The Shaping of a Worldview: an interview with David Takle Artwork

Voices from the Desert

In the early days of Christianity, men and women fled to the desert and became the wisest sages of their era. Voices from the Desert explores how the wisdom of Ancient Christianity applies to our modern world. Where do the streams of historic Christianity intersect with contemporary Christianity? And how do we come to know God deep in our heart? Join Joshua Hoffert and Murray Dueck for a deep dive into the mystics, union with God, patristic theology and what it all means in our modern world.

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Voices from the Desert

The Shaping of a Worldview: an interview with David Takle

February 17, 2026 • Joshua Hoffert and Murray Dueck

0:00 | 1:38:00

Most Christian worldview discussions focus on doctrine or biblical theology. Rarely do they address the foundational assumptions shaping how we see the world. As has been said, "The problem with having a worldview is having a worldview." Voices from the Desert welcomes David Takle from Kingdom Formation to talk about how our worldviews are shaped. David breaks down how the west's focus on belief and doctrine over belonging and relational intimacy has led to a watered-down gospel, producing Christians who are unaware of their true identity and purpose. Tune in to join the discussion!

For more about Voices from the Desert, visit out Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/VoicesfromtheDesert

For more about David Takle and Kingdom Formation, visit: https://kingdomformation.org/

Joshua Hoffert (00:00.16)
I'll introduce you and Kingdom Formation is the is the ministry, right? Yeah. Okay. Prolific author, and amazing husband and father. And David, it's hard to read your writing, you know. I remember a friend of mine doing that when he introduced

David Takle (00:11.254)
Yes.

Joshua Hoffert (00:30.361)
I used to, do know who John Paul Jackson is?

David Takle (00:30.368)
Cough

David Takle (00:33.847)
Not just just by name

Joshua Hoffert (00:34.496)
streams, ministries.

Okay, I used to work for his ministry years past. And he we did a conference out this way with him and RT Kendall. They're both good friends. john Paul or RT Kendall was introducing john Paul and he's quite a tease. RT Kendall is and he was up there.

singing these glowing praises of John Paul about how amazing he was and his years in ministry and he's a prophet of the Lord and you know, he's been used in all these mighty ways and then and then he holds up his paper, adjust his glasses and goes, John Paul, it's so hard to read your writing, you know, it's like, you know, it's like 500 people there were killing themselves. It was hilarious. So I won't do that to you. Okay, okay. Here we go.

David Takle (01:28.897)
Good, good.

Joshua Hoffert (01:33.39)
321. Welcome everybody to another episode of Voices from the Desert. Desert. Desert. And this is the part where you'd hear Murray, my good friend, do a coyote howl and then I would maybe yip in response and

Uh, but Murray's working on the farm, you know, he's got the, the winter season is upon him. All the, everything gets frozen. I think at one point last year or a year before he slipped on some ice and dropped his laptop into the feeding, the water bin for the horses. So he's busy at work taking care of the recovery animals. And so it's just me here today with a man that's becoming a good friend. And so we've, we've got a good.

a good day planned for all of you listeners. And we've rolled the we've rolled the calendar over to 2026. I think this will be the first episode that we publish in 2026, actually. And last episode we published was an interview with a good friend of mine, who was probably the unlikeliest man to become a pastor, talk about someone who went from a fear bonded to a love bonded relationship with God.

and is doing an amazing work. You can go check out that interview with a good friend of mine, Justin Menzies. And I asked him at one point, what, what do you say to some of these, the online, the online culture of pastoral ministry of having the, you know, the three points sermon and your, your all your, all your

perfectly articulated talking points. And he said to just just preach Christ and live him. That's the whole point. And I really appreciated the candor and the simplicity that Justin brought. So go listen to that. But today, we have a returning guest on the podcast, we interviewed this man a year ago, and he talked about his story of the father and counting or encountering him out of a

Joshua Hoffert (03:47.286)
If I remember right, cessationist, heavily conservative environment to a place of manifestation of the spirit. And, and now he's written multiple books on spiritual formation and reframing worldviews. And so I'm so pleased to welcome David Tackle onto the podcast. David Tackle. He's, he was just telling me he, he

he was a bone almost a bona fide Californian for a little while, at least, you know, I don't know if you can ever get the Minnesota out of the Minnesotan. But, you know, he did spend some time in Pasadena. And so that wasn't too far from my old stomping grounds, you know, maybe a couple hours south, but like, like I discovered moving from the west coast of Canada to the east coast of Canada, that the

The body, once it's acclimatized to a warmer climate, it kind of appreciates that warmer climate for the rest of time. so, David lives in, North Carolina, Greensboro, North Carolina, runs a ministry called kingdom formation. Yeah. They, they are helping people grow, you know, one, one moment with the father at a time. And,

He wrote the most recent book he wrote was a book called Copernicus 2.0. We talked a little bit about that last time we were together. And I'll put a link to the ministry and to resources where you can find where you can find David's resources at the podcast description. And, and he's presently revisiting that book, as he was saying, but, but we're here. I've got him here today to talk about worldviews.

And so I'm so pleased to welcome you onto the podcast, Voices from the Desert. You're truly one who, I remember your story, you went through the desert and the Lord reshaped and reformed everything in your life. And so here you are today.

David Takle (05:40.375)
and

David Takle (05:51.415)
It's been a great journey. Thank you, Josh, for having me on. This is a privilege.

Joshua Hoffert (05:56.265)
Absolutely. Absolutely. So you the topic of worldview came into my radar as pertains to you, because my dad is the one who introduced us. You guys had met at a heart sync conference, I think is where the connecting point happened. And so my wife, my wife is a heart sync facilitator. She's been involved in heart sync.

which is a great ministry as it pertains to reintegration, actually talking of one of the conversations we'll talk about regeneration and the process of that and moving people into a family bonded relationship with God. Like, you know, HeartSync does a fantastic job of doing that. So my wife's been working within the context of HeartSync for it's been almost 10 years now. I think it was 2018 when she first took training.

with Father Andrew, Bishop Andrew, we had Father Andrew on Father Andrew and David are good friends. And so there's all kinds of connecting points. And I love the integration on a personal level of the charismatic expression of Christianity was it pertains to the movement of the spirit, the the the robust approach of inner healing that a ministry like heart sync brings and

that the concepts that David brings on spiritual formation and practices, I think those things should actually be married a lot more than they are. Prophetic ministry, spiritual gifts, the movement of the spirit, those kinds of things, with a view of recovering the wholeness of self and integrating identity into the Father, into the Godhead. And how do we practice all of that and live that out daily?

as a rhythm of life. I think those things are are too often disconnected. And frankly, you know, we're presently looking at the fallout of one of those situations, not that we want to belabor the point on what's happening with Sean Bowles and Bethel and the YouTube, you know, the YouTube craze of exposure. discernment ministries. I'm not I don't want to comment on that. I'm just saying that we can look out at the landscape of what's happened in the last 10 years and

David Takle (08:14.998)
Okay.

Joshua Hoffert (08:19.801)
ministry, whether it's the Hillsong guys, or the the crazy charismatic guys, I think a fair bit of inner healing and spiritual formation work would be go a long way to curb some of those. Some of those things, at the very least, to help us be aware when people are taking advantage of us, you know, something feels off here. And then that that all bleeds into worldviews of how do you see

the kingdom of God, the world that you embody. And I remember reading NT Wright at one point, he said, the problem with the worldview is having a worldview. said something like that. And, and so I know that you had you were you just ran, you had a some sessions that you did with a group of people on worldviews. And my dad was telling me about that. He did that late last year.

David Takle (09:06.391)
Hmm.

Joshua Hoffert (09:18.553)
And, you know, I, I've said to my wife and to others before, I think that present day, Josh, I just turned 45. So present day, Josh would have really offended 25 year old Josh, because of because my worldview has has shifted. And not because I made a conscious effort to shift my worldview, but I think the father has made a conscious effort to help me shift my

David Takle (09:44.567)
Ha

Joshua Hoffert (09:45.825)
Right. Cause again, it's like the work of shifting a worldview is it's like, how do you do it? But that's what we're here to talk about. So, David, tell us about worldviews.

David Takle (09:56.065)
Well yeah, in fact the reason I have shifted away from, for years my focus was very specifically on spiritual formation. How does that happen? Why do we need it? How does it fit into the gospel? All of that. Very specialized in that area. And I think, and I'm a fan of specialization. I think we make better progress that way.

Joshua Hoffert (10:09.975)
Mm-hmm.

David Takle (10:26.039)
as long as we talk to the other specialists. But I kept noticing problems that were bigger, and that's why I've widened my area of study to include worldview. I think the Western church has a worldview problem.

Joshua Hoffert (10:29.28)
Yeah.

David Takle (10:52.887)
And that's exactly why inner healing and spiritual formation were missing for so many generations. Okay? If they had had a working worldview that matched up with the New Testament, inner healing and spiritual formation would have been well known and taught. And so,

Joshua Hoffert (11:01.751)
Yeah, that's a good point.

David Takle (11:23.295)
just the fact that they were absent tells me something's wrong with the Western worldview. And as I looked at it, it impacted every aspect of our practical theology. How do we understand Christian identity? If you're stuck with your old nature until you die, that's a lot different than having be given a new nature.

that the implications for how you can live the Christian life are completely different. How do you understand the gospel? Is it just about going to heaven when you die? Or is the gospel of the first century a whole lot bigger than that? And that again has implications for what's possible or what's normal, what should be normal in the Christian life. Today,

You know, it's very common for people to believe you can be a Christian forever without ever becoming a disciple. Well, that's unheard of in the New Testament. Well, where did that come from? And how does, it comes from a shifting worldview. And so yeah, I'm very interested in how worldviews come about. How can we shift?

the Western Christian worldview to be more accurate and in line with the New Testament. And see, the reason why it's so hard to do that, NT Wright points this out, that a worldview is something you look through, it's not something you look at. And so, if you're looking through your worldview, you see evidence of it in the Bible when you read it.

