"Believe in yourself." That's the message most of popular culture gives us, but it's not what the Bible teaches. Author Jen Oshman stops by to explain how we can go from stressed out self-promoters to joy filled children of God by the power of the gospel. Also in this episode: Jen tells us the weirdest food she ever tried while serving as a missionary overseas.
Links for this episode:
Jen's personal website
Official book page
All Things Podcast
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Surf Dayton
"Believe in yourself." That's the message most of popular culture gives us, but it's not what the Bible teaches. Author Jen Oshman stops by to explain how we can go from stressed out self-promoters to joy filled children of God by the power of the gospel. Also in this episode: Jen tells us the weirdest food she ever tried while serving as a missionary overseas.
Links for this episode:
Jen's personal website
Official book page
All Things Podcast
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Surf Dayton
[MUSIC PLAYS] I have a heart full of questions quieting all my suggestions. What is the meaning of Christian in this American life? I'm feeling awfully foolish spending my life on a message. I look around and I wonder ever if I heard it right.[MUSIC STOPS]
Amy Mantravadi:Welcome to the(A)Millennial podcast, where we have theological conversations for today's world. I'm your host, Amy Mantravadi, coming to you live from Dayton, Ohio, the surfing capital of Ohio. Now those of you who are more keenly aware of geographic realities may be thinking,"Where does one surf in Dayton, Ohio? It's nowhere near the ocean. It's not even close to Lake Erie." Right you are, but we Daytonians are nothing if not persistent in the face of geographic obstacles. As it turns out, you can surf on rivers too, and in the past few years, the local parks organization has invested in the creation of two different water features on the Great Miami River downtown with separate entry points depending on one's skill level. The BBC reported last fall on an explosion in interest due to the current COVID pandemic, which has caused many who would have traveled out of state to remain at home. There is a thriving business in surfing lessons and one store nearby reports that people are buying paddleboards faster than they can stock them. My husband and I were able to witness a group of people kayaking on one of the water features recently, and I can confirm that they seemed at least moderately pleased. Huntington Beach had better watch its back. Today, I'm going to be speaking with Jen Oshman, author of the book Enough about Me: Finding Lasting Joy in the Age of Self. When I first read the title, I thought it sounded like a great book for other people to read. I kid, I kid. I'm sure the world has certainly had enough of me. Selfishness, self-obsession, and pride lay at the root of every sin in one way or another. They're also very depressing ways to live your life. However, Western society- by which I mean primarily Europe, North America, and other parts of the world primarily influenced by them- has put the individual on the highest pedestal, as opposed to Eastern or other historic societies that tend to put the family, clan, or society in that position. While this has led to some very important and beneficial protections for individual freedoms, it has also led to us becoming increasingly self-obsessed, dependent on our own personal efforts for meaning and satisfaction in life. Scripture, on the other hand, respects the individual but puts God in first place. In his Epistle to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul made one of the strongest cases in Scripture for the insufficiency of self-effort. He wrote that attempting to perfectly keep the commandments of God- collectively known as the Law- by your own power will only result in failure. Instead, we must submit ourselves to Christ and find our identity in him as our savior. Here's what he says in one key passage."I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died needlessly." Contrary to our culture, which is constantly preaching a message of self-empowerment, the message of the Bible is that we can't do it, but Christ has already done it on our behalf. That is incredibly humbling, but also gloriously freeing. Listen on to hear my discussion with Jen about how we can start focusing less on ourselves and more on the God who has saved us.
Jon Guerra:[MUSICAL INTERLUDE]
Amy Mantravadi:And I am here with Christian author Jen Oshman. Jen and her husband served for many years as missionaries, first in Okinawa, Japan, and later as church planters in the Czech Republic- also known as Czechia- with Pioneers International. During that time, she was active in teaching, discipling, and counseling women. In 2015, their family that includes four daughters returned to live in Colorado and planted a church, Redemption Parker, with the Acts 29 network. She and her husband both remained in support roles with Pioneers International. Jen is also an avid writer, which is what brings her on the program today. Her articles have been shared by The Gospel Coalition, Desiring God, Risen Motherhood, and Tim Challies, among others. The past two years have been big ones for Jen as she launched a podcast called All Things in which she applies Christian truth to pressing issues of the day, and she also published her first book, Enough about Me, which we'll be talking about today. You can find her on social media on Twitter and Instagram@JenOshman and on Facebook Jennifer.OwenOshman and her website is www. jenoshman.com. Well, welcome to the program, Jen. I'm so glad to have you on.
Jen Oshman:Oh, thank you so much. It's my joy. Thanks for having me.
