Ep. 409 Marty Solomon - The Gospel of Being Human

Marty Solomon joins me to talk about what it actually means to be human and why starting with belovedness changes everything. We explore how the stories we believe shape our view of God, ourselves, and others, why certainty can get in the way of real faith, and how to hold both our brokenness and our belovedness at the same time. This conversation moves from theology into practice - how we listen to the Spirit, see our enemies as human again, and participate in the shalom God is already bringing in the world.

Marty Solomon is a theologian, the president and director of discipleship for Impact Campus Ministries, and the creator and executive producer of The BEMA Podcast. He and his wife, Rebekah, live in Cincinnati with their two children. Marty’s previous book is titled Asking Better Questions of the Bible: A Guide for the Wounded, Wary, and Longing for More.

Marty's Book:

The Gospel of Being Human

Marty's Recommendation:

N.T. Wright

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:46

Coming to the grips with what it means to be human, coming to grips with continuing to grow in our awareness of just how beloved we are. Frees me from having to other somebody else, because it's not a zero sum game. There's more than enough salvation, there's more than enough love, there's more than enough freedom.

Joshua Johnson: 1:17

Hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, what does it actually mean to be human? For a lot of us, the story we've been handed begins with sin, failure and everything that's gone wrong. But what if that's not where the story starts? What if the foundation is something deeper, something like belovedness? Marty Solomon joins us today. We talk about how the stories we believe shape everything, how we see God, how we see ourselves and how we see others. We get into curiosity, uncertainty, why we're so afraid to ask questions, and what it looks like to trust that God is still good, even when our theology starts to crack a bit. We talk about holding together both our brokenness and our belovedness, learning to see our enemies as human again, and what it actually looks like to become more like Jesus in everyday life. This one moves from big theological ideas into really practical questions, like, how do we live this out? How do we LISTEN to the Spirit? How do we participate in what God is doing in the world? It's about the good news, not just something we believe, but as something we live into. And Marty is the right person to talk about these issues as somebody that has been teaching and training and learning and being somebody that is open and curious, full of wonder, knowing that no matter what happens, God is there, that he is beloved, that God loves him, so God will hold him through it all. It's a fantastic conversation. You don't want to miss this, so join us. Here is my conversation with Marty Solomon, Marty, welcome to shifting culture. It's a pleasure to have you on thanks for joining me. Absolutely.

Unknown: 3:05

It's fun to be making new friends these days and get a chance to talk to people I haven't met before.

Joshua Johnson: 3:10

Yeah, I'm really excited to talk to you. I think what you do with your email podcast is really important. The way that you walk people through the Bible, inciting some curiosity and wonder into people so that they could actually start to not just get information about the Bible, but they could start to discover who they are, who God is, and how they can interact in this world with others in a way that embodies the ways of Jesus. So you do a fantastic work, and you've been walking people through the Bible for a long time. Why this now? Why is the gospel of being human foundational and important for you to get

Unknown: 3:49

out the gospel of being human is, is like the middle piece of a stream of consciousness, like there's this thing, ultimately we'll be going for about how do we become the more loving people that Jesus called us to become. And a large part of that needed to start with the last book about how to read the Bible, because better readings of the Bible facilitate better theology, and that's this piece. So the the gospel of being human, is a theology piece that sits in the middle between how we're reading our Bibles and then how we're walking the path that God's called us to be on. So as you

Joshua Johnson: 4:21

walk through your life, what has shifted for you? What does it mean to be human for you today, in this crazy machine age that we live in,

Unknown: 4:31

yeah, and you know, by the time I get done doing all these interviews, I will have figured out an answer that doesn't feel so cliche. The word that I the word that comes to me all the time, is the word Beloved. Like, what it means to be human is a lot of things, but one of the things that I feel like I'm wanting to recover in my own life, or in this book or in the lives of my students, is that I stand in relationship to a creator, and that relationship is not one of task or but I am Beloved, and that's my foundational, like, above all things, I sat down this morning, and I have this daily prayer I say every morning. I said it again this morning. I, you know, I I am not loved and valued because of what I do and produce today. And should I fail today in large or small, small ways, it will not affect my worth. I will still be loved and valued. I am simply beloved, and I repeat that every morning a handful of times before I start my day, because for me, that's what it means to be human in God's good world.

