concluded very tragically uh with

his his brain succumbing to the effects of long-term alcoholism

um and cycles of of failure and and and repentance for sure. Um, even at the

very end of his life, you know, he was embroiled, and I wrote about this in one of my books, embroiled in a a minor

controversy in which he, you know, lied about his participation in hurricane

relief after Hurricane Katrina and then called, I believe it was Christianity Today, called the publication back and

said, "I was actually lying about the stuff that I said." And then they printed it. You know what I mean? Like,

and and you can look at that two ways. You can look at it like that's so lame that he li and why why do you need to

lie that's embarrassing and I looked up to this guy or you can look at it like he called them back

and told them he was lying. I look up to this guy you know what I mean? Um and that story to me exemplifies the

like if you read his work and I don't know the guy. We don't you know I don't know him personally. I don't know all the skeletons in his closet. There's

probably more than we know about because that's true of everyone. But if you know the story and you read his work, he he

seems to me to be someone deeply familiar with the love of God and invested in the life of Christ. Um who

also screwed up again and again and again, repented again and again and again. If that's not like a a microcosm,

a portrait of the story and then he's and now he's dead. He's dead. You know what I mean? And he died unable to

complete his memoir by himself. He had to have people help him. And that shouldn't have been the case,

but it was the case because of decisions he made. And that to me is a portrait of

life this side of resurrection in in in a broken world. It's beautiful. It's

redemptive and it's also tragic and it's also screwed up. And accepting that is

like a lifelong journey. But the work of accepting that is also freedom from the trap of there's a

trick, there's a trick, there's a trick. Yeah. there. There's so much there because I think ultimately all of the

tricks are just an accumulated effort to resist the one reality we desperately

want to escape, which is that no, I am God. I don't die. I am perfect. I I can

be in charge of my own existence. And again, death is that great sobering,

humilityinducing leveler that we just can't escape from. And you know, I I I think maybe one of

the one of the people that typifies sort of our our railing against that is Brian

Johnson. You know, the guy who's trying to live forever, the I don't know if you remember the guy. He's he's got a company.

I've seen him in the popular culture, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Blueprint. The guy with all the medicine and stuff. Uhhuh. and he takes like 147 pills a day

and eats all of his meals before like 10:30 a.m. And I was listening to him

being interviewed. And the the host of the podcast was talking about his hair and he's like, "Yeah, I'm getting into

my early 30s. I can tell my hairline is receding. Like, what do I do?" And Brian cuts him off and he's like, "Fight. You

gotta fight." He's like, "This is what I do. I wear a infrared skull cap for an hour. I take these three pills. I I rub

on these three ointments." And as I'm listening to this, I can't be the only one. I'm just like, dude, this is just

you're you're living to live. There's this circular self just self-defeating nature to what

you're doing. There's no object. There's no objective to it. There's no there's nothing that's grounding it. It's just

desperately trying to cling on to hair was kind of the perfect symbol of totally of what that kind of taken to

the logical extreme. what that kind of worldview, the place that it ends up getting you. And I I was listening to a

clip of this Catholic priest talking about the whole Charlie Kirk tragedy and

death and and he was just talking about how we are so quick to rush past death

like we don't we don't contemplate it. We don't grieve. We don't even in our

you know our the the ceremonies around funerals now are are altering in such a way where we avoid it. We don't look at

it. We don't look into it. And it kind of speaks to what you were saying about

there is this this power in not running from it, but but staring into it and and

allowing it to have the sobering impact that it's supposed to have because we need the wisdom that it gives us. And we

have a culture that's railing against it. And if we're not careful, that is what we then become sucked into as well.

Yeah, I agree. you know, the irony of the live forever dude, which, you know,

he I I don't I'm assuming based on what I do know from popular culture that,

by the way, he should rebrand himself as the live forever dude. The live forever dude. Yeah, he's uh

he's become something like a you know he he presents himself for our entertainment and in most cases it seems

like our you know mockery because everyone watching can see what what

you're articulating which is like this is a fool's errand that you're on. Um

and and it ain't working like because even if your methods pay off in some um

really unusual way, if you live to be 120 years old or some such thing or you look young when you are old, whatever is

the payoff, you will have spent your life dedicated to the thing that gave you more time and then you used that

time to do the thing that gave you more time. Yes. Um, and then the, you know, the sad

irony is that some grizzled, unhealthy farmer in the Midwest who smoked

cigarettes and didn't take care of himself is going to end with more contentment, more peace and a life of

more love that just spent the evenings like doing nothing but hanging out with his kids and around a dinner table and

goes to bed grateful for, you know, the kind of life that uh a lot of us would go like, "Oh, the nothing happened." But

and and yet he did finish well whereas this you know somebody else doesn't

finish well and the difference isn't even necessarily always like an acceptance of mortality so much as it is

an acceptance of existence it itself that there are and I'm I'm saying this like I'm some

kind of sage and I this is not something I have learned I and God talks to me about it all the time that you know I

have this innate thing that a lot of us have which is like I need if I do some

other thing that matters I will lend validity and value and worth to my life

and and I need I need to do that even things like you know I've I've on my

best day I do something like writing or teaching the Bible genuinely because um

I love to do them and I actually care about communicating these ideas in a way

that means something to people or that changes people in some way on my best day. On my worst day, I'm thinking, man,

if I write another book, people will think I'm so smart and they'll love me more and then I'll have more value. I

don't explicitly say these things, but subconsciously, these are the machinations of my my flesh, if you

like. And, you know, and then I'll sit in in the quiet in the morning with God and and be

like, man, it's still I mean, like, look, what is life? times, you know, I live on this little road and in this

little house with my little family and I haven't done some amazing thing that's changed the world and and I feel like

instead of God saying like, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself." Or saying like, "Don't worry, man. The next big

thing, the next big apostolic movement is coming through your book, instead he's like, "Yeah, what if this is it?