Amy Mantravadi:Well, I mentioned that you spent time serving with your family as missionaries, and you've also written about how you taught your daughters to eat whatever food was put in front of them, because you were served a wide variety of meals in your time abroad and didn't want to offend anyone. All of this led me to wonder, what is the oddest food you've ever had to eat during your time overseas?
Jen Oshman:Oh my gosh. That is a funny question. Well, you're right. I mean, having these kids in Asia and then taking them to Europe, we have eaten all kinds of things. I think the hardest thing for me to stomach and get down was once in Japan I was served squid ink pasta, and the ink sauce is very black and it dyes your teeth and your tongue and your lips black, and it kind of bleeds from your lips onto your skin as well and kind of spreads. And so it's just visually so hard to eat something like that and then sort of feel it and see it out of the periphery of your eye on your face. I got it down, but it was not easy.
Amy Mantravadi:Yeah. I've never had that, but I I've heard a little bit about it, so maybe someday I'll have to try it. I was also wondering if you had ever eaten uni while you were in Japan.
Jen Oshman:What is uni? I don't know off the top of my head.
Amy Mantravadi:So it's...And you know, Okinawa is a little different maybe than the mainland of Japan as well, but uni is the one thing that my husband has tried that he said he would never have again. It is a sushi which is sea urchin. So he had it-
Jen Oshman:Yeah, I've seen it.
Amy Mantravadi:He had it many years ago, and then about a year or two ago, we were out to a Japanese restaurant with some friends and he was persuaded to try it again, thinking maybe the first time it had just gone bad or something. No, he still didn't like it.
Jen Oshman:Wow. Well, I respect him for trying twice cause I don't- I've never tried it even once. I definitely have seen it, but never ordered it.
Amy Mantravadi:Yeah, and I tried it, but I don't remember anything about how it tasted.
Jen Oshman:Well, maybe that's good.
Amy Mantravadi:Yeah. Anyway, I just thought that would be interesting place to start off: with the wonderful world of strange foods. So diving in then to a discussion about your book. My own spiritual journey has involved a long process of realizing just how self-focused I am in so many areas of my life. This problem is certainly not unique to me as selfishness and pride lies at the heart really of all sin, but you point out in your book that there are things in the West and Western culture that tend to lead us to become more self-focused. Speaking to those of your own generation, you write that,"You and I were born into an age that triumphed relativism and individualism. The culture of our childhoods was decidedly anti-authoritarian. Rather than discovering the objective truth, we were taught to define our own subjective truth. Unlike millennia of generations before us, we set out not to uncover the meaning of life, but to give our lives their own meaning. We've triumphed freedom as our highest good. Individual freedom trumps all former societal norms and values. It is ultimate." So as I mentioned, you've spent time as a missionary in Japan and the Czech Republic, two cultures that in their own ways are very different from the United States. So do you think these tendencies toward relativism individualism and what I'll call libertarianism-though not in the sense of the political party- are unique to certain places in the West or do they have an increasing pull throughout the whole world?
Jen Oshman:Yeah, you know, it's funny having lived in Asia and Europe- and obviously Asia is wide and diverse and so is Europe- but what was so fascinating is there are some striking similarities between the Japanese culture and the Czech culture, which we did not anticipate, but some just really interesting things: like for one neither people group ever wears shoes in their home, or they all take, no matter what, if you're in Czech or Japan, you take off your shoes. When you enter any house or even school buildings and office buildings, there are certain indoor shoes that you switch to when you get to that building. Also both cultures speak really softly. It's rude to speak really loudly and they speak with their mouths moving sort of minimally. Whereas in the Czech Republic, they said Americans look like they're speaking with an egg in their mouth: a whole egg, you know, without cracking it. So anyway, that's a side note, that even though they are a world apart and have totally different histories, there's some interesting similarities between the two, but another- to get to your question- Another thing that's similar about both Czech and Japanese cultures is that they are- really the foundation is the family and the foundation is sort of the ancestry and the history of the family. Both people groups are largely homogenous, so strikingly different from the United States where we are sort of a melting pot, but in Japan you have almost exclusively Japanese citizens with Japanese ancestry, and same with the Czech Republic. Now in Czech, there's a little bit more intermarriage with the surrounding nations, but the Czech people are very Czech historically, and this is a source of pride for both countries. They're very proud of their heritage and proud of their traditions as a culture and as a people. So in that way, they are so different than the United States. We don't have much of a shared identity in terms of our history and traditions, and we don't introduce ourselves as members of a family or as people of a certain city or of a certain village or of a certain tradition, whereas in Japan and Czech you do. It's very much part of your introduction of who you are, even today, even as a young person, you are a family that-your line, you know, who you come from. So I think while pride is certainly pervasive, we see it in the Garden and then we see it in every human heart- Since the Fall pride and sin is pervasive. That is our condition as fallen humans. What's different here in the United States is that we don't have a shared identity or a shared ancestry, and especially in more recent decades, we've tried really hard to invent ourselves and create our own identity, and identity politics is increasingly coming to the surface as an issue of not just contention, but even violence and huge disunity in our nation, and I think that's because people have worked so hard to create their own identity, that to threaten it or to question it is very personal and very hurtful and just sort of wounds the soul of the person who said,"This is who I've decided I am. This is my identity." They aren't couched in the safety and the security of a family name or a family tradition or a family line or the history and heritage of a people group. They've had to invent themselves, and the invented self is very fragile, which is largely what Enough about Me is about. So I do think the U.S. is unique in that way, and certainly maybe not the one and only- I can't say that we're the only society in such a position across the globe, but it's the society I know best, and I know that we are fragile because of that.