Joshua Johnson: 5:36

How did that shift for you? How did you get to the place of belovedness and not seeing your value in what you produce? So one of the things

Unknown: 5:45

I really love, Jonathan. And Martin wrote that book prototype years and years ago, and he made the case in that book that each one of us, like from our earliest youngest days, we have this sense that we're we're Beloved. So that seed was always in me, but where I really discovered it like the heart of your question, probably I found in therapy when I was in my mid 20s, and somebody said I had anger issues, and they probably didn't want to tell me I was a narcissist. And I started journeying through therapy, and somewhere in there, this beautiful therapist kept connecting the dots to, you know you don't have to perform right, like, you know that you don't have to be perfect, like if you fail, people will still love you. Most importantly, God will still love you like your value does not. And that was before Bama, before the podcast. So a lot of the things that come out of my teaching come out of that lived experience, of something I learned in my own journey, of my value does not come from what I'm going to do or the ways I'm not going to fail today. I'm just loved, and that sets us free in a lot of ways and and I've I just want our theology to facilitate

Joshua Johnson: 6:59

more of that awareness. So much of Christian formation these days begins with sin and separation, but you are. You. The Bible begins with image and belonging. Why does where we start matter so much so when we look at the

Unknown: 7:15

Scripture, if we're going to look at it as a story, which I love, the idea and the concept where the story begins is going to shape. It's going to be the foundation that every story, then after that builds upon. And so we do, we typically start the story towards the beginning, very close to the beginning, but one story too late. We love to kind of jump into Adam and Eve and sin in the fall in the garden. But there's this really important story that precedes it, which is that story of failure or brokenness or sin exists in a world that is good, and it's good enough, and God loves it, and and then, and then, sin is a part of that, but sin is not the defining part of that. Sin is a part of a larger picture that God seems to be pretty fond of in the scripture, and it's where he starts a story.

Joshua Johnson: 8:03

The stories we tell ourselves really matter, and if we want to get the story of God in us so that we could know how to be human, how do we live in relationship with God, in relationship with one another? What are some of the common stories that throw off throw us off track, to get us off course, that people start to believe and tell themselves,

Unknown: 8:28

yeah, it's definitely the stories that begin where we begin our story. So it's those initial stories in the garden. It's the creation narratives, our story of It's Our stories of origin, and then as we start to journey our way, I think because we focus on the brokenness the problem as we as we define it as we've defined it in western theology, we then start to hyper focus on all the stories of God's anger or God's wrath. And we're not necessarily incentivized or trained to see all the stories in the middle as stories of like, love, love, love. And so you have 10 stories of God's love, and then like, Oh, here's a story of something going sideways. But we we only seem to highlight all the other stories are kind of like normal, and then we highlight the stories of wrath and disappointment and sin and brokenness and and, yeah, I think, I think the stories we listen to and the stories we've been told matter the most. Have have in a lot of ways, shaped our worldview.

Joshua Johnson: 9:32

So as we believe these stories, our worldviews have been shaped, we elevate the stories of wrath and sin and brokenness which they're there and they're in it, but it's not the full story. You start this book with curiosity and attention and wonder. How do we then, even in the midst of our like hardcore held belief stories that we hold on to, how do we cultivate some of this curiosity, attention and wonder that helps open us up to the love of God in the story that we're should be believing?