Joshua Hoffert (13:05.943)
Right.

David Takle (13:16.777)
It's how you read the Bible. And so it keeps reinforcing your worldview, even though it's not exactly what the apostles had in mind. And as we redefine terms like salvation and sanctification and repentance and gospel and grace, as all those words got redefined over the centuries until they lost most of the meaning that they carried in the first century.

Joshua Hoffert (13:18.475)
Right.

Joshua Hoffert (13:22.379)
Right.

David Takle (13:45.751)
And as a result, when we read the scripture through those distorted definitions, we get a very weak worldview. And then we wonder why the church is so ineffective and why it's lost all of its influence in our culture. Well, it's because the worldview shifted.

Joshua Hoffert (13:56.929)
Mm-hmm.

Joshua Hoffert (14:10.445)
there's one of the you know, I remember reading john 1415 and 16 and and the topic of belief as I was reading through that right and I was thinking about this that in a contemporary way a belief is described I think as a set of true facts that you have a strong conviction towards right

David Takle (14:15.264)
the

David Takle (14:36.022)
Yes.

Joshua Hoffert (14:38.241)
And I started to realize that I don't think the Bible means that when it says belief that I can have, you know, and so the way, you know, our, our statement of faith on most websites, right. That's actually, I've kind of staunchly refused to put one on. I'm pretty firmly evangelical, you know, quote unquote in the sense of, yeah, but I'm like, I don't want to put a statement of faith because then it implies that I'm okay because I have 12 points of doctrine that you agree with.

David Takle (14:57.089)
Well, sure.

Joshua Hoffert (15:06.431)
And I don't think that's what the Bible means that we're in. Actually, I'll say this. When I was reading, I got into this, this Catholic guy, an old priest named Eve's Congar. And, you know, I just, for one, I just thought that was such a cool name that you got to read what he has to say. But he was one of the guys that was working towards healing the East West divide between the Orthodox and the Catholic Church.

David Takle (15:35.393)
Wow, big job.

Joshua Hoffert (15:36.301)
And he he and yes, he endeavored towards that. And so and he passed away, I think, in the mid to late 50s, something like that 1954 or something like that, I think. And it came on my radar because he wrote about the temple and the tabernacle. I thought it was really interesting. But I was reading one of his breakdowns of he was he was investigating what happened and why the East West split happened. And because most people will point to

the kind of the issue of the kind of a kind of iconoclasm or iconoclists. Am I saying that right? You know, the the argument over icons basically, between the Orthodox and the Catholic guys, and then the separating of Constantinople and, and Rome and the moving of the seat of power. But the but most of a point to 1066 when the church officially divided and the schism happens, right. And he goes, and he goes, but the problem existed way

David Takle (16:13.815)
Sure, sure.

Joshua Hoffert (16:34.349)
way longer before that. And he said that the difference between the East and the West, and I thought this is what was fascinating. So I want to hear your your thoughts, because I think this goes right in what we're saying. The difference between the East and the West is that the West primarily and he's talking West in terms of Catholic Church in the in, you know, between 700 and 1100 AD, the West primarily thought of salvation and Christianity as a matter of belief.

David Takle (16:37.793)
Yeah, it did.

Joshua Hoffert (17:04.415)
and doctrine, and the East generally thought of Christianity as a matter of belonging to a community. And the divide was between those two concepts. And that was what separated the church. And then further from that, the difference between the Latin language and the Greek language, right, and that's what that's what codified it was the separation. And that is and the hard part about that, as you're saying is the

David Takle (17:23.489)
That's,

Yes.

Joshua Hoffert (17:33.685)
The very language that they spoke, if you think about it, created a worldview, right? Or at least added to it, made it difficult to depart from it. So you say one thing, I say another thing, and we're, talking over each other. say, belief, the scriptures say belief. They don't mean the same thing. Right.

David Takle (17:39.222)
Yes.

Yes. Yes.

David Takle (17:50.56)
Exactly.

Yeah, very much. think we underestimate the power of a particular language to shape culture and worldview. They're closely interrelated. You know, in English, we have 300 words for money.

Joshua Hoffert (18:09.921)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

David Takle (18:10.613)
We do. It's like portfolio, investment, savings, IRA. We've got hundreds of words that the financial industry uses. And we've got like, what, eight words for community. We have a hard time talking about community and relationships because we believe in individualism.

Joshua Hoffert (18:15.136)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (18:19.788)
Moo-la.

Yeah.

Yeah.

David Takle (18:38.869)
So we really haven't developed a vocabulary to talk about community. But money's important, it's our God. Well, the same thing happens with Latin and Greek. Lawyers love it because of its precision and its finite divide. mean, whereas Greek was the language of the New Testament.

Joshua Hoffert (18:57.953)
Right.

David Takle (19:08.151)
And so as soon as you translate to another language, you have problems. Try translating the word chesed or hesed from Hebrew. It does not translate to any language.

Joshua Hoffert (19:18.487)
Right.

Joshua Hoffert (19:22.029)
you've got to use like 60 like what the the the tender mercy loving kindness you know you've got to use so many different words right you can't it's often just love or mercy but it means so much more yeah

David Takle (19:24.618)
Exactly.

David Takle (19:29.239)
Exactly. Yes.

Yeah, because the Hebrew, because then the reason is their worldview. The Jews had the one God instead of many gods. They had, and this God was loving. He wasn't capricious like all the other gods. And they were his people. so they had God, the Chesed,

Joshua Hoffert (19:52.62)
Right.

David Takle (20:02.323)
or chesed, it's two different forms of the same word, chesed captured both who God was and what he did. So that's why prayers of both thanksgiving, which about what he does, and prayers of, psalms of praise, are about who he is. They both use chesed all the time.

Joshua Hoffert (20:12.683)
Hmm, right.

David Takle (20:28.139)
They bring these things together and they have a very unique God in the world. Well, you try to translate that to a language of druids, you know, there's no place for that idea. They don't have a word like that. So again, this is, know, as soon as you divorce, that's why it's valuable to listen to people who know some Greek.

Joshua Hoffert (20:39.831)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (20:43.594)
Right. Yeah.

David Takle (20:57.847)
It's not like you can't understand the Bible without it, but they can help us redefine these terms that have been lost in English. Another example, we don't have time to get into it, but if you read the word mercy in the New Testament, Paul talks about, due to his incredible, unbelievable mercy, he saved us. Mercy is the Greek word, eleos, which is,

Joshua Hoffert (20:58.327)
Right.

David Takle (21:26.643)
In the Septuagint, they used Elias for Chesed.

Joshua Hoffert (21:32.225)
Right.

David Takle (21:34.123)
So when Paul says, God's amazing, unbelievable goodness toward us, His mercy, Paul's thinking chesed. But he can't write it because he's, you see the problem? So, but the word mercy doesn't mean anything like, by the time you get from Hebrew to Greek to English,

Joshua Hoffert (21:46.911)
Right. Right.

Yeah. He's thinking. Yeah.

David Takle (22:04.789)
we have the word mercy, which doesn't mean anything like chesed.

Joshua Hoffert (22:08.183)
Yeah.

Right.

David Takle (22:12.727)
So again, this makes it harder for us to develop a worldview that matches the disciples who were all Jewish in the first century.

Joshua Hoffert (22:25.835)
Yeah. Yeah, that's the same problem. I remember seeing this exists with the word propitiation used. Right? Where the word propitiation. can't remember the Greek word. Yeah. Yeah. Which means the it's, literally a transliteration of the mercy seat from the from the Ark of the Covenant. And so we've taken it as

David Takle (22:36.63)
absolutely. Yep.

Hilisterion or something like that.

David Takle (22:48.566)
Yes.

Joshua Hoffert (22:54.253)
You know, in the, in the Greek, it's taken as an, action that God does or man does on behalf of connecting with God, but it's an actual physical thing that was done in the midst of the people to symbolize God's presence dwelling with them. It's like, it's totally different, right? The concept is missed.

David Takle (23:09.463)
And add to that, we translate the word atonement in most of our, but even the word atonement, if you follow the etymology of that, it has changed since the days of Tyndale to present day. Tyndale actually coined the term atonement because atonement was reconciliation.

Joshua Hoffert (23:16.885)
Yes, yes, that's right.

Joshua Hoffert (23:37.357)
I've never at one minute. I did not know that that's fascinating. Okay. I love atonement doesn't mean that at all in my mind

David Takle (23:40.223)
Yes, because it was about

because it's about reconciliation. Atonement is reconciliation and restoration. Well, by the time you end up with atonement, that means someone has to atone for it. Now you're talking payment, which wasn't in the word atonement at all. I mean, that's a whole nother story. But you mentioned even the problem with the word faith.

Joshua Hoffert (23:47.981)
Wow.

Alright, okay.

Joshua Hoffert (24:00.588)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (24:06.956)
Yeah.

David Takle (24:13.719)
I like this analogy that you have a friend who has a condo at the beach on the Gulf Coast. I mean, this is you can't get a better friend, OK? And he says you can come use this condo whenever you want. That's hope. Faith is packing the car and driving to the coast.

Joshua Hoffert (24:32.354)
Right.

Right. Yeah.

David Takle (24:37.183)
Okay, faith is active. Faith is repentance and movement and trusting God with your life. It's not an idea. It's not agreement with a doctrine. Faith is life-changing.

Joshua Hoffert (24:43.394)
Right.

Right.

Joshua Hoffert (24:50.871)
Right.

Joshua Hoffert (24:54.401)
Right.