What if this is all I have for you is to just sit in this house and love your family and do the best you can with what

you have?" Um and part and you know part of it is that Christian

cult church culture and I and I don't you know I don't have it out for Christian culture and church culture. I love the church. I love the Christian

movement. So I I don't I feel so tired and bored with these people that are like still railing against, you know,

the the entity of Christian culture like it's still the late 90s or something.

It's such a dorky thing to do. I don't have it out for these things. But culture communicates a story. Any

culture and the culture of Christians communicates a story. The culture of the church communicates a story.

And because we're so inspired by the life and work of Jesus and because we take his commands seriously to preach

the gospel and to baptize people in the name of the father, son, all this stuff. And because there are people who have

been given assignments that are very big, you know, to do justice work across the world. Sure. by the grace of God. Thank God for

them. Uh we tend to look at everyone at other people and go like, "Oh crap, I'm

not doing it right because I haven't started an orphanage in Kolkata or I'm not doing it right

because I have not evangelized my entire street and brought them to faith."

Yeah. And you know, and maybe sometimes it's possible that there's an element of

truth in that like God has called you to something and you've resisted it. God has called you to something bigger than your little story and you've resisted

it. But maybe a lot of the time uh your little story is the story and God's

invitation is for you to embrace your place in the kingdom of God which is like there are kids that you need to

care for and that you need to bring them into the presence of Jesus. There's a community of people in your purview that

you need to care for, that you need to practice justice and generosity in a tiny sphere of your influence because

that's what you have. You know what I mean? Yeah. And and that's that's not just okay. That's good. That's what God that's what

God has handed over to you. And if you don't miss it, it's a beautiful wonderful thing.

It's something that I'm still trying to learn. Well, and it's even sort of resisting the other end of the

pendulum swing where you kind of well maybe, you know, it's just to love my this little humble calling and that'll

define or that'll populate my little meaning basket enough, you know, and

it's like, no, no, that's not the point. It's not it's not that it's it's you're consummated in something big or somehow

more noble in that it's not big and that you know it's not visible and not seen. It's that none of it is supposed to fill

what only God can, right? that it's just about being faithful and it's obedient and you know I mean all you see that

driving desire and people putting their names on buildings and kings being building pyramids and everyone's trying

to kind of like cement their mortality or or or actually create some sense of

immortality through the things that they do and that same driving instinct is in us and and like you said we almost seem

to want to earn it each day like did I justify my existence today? Am I am I inching towards a life that would be

worthy of, you know, something by one more page written of a new book or or

whatever it is? And just to maybe end here, there there's a quote, many quotes in your book, but one of the ones that

just kind of really hit me hard was this idea. You say at the end, it's kind of a

reflection on your own journey. And you talk about dying, and you say dying, the kind of dying that matters most is the

ongoing process of surrendering to love. And I just was so blown away by that

because ultimately it's not sort of the okay, you know, kind of this begrudging

sense of I give up significance and I'll just be the humble, you know, anonymous

servant. It's it's not the giving up of anything. It it's the receiving of

something so much better. Maybe kind of to end here, talk talk about that because I I feel like that is it. that

when you get a taste of of real love, love given to me by my dad, it it helps

you recognize that man, everything else is house money. I've already won. Yeah. Yeah. I mean over the last couple

of years I have been re and really just like the last two years of life have

been relearning um something that you know I've known

but uh have come to know in I guess with greater intimacy and not to say that

I've arrived cuz I really haven't but like I've for the last 10 years been participating in something that will

probably become known as like the new spiritual formation movement. or something. And it's a it's a kind of

like church practice movement built around a rediscovery of disciplines and

a rule of life as the lived experience of disciplehip kind of uh developed off

the thinking of Dallas Willard and writers like Richard Foster, the celebration of disciplines, things like that. that if we reorient our churches

around formation as opposed to like weekend experiences then people would actually

uh become more like Jesus by through practice and and and it's not based on nothing. It's, you know, like who

whoever hears these words of mine and puts them into practice, you know what I mean? Um, it's good thing, a beautiful thing.