Unknown: 10:11

Yeah, that's a really good question. I feel like we have to, we have to remind ourselves, we have to remind each other that just because we're curious about something, or just because we asked a question that can coincide with deeply held convictions, like anchored beliefs. And so that was a big part of the first book that I wanted to pull through and start the second book with, which is we have to we as evangelicals, have often been taught that we kind of know everything about everything, and we've gotten really addicted to certainty. I know pedenz writes a book about the sin of certainty, and you. And we kind of put our faith, not sometimes in God, but in the certainty of our theological belief systems. And so to unhitch, what we're anchored to to be our own certainty, to be the person of God, and to say, this story is great and and we're probably right about this story. Is there anything else? Is there anything we're missing? Can we be? Can we approach a story and we use in the book, we use the story of Moses in the burning bush, and the rabbis talk about this is not a Marty idea. The rabbis talk about Moses can see he he notices the bush isn't burning. That's not something you see without looking for a while and realizing that bush is on fire, but that bush is not being consumed. And so it's that kind of curiosity, and it's that kind of attention, paying attention, giving intention to our intention, beginning to wonder at like, what could be going on here? Maybe I don't. Maybe there's, again, the things that I know are beautiful. We don't need to get rid of the things that we know. But what else do we still not know what else is hiding in this story? What could fill out our theology that attention and curiosity and wonder, I think, is can be really life giving. It has been for me.

Joshua Johnson: 13:00

I know for for many years, I think in a lot of different evangelical circles, certainty is lifted up to a high standard we want to be certain. And this says, if you start to ask questions, this might fall apart. How do we trust that God is good and God is faithful, even the mid in the midst of our searching and our questions and our doubt?

Unknown: 13:26

Yeah, and that that in so many ways, is a key question that might be actually, what, what faith on a personal like we have this, this personal we talk, we talk about personal relationship with God all the time. But if, if I am, if this God loves me, and I am in love with this God, and I trust that it is trusting in the goodness of this god that releases me to be curious. And I think we, we throw those phrases around, we think that, but really, we're scared to death that if our theology is has cracks in it, or if it can't hold up, or if there's something like if one if one piece is wrong, well, the whole thing's gonna the whole thread is gonna unravel, but God's good, and theology is facilitating that reminder to us. So we're okay. We're okay. I used to, I tell my students all the time, the reason that deconstruction hasn't become destruction for me is the floor, like, if the floor of my theology falls out from underneath me, like Jesus and the Bible, I think, are bigger than whatever my theology was, like, they'll catch me, and that's just a foundational belief that doesn't come because I've thought through and reasoned through my logical theology, but because of what I believe about the God that I love, and I've been told loves me deeply, and I've only been that's only been reaffirmed. The older I get, the more things I've lived through, the grief I've endured, the resilience I've experienced. God's only been more compassionate, more loving. I've been drawn further and deeper into that relationship. So so my theology has let me down all the time. But God, man, he's been so good.

Joshua Johnson: 15:12

I mean, you start with belovedness, so that is that foundation, right? Whatever falls away, you're going to be held by the love of God, and the belovedness, Jesus is going to be there for you. But then you also talk about how we are broken, right? Sin did come into the world. There is some brokenness in us, and I think a lot of people live in a black and white world. We're either beloved or we're either sinful. How do we hold those intention The belovedness and the brokenness of who we are? In a way that is not so dogmatic, but it is. It is true. Both of those can be true at the same time.

Unknown: 15:54

Yeah, the complexity of the human experience and the complexity of human nature. Reid, who is my co author on the book, he wrote this chapter about David and the Psalms and how the and there's that line about how the line between good and evil flows through the every single human heart, like our capacity. We are both the one who has been harmed and the one who does harm. We are both, and all of us are, and they don't. And those realities don't fit into clean categories. They don't fit into I struggle with this all the time. Is he a good guy or a bad guy? Is King Solomon a good guy or a bad guy? And I can't do that, because King Solomon is a human being like all of us, with all kinds of flaws and beautiful things and gifts and talents and idolatries and Pam and the frustration. Thing about theology sometimes is how it's not very expedient for our western minds, because it doesn't slip into clean categories and clean buckets. But I think that's really important to do what you just said, the How to as man. In a lot of ways, it's still a mystery. I'm trying to unpack. How do I hold those two things, but that I have to hold those two things has become more than obvious to me in my in my theological journey, if

Joshua Johnson: 17:16

we don't hold those intention and hold them at the same time, it not only sees us as something, but it sees them, whoever the other is, as something, and we see people as enemies and not as fellow humans. Yes, how do we re attach ourselves to some curiosity to see people for the complexity of who they are, and that doesn't lead us to see everybody as an enemy?