David Takle (24:57.271)
So

Joshua Hoffert (24:57.666)
Yeah, that that makes sense. I've got to I just looked up this quote, talking about the the shifting away from a Judean worldview. And I want to dive into that topic of what, what's an what's an actual biblical worldview? And because I think a lot of people hear that today, and they think Calvinistic worldview, right? reformed worldview. That's how we're supposed to read the Bible through that through the lens of Luther and Calvin, but

David Takle (25:14.603)
Yeah, yeah.

David Takle (25:19.319)
.

Joshua Hoffert (25:27.245)
you know, we peel the layer even back, back even further. And so there's two things I want to say. One is, and we could talk about this later, maybe is Genesis one is worldview shaping beyond anything we've like, like, because you had talked about the, the, the nature of gods in the old, you know, little G gods in the Old Testament, and Genesis one actually defines a worldview that's different than any other.

religion that existed at their worldview or even calling it a religion is very Western even, right? It's like, anyway, but here's a here's a quote. I mentioned to this to you yesterday when we were chatting, when I was studying the monks, the history of the monks in Syria, in the early church, and the changing nature of how the Christians viewed themselves. And, and you because you had just talked about the pagan

David Takle (26:02.496)
Yes.

Joshua Hoffert (26:24.514)
the pagan influence on the church. Here's the here's the quote. The primitive and I'll kind of cut a paste a little bit. And this is talking about the third, fourth and fifth century movement in Christian history. So the primitive Christians had a strong sense of themselves as a holy people existing in the flesh, but not in accordance with the flesh, living on earth.

but exhibiting a heavenly citizenship. The fact that the vast majority of Christians aimed at nothing higher than the basic moral decencies did not dent Christian self-esteem, since this could be buttressed by contemplating the vices of the pagans. But as the church expanded to incorporate whole social groups, being a Christian ceased to seem so special a claim on God's favor,

and the comforting spectacle of pagan vices became a rarer one. Inevitably, the ordinary Christian of the fourth century did not enjoy the self-confidence of his predecessor of two or three centuries earlier. To be certain of God's favor seemed now to require something beyond the observation of the ordinary layman. Asceticism had long been practiced as a way to special graces. Now, for the first time, it was widely pursued as the only way to be certain of salvation.

Joshua Hoffert (27:48.812)
The pagan influx, the incorporating whole social groups, stressed the Judean worldview. And they had, and you essentially created a system of holy men that would now answer your questions. Right. And, and we've been fighting and it seems in a way we've been fighting that ever since.

David Takle (28:02.677)
Yes. Yeah, I.

David Takle (28:08.887)
Absolutely. I think it dates back to about 400 AD. Because we often blame Constantine, but he was only around 310 AD. And what he did was legalize Christianity, but that just meant that was one more legal religion amongst many others. So it was still a very unique thing and people still guarded.

Joshua Hoffert (28:31.209)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

David Takle (28:38.485)
the church carefully, and we can talk about that in a minute. But at the end of, around 390 AD, the emperor, can't remember, Theodosius or something, he made it the state religion and started to ban all of the other religions. So now people can't go to their temple anymore.

Joshua Hoffert (28:42.327)
Yeah, absolutely. Yep.

Joshua Hoffert (28:57.793)
Right.

David Takle (29:06.753)
they have to go to the church building, which means the church, the Christians are now being overwhelmed by pagans in their church. That never happened. When Christianity was banned, the pagans didn't even know where the Christians met half the time.

Joshua Hoffert (29:18.54)
Right, Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (29:29.579)
Right. Yeah. They had to keep it private or else persecution was going to happen. Yeah.

David Takle (29:31.883)
Yeah, absolutely. Plus, I just read a wonderful book on what conversion looked like in the second century. If you wanted to be a Christian, you had to find someone who was and say, hey, I like watching what you guys do, you live differently, I know you're a Christian, I'd like to be one too.

Joshua Hoffert (29:54.743)
Right.

David Takle (30:00.043)
What they would do is take you, they would set up a meeting with you and an elder, and the elder would ask you a bunch of questions to find out whether or not you were teachable.

Joshua Hoffert (30:11.468)
Right.

David Takle (30:13.407)
I mean, if you were an idol maker and you weren't going to give that up, you're not teachable. Okay, I mean, these are the kind of questions they had. What do you do? Who do you talk to? What, you know, what are your values? If you made it past the interview, then you were a candidate and they started teaching you spiritual practices over a period of maybe a year or two years.

Joshua Hoffert (30:15.33)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

David Takle (30:42.581)
And when you finally reach the point where the elder says, I think he's ready for baptism, they would make a profession of faith. I it was an all day event. They would fast and pray for a day. At midnight, they would do a final confession and exorcism. they would baptize the person. When they pulled him out, guess they baptized him at sunrise.

when they pulled him up, you are now a new creation. Come meet your brothers and sisters. And they would talk, take them in and show them the family of God. I mean, this was conversion. Nowadays, you know, if you say this prayer, you get to go to heaven when you die. And that's it. It's like, what?

Joshua Hoffert (31:25.037)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (31:29.803)
Right, right, yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah.

David Takle (31:33.867)
But what would you do if you had a church full of pagans all of sudden, that you suddenly divided the church into priesthood and laity?

Well, that changes your worldview of the Kingdom of God.

Joshua Hoffert (31:50.274)
Yeah.

Yeah, we're in where then we have to adjust. I remember reading about the Christian expansion of the Europe a number of years ago, and coming across a passage where some of the initial priests, know, quote unquote missionaries, they didn't call them back back then. But they would, they would, essentially, the model was send the priest to walk with a local Lord of some kind, right, some feudal Lord, we're talking seven, you know, maybe

650 on as Europe started to kind of be the central place where the Christian expansion was happening. So send them to walk with a feudal Lord, a local king, magistrate, convert them. And then by Edict, the king converts the rest of the people. And so then the pagan temples would be transferred into churches. And so the life would continue essentially

David Takle (32:41.827)
wow.

Joshua Hoffert (32:52.564)
unchanged. Now you're Christian in name only because the local Lord said we're all Christian, right? And, and so then the Catholic Church imposed a land tax to support the work, which became the tie, the contemporary tithe as we think about it, right. And, and then the priests though, they started going back to the Pope and the and the, you know, the leadership of the Catholic Church.

David Takle (32:57.333)
Yes.

David Takle (33:07.799)
Right.

Joshua Hoffert (33:19.63)
And Catholic in that sense, that was the only church that existed, right? That was the church, the Catholic being the one holy church. And so they would go back and they would go, hey, you're imposing this land tax. And so all the people are bringing their money to us, the 10 % that they're owed. But we can't teach them generosity. Because they think once they've done that, they've done their due diligence.

David Takle (33:49.476)
of course. my gosh.

Joshua Hoffert (33:49.505)
because they had a pagan worldview, right? They placated the God, right? And so they were going, can you, can we stop doing that so that we can help them understand what spiritual life actually looks like? And, you know, naturally that fell on deaf ears because they had an enterprise to run, right? And, and so the pagan influx in, in that sense too, created a system where people could be Christian in name only because someone by local edict said you were.

David Takle (34:05.377)
Right?

Wow.

Joshua Hoffert (34:19.752)
And, and it, it worked functionally for the expansion of Christianity. And for sure you had some genuine people who encountered the Lord and, and, and their lives were transformed, right? But the vast majority were, were funk. And so that's where you get, well, okay. Now you guys celebrate the, the, winter solstice on December 21st. Well, cause you know, the largely the

David Takle (34:23.031)
Alright.

Joshua Hoffert (34:47.201)
the birth dates of Christ and the epiphany and all that kind of stuff has been around since the first century. But so they would just go, well, that you're not celebrating that anymore. Now you're celebrating it this way. Right. So they they co-opt, you know, in a way they didn't they didn't sometimes the argument is this is beside the point, but sometimes argument is, look, that the Christians just took all the pagan holidays and Christianize them. Well, no, they already had a Christian calendar.

David Takle (34:49.365)
Okay.

Joshua Hoffert (35:15.969)
They just went to the pagan and said, you're already doing this. You might as well do it now this way. Right. Cause but so they were, they were in name only they were Christian. And so you, you can track the problems that we have today. You could, you could look at it and you can go, yeah, that makes sense. Why we got there today. Right.

David Takle (35:32.759)
Well, and the gospel that we preach today makes it easy to be a Christian in name only.

Joshua Hoffert (35:37.238)
Yeah, that's true. That's so true. man. So so looking at if we look at Genesis one, and I'll just I'll just I'll just say this because I want to I want you to go through what a biblical worldview actually looks like. And I want to frame it this way. And I think because I think it would help people listening that when when Moses writes, you know, if it's Moses, let's say it's Moses Genesis one, in the beginning,

David Takle (35:39.681)
So, yeah. Yeah.

David Takle (35:58.103)
you

Joshua Hoffert (36:07.041)
God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and without void, spirit hovered over the face of the deep and he brought, you know, okay, let there be light. Right? We see this kind of ordered form of, of creation standing opposed to almost every other myth that existed in the day of angry gods clashing and the universe being created as a result of that. Right?

David Takle (36:32.449)
Right.

Joshua Hoffert (36:33.873)
And, and then gods that were disinterested sending lesser gods to terrorize what was created and, and form it into whatever they're, you know, what are their whims deemed fit, right? That's kind of the overall mythos that Christianity was growing up alongside of, right? Or Jew or Judy, you know, Israel, Judaism was growing up alongside of so, so Moses goes, actually, God, who was loving

brought order out of the chaos, not chaos out of himself, right? So he's, he's showing them a much different way of thinking and perceiving the world than they would have seen in especially in relation to the Egyptians. And the chaos of all of their, the heavenly beings they worshiped, you know, being the stars and all that kind of stuff. And so that's the the intro level of

How Judaism separated itself from the pagan myths of the day was God cared and loved and gave and put himself in creation versus angry gods that clashed and we were the consequential result. Right. And so that sets the stage for something far different. And, you know, we've kind of adopted a hodgepodge. think Western worldview adopts adopts a hodgepodge of those things.