Amy Mantravadi:Yeah, and if you think about U.S. History, it makes sense that we'd be that way because with the exception, of course, Native Americans, everyone else here is an immigrant at some point or another. And I in previous years worked on a study where I was interviewing people all over the country for some social science research that was being done, and one of the questions I had to ask them was,"What is your ethnic identity or where is your family from?" And it was very interesting the high percentage of people who just said,"American," and really we were looking for- American is not an ethnicity. We were looking for,"My ancestors are from Germany," or even Africa or a continent...anything. And they just had no idea where- no sense of any history beyond just their generation or the one or two before that. And as someone who myself has spent a lot of time looking into my family genealogy- as I've found out more and more about where my family is from, in an odd way, I have started to see myself less and less as American or just an individual here creating my own identity and much more connected to a history and a people that go back for hundreds of years. But our status as an immigrant nation really has created in many cases a rootless people, and you know, when you talk about not being identified by your family identity, I guess I could see some good consequences of that in that you don't have as much of an aristocracy as you did in old Europe where, people in the upper classes looked down on people in the lower classes, but it also gets rid of all the positive parts of family identity. So that's interesting that you have that observation. I appreciate it because you have spent time living in other cultures, so you have that- you can bring the different ways that people tend to think about questions of identity.
Jen Oshman:Yeah, I'm with you. I think it's fascinating.
Amy Mantravadi:You refer to God in your book as a story writer and storyteller from whom we have our existence. He is the one who can,"...tell us about ourselves. He has the answers." I've thought about God in a very similar way as the maker of a car and the commands of God are akin to an instruction manual for that car. How do Christians who outwardly acknowledge God as their creator tend to forget that fact in certain ways and how does it manifest in our behavior?
Jen Oshman:Well, I know that I personally forget it a hundred times a day in a hundred different ways. Again, going back to question number one, pride is really at the root of this. The enemy asks Adam and Eve,"Did God really say that?" And that's sort of been the question of the sinful human heart ever since: Did God really say that? Did he really ask these things of me or did he really command these things or can I be my own God? Can I direct my own way? And certainly I fall prey to that, as I said, truly a hundred times a day, as I seek to obey myself and seek to please myself above the God who made me and created me and saved me as well. So I think that, especially in this moment, and I know there's nothing new under the sun, but in this moment of a very consumer oriented American or Western culture, we really do seek to please ourselves. We have so much security, so much comfort, so many opportunities to do exactly what we want to do and not endure certain peril or certain hardships. We want to cultivate our best lives now. It's so easy to forget that Jesus asked us to lay down our lives, that he asked us to be the least and he asked us to be the last. God really did say,"If you want to follow me, you must bear your cross. You must lay down your life to find it," and I think of somebody like Mary when the angel appeared to her, she said,"May it be to me as you have said," and just so willingly gave her body, gave her life, gave her social status, her soon to be married status- all these ways that she viewed herself and others viewed her and laid that down and said,"Yes, may it be to me as you have said." And I think that's something that I personally and I think many of us Christians in the West struggle with. We forget that the Lord has said,"Yes, go low, lay yourself low," and we seek to serve and please, and protect ourselves rather than following Christ.
Amy Mantravadi:Yeah, I think we could probably go on for a very long time about all the ways that we do that, and if you're only forgetting this a hundred times a day, you're probably doing better than me, cause I'm probably at least at 200. Because isn't that the source of all sin? Just our forgetfulness of God's position in relation to us. So yeah, I appreciate you reflecting on that. As a young person, I had the impression that giving oneself more and more to God meant having your identity erased in a certain way or your personality changed. I've come to see as I've gotten older how untrue that is, and you make a good point to this effect when you say,"To be our true selves, to walk in our most genuine identity, does not come from within. Rather it comes from being fueled by our relationship with God and living for his glory as creatures designed by him and for him. This is our best and truest self." Could you expand on that a bit more? How does finding our identity in Christ make us the truest versions of ourselves?