Unknown: 17:48

Yeah, I think that is something that has to come through. I think this is part of where the church shows up in beautiful ways, where the the ecclesial community of faith, like God's people, gathered for worship, gathered around the Eucharist. What it does is it, it brings out, maybe, to use the language of the book, what's more human about us and less beast like like, it makes us more in the image of God and less like an animal. Like we train ourselves how to see the other person, like, in our own faith communities, there are people who are not like us, who don't think like us, who mess up, who have betrayed us, sometimes deeply, sometimes people we have boundaries with and and there will be a limit to the reconciliation. And yet there is some sense of fellowship and reconciliation that we have in Christ. If that's true there, it kind of like it's the practice ground for what's also true everywhere else. Because if I'm beloved, everybody else is even my enemy. Is my enemy human, well then my enemy is beloved, and I don't have to do the work necessarily that I that I can't do, or that is God's work to do, but I can do the work, which is to see them on some level with some sense of human solidarity in this experience, no matter how far off track they've gone. And I think part of what we're trying to do in the book is realize along the way, we come to realize we've gotten off track, maybe we've contributed oftentimes, to some of these experiences as well.

Joshua Johnson: 19:12

I mean, I've experienced that, you know, in deep ways. One of my favorite movies of last year was it was just an accident. And I think it gets to the core question of, who is my enemy and is my torturer going to be someone that I'm going to torture? Am I going to inflict the same pain on them as they have inflicted on me? How do we break these cycles of enemy? How do we love our enemy? I worked in the Middle East with Syrian refugees, and I had somebody that was was shot and killed. And then there were calls for revenge and murder of the brother or the one who who shot, and somebody stepped up and said, Jesus tells us to love our enemies. How are we going to do that? And there was no revenge. I have seen this play out in a way where it is practical to me, and it is, it changes everything. And is the most difficult thing in the world to do is to love our enemy. How does this help? Like, how do we get this in us in a way where we see people as human, we don't see them as enemies? That we could ask the question, can we love our enemies?

Unknown: 20:32

Yeah, man, I love all your how to questions, because this is the thing. I'm very practical. Like, I want to know how to do it. Like, how are we going to preaching class? They used to always take me there. Like, Marty, you need action items at the end of your message. So it's your thing, and it's my struggle, but yeah, I think this is the journey of spiritual formation, because what we're doing is we're trying to become more and more like God. And when I mean that, what I mean is we're trying, we're trying to become more human, to be made in His image. This is who God is. God is the fruit of the Spirit, the perfect, and obviously, Jesus incarnate is the great example that we have to follow in human form of what it means to be love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness. But the reason we would give ourselves to spiritual practice or or Eucharistic fellowship or forgiveness, because forgiveness isn't just transactional in the abstract. It does something concretely to me. It does something in my own heart. It does something to my soul and and so what I'm doing when I give my it's a slow process. It's not any one thing. It's this thing that we grow in the life of discipleship, that makes us. Know the I know, when I used to go hang out at the monastery, the monks would always talk about this process. I think, I think the Eastern Church calls a Theosis, like this concept of, of, I'm gonna, I'm gonna purge, there's purgation. I'm gonna get rid of all the things in my life that I can, I can see that need to be gotten rid of, like cleaning out a shed in the back of the monastery, and then, and then you, you kind of clean the windows that the light can shine in, and they call that illumination. So we kind of get, we do the process of getting rid of the stuff in our life. And then we, we, we also engage in the processes that let God's light in. And somewhere in the midst of that, the unification, like we become, we become united with God. We become in what it means to be in Christ. We become more like Him and His character. We bear his image. We reflect His love, as the Jesuits would say, back out to the world. And so it's all the things that we kind of like, I feel like sometimes we roll our eyes and chalk up to religion, but it's some of the things that religion, when it's done really well and done right, man, it really facilitates some transformative stuff. And that's kind of the How to it's in the small, little things we give