David Takle (37:41.143)
Hmm.

David Takle (37:51.388)
yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (38:00.011)
Right. And well, God is loving, but he's so angry that he had to kill everybody in order to win his people back. Right. It's like, we just get this, just kind of throw them all together and make something up out of it. So when you look at, when you look at a biblical worldview and how that developed over the old Testament and the new Testament, what would you, how would you articulate that David?

David Takle (38:23.435)
Well, first to start with the Jewish worldview, to back up, the thing that drives a full-fledged worldview is what is your story of ultimate reality?

Joshua Hoffert (38:45.461)
Right, that's good way of saying that.

David Takle (38:47.255)
It's a story. And it's a story, again, this is NT Wright. And it's a story that has particular symbols. And it answers particular questions, like who are we? Where are we? What's the problem? What's the solution? And there's also a praxis. How do we live out our worldview on a regular basis?

Joshua Hoffert (38:52.812)
Mm-hmm.

Joshua Hoffert (39:06.859)
Right.

David Takle (39:17.397)
Let's look at the Judean worldview. They look back, starting with Father Abraham, really, okay, which is long before Moses. Father Abraham, God's looking around the world, and it's not at all the world that he planned.

Joshua Hoffert (39:26.444)
Mm-hmm.

David Takle (39:40.555)
He wanted a good world. In fact, my belief at this point is God created the earth because he wanted a billion children.

Joshua Hoffert (39:48.685)
That's pretty simple. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

David Takle (39:52.275)
It's honestly, this is it. He wanted to be a father and he loves to father. He gets a kick out of it. He wants to raise children. All right. Why do you think we have families and grow up? mean, this is the image of God. So anyway, he looked around and he couldn't, you he finds Abraham and he thinks, I think I can work with this guy and we can start over. And we're going to.

Joshua Hoffert (39:59.181)
Yeah. Right.

Joshua Hoffert (40:05.325)
Yeah.

David Takle (40:21.055)
Start with Abraham, and through Abraham, we're gonna bless all the nations of the earth. It says that. So we're gonna start with Abraham. He has Isaac. He has Jacob. He has the 12 sons. And then there's the story of Egypt, all right? So you fast forward a few hundred years. God looks around, it's like, gosh, the family I wanted.

Joshua Hoffert (40:26.711)
Right, yeah.

David Takle (40:50.153)
is all enslaved in Egypt.

So he starts again. Let's pull him out of Egypt, a new beginning. This time we're gonna covenant with all of these people. So this is the great original old covenant. Moses led them out and brought them to the edge of the new land. Joshua brought them all the way in. There was the conquest.

Joshua Hoffert (41:20.247)
Right. Right.

David Takle (41:23.145)
story, and then finally you have King David and the golden era. so this is, of course eventually that went south and they went into exile and then they were brought back again. God brings them back home. So, and then there's this, prophets talk about a future time when

God's gonna put an end to this cycle of up and down all the time and bondage and repentance and renewal and someday God's gonna put an end to this cycle and the earth will be exactly the way he had in mind. But somehow Israel's gonna be involved in this process. He's gonna have a people who will bless the earth.

Joshua Hoffert (42:19.884)
Yeah.

David Takle (42:20.503)
So the big story is God wants a family. He started with Abraham, created this family, and their purpose was to bless the world. Now when Jesus comes on the scene, two things happen. One is he says, what you've been waiting for for 400 years now, the time is fulfilled.

This is it. So now we have another new beginning. This kingdom that we've been waiting for is arriving. It's here. It doesn't come the way you thought it was gonna come. It's not a political kingdom, but it's better than that. It's gonna change hearts and minds. And it's actually a new Exodus.

NT Wright would say that Exodus is the controlling symbol or motif in scripture. God is, Paul names it, he says, he has rescued you from the domain of darkness, transferred you into the kingdom of light. That's an Exodus. And so this is it. What God is doing in our era,

Joshua Hoffert (43:37.889)
Right, Yeah.

David Takle (43:48.883)
is rescuing people from darkness and bringing them into the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is no longer a geographical area. It's not even, in fact, it never was. It was the remnant within that geographical area that was the kingdom of God. The kingdom is people and God living together and being in relationship with each other.

Joshua Hoffert (43:58.935)
Right.

Joshua Hoffert (44:16.395)
Right. Right.

David Takle (44:18.173)
And so that's why Jesus could bring, we're gonna redefine the kingdom and the Gentiles can join and it will give you a new heart and a new mind and a new character. We don't teach much about regeneration today, but it was absolutely central to the gospel in the first century.

Joshua Hoffert (44:39.821)
Yeah, that's right.

David Takle (44:47.703)
If you look at the number of times Paul refers to death and resurrection and joining Christ in death and resurrection. Not that Jesus died instead of us, but he was the forerunner so that we could join him and have a new life.

Joshua Hoffert (44:55.394)
Right.

Joshua Hoffert (45:04.023)
Right, right.

David Takle (45:06.415)
This is like how the Judean worldview kind of morphed into the Christian worldview. But God is doing what he promised all these years, centuries ago, to bring about his real family and to bless the earth with it.

Joshua Hoffert (45:28.683)
It's it's I'm, you know, I was just thinking about the what you said, how you defined a worldview as the story that you said something like this, the story you tell

David Takle (45:41.303)
of ultimate reality.

Joshua Hoffert (45:44.595)
about the ultimate reality. What's gone wrong and how we come back from that? Yeah, yeah. And I just had a mini epiphany. When Moses writes Genesis one, he's writing it from the perspective of the temple, or the tabernacle.

David Takle (45:49.289)
yeah, right, right.

you

David Takle (46:09.111)
yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (46:10.253)
Because, and he uses certain visual cues in Genesis one, to call people back to the to like they would have thought of the tabernacle, right? Because he's using temple language tabernacles, three different spaces, outer court, inner court, holy of holies, right? And he's he's using or it's outer court, holy place and holy of holies. And then he goes, we got the

David Takle (46:24.641)
Yep. Yep. Yep.

Joshua Hoffert (46:33.752)
the firmament above the firmament, the firmament below, right? That's the heavens, the earth and the seas. He's separating them all out and saying, and then, and then he talks about the spirit hovering and he uses the same language as the spirit hovering over the temple. It's the same Hebrew phrase between the two. Right. So I'm, just thinking he's, he's actually telling narrative is what he's doing and tying the people back into, Hey, this tabernacle that you guys are existing.

David Takle (46:54.647)
you

Joshua Hoffert (47:03.273)
and God dwelling in our midst. Here's the whole narrative of creation seen through your present experience, right? He's forming, he's forming a worldview through then he's forming it through the stories he articulates about their history and their narrative, right? Just as Adam and Eve were taken out of the ground into the garden, then they were taken out of the garden. And then the Israelites were taking

out of the earth and put into Egypt and then out of Egypt and put into the wilderness like he's it's the same phrase ology that is repeated throughout Genesis and Exodus and and so I'm he's going, let me help you understand the narrative and who you are, what went wrong and what we're doing to fix it. Right. And it's actually the mini epiphany that I'm I'm presently thinking through as you're saying is, it's brilliant.

David Takle (47:51.403)
Right, right,

Joshua Hoffert (48:00.406)
informing a national identity. Brilliant. Right? This is the story of where you've come from. God's in your midst. And then and then that story plays itself out. And then Jesus reframes the whole thing with narrative. Right? It's fat. It really is fat. Okay, that temple stuff. Creation, right? John writing in the beginning was the word and now we are now we're harkening back to Genesis one, right? The the narrative has has

David Takle (48:05.078)
Yeah, yeah.

David Takle (48:15.819)
Right, right.

Joshua Hoffert (48:30.135)
brought itself forward into the New Testament. It's re articulated now the people of God, if they catch the visual cues are reframing the worldview that they had around, things are shifting the kingdoms here. This is it's, it's, if you think about the big picture of it, the Bible is actually, you know, it's funny to say it, right? It sounds so pithy. The Bible is brilliant.

David Takle (48:53.143)
It is, it is, all right. Well, and you mentioned the temple. Part of a worldview is your major icons and symbols. And the temple was that for the people because, yes, exactly. The temple was where heaven and earth met. And God was dwelling among them. So it was very iconic, very important.

Joshua Hoffert (49:03.445)
Right, right.

Jordan Peterson would say your memes of understanding, right?

Joshua Hoffert (49:15.051)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (49:22.06)
Right.

David Takle (49:22.709)
They had a terrible time trying to reformat their faith after the temple was destroyed. It's like, so who are we without this major icon? Another big symbol they had is the Torah. You know, is, you know, God's covenant with us was encapsulated in that icon. So.

Joshua Hoffert (49:40.193)
Right. Yes.

David Takle (49:51.611)
It's very important. And of course, the problem and the answer, those are two major questions that have to be answered by every worldview. Where's the problem and what's the solution? Well, for the Judean worldview, the problem was nobody knew God, and the solution was to know God. All right? Today, if you look at our gospel,

Joshua Hoffert (50:05.303)
Right.

Joshua Hoffert (50:13.697)
Right. Right.

David Takle (50:20.695)
What problem is the common gospel trying to solve?

Joshua Hoffert (50:26.214)
Yeah.

David Takle (50:27.297)
We're all guilty and on our way to hell because of a judgment. What's the solution? Get rid of the guilt.

Joshua Hoffert (50:35.799)
That's right.

Yeah.

David Takle (50:39.873)
We'll put the guilt on Jesus and then we're not guilty anymore.

Joshua Hoffert (50:42.081)
Right.