Jen Oshman:Sure. Well, like we just said in the last question, God is our story writer. God is the storyteller. He writes us into his grand story, so he is our Creator. And if you even just look back to the creation account, you can see right off the bat what a good and kind and loving God he is, the way that creation is, the beauty that we can behold in creation. The fact that he created us in his image for community and worship, by him, for him, through him, to him as Colossians says. So he knows us best because he made us. He's the one who knit us together and we are by no means then to think that we are sort of cookie cutter or that erases anything. I mean, Amy, if we just look at the fish under the sea or the stars in the sky or the intricacy of the human body, what's inside each of us- think of the billions of people on the planet and how each one has different eyes and different hair and different personalities- physically, inwardly and outwardly, their spirits, their personalities- there is so much diversity in creation. Our God is immeasurably creative, and so if we remember and return to the truth that he made us and we seek his face and seek his will and seek what is his grand story all about and fit ourselves into that with his help and with his power, for his pleasure and for his glory, that's when we come to know ourselves the best, and it's when we rail against that where we really miss out on the joy and peace and satisfaction that he's intended for us to have in this life.
Amy Mantravadi:Yeah, I think that's a very good point. And when we talk about having to lose ourselves in order to find ourselves or laying down our lives in order to follow Christ, I think it's best to think about that as what we're really losing is our sinful tendencies and desires being lost over time. The good thing that God always intended us to be, like you said, is coming out, and you make a good point that he wants a diversity of people. He doesn't want us to all be cookie cutters, so I appreciate you talking about that. One good point you make in your book is that,"Any deviation from biblical Christianity can be detected when we are told to turn our practices and habits inward on ourselves rather than outward on our marvelous Savior." Two manifestations of this that you mention are the way we think about"quiet time" and the content of our worship songs. Could you discuss that a bit, and are there any more examples that you've seen?
Jen Oshman:Yeah, sure. So again, I've said this and I hate to be Debbie Downer about it, but we live in such a consumeristic oriented culture. We have this sort of consumer Christianity. If we haven't rejected church altogether or rejected Jesus Christ altogether, and we've- we want to follow him, or we want to join a Christian church in many ways, it's with a consumeristic mentality. Which one fits me the best? Which one do I enjoy the best? Which one has the best coffee or the best kids' programs? Or where can I go to consume rather than where can I go to maybe contribute or to covenant with the other people in the community and pursue the goodness that is the family of God we tend to consume. And once you see it, it's hard not to see it everywhere. And I know it's not everywhere, but you think of just the large institutions- and I have nothing against large churches. I'm not saying that by any means, so please don't mishear me, but just these engines that sort of have to keep themselves going. And the goal then is maybe numbers and growth so that the engine can keep going, and it is everywhere. It's on our home decor, it's in our Instagram and it's in our own souls, this desire to serve ourselves. And so it can be hard to see, or it could be hard to pick up on that idol when you worship it, but I do think it comes out in things like your personal quiet time. Certainly our relationship with our Maker and Savior is meant to be personal. Certainly our salvation is personal. We must surrender our unique and personal selves over to our Lord. However, the Christian life was never meant to be private. Personal in some ways, yes, but not private. We were created for community. As we see in the Garden of Eden, we were created to be a part: to be one more link in a eternal genealogy. There's so many genealogies in just the Book of Genesis alone, but throughout all of scripture. And we're part of that genealogy and we are designed to flourish corporately, not flourish individually. And so I think in the American West especially, we have really forgotten that crucial and I think very central component of our faith is that we were created for community, not for an individual pursuit. And that has been to our detriment, our great detriment. It has been- We've just been really hurt ourselves in the process. And so you see it like in your question, and as I say in the book, you see it in worship songs too, that make priority your personal feelings rather than the exaltation and goodness of God, or maybe a corporate history- a corporate recitation of God's goodness to the whole community. We do tend to just be very personal or very private rather than corporate, and I don't believe that's the Lord's design and I don't think it's for our good.