Joshua Johnson: 22:57

ourselves to every day. I think religion can do both things right? It can lead us into that place, and it could, like, lead us away from that place, but it's what we choose to give our attention to, and how we do that. You're thinking about being human, and you're thinking about the way I think about God and theology, and you wrap all that in, how does what we think really reveal who we are. Where does this this thinking practice in religion either take us away from God or bring us towards God. And I

Unknown: 23:38

always love to do everything in the in the Hebraic mind. But what keeps coming to mind in that question is this Greek idea of repentance and changing one's mind. And I wonder if it's not this catch 22 sometimes of my thinking shapes who I am and who I am greatly impacts my thinking, because there is this call in the New Testament to change the way you see things, to change the way you think about and and yet, if your follow up question is a how to I'm not going to know I'm not going to know this. My students and I used to wrestle with this all the time. Well, how do I just start thinking differently? Marty, and maybe it goes back to that spiritual trans that, that spiritual formation we were talking about earlier, where this stuff starts to make me I give myself to something that starts to change the way. But what I think definitely shapes if I think God is mad at me if I think some of these questions start pointing towards the third book, which I'm actually working on right now and working on some research. And part of what I'm studying is things like God attachment, and this concept of we know about relational attachment, but that also impacts the way that I understand and interact with God, these things that were shaped by my family relationships, and if I have an avoidant personnel, well, I have an avoidant approach to God. It's how I have no other choice. It's the only way I can understand God. And so healing from those things. I mean, I've experienced that in my relationships, through things like therapy, but it's changing the way that I think, and then I can approach God differently. But I've also I changed the way I think, because of the things I've experienced. So I've always wonder which the chicken and the egg on that one? I'm not sure which one comes first, but, but, yeah, that catch 22 of thinking, shaping identity, shaping behavior and behavior, shaping identity, shaping thinking, seem to go back and forth.

Joshua Johnson: 25:29

We're changing our thinking. It impacts who we are and not just what we believe. So the question I have you talk about it, one of your chapters is, is the human agency that we have to partner with God? We actually are able to partner with God to bring Shalom and restoration on this earth. I've seen people try to do this in ways that harm and try to do this in ways that bring about some Shalom and restoration. Yeah, like, so how does like it all work together to say, oh, God's gonna trust us and let us participate. Aren't we going to mess things up because of our brokenness? Like, where does this sit in right?

Unknown: 26:15

Yeah, and I love that you that you caught that principle. That's what I'm learning about in my grad work right now, I'm actually at a Jesuit university, and one of the things I love about Ignatian spirituality that I'm learning from the Jesuits Is this, like, there's kind of this three or four fold. Who am I? Who is God? What is God up to? And how am I going to and I love the word participate. How am I going to join and participate? God's doing something. He beat us here, like he got here before we we don't have to ask God to come show up. Like, God beat us here and he's already at work. I'm. Trying to tune into the right spiritual frequency so I can discern what God's up to, and then I get to join. But, but you bring up this great point about but this person that's trying to discern and this person that's trying to join as broken, selfish, flawed, sinful, rebellious, and so how are we and and part of the what I part of my favorite passages in the New Testament are these, you know, a tree by its fruit. At least I have a test like, I think about, I don't know why this came to mind. I'm thinking about testing the water in my hot tub this weekend. Like, where are my levels at what? Like, we have this spiritual test strip of sorts, of going, am I aligned with this? Because this should be bringing love and joy and peace and patience. Is this bringing division, fits of rage, envy, malice? Because there's plenty of that going around in the world in our own faith spaces, and those should be indications that we're discerning something, something in the process, is off here. We need to dive back in and figure out where we've gone, where we've gone off kilter, because, because if we're partnering with God, it will be bringing more shalom, not less. And so that's at least part of what I've learned to lean on, is what's the test here? And again, that's flawed too, because who's running the test me and my group of people that are part of my tribe who want to we have an incentive to be right, but learning how to be humble, learning how to be honest, learning how to be authentic, is part of what the gospel does in us.