Joshua Hoffert (50:46.773)
we could just kind of keep living our everyday ho drum, you know, average.

David Takle (50:50.411)
This has nothing in common with the Bible. That's not the problem God was trying to solve. God's trying to solve the problem of evil.

Joshua Hoffert (50:53.271)
Yeah. Yeah.

David Takle (51:05.451)
How do you get rid of evil? You regenerate human beings and you grow them up in crowds.

Joshua Hoffert (51:13.175)
Right, right. Yeah, that's a and you know, I'm just thinking of the the conversation around I just because I just had a conversation earlier today about you know, the quote unquote spiritual warfare. Right. And then the the threat is externalized. So we're, we're, praying and wrestling with the devil and the demons. And

David Takle (51:14.987)
That's a big diff- that's a different gospel.

David Takle (51:21.591)
Grrr.

David Takle (51:31.509)
Yes.

Yes.

Joshua Hoffert (51:41.344)
And I was and I was saying to this person that the the real struggle is with the self. It's not the struggle. And this is what I always I was found interesting in studying the Desert Fathers, right as a as a as a how did they approach these things and the struggle was rarely with sometimes it was an externalized threat. But the struggle was almost always internal.

David Takle (51:48.257)
Yes.

David Takle (51:59.287)
Hmm.

Joshua Hoffert (52:11.051)
Right? The, the, struggle, if there was an, if there was a, you know, an external visible manifestation of a demonic entity, it was tempting you to something. Right. It was, but the struggle was with the heart, whether, you know, there's gold on the ground. Should I pick it up and take it? Well, it's a manifestation. The devil put it there. Right. So the, the threat might be external, but the struggle is still with the lust of the heart for the thing. Right. So all of the instruction is.

And this is what I love about studying the desert fathers is all the instruction is about the inner life. And all of the instruction is about the structure of how that I how I navigate these things, right, the inner realities. Today, when we talk about a spiritual struggle, we talk about struggling with demonic principalities and demons and devils and stuff like that. We've externalized it so that it actually has no meaning anymore. And so then we have deliverance ministries.

David Takle (53:04.737)
Right.

Joshua Hoffert (53:07.854)
kicking demons out that don't exist, right, which which are good, you know, you're a good friend and our podcast host, Father Andrew says you're basically just re traumatizing people and into reintroducing them to their traumatic memories. And so we've we've and that's all a function of the worldview. Right, how we see things and then how we interpret them and how we process them and our prayers are completely ineffectual.

David Takle (53:28.331)
Yes. Yes.

David Takle (53:37.303)
Right.

Joshua Hoffert (53:37.587)
And I think the only reason we have anecdotal evidence that they work is because God's gracious and merciful. And he doesn't desire that his people would suffer. And so sometimes we stumble into success because of his grace and mercy, not because we've actually articulated what he's actually like and what the world's actually like. We've, we've accidentally become successful.

David Takle (53:57.705)
Right, right.

David Takle (54:02.209)
Yeah, yeah, and that's why, you know, when we see this, we live in a time when a lot of leaders are falling, you know, just moral failures and stuff. And it's important to understand that these were not sudden onsets for these people. They'd struggled with these things for years and kept a lid on it and somehow,

Joshua Hoffert (54:03.542)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (54:14.125)
Mm-hmm.

Joshua Hoffert (54:23.787)
Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

David Takle (54:32.022)
managed to build a ministry in spite of it, but it finally leaked out. There's nothing sudden about these things. And of course, part of that problem is that most of the Christian in West, I have to say Western world, because the Eastern Orthodox believes very much in purifying the inner self.

Joshua Hoffert (54:35.372)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Joshua Hoffert (54:58.743)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah.

David Takle (55:02.259)
It's a big deal over there. But we've kind of given up on that. We settle for either having no regeneration at all. That's literally in much of our theology. Or you have the new nature move in alongside the old nature, which is really fun. So because

Joshua Hoffert (55:25.127)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right.

David Takle (55:30.647)
If the new nature is perfect and doesn't need any transformation, the old nature is entrenched and won't transform, how in the world are you supposed to grow? You exercise willpower. Well, this is, no. Once you ruin Christian identity, you haven't got a plan for salvation from evil. And so,

Joshua Hoffert (55:39.083)
Yes.

You just hide.

Yeah, yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (55:55.627)
Right. Right.

David Takle (55:59.448)
And then if you become a teacher and you teach this stuff all the time knowing that you're divided inside, eventually, how long can you keep the lid on that? So it explains why we're having so much trouble with our leadership. And if maturity is not an issue,

Joshua Hoffert (56:06.477)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (56:20.055)
Yeah, absolutely.

David Takle (56:26.581)
You have people like Todd Bentley being promoted back in the day. I I was in Pasadena when he was invited to Harvest Rock Church by Che-Yang. And they just thought he was gonna lead the next revival, the next, you know, he was gonna take over the country with Todd Bentley leading the whole thing. Well, I watched him for 30 minutes and it's like this guy's a train wreck waiting to happen because he was clearly immature.

Joshua Hoffert (56:30.263)
Mm-hmm.

Joshua Hoffert (56:35.558)
sure.

Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (56:48.311)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (56:53.537)
Yeah.

David Takle (56:57.269)
You can't give that kind of leadership to that kind of person. But they don't know that because they don't know what maturity is anymore.

Joshua Hoffert (57:06.945)
Right, right, yeah.

That's so true.

David Takle (57:12.098)
So this is the problem we're having. Your worldview matters. If we're just gonna get saved and then wait for Jesus to take us to heaven, hang on till Jesus comes. I remember saying that phrase when I was in the fundamentalist church. We're just hanging on till Jesus comes. Well, that's not what God had in mind. He was hoping to have a family.

and you'll be part of it and you're hanging on to your dark side because you don't think you can let go of it.

Joshua Hoffert (57:56.589)
Well, even going back to the you mentioned the Eastern Orthodox guys. And even to some extent, the Catholic expression. I you know, there's a reason why we have we've had a an Orthodox priest on I can't it's not Eastern or it's not as he Russian Orthodox Antioch and orthodox I don't know there's like four or five different strains of orthodoxy. He's been on here a couple different times. He's a parish priest.

David Takle (58:06.519)
and

Joshua Hoffert (58:26.316)
out here in BC. And he and I actually used to visit when I was living on the East Coast, I would visit a Orthodox monastery there for once or twice a year to do a spiritual retreat. And I got to know the monks pretty well there. And both of them different sides of the country, anecdotal evidence. But they would say that the Orthodox Church is

David Takle (58:29.207)
You

Joshua Hoffert (58:54.719)
is bursting at the seams. People are rushing to the Orthodox Church. So the the the bishop is he called the Metropolitan of Eastern Canada and Eastern US? I can't remember his name. Bishop Irene maybe is his name. I think I they told me I can't remember. But he was saying the Orthodox churches are full everywhere in the east. And our and our anecdotal evidence to our father, Father Michael, Father Mike.

David Takle (59:18.081)
Wow.

Joshua Hoffert (59:24.973)
would say that their churches, they've got more catechumens that they know what to do with. And, and he said, but you know what, because the narrative is typically the way people think is that people are leaving the evangelical church and joining the Orthodox church. But he said, that's not true. Most of these people are agnostic and some of them are atheists and they're coming in. They're not coming from a pre-churched background.

David Takle (59:46.199)
Wow. my goodness.

David Takle (59:52.983)
That's amazing.

Joshua Hoffert (59:53.262)
They're coming from a lack of church. And I've, I've often wondered if the, because, because in the Orthodox church, right, you can't, there's a commitment to get in, you know, you can't, you'll walk in there and they'll say, there's a bench for you in the back. You can sit there, right? You're not allowed to participate in most of what they do. And you don't even know what to do. Actually, if you walk in unaware, right, you don't know what to do because they've got a whole rhythm.

David Takle (01:00:15.383)
Wow.

Joshua Hoffert (01:00:21.663)
and a cadence to the singing and the preaching and the worship and the chanting and all of that. And you're just overwhelmed with everything. And and then when they do communion, right, the sacred right, that is that is deeply practical in the terms of how they view it impacting like, like, you know, you've just ingested the very nature of God, and it's transforming your insides as you systematize it. So you're not allowed to do that. They've got a special, a special

plate of blessed bread that they'll let you have, but you can't take communion with everybody else. Right? It's a it's a lengthy process of I think it's about if there's like eight months worth of classes before and then you've forgiven a new name, right? You adopt a patron saint, you're given a new name. And by the time you're actually allowed to participate as a full fledged member, it's probably been about a year from your first point of contact. And, and so

David Takle (01:01:02.903)
Wow.

David Takle (01:01:07.628)
Wow.

Joshua Hoffert (01:01:19.47)
you know, in our evangelical circles, the way that we've approached dwindling church numbers is to go well, let's make it as accessible as humanly possible. Lights, smoke machines, watered down language, right? We'll just make it super, super easy. Put on a show Gospel 101 every single Sunday. No, nothing ever any deeper than that. So that people will come, right?

David Takle (01:01:30.668)
Yeah.

David Takle (01:01:38.231)
put on a show.

Joshua Hoffert (01:01:47.595)
And then what happens is the most charismatic people to track. Feel so the big churches get bigger and the small churches get smaller. And meanwhile, you look at the Orthodox church and they're going, well, all the Gnostics and agnostics and atheists are coming because they found some meaning. We made it difficult for him to come in. We're person at the seams because of it. And I don't, I don't know that it's a, it no, it's not, it's the opposite, right? But they're, they're having more.

David Takle (01:02:07.009)
Yeah, not exactly your seeker friendly model.