Amy Mantravadi:Yeah. You made me think about some of the observations that have occurred over the past year with the coronavirus pandemic and so many people going to virtual streaming of church services rather than going in person on many occasions, because they're legally barred from going in person for a time, or they have very real concerns for their health. And we've been watching streaming of church a lot more than going in person, but I do feel that we lose something when we're just watching on the TV. But there's been a lot of concern that some of the people who are watching at home, they'll never come back when the churches reopen: they'll just check out of church entirely. But what I'm seeing from people who seem to be really deep in their faith is that they are really feeling a loss over the course of this year. They aren't feeling like,"Oh, it's just as good to watch on TV," because they understand what it is to be in that vibrant community that God has intended where we are walking together in the Christian life and not just on our own. Because even before the pandemic happened, you would hear about these virtual reality churches or whatever, and we all kind of- a lot of us made fun of it."That's not really church! It's not the same thing!" But now it's almost like God has given us all this test of all of a sudden being starved of some of that community, and we're finding lots of different ways to try to continue the community despite the restrictions, but it's given me such an appreciation for the few occasions we have gone in person. It's just so special. And when we finally get back to more of a normal where we're going every week- I mean, our son was born the month before everything shut down, so he really has no concept- I mean, he's too young to have much of a concept of anything, but he's still- he doesn't have a concept that every week we go to church. He thinks every week we go downstairs and sit and watch church, which is good, and we do lots of things too every day. We're reading scripture and praying with him, doing different things, but it will be different for him when he's there with his church family. So I just think this past year has given such a perfect example of what you're talking about, that we can't just have our own little church with our Bible and our mug of coffee on a Sunday morning, sitting on our porch. You know, it's not the same. It's not what God intended for us. And when we are together, that drives us away from that purely consumer mindset. We're forced to be part of a body, and that is what God intended for us. So I think that's just a great point that you have. Our culture loves the message,"Believe in yourself," and various variations on that. As a mother of a small child, I see it in many children's books. It's in so many American films. We seem to accept this platitude with little consideration, and yet you point out that this message is in large part antithetical to Christian teaching. You write,"To believe in oneself is to refuse grace. It is to say to the God who made you,'I'm doing fine on my own. Thank you very much.' It just refuse the Lord's unconditional love, forgiveness and empowerment. But when we confess that we are not enough, we invite all of that in. Confession leads to joy." How do we draw a line as Christians between appropriate self-confidence and harmful pride that places trust in something other than God?
Jen Oshman:Man, that is a good question, because I feel like those two things can look really identical. The sort of outward appearance of two different hearts can be very similar, and I think sometimes we can even not know ourselves- from which foundation we are operating- and it's something we constantly need to be asking ourselves about. But really the premise and message of the whole book is that first sentence that you read: to believe in oneself is to refuse grace. And that's my hope with the book Enough about Me is that those who read it would just experience total relief. It's so exhausting to believe in yourself, to feel like,"I have got to invent myself. I have got to pull myself up by my bootstraps and I've got to make this happen. It's all on me." And that's how we were raised at least in a secular setting, and I think a lot of times even in the church setting, maybe by teachers and parents who did not realize that that's actually what they were communicating. So this exhaustion, this burnt out experience that a lot of us have is the result of,"I can do it myself." And so my hope is that the reality check that,"No, actually you can't do it yourself," is a message of sweet relief. And you make a good point with your question: there is an appropriate self-confidence, absolutely. We must remember there is now no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus. To be beloved and chosen and holy and set apart by the God of the universe is such a great gift, and when we operate from the foundation of that truth, that,"I am his. He will never leave me or forsake me. I can never be snatched out of the Father's hands. I belong to him," then we operate from a place of wanting to please him and steward the life that he's given us. It's a stewardship mindset rather than a self help mindset. It's an acknowledgement: my life and breath and all that I have comes from the hand of a sovereign and good God. He ordained my life and the circumstances and my gifts and abilities, as well as my shortcomings and the hard things in my community or my setting for his good purposes. And so I can wake up with confidence every day that God is God and he's going to accomplish what he wills in my life. And when we move from that perspective rather than an"I can do it myself" perspective, we have nothing but hope, we have nothing but encouragement and power because we know that God is in charge and his will cannot be thwarted, and he's pleased with us because when he looks at us, he sees his Son and his Son's righteousness. And so it's an incredibly freeing shift in the way that we think. And so really just to get back to your question, how do we draw that line? I think it depends on who we trust. Do we trust ourselves or do we trust the Lord?
Amy Mantravadi:Yeah. One of the pastors at my church is very fond of putting the sort of secular gospel in terms of the phrase,"Do more, try harder," which is really the opposite of the gospel. And yet I think in our culture with the sort of self-reliance, rugged individualism, and in some ways it comes a little bit from capitalism, the mindset that if you just work hard enough, you can succeed in the economy or you can succeed in life. And regardless of where we are on the political spectrum, I think we all to a certain extent buy into the idea of meritocracy."We have it within ourselves. We just need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps." And on the one hand I can say, I don't have nearly enough faith to believe in myself. I know myself too well to believe in myself. And yet again, there are probably a hundred times a day where without even thinking about it, I've falled into that"Do more, try harder" mindset. I have a almost one-year-old son, and during the day I'm saying,"Okay, did I do this with him? Did I do that? Did I get this done? Did I get that done? Did I have time to work on the podcast? Did I have..." I judge my day based on,"How much productivity did I get? How many things did I check off on the list?" And in a certain way, I have to have a list to keep myself sane and not forget everything, because my memory went completely kaput after I had a baby. But on the other hand, that is definitely falling back into that idea that believing in yourself- that if I just keep trying harder, if I just get up 30 minutes earlier and do one thing more in the day, that it'll all be okay. So I really appreciate dthat you talked a lot about that in your book, especially because your book is targeted a lot to people like me who are women with children, or just trying to juggle all the things here in American life. And I think that's something we can fall into a lot, so I really appreciate you addressing that.