Joshua Johnson: 28:20

I think part of it is the Spirit of God. So the Holy Spirit helps bring some discernment in us. And I think this is really mysterious for a lot of people. Is how that works? Where does the Spirit come into play? How does the spirit bring discernment? How do we start to rely on the Holy Spirit? I mean, it was great that Paul was able to have a dream and say, I'm gonna, like, go to Macedonia. Or, No, I'm not. I'm gonna go somewhere else, or, you know, the spirit's going to show me, I'm going to rely on the spirit. How do we like sit with the Holy Spirit in discernment? I really appreciate you asking

Unknown: 28:58

that question. I came from a tradition. The joke was always that we came from, you know, we believed in the Father Son and the Holy Scriptures. We never talked about the Holy Spirit, because revival could break out, and it was dangerous, and it's subjective and it's hard to get your hands on. And so I was not trained with a bunch of tools. That was not language, that was often I was often surrounded and luckily, I got trained in other traditions, and had some amazing mentors who were built that way. And I don't know if I was even conscious of they just taught me how to listen in community with other people. Because we were doing it together. We were never just sitting with our prayer journal by myself, making great life decisions. We're doing it with our with our families. We're doing it with our mentors. We're doing the people at disciple us. We're doing it, the people that we're in small group with. We're doing it the people that we fellowship with, but they like, I think, I think it's easy to just go through the Christian life and really give yourself to the Christian life, and never really sit. And one of the things we talk about in the podcast is creating space. Like, if you create space, God will fill it. And I think what you're talking about the with the spirit is, what are the spaces that we create so that we can ask spirit, what are you saying? Spirit, where are you leading? Spirit, what are what? What give me eyes to see and ears to hear and and oftentimes it's just whether or not we're creating some of that literal space, to be quiet, to listen, to listen to the whether it needs to be the text, because I'm not. I don't trust myself. The heart is deceitful above all things. Or whether it's it is like I'm comfortable in that space, I feel the Spirit of God speaking to me. I remember a mentor telling me to put, I think they stole this from Ben and Brennan Manning, you know, put Jesus in a chair, an empty chair in the room, and just sit down and talk to Jesus. And I can remember thinking that is the dumbest thing. And they're like, well, close the door. Like nobody has to see you. Just give it a shot. And I like, I just remember my mentor telling me that, and Jesus talks back like it's crazy, like, and that. What is this? A Holy Spirit. So Holy Spirit helping guide and direct, and if we'll listen, and we got to be careful, we got to check that, we got to hold it accountable to a lot of stuff, but Jesus talks back the Spirit works. And yeah, it's well said, and something that I think I still don't put words to enough for sure.

Joshua Johnson: 31:22

I mean, you're sitting in that space where you could have Jesus front of you, you're talking to Jesus, he's talking back the Holy Spirit's doing some work, but oftentimes when we have, like, really horrible relationships, or we're lashing out on somebody, or I'm just in a conversation with you right now, Marty, like, how do I very quickly create some space for the holy? Spirit to speak. Maybe we, the Holy Spirit says, Let's go down a different road in this conversation. Maybe you need to talk about, you know this. How do we in conversation, in everyday life, in the busyness of who we are? Have that space to listen?

Unknown: 32:06

Yeah, I think if I have, if I have taken the time to get to know His voice, I recognize it in the midst of the conversation. I don't know if i This has just been my own experience. If I have not gotten to know that voice, I'm going to struggle to hear between my own selfish desires or insecurities and fears and my own subconscious and the Holy Spirit, I'm going to have a hard time knowing what's what in the moment and in a conversation with you right now, if I've given myself to a life of I know his voice like I can think of the family retreats that I've been a part of, and the blindfold the children, but the children can pick mom's voice out, and they find mom's voice, and they'd follow her a direction, or they go find her in the midst of a crowd. Like we know the voices of the people that we're very intimate with, and if we've been intimate with God enough that we know His voice, we can hear it even in the moment when it's not contemplative silence and creating space in a room by myself with Jesus. But what do I do in this moment, in this crowd, in this event that I'm a part of, and the Spirit's trying to tell me something, I can hear that voice amidst all the other distractions, at least that's the best answer I got for you.