Joshua Hoffert (01:02:16.865)
people, then they know what to do with and all these churches are small, but they become the locus point of everybody's life, right? Because worldview is the Orthodox Church. Actually, each building is shaped like a cross. I don't know if you knew that if you look from the top down, the whole point is you're looking from the top down and say shaped like a cross. They're supposed to be anyway, so that God when he looks down sees himself on earth. That's the idea, right? So it's the locus point. Yeah, symbols. Exactly. It tells a story, right?

David Takle (01:02:23.959)
Yeah.

David Takle (01:02:40.503)
Okay, Symbols, symbols.

does.

Joshua Hoffert (01:02:47.246)
So everything there tells a story that, know, all the icons, they tell a story, right? Every symbol, all the symbology, they tell a story. And you're like, they've, they've tapped into something. It's not a new, right? They haven't changed anything. They've been doing this for more than a thousand years and it's not changed very much at all. Maybe it's translated into English and that's about it. Right. They're still using Basil's liturgy from the fourth century. So

David Takle (01:02:52.396)
They do.

David Takle (01:03:14.465)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (01:03:16.113)
haven't changed a whole lot. And but people are going, I'm finding meaning here. The evangelical people are going over to deconstructing because we've been hurt so much by the church. And you're like, maybe they got something there. It's a fascinating thing, right? And and they're the church to an Orthodox person and to a Catholic person and Anglican for that matter. The church building is

David Takle (01:03:18.006)
Yep.

David Takle (01:03:33.887)
I have...

Joshua Hoffert (01:03:44.428)
the place where God dwells and all of life happens. It's it is central. It's almost like a replacement of the tabernacle. And maybe for better or worse, when we talk about the living temple and all of this, right, but they've got something going on that people are engaged with. And they're reaching they're reaching through no, they don't have some grand evangelism strategy.

actually, there's no evangelism. It's, it's not even a thing that exists. But people are coming. And so it's a, you know, it's interesting when you think about the failure of the modern worldview, which I think we're at a it kind of seems like with the you just think about the stuff in, you know, your old stomping grounds in Minnesota, right? What's going on right now? The crumbling of

David Takle (01:04:25.687)
That's a, yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (01:04:42.413)
the economic order, the crumbling of the political class, the crumbling of the, you know, the nuclear family, all this kind of stuff. It's just the world, the Western worldview is kind of coming apart at it seems right in front of us. And it's almost being systematically undone. And people are going

I'm going go back to the old guys. It's interesting, right? It's there's a lot of unsettledness and I'm going to go to the Orthodox Church. That's interesting.

David Takle (01:05:21.313)
Yeah, yeah, I see it. What we're seeing in the world generally is a lot of chaos and unrest. And the solutions that they're proposing are only gonna make the problem worse for the most part. Because again, this is a worldview problem.

Joshua Hoffert (01:05:29.707)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (01:05:39.307)
Yeah, absolutely.

David Takle (01:05:52.715)
There's a lot of different ways to create a worldview, to develop a worldview. And one of them, Dallas Willard says you have to start with ontology, which is what is ultimate reality? What matter, is there a God? What kind of God is he? Why are there people? What is a person?

Joshua Hoffert (01:05:57.483)
Yeah. Let's talk about that. Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (01:06:05.537)
Okay.

Joshua Hoffert (01:06:11.298)
Mm-hmm.

David Takle (01:06:21.644)
What is a good person? How do you become one? You have to start with ontology, the things that are, and define them well. And that's why we have revelation. Who is this God? And what is he about? What is he doing? So the problem with modernity was

Joshua Hoffert (01:06:36.289)
Mm-hmm.

David Takle (01:06:50.825)
you know, and the world that we live in today is they start by asking the questions, what do I find most disturbing? Okay. What problems are, it's okay to identify problems. But if that's the starting point for your worldview, you end up like Karl Marx.

Joshua Hoffert (01:07:03.009)
Mm. Right.

David Takle (01:07:20.029)
Okay, he looked at a problem, said, I see a bunch of peasants and I see a bunch of rich people living in the city and that doesn't look good. So he develops this idea of a revolution. Well, he's not dealing with ultimate reality. He's not dealing with the top down. He's like trying to create a worldview from the bottom up.

Joshua Hoffert (01:07:42.135)
Right.

David Takle (01:07:49.003)
So just looking around to see what you don't like and forming a mob to go protest does not solve anything. You're just making the problem worse. You have to start with what is and what's true. so to develop a good theology, for example, you need to start with the character of God. that's where, know, chesed is it.

hugely important idea that, you know, God is good. He loves being good. There's this wonderful passage in Jeremiah, Jeremiah, I stumbled on recently, where it says, I'm going to be good to you, and I'm going to enjoy being good to you. It's like, no kidding. It's like, you really. It's, it's, it's wonderful.

Joshua Hoffert (01:08:39.809)
Yeah.

David Takle (01:08:49.303)
this is the kind of God we have. And so, you know, we don't have a God who's like,

Joshua Hoffert (01:08:51.575)
Yeah.

David Takle (01:08:59.467)
just waiting to, can't wait to pour out his wrath on the planet. And the best you better do is get ready for the rapture or get saved so that your tickets, your visa is stamped.

Joshua Hoffert (01:09:07.234)
Right.

Joshua Hoffert (01:09:17.848)
tickets. Yeah. Where you have you have a nice bunker full of full of food last year through the rap through through the pre millennial post millennial, whatever. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

David Takle (01:09:23.189)
Yeah.

David Takle (01:09:30.42)
Yeah, right. So, yeah, you have to be careful how you build your worldview. I think Anselm in 1100 AD, he was living in feudal Europe. And he looked around and saw serfs and lords. And when a serf offended his lord, he had to...

Joshua Hoffert (01:09:43.426)
Mm-hmm.

David Takle (01:10:00.137)
He had to be punished or if he could make sufficient satisfaction, he would escape the punishment that the Lord would impose and the Lord would accept the satisfaction instead. This was the starting point for his worldview. And so when he cuts about atonement, he says, well, we've all offended God. He's the Lord, we're the serf. We've offended God. The problem is we can't make satisfaction.

Joshua Hoffert (01:10:17.463)
Right.

David Takle (01:10:30.785)
So Jesus came to make satisfaction for us. Well, this completely ruined atonement theory. Nobody thought that way before Anselm. But guess what? It matched their worldview so it caught on.

Joshua Hoffert (01:10:33.473)
Right, right.

Joshua Hoffert (01:10:38.381)
Yeah, yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (01:10:46.187)
Yeah, it did. That's very true. Yeah.

David Takle (01:10:48.183)
And it became their theory of atonement. then by, you know, fast forward 400, 500 years, and that's morphed into penal substitution. And now, you you can't make satisfaction. It has to be punished no matter what. And Jesus took all the punishment. Well, have to understand, nobody understood atonement this way before Anselm at 1100 AD.

Joshua Hoffert (01:10:51.501)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (01:11:00.311)
Yeah.

David Takle (01:11:17.013)
Well, what did they think about before that? Atonement was Christus Victor. It was a life, actually life and death. Atonement was life by dying.

David Takle (01:11:32.567)
You are buried with Christ in his death and you are raised with Christ in his resurrection. That was atonement. Or they taught ransom theory. And we don't understand ransom either. We think, well, who paid who what to wear and that's what upset Anselm. Well, it's not about payment. Ransom is about bringing people back to where they belong. I ransomed, Jesus, God says I ransomed Egypt.

Joshua Hoffert (01:11:44.929)
Right. No.

David Takle (01:12:01.943)
I ransomed you from Egypt. Well, who did God pay? He didn't pay anybody anything. He used the word ransom because it was like, rescued you from slavery.

Joshua Hoffert (01:12:07.713)
Right. Yep. That's right.

David Takle (01:12:17.303)
So, you know, and this is how they used ransom theory in the first century. It was rescue, it was a rescue operation. By the time, so this, you're talking about a completely different kind of atonement than by the time you get to Anselm and the reformers.

Joshua Hoffert (01:12:34.839)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

The, you know, it's, it's the, you, you just, you got me thinking of so many different thoughts. Zach or I, I, I go ahead.

David Takle (01:12:47.915)
Well, the bottom line is Anselm drew his worldview from his culture, not from the character of God.

Joshua Hoffert (01:12:54.347)
Yes. Yes.

I read recently in Zechariah one. And it says similar to what you were saying. God says I got I've been so angry at your fathers. And I've been so angry at the surrounding nations, that I'm going to bless Jerusalem socks off so much and be so merciful with them that they become a blessing to everybody was so angry that he's going to be as merciful as possible and bless everybody around so that they see his goodness.

I thought, that's a way of characterizing his anger. You know, it's, it's, so angry. I'm going to be extremely merciful and blessing. And you know, it's, it's, that's not the concept that he was so angry that he punishes. No, he's so angry that he's merciful.

David Takle (01:13:34.838)
Yeah.

David Takle (01:13:42.487)
I found the quote from Jeremiah 32. And this is, know, Jeremiah, he's right in the middle of announcing all of the chastisement that God's gonna bring on Israel for their idolatry. But he stops and says, it's not gonna end here. There's another chapter to the story, and this is what it is. With the new covenant, they will be my people.

Joshua Hoffert (01:13:58.711)
Yeah.

David Takle (01:14:12.543)
and I will be their God. I will make a lasting covenant with them that I will never stop doing good to them. That's His covenant. I'm gonna make a lasting covenant with them that I will never stop doing good to them and I will take delight in doing good to them. I will faithfully and wholeheartedly plant them firmly in the land.

Joshua Hoffert (01:14:26.157)
It's amazing.

Joshua Hoffert (01:14:35.095)
Yeah.

David Takle (01:14:36.939)
That's, I mean, wow.

Joshua Hoffert (01:14:39.522)
Yeah.

David Takle (01:14:41.687)
See, that's the God we have, and that's why he's interested in solving the problem of evil.