Jen Oshman:Yeah, I'm preaching to myself, Amy. I have to say that to myself all the time.
Amy Mantravadi:Yeah. So another thing our culture is absolutely obsessed with is the notion of choice and the belief that more choices equals greater freedom. To a certain extent, that's true, but you also point out that we can end up becoming a slave to our own choices, unable to decide, because we think everything hinges on our own autonomy. How should Christians think about our choices differently than the population in general? This is something you address in your book, but maybe you could just give us a little preview or a little snippet now.
Jen Oshman:Sure. Yeah. I think in the book I share how after living overseas for about 15 years and coming back and trying to do the grocery shopping, it was just absolutely overwhelming. We've lived back in the U.S. For five years now, and I still find it almost debilitating to go into the grocery store because there are so many choices. It's like analysis paralysis. There's too many things to think about. And we do get into that mindset as Americans."Well, as long as I curate the best education, the best friends group, the best wardrobe, the best weekend plans and retirement plans and vacation plans and do just the right thing, and of course curate it for online consumption in social media, I can create my best life now!" And that's just not true. We can operate that way for so long, but inevitably will run up against something, and we'll be reminded that in fact, we are finite and frail and fallen human beings and we need the Lord and we need his help. And so, again, not to be a broken record, but I hope that that is a freeing message: that you are not the sum of your choices, your good ones or your bad ones. There's nothing that you or I can do to make God love us more or make God love us less, and he is indeed sovereign, and he does look upon you and me with love and grace if we are in Christ Jesus, and he wants to help us and to fill us and to move us through our days according to his will. And so my desire is that Christians would look at choices again with that sort of stewardship mentality like,"Lord, what would you have me do?" We tend to look at life with,"Well, what can I get away with?" And I think a better question is,"Well, how should I honor the Lord? What has he appointed for this moment? What would be by him and for him and through him, into him in this moment?" And then there's freedom in that because I realize I'm not the sum of my choices. If I really screw this up, it's going to be okay because Jesus has redeemed me and he's not letting go of me and he will help me, whatever comes. So let's not be overwhelmed by our choices and feel like,"It is all on me," because that's just not true. Let's walk in freedom that our God is good and he is ready to help us.
Amy Mantravadi:You know, so much of what you're saying reminds me of the first question and answer in the Heidelberg Catechism, which asks,"Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death? A. That I am not my own, but belong body and soul...to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ." And I've so often observed that if you're not in Christ or if you think you are and you're not, or if you're completely secular, that's not comforting at all to think that you belong to Christ: that you're not completely in control of everything, but the Bible is pretty clear that all of us are being influenced and controlled by something. Paul says we're either slaves to sin or we're slaves to righteousness, and the Bible says that true freedom is to serve Jesus Christ rather than serving yourself or the devil or whatever you're worshiping. So I think that sometimes we've raised freedom up to be the most valuable virtue in our society, but freedom is only as valuable as what you use it for, and what kind of freedom are we talking about? We just like the word freedom so much that we don't think too much about,"What does that actually mean?" and the fact that none of us are really free. And sometimes all of a sudden, even though we have the best technology and medicine and everything that we've ever had in human history, there can be a virus that hits us that completely throws everything out of whack, and suddenly none of us are in control anymore. And so again, our current situation is a reminder to us of what you're talking about, and so I really appreciate that. Circling back to some things we talked about, you have a quote in your book,"We tend to believe that our worth is equal to what we can produce and consume. We look to ourselves, To the products we choose and buy, to the methods we choose to live by, to the things we can produce, and to the lifestyle choices we make for our value and identity." This tendency of our society to value people in terms of production and define them in terms of consumption has led to all sorts of negative consequences, not the least of which is the dehumanization of anyone who's not seen to"contribute anything to society." And unfortunately the same tendency is also prevalent within the Church, if in slightly different ways. How does our mindset of production and consumption specifically affect the way we think about success in Christian ministry or in the Christian life?