Joshua Johnson: 33:32

That's a great answer. Good answer is a really good answer. You know, we've been talking about, you know, starting with belovedness, that we're broken, we also have some agency to participate in the shalom of God here on Earth. I think people are gonna, gonna ask, then, what is the good news? What is the gospel of being human? The gospel is good news, right? Yeah, what is the good news? That is a good direct

Unknown: 34:00

question that in some ways I tried to, with a twinkle in my eye, Sidestep in the book, we were like hinting at, because I think the gospel is, the gospel is we understand it, and that's going to vary for a lot of us, but the general understanding of the gospel is, is is good. We don't need to get rid of that. I just have wondered if it's robust enough, is it beyond just the gospel of Jesus's death that facilitates a restored relationship with God and whatever that means for eternity. Is it also more that? Is it about who I am all the time every day? Is it about not just my spiritual status as a reborn, spiritually regenerated person, but what it means to wake up every morning with the breath of God in me, what it means to be beloved, what it means for my you pointed out your enemies, unbelieving enemies, none. What is it? What is the gospel of what is? What is the good news for them? I remember one teacher telling me, if the gospel is not good news for everybody, then it's not good news for anybody. So there's something about the gospel that reaches out. And I'm not saying salvinically, I'm not talking about in ways that save us soteriologically, but, but there's something about the gospel that reaches out with good news about just what it means to be alive and to be here and to be in relationship with God and and then in the midst of that, the gospel that we typically think of shows up and plays a huge key part. But I think the gospel is also, if I'm reading my New Testament correctly, the gospel is also a lot more than that one simple theological treatise

Joshua Johnson: 35:40

as we're trying to find out who we are and who God is, I think we live in a day and age, especially in the West, in America, we live in a therapeutic age where we're trying to find the answer somewhere inside of us, like we're like, going deep inside and a lot of therapy, as you said, can be good, right? As you realized in therapy that you are beloved by God, like that is a good thing. How does this this work, both looking interiorly, but then also being able to receive God's love from the outside of us, like actually having him encounter us. Because you're saying, I'm waking up with the breath of God. That means God is in me, but then God is actually then outside of me and we're receiving His love. How does that work?

Unknown: 36:33

Yep, yeah, and I love you pointing out that we live in a world that is typically more we do have a therapeutic I remember the years ago, we were all talking about therapeutic, moral deism, like this, this, this need to, like. When you don't have the thing that is outside of you, also within you. Like I love the fact that we would go deep inside. Jesus says, well, the kingdom of God is in your midst, or within you, or however we want to translate that in different places, Ecclesiastes, God set the eternity. Has set eternity in the hearts of men. Okay, I love there's something in us, but it does not come from us. The goodness does not originate from us alone. The goodness, the thing that we'll find, if we go inside of us, is going to take us, outside of us and outside of the cosmos, to the God who creates it all. There is a belovedness, a seed of belovedness, that also comes from something so I love that we would go in looking if we're willing to find it in something far better than me. And that's not to say, whoa. What a wretch I am. I'm good, but only because a God, a good God, who's even better than me, made me that way because I'm also broken, I'm also incomplete, and I'm also all those things. So if I go inside, I'm going to find some really good stuff, but it's not going to point me further to me. It's going to point me further to the thing that I'm reflecting, that, that idea of being made in the image of God, the reflection, the representation of I'm reflecting something else, like the moon, reflecting the sun. It is not the or it's a there's no light being originated there. It is reflecting a light source from outside of itself. And hopefully that's what I would find, if I'm really looking for that. And that is what that is. I think, on some level, the gospel is you are beloved, and you're not defined by simply your wretchedness, but only because you are beloved by somebody and that, and that is the root of what the gospel

Joshua Johnson: 38:30

is, and that's so beautiful. And for some reason we, you know, us Protestants, we live in a place where, if we don't believe on a theological idea, we're going to break apart and create our own separate denomination. And you know, we were, for some reason, we're known more for what we're against than what we're for, and we are not as charitable to fellow believers in different camps. They're often enemies. For some reason within Christian culture that more than unbelievers, people are a lot more charitable to unbelievers. I know that you have you just talked about the Jesuits having mentors from different, you know, places within the Christian world. How do we open our eyes to see that we are brothers and sisters in the global Christian Church,