Joshua Hoffert (01:14:41.933)
That's yeah. Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (01:14:49.857)
Yeah, that's the the the ransom theory. One of the other terms is used for it is recapitulation. Right. And which was essentially summed up by Irenaeus. And he made he was the first one to make this particular statement, but it sums up the the idea of ransom theory and recapitulation as a theory of the Atonement, right? And as Christus Victor.

David Takle (01:14:56.757)
Yeah, okay.

Joshua Hoffert (01:15:19.277)
which for anybody that hasn't there's a book out there written by Gustaf Allen called Christus Victor that you should go check out. It does a really good job of summing up how the the different ages of humanity heavily influenced how they saw theories of the atonement. Really good job of doing that. So recapitulation and ransom theory are summed up by Aranaus in the statement, God became man so that man could become God. That's his

David Takle (01:15:48.245)
Wow, yeah, exactly.

Joshua Hoffert (01:15:49.087)
articulation of the theory of the atonement, right? God became man so he and then that that that idea carries forward. So you have guys like Gregory of Nyssa, right? Cappadocian father, saying things like, whatever he took on, he redeemed whatever he didn't take on or assume he did not redeem. So that

that's the idea that God became fully human in order to fully redeem. So everything he that he took on was all that meant to be human, right? And so this is God became man so that man could could become God, God became man so that he could fully redeem humankind, right? This is recapitulation. This is ransom theory. And recapitulation and ransom theory are about reframing the whole thing around the centrality of the incarnation. So so everything in the Old Testament is seen

pointing towards the incarnation. And then everything that they talk about is pointing back to the incarnation. But that that phrase by Irenaeus became the de facto way of understanding atonement, God became man that man might become God. And, you know, it's a it's a people like to go, that's Benny Hinn, you know, little gods. And no, that's not what he's saying, you know, that actually, there's a there's a quote in about

one of the Desert Fathers, Macarius the Great, 300 to 391 was his life. And he was one of the disciples of Anthony the Great. this, I think this sums up perfectly what Irenaeus meant. So it says, Macarius became like a god on earth because seeing the faults of others, he would cover them in his grace. That's what it meant.

David Takle (01:17:35.799)
Wow.

Joshua Hoffert (01:17:38.165)
Right? Not the ability to operate in science powers, wonders and miracles. That's a consequence. Right? It is. But that's actually a consequence of the hypostatic union, which again, Western worldview in terms of general theology fails to comprehend at all. But it was the de facto, you know, the central tenet of the early church theology was the hypostatic union became everything. the hypostatic, the reason why

inner healing exists is because the hypostatic union. The reason why spiritual gifts exist is not because the spirit infills, it's because of the hypostatic union. God became man that man might become like God. It all is the central hinging point on in early church theology. And it's the main through line that all the arguments and all the councils, they finally articulated it in, you know, by the time it's the Council of Chalcedon where they articulated

David Takle (01:18:21.719)
You

Joshua Hoffert (01:18:35.595)
But that's the through line of all of them is understanding the ramifications of a God become full becoming fully man. That's why we can that's why we can be healed. It's why we can be put back together is not is not because of it's it's not because of you know, the way that we understand modernly the atonement. It's not because of that. It's not because of death sacrifice and appeasing an angry God. It's because he became man.

David Takle (01:18:44.055)
Wow. Yeah.

David Takle (01:19:02.485)
Right. Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (01:19:05.205)
And that changed everything. Right. And if you fail to grasp that you failed to grasp that the rest of it will all be built on faulty premises. Right. That is this. And so it's fascinating when you look at the early church and the narrative they painted through the through the creedal formulas that they put out. Right. These told the story in short form. The creeds did. And one of the things I look at today in terms of contemporary

theological movements will say it that way. is in the early church, they were the creeds helped to clarify language to to bridge the gap and bring together different people groups, language expressions, regions, and everything. So, we've got codified language that narrows down

the issues that we have to agree on. now everything else is fair game, essentially. Right. Because they all know that the Church Fathers disagreed on lots of different things. But when it came down to the the Apostles Creed, the Athanasian Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Chalcedonian Creed, these just helped to clarify the common issues so that we had agreement. Right. And today, so so then we made that in the early church, we made creedal statements to bind ourselves together. Today, we make

David Takle (01:20:23.627)
Right, right, right.

Joshua Hoffert (01:20:33.569)
doctrinal statements to distinguish ourselves from others. So our creeds serve to divide rather than unite where in the early church, because of their worldview and the fact that they were dealing with the pagan world, putting pressure upon them, right? They said, well, we got to find ways that we have common ground so we can walk together. Today, we try and find ways that are different so we can separate ourselves. And so now we have, you know, lots of different denominations because of that.

David Takle (01:20:36.919)
Hmm.

David Takle (01:20:49.399)
Right, right.

David Takle (01:20:54.848)
Yes.

David Takle (01:20:58.646)
Right.

Joshua Hoffert (01:21:03.425)
But it's a fundamental difference in the view of what is ultimately real.

David Takle (01:21:03.542)
Well...

Yes.

David Takle (01:21:10.615)
Well, here's where, yeah, exactly. And here's where, that perspective of what's essential and what's not comes out of philosophy. When you identify an object, it has certain properties that have to be there for that object to be what it is, okay?

If you're gonna have an apple, it has to have some kind of inside, some kind of skin, and hang from a tree. These are all essentials. If you don't have any, take away any of those, you don't have an apple anymore. But the apple could be green, it could be red, it could be rotten. mean, there's all kinds of variations to apple. But it's still apple. All right.

Joshua Hoffert (01:21:50.827)
Yeah, right.

Yeah, that's right.

Joshua Hoffert (01:22:05.335)
That's right. It's still an apple. Yeah.

David Takle (01:22:08.957)
So when you're talking about what is the kingdom of God, what is the church of God, that's where the creeds come in. There are essentials. If you take away any of these, you don't have a church anymore. All right? You have to have these to have the church. And then we can have some other issues out here that vary from one group to another. Maybe, but, you know, you have to keep these essentials.

Joshua Hoffert (01:22:20.749)
Yeah, that's right.

Joshua Hoffert (01:22:37.111)
Yeah, that's right.

David Takle (01:22:37.717)
And that's what binds us all together. We are all church, even though there's some variations.

Joshua Hoffert (01:22:43.649)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and that's that is how it functioned in the early days of Christianity, when the people saw themselves as set apart with special access, as I read earlier, special access, heavenly people with a heavenly citizenship living that out on earth. And the fundamental way they they transformed the world was grassroots bottom up. It was not top down. Right. And and

David Takle (01:23:10.39)
Absolutely.

Joshua Hoffert (01:23:13.367)
for better or worse, right? Christianity took over the world in a way because of it because of some top down movement, but the grassroots never the grassroots effort never changed. Right. And that's that's it's interesting when I was listening to the Bible project guys a while back. They're great. Yeah, my dad turned me on to this particular get my dad introduced me to you anyway.

David Takle (01:23:33.207)
They're great.

Joshua Hoffert (01:23:40.301)
I should probably just have my dad come on the podcast and talk about all the ways he influenced me. The Bible Project guys were laying out the book of Genesis. I can't remember which, it was the series they did on cities. That was what it was. And so I listened to the first few of them and it was really fascinating because they talked about the thread in Genesis that separated the people of God from the way that

the way the cities were formed, right? And then there's another guy, Meredith Klein, who talked about the covenants, had kingdom theology, course on kingdom theologies, he's a, was a fascinating reformed theologian actually that I actually like. But he talked about the threads in Genesis that show the family line of the people of God and the family line of, you know, stemming from Cain and Abel.

essentially, right, the two family lines and how they play themselves out. And so he'd go through and he'd stack the two on top of each other. You can see one genealogy next to the other genealogy and how they play out together, right? One produces Noah, one produces Lamac, right? The guy who says I killed so many people now God's going to protect me even more, right? One produces a twisted notion of what it means to live in reality and one produces

the real notion of what reality is about, right? And he said, you can track that all the way through the whole scriptures and those two things. And I'm just thinking we can kind of still track it in human history after the scriptures, you know, like all these splintered groups and everything. It's even when it comes to theology, right? Just pointing out the difference between we use our common language to bind ourselves together.

David Takle (01:25:12.631)
Hmm.

Joshua Hoffert (01:25:40.325)
or we use our common language to exclude ourselves from others. But those are those are ones the practice of the family of Cain, ones the practice of the family of God. And and I was we had a young couple over a few months ago who were were struggling with some prosperity gospel doctrine stuff in their in their family. And they were trying to figure out how do we actually think?

David Takle (01:26:00.823)
Wow.

Joshua Hoffert (01:26:08.651)
right, let's figure out all of our theological terms. And I said, well, don't think of it that way. I don't think let me iron out my theology. So I got so I have all my terms properly identified. I go, I've met him. I know him. What is he like? And how do I see him in scripture? And what does scripture teach me about him? My I realized that

David Takle (01:26:09.28)
uh-uh

Joshua Hoffert (01:26:33.505)
that I was always talking with him, my fundamental reality for theology is my relationship with him, that he's been revealed to me. But I said to you yesterday that I think I want to write a book, and I need to think about it more, that would distinguish sola fide, which is the classic, you know, Luther, salvation by faith alone, sola scriptura, scripture alone, not tradition, that would articulate a new theory of salvation.

that would be called sola revelatio, salvation by revelation alone. The salvation happens because he's revealed himself. And then everything that comes after is me figuring out what he's like as an ongoing process of walking in that revelation versus me having a moment of faith that's inspired me to call myself a Christian now. And the way that it's framed for people

It changes how they approach it for the rest of their life. And we live in a day where you can, like we've already said, you can be a Christian because you said a prayer. I pulled this up, actually. Dallas Willard won. You'll like this. Dallas Willard articulated three different gospels. This is in his course. You can find this course online, actually, on YouTube.