Jen Oshman:Yeah, you know, this issue is like insidious and it's absolutely evil. I believe it's what drives the abortion industry. It's what drives physician assisted suicide. It's what's driving so much depression and despair. It's just this idea that if you can't contribute to society, then your life doesn't have meaning. If you can't do something useful, if you are less than able, somehow then life is less than worthy, and it's so grievous, and it's so contrary to our God who says that when we are weak, he is strong. So really it's- as I said, it's just pervasive. And we do see it in the Christian life and in the Christian Church as well, and it grieves me and I see it in my own heart. I am not pointing fingers as much as I am just acknowledging this in myself- is that we want to see,"What can I get done today? What can I produce? How many followers can I have? How many listeners can I have? How many books can I sell? How many people will come to my church? If I'm a missionary, how many people will get converted? How many times am I sharing the gospel?" We tend to be visually oriented, you know,"What can I see? And then what can I count?" We want to measure the things that we see. And so I do think it's a huge issue inside our churches and inside our own hearts. What we determine to be good and faithful ministry, we measure with our finite limited human minds, but that is not the mind of God. The Lord does not deem success with big numbers. I don't mean to paint such a broad brush stroke as to say there aren't some useful things about that. There are. With God's help and the Holy Spirit's leading it's okay and good and helpful sometimes to look at those measurements. I don't mean to say they're all awful, but if you just look at the life of Christ and who he drew near to, it was the sick and the outcast and the poor and the lowly. This is who Jesus drew near to. This is who he had compassion on. This is who he came to save, and so if we wouldn't call that fruitful ministry, how dare we deem what we're doing now as fruitful. So I think there's this principle that I have that has been really helpful, whether on the mission field or whether here in the U.S. as a church planter, or as now an author, and it's that God calls me to be faithful. He's asked a certain task of me. He's placed something in my life and asked me to do it. So my job is to be faithful, but his role is to produce the fruit. I cannot produce fruit. It's God who grows the fruit is what Paul says, and so that fruit is not really my business. You know, the numbers aren't really my business. My business is being faithful and obedient to my Lord and honoring him, but what he wants to do with my faithfulness is up to him. And it might be to have a teeny church or to sell no books or to be rejected and persecuted. That might be his will, and that's the fruit that he's growing, and that's a blessing, and we ought to praise him and thank him for that as well. So my encouragement to people, especially if they feel paralyzed, like,"What should I do? What if nobody listens, or what should I do if nobody reads?" Well, that's okay. That's not our business. That's God's business. Go ahead and obey him and let him determine what the outcome will be.
Amy Mantravadi:And that's such a temptation as a writer, or a pastor, or a missionary to think that you have to protect your platform, I guess you could say."Because no one listened to me if I don't have this institution backing me, or if I don't have enough followers on Twitter or enough..." And we think,"Well, it's good for people to hear what I have to say, so I have to keep promoting it, perpetuating that in some way." And sometimes we need to stop and ask,"Are we just telling people what they want to hear? Are we telling them what God really needs them to hear?" Because if you look in the Bible at the prophets, a lot of times when they told people what God wanted them to hear, they didn't get a lot of fans. And you can look at Jesus and say, he actually did have a lot of people who came to listen to him. He was somewhat of a celebrity in his own day, but when push came to shove, a lot of those people rejected him and he was willing to give up the things of this world to save us, and as a result of that, God brought about this blessing where he said, the Father is going to bring everyone to me that the Father has for me. And you definitely see that it's God who's bringing the fruit. And sometimes we're not going to see it in our lifetime. You think about all those Old Testament patriarchs who had to see the promises from afar, and they were faithful for many years and never saw the Christ come, but God does keep his promises. So it's useful to look at numbers and pay attention to them, because sometimes that can point to something that is problematic. But I do think it's a problem that most of the time, if you ask people,"Name some really successful pastors," they're probably going to all name people with either huge churches, or a lot of published books and sold books, or who appear at a lot of conferences, and some of those pastors certainly have been very successful for the Lord and being very faithful to him, but how many people would say,"Well, my pastor of this church with 50 people is the person who is very successful"? No, we don't think about it that way. So I definitely think you make a good point there, and certainly as you say, the most nefarious way we see it is in just completely devaluing certain human lives. So that's the worst thing that comes about as a result of it, but in a lot of small ways, I think we buy into some of that reasoning as well. You have a quote in your book originally from Andrew Delbanco that,"Pride is the enemy of hope." I thought that was an interesting way of putting things. Can you unpack it?