And but over 10 years of like teaching that of of attempting to embody that,

you there's these little moments in life where you realize like, man, so I have

uh gone against my own wiring and desires to learn how to implement the practice of fasting, for example. It's

no fun. uh and then you've experienced the the benefit of like what fasting can

and has done in the Christian tradition over centuries and you're like man this is really an an incredible thing that I

didn't even know about and it has uh brought me closer to God. Um so it's not

nothing it is something in the same way that like you know like exercise is you if properly implemented you will

experience changes in your in your body and your mind from exercise. It's not nothing, it's something. But then you'll

be like at, you know, a Sunday gathering with other people and where and then God will change someone

uh incredibly in an evening over like one and and not

from some sermon, not from fasting, just like the Holy Spirit comes through, says

something to someone, they turn around, they don't even know what it means. They turn around, communicate it to the person next to them. Hey, I think this

is kind of for you. I saw a balloon. You know what? Whatever it is, the person's mind is like tears come

down. Yeah. And they discover the love of God in a way that 10 years of fasting did not do. And that

doesn't mean that fasting's nothing. It's something. Jesus did it. We do it. You know what I mean? But like you real

that can't be regimented. That can't even be structured. Like it was completely chaotic. Like no one planned

for it except God. And so over the past two years even in the process of draft

starting the book which you know like it does have a whole section called the manual of disciplines it's about

lifestyle practices of Jesus but I just was like you the love of God is the

thing and there's no like perfect quantification of it. There's no way to

corral it. There's no way to structure it perfectly. We have tools that that put us in a better proximity of the love

of God. Yeah. But but they're all they are are resources that turn our attention towards something that's already there.

The way you put it, we you already have it. All that the disciplines do is redirect your attention to what you

already have and and in abundance. You know what I mean? And that's a hard thing to write

about. So there's a lot of language in the book about like the tsunami of God's love about like how it just moves over

thing and destroys things and reshapes things and and we stand in front of it going like hold on, you know, and it's

just like no, it's coming. You know what I mean? And and it can it can reform you or deform you depending on how you

receive it. Um, I think that there's a reason that the primary metaphor for

God's relationship to his people in the scriptures is is marriage because I realized that across these 10 years of

teaching formation through disciplines. Uh there's so many times that I've said

things that are true in some sense, but then another sense you're like, wait, but you know, you you can't get around

the thing that or the reality that I'm teaching. You do the thing to get the thing

because that's the the gospel of self-help. You do these things because you get these things from them. And

that's just not the go it's antithetical to the gospel of Jesus. You don't do the things to get the things. You have the

thing. You do the things because they make you more aware of what you have.

Wow. Yeah. And so the love, you know, that to me it it reshaped the the writing

process. the entire thing became more about like the absolute devastation,

devastating power of God's love and less like uh okay, put these things into

practice so that you can get get the thing which I never would have said that's what I was writing but subconsciously you fall into these

patterns because we've been taught to receive them. The marriage thing to me is what makes the most sense. If

someone said you there's all these things in spiritual formation, some good, some bad, about like something

called stage theory. The idea that you progress in the spiritual journey toward a thing. Um, and of course you do grow

and mature. You see that represented in the scriptures and the teachings of Jesus and Paul and blah blah blah. But

even that is a very dicey place to go, I think, because if someone were to say,

you know, to me and my wife Abby, you're like, "Okay, you've been married for almost 18 years now. Uh, so are you on

stage two or three?" You know what I mean? I'd be like, "What?" Yeah. There's like, "Have you arrived at the

goal?" You know, because the implication is that you're moving from level one to level 10 to beat the game. Like, how

close are you to beating the game? Like, what? There is no game. We just live together. We're just, you know, like we share life together.

That's the thing. The goal, the goal is just that like as cheesy as it sounds, like we love one

another and have decided to to merge our lives together. And have we grown and matured as

individuals and as a couple? Well, of course, inevitably, like if but there is

no there's no finish line. There's no goal. The the the entire thing is just

life together. And I, you know, I'm coming to a place more and more where I'm trying to learn to accept no goal,

no finish line, just life together. Wow. Well, that I think that perfectly

sums it up, dude. I This conversation just flew by as it always does. I so

resonate with what you're saying. I appreciate the work that you've put in to put this book out there. I we'll put

it everywhere, the links and all that. I know you're not concerned about that, but um also your uh we'll just throw

this up here real quick. So, oh, I thought I had it up here. I had your

website all ready to go. I mean, this is how high quality of production this is. Uh joshua porter.com. We'll just go the

manual approach, but like I said, it'll be in the intro. It'll be in the links and all the things, but dude, thank you. Thanks for making this work. Sorry for

the back and forth on that, but hey, I I so resonate with what you're saying, and uh I look forward to what you're going to do next. And uh hopefully we can have

another chat down the road. Yeah, dude. Thanks for having me. I I had a genuinely good time. So, thanks for making the time for me.

That was the goal. All right, man. You have a good rest of your day. I'm going to hit end here. Make sure your file gets uploaded before we uh totally end

the call. But, uh thanks for listening, everyone. Peace. Thanks for watching Provoke and Inspire. If you enjoyed this

content, could you do me a favor and hit that like button? Leave us a comment because this ultimately is a

conversation. Hit that bell thing, I think, right? And uh YouTube seems to be recommending another video for you to

watch. Check it out. Stay involved. Also, provokeandinsspirepodcast.com for everything else. That's it. Peace.

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