David Takle (01:27:51.831)
.

Joshua Hoffert (01:27:59.318)
Spiritual Formation Course. It's fantastic. 18 videos. He's talking to pastors and leaders. It's amazing. The three gospels according to Dallas Willard. Christ died. You need to repent and then you'll get into heaven. That's the first one. These are he's obviously, you know, facetiously defining defining these three different gospels. In their simplest term, Christ died to bring freedom to the oppressed. That's gospel number two.

David Takle (01:28:19.205)
Right, in their simplest terms.

Joshua Hoffert (01:28:27.499)
Gospel number three is if you take care of your church, your church will take care of you. Those are the three gospels, right? He said, and then he said the real gospel is living as a disciple of Jesus and the kingdom of God. Right? That's the real gospel. that's what's and he got, you know, and certain certain groups raked him over the coals for saying stuff like

David Takle (01:28:31.649)
Yep, yeah, I've heard that.

David Takle (01:28:40.011)
Yes. Yeah.

David Takle (01:28:49.207)
my gosh. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for Willard, the gospel was the invitation to the kingdom is open. But that means a different kind of life. And the people, it upsets people, they think that salvation by works. And it's like, no, it's salvation to a different kind of life. You know, and.

Joshua Hoffert (01:29:02.455)
Yeah, that's right.

Joshua Hoffert (01:29:09.729)
Yeah, yes.

Joshua Hoffert (01:29:14.615)
Yeah, that's right. That's right.

David Takle (01:29:18.323)
If you don't understand, I don't know how you can read the New Testament and not understand that regeneration is a life-transforming event. I found over 40 references to regeneration in the New Testament. And they have to do with putting off the old and putting on the new. You can't see it any other way.

Joshua Hoffert (01:29:29.739)
Right.

David Takle (01:29:48.419)
And to think that those are options after you've agreed to a doctrine completely misunderstands the New Testament.

Joshua Hoffert (01:29:59.511)
Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. And then it changes the practical application of everything after that. Right?

David Takle (01:30:08.171)
Yeah, and Willard has a way of explaining it. He says, well, the grace of God is only opposed to you earning it. It's not opposed to effort. This is like, he's trying to get you to become a different kind of person, and that means you're gonna do things differently.

Joshua Hoffert (01:30:18.391)
Right. Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (01:30:26.369)
Right.

Yeah. Yeah, that seems it strikes me that the argument about works salvation like like I thought about this recently that salvation by works, right? Because that's always the thing that comes up when you start talking about regeneration. Well, that's workspace theology, right? And it's like, but but I, you know, nobody's arguing for a salvation by works today. The Catholic Church may have been arguing for that in Luther's day.

And so Luther had to articulate a gospel that distanced itself from indulgences and a corrupt curia, I think they call the Catholic leadership. They had to distance themselves from that. So he articulates salvation by faith alone. But nobody's articulating a salvation by works anymore. Even the Catholic Church redefined through the different Vatican councils. They wouldn't articulate that anymore anyway.

So people that are still arguing salvation by works, it's long gone guys. Okay. It doesn't exist anymore. We're talking about a life of works. We're not talking about salvation by works. We're talking about a lifestyle that's been transformed. That's what we're talking about. So no one's, no one's tying in works to salvation anymore. The Catholic church did in the 12th century or in the, you know, 1200 to 1500. We don't anymore. We don't.

David Takle (01:31:55.829)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Joshua Hoffert (01:31:58.274)
And in fact, probably the evangelicals are almost the worst at insinuating, well, if you come to church, you your church will take care of you, as Willard said, or if you stack enough chairs, you'll find favor with leadership and eventually they'll recognize you and you'll be a better Christian. Right. If anything, we've got some, some, you know, some ways that that's been insinuated into the culture, but no one's tying in a theory of salvation to the works anymore. And, and so it's just

Okay, let's have a different conversation. William Law actually Anglican writer in the 1800s, I think it was his book, The Power of the Spirit. He talked about how it's foolish to try and separate the person of Jesus from the works of Jesus. To imagine a distinction between the two is insanity. Like the person and their works are one and the same. They can't be two different things. The work of salvation in terms of being saved itself and the works of salvation are the same thing.

David Takle (01:32:47.478)
Yes.

David Takle (01:32:56.043)
Yes.

Joshua Hoffert (01:32:56.422)
It's insanity to separate the two of them. And I thought that was a pretty good point. Yeah.

David Takle (01:32:58.837)
Right.

David Takle (01:33:02.891)
Yeah, I've been listening to Aaron Preston. He's doing a series on philosophy 101. And he addresses this problem of a person has various characteristics. And among those is the events, the activity of the person.

Joshua Hoffert (01:33:30.22)
Mm-hmm.

David Takle (01:33:31.992)
It's part of the person. don't, you know, I mean, not only does a person have, you know, certain qualities that you can see and observe, their choice of activity or the fact that they can be active even is part of being a person. Those aren't two different things.

Joshua Hoffert (01:33:55.255)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (01:34:01.943)
Yeah, that's right. That's yeah. I love that. well, I, you know, I wonder if we'll, we wrap our conversation up there with, with the thought of, maybe we'll continue this at some point in the future and dive even further in, you know, I feel like if we're, if we dive anymore, we'll be here for another three hours pulling things apart.

David Takle (01:34:04.94)
So.

David Takle (01:34:30.113)
Sure, sure.

Joshua Hoffert (01:34:32.366)
And so, but I just so appreciate how you articulate things and the way that you think, David. It's like I said, like I said to you before we started recording, I first read your book, The Truth About Lies and the Lies About Truth, probably 15 years ago, and found that book very helpful. And that was probably one of the first books I read on formation and healing.

and started a journey down that path. And so I'm excited for what the future holds in terms of what the projects you were saying that you have on the go. And so everybody, you want to check out the ministry is called Kingdom Formation. The website is kingdomformation.com.org.org. Yeah, kingdomformation.org. I'll put all those links.

David Takle (01:35:25.355)
dot org dot org.

Joshua Hoffert (01:35:30.143)
in the episode description. Yeah, and you can check out, and I'll put a link to the book Copernicus, and maybe we can help it become a New York Times bestseller.

David Takle (01:35:41.079)
Thank you. And the other important website is formingcourse.com. And that's hyphenated though, forming-course.com. that gives you all of the information you need to engage in a 12-session course, experiential course.

Joshua Hoffert (01:35:49.239)
Formingcourse.com.

Okay. Forming dash course. Yep. I'll put that link as well in there and what's on, what's on there.

David Takle (01:36:10.111)
in spiritual formation. It actually begins to train people to engage with God. And I think to date about 8,000 people have been through it. So we're happy about that.

Joshua Hoffert (01:36:10.423)
Mm-hmm.

Joshua Hoffert (01:36:15.819)
Wonderful, wonderful.

Joshua Hoffert (01:36:21.505)
That's amazing.

You're changing worldviews one person at a time. Yeah.

David Takle (01:36:27.466)
That's the goal. And frankly, the course came out of the big book, this one, forming a work of grace.

Joshua Hoffert (01:36:38.199)
forming a work of grace. Yeah, that's another excellent one as well.

David Takle (01:36:41.108)
Yeah, this is kind of like what I wish someone would have told me 30 years earlier. So, save me all this trouble. And it's heavily based on the work of Dallas Willard. But we put it into a course so it would be experiential. And that's what the forming course is.

Joshua Hoffert (01:36:45.549)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.

Joshua Hoffert (01:36:55.607)
Right.

Okay, right.

The analogy in the beginning of that book was what gripped me. And it was the rowing with one or going around in circles. I will never forget reading that and going, I know how that feels. Right? Yeah. So David, David does a great job of giving you another or, and he doesn't tell you which direction go. He gives you the or, and then the father. Yeah. there you go. Yeah, that's right. Yes. That's right. Yeah.

David Takle (01:37:14.546)
Exactly. Everybody does.

Yeah, actually.

No, I take away the oars and give them a sale.

David Takle (01:37:30.965)
The oars are what we call direct effort to growth. Whereas the sail is, there's still, if you've ever tried sailing, there's a lot of work involved. We're not talking about an easy life. But the difference is that you catch the wind in order to move, rather than try to do it by brute force.

Joshua Hoffert (01:37:33.964)
Yeah. Yes.

Joshua Hoffert (01:37:44.524)
Yeah.

Joshua Hoffert (01:37:52.289)
Right. You know, I'll tell you this, just before we end a number of years ago, it probably about 10 years ago, I had a dream. And in the dream, I was looking at a sailboat and I was talking with the owner of the sailboat. And I knew that I had taken the sailboat out into the harbor before, but I never knew how to unfurl the sails. I just used a little outboard motor and puttered around. And I was embarrassed to tell the owner that I had used the sailboat.

David Takle (01:38:16.8)
Ha ha ha ha ha.

Joshua Hoffert (01:38:21.035)
without actually accessing its full power and potential. And I knew that it had so much more, right, than just the little outboard motor that I had used. And that dream always stuck with me of, know, learning how to unfurl the sails and be carried along by the spirit rather than the effort of, okay, we're running out of gas now, I guess we're going to sit here for a while till we find some more gas. And

David Takle (01:38:23.456)
Sure, sure.

David Takle (01:38:36.694)
Interesting.

Yep. Yep.

Joshua Hoffert (01:38:50.741)
Yeah. So the analogy is very personal to me in that sense. Yeah. So, well, David, thank you very much for your time. And, yeah. So until next time, I'm looking forward to more conversations. Yeah. All right. Yeah. It's wonderful. Okay. Blessings everybody. And until next time. Bye.

David Takle (01:38:54.614)
Well, good.

David Takle (01:39:04.148)
Yeah, thank you again. This has been great.

Joshua Hoffert

Co-host

Murray Dueck

Co-host