Jen Oshman:Yeah. I love that quote too, which is definitely why I borrowed it to stick in my book."Pride is the enemy of hope." So when we are prideful, when we think,"I can do it myself," when we have total self-confidence and we count on ourselves- at the end of the day, I think when we're totally honest, we know we are limited. You know, that's sort of what burnout is: we know we actually don't have what it takes to get the job done. We know ourselves better than anybody else. We know our secrets and our sin and our shortcomings better than anybody else, and we know how tired we get and we know how incapable we are. So when we keep shoving that truth away and say,"No, no, no, I can do it. I can do it. I can do it," discouragement rises. But when we just look in the mirror and go,"You know what, it's totally true. I can't do it," that's when hope comes rushing in. It's just that surrender. It's that on the floor moment that I talk about in the book. It's hitting rock bottom. You know, we all have to hit rock bottom once, especially to be saved, but then over and over a hundred times a day, when we say,"I've fallen again, Lord, I blew it again. These people in my life, this project, whatever you've given me, I've blown it again. I can't do it myself. Please help me." There's nothing more hopeful in this life than calling on the Lord and saying,"Please help me," and my hope is that this book will help people do that- is just cry out,"I can't do it. Please help me." That's so hopeful.
Amy Mantravadi:It reminds me of the story of Martin Luther and how he for many years tried so hard to become righteous through self-effort and constantly confessing his sins to the point that person he was confessing to is like,"You really need to be a little easier on yourself. This is getting insane." You know, and they were monks, so if they thought that he was being too hard on himself, he was being really hard. And he said- I can't give you an exact quote, but in his writing he said he got to the point where he was just in complete despair, and that was when God was able to reach him: when his heart was open to the gospel that it wasn't through self-effort. And that was when he surrendered that pride of trying to earn his salvation, essentially, so he was able to actually experience the freedom of salvation and the hope that that brought him. And he was in very deep depression and was relieved from a lot of that as a result. So I think that's just a good way to sum up your book, and I would very much encourage people to read your book Enough about Me and to listen to your podcasts, but just here at the end, I'm wondering- you're working on a new book and I think you were trying to just complete the manuscript before we recorded it. So could you give just a little sneak peek of what that will be about?
Jen Oshman:Yeah, sure. I just turned in the manuscript on Monday also. This book will be published by Crossway again, and it will come out...
Amy Mantravadi:Okay. I'm giving you a round of applause for completing your manuscript. That's great. I commiserate with you on the hard work and congratulate you on a job well done.
Jen Oshman:Thank you so much. I know you know, like writing and podcasting, these things are done from the isolation of our own homes and it's fun sometimes to see like-minded friends who are co-laboring with you from afar and cheer each other on, so thank you. That's really sweet of you. But yeah, actually this second book sort of came out of the first book. So in the first book I critique the age of self and just really wanting to draw the reader to remember who God is and remember who they belong to, and the second book I do that as well, but I actually- so if you ever heard my podcast, you know that I do love to do sort of cultural critique. I love the news. I love the headlines. I want to know what's going on, and then I want to view them through the lens of scripture. And so with the second book I do that. It's called So Much More, and I actually look at what it's sort of been like to be a girl and a woman since the sexual revolution, and I try to uncover or expose five idols of our age and show the reader the rottenness that is underneath the sort of glittery life promising facade, and just showing how these idols have over promised but under-delivered, and we were made for so much more and all that we have in Christ. What he has for us- all that he has is ours, how he's created us and made us and the victory that he has for us. So my hope is to just expose these idols and then exalt Jesus and woo the reader to him rather than to the false gods of our age.
Amy Mantravadi:Well, thanks for that little preview, and that's something to look forward to maybe coming out later this year, perhaps, sometime?
Jen Oshman:Early 2022. Yeah, it'll be a year from now.
Amy Mantravadi:Hey, we might even be like somewhat past the pandemic by then. You never know.
Jen Oshman:Oh, L ord willing!
Amy Mantravadi:It'd be wonderful. Then you could have- I don't know, people might have actual book tours or book release parties again. I don't know. It could be great. Well, thank you Jen so much for talking to me today and I really enjoyed our conversation.
Jen Oshman:Thank you so much, Amy too. It's been really sweet for me as well.
Jon Guerra:[MUSIC PLAYS] I need to know there is justice, that it will roll in abundance, and that you're building a city where we arrive as immigrants, and you call us citizens, and you welcome as children home.[MUSIC STOPS]
Amy Mantravadi:It was an honor to interview Jen about her book Enough about Me: Finding Lasting Joy in the Age of Self, which is published by Crossway. As always, the music today is the song"Citizens" by John Guerra, who graciously allows it to be used for this podcast. Wherever you are, I hope that you experience a wonderful week in which you grow in the knowledge of our Lord and live for his glory. As Paul concluded in his letter to the Galatians,"The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters." Amen. Come Lord Jesus. Have a great week.
Jon Guerra:[MUSIC PLAYS] Is there a way to live always living in enemy hallways? Don't know my foes from my friends and don't know my friends anymore. How through prizes handcuffs can come in all sizes, love hasn't million disguises, but winning is simply not one[MUSIC STOPS]