Unknown: 39:32

yep, yep. And in a lot of ways, that's where my next book heads is in that direction. But I will say this for sure, I think the importance of this project and the conversation we're having in this book is the reason I think we posture ourselves that way. I think of Rene Girard, great theologian that talked about just the idea of scapegoating. Why do we do that as human beings? There is a fear and an insecurity that goes deep down into our most primitive roots of what it means to be human, of there has to be an in crowd and an out crowd. And I've got, I mean, this goes all the way back to Cain and Abel. Is no threat to Cain, but Cain has perceived himself. So what does God encourage Cain to do? Just rest in his belovedness. You're fine. Cain, Abel has done something good today. I love it. And if you do what's right, you'll be fine, but if you don't do what's right. And so there's this thing that's deep inside of us that always causes us to other somebody, like it's a zero sum game, there's only so much belonging, so much acceptance, so much salvation to go around. So coming to the grips with what it means to be human, coming to grips with continuing to grow in our awareness of just how beloved we are, frees me from having to other somebody else, because it's not a zero sum game. There's more than enough salvation, there's more than enough love, there's more than enough freedom. And I can now really want all these other people to find it. I can really rejoice if they've got some things right, and maybe I'm short sighted on some things. Theologically, I can, I can celebrate the fact that it appears and I could be wrong, but it appears that God is really up to something outside the lines that felt comfortable to me. Maybe, maybe the lines are actually maybe the tribe is a little bigger, maybe. And I feel like I've seen that from Genesis to Revelation in the scriptures, like God keeps saying, I don't know if you're and it doesn't mean everything. I'm not talking about universalism, or it just means that, like maybe God's looking, the scope is wider than

Joshua Johnson: 41:34

I thought. I think part of that is now we have tribalistic thinking, and we move into a place of we want to win. We want power over and once my tribe wins, everything will be okay. A you talk about in the book, about God's left handed power of coming in something different humility and presence and invitation. What does that look like for us as we actually then want to see some some beauty and goodness and truth in the world.

Unknown: 42:07

Yeah, and I think we're getting back to the gospel again, because that was another Reed chapter. He did a great job on that chapter I loved. He introduced me years ago to this, I this language and this idea he got from Robert for our Capen of left handed, right handed power and and I think the metaphor he might even use in the book is like I can demand that my kids come out of their bedroom like I can demand that they see me in the dining room, or I can just bake bread and let this or bake fresh cookies and let the smell waft down the hallway and watch them come out of their room. And I think that's the way we often try to take up space in the world we're going for the end. And so it feels like the more expedient, cut the corner with right handed power make people say yes to Jesus. And I think the verse that comes to mind in the in the evangelical and the evangelicalism I was raised in was every knee will bow, and every tongue, it feels very right handed power to me, until I remember where that verse showed up, which is at the end of the Christ humility hymn, where he did not consider equality with God something, but he became obedient to death on a cross. And because of that, he's exalted because of his willingness to humble himself. That's why every that's left handed power, and we used to always quote the last verse with a very right handed flair to it, and the irony of how that how that passage calls us to something totally different as Christians.

Joshua Johnson: 43:37

So all of this really is a foundation for discipleship and to grow into the likeness of Christ in our lives, individually and in community. So how do you think that this reshapes discipleship? How do you see discipleship as somebody that has been talking about it for a long time? How do you see it now? What does it look like to grow into the likeness of Christ?

Unknown: 44:05

Oh, man, I have questioned everything about the way I discipled students for years in the last 10 years of leadership. And if I could try to encapsulate what I think about that question, it's it's the ways that I used fear to try to manipulate and control people and discipleship and in relationships and fellowship versus free like, am I trying to, am I trying to narrow or or it's about freedom. Now, how can I, how can I free people? How can I, how can I turn the lights on that lift the burden, rather than man? When I was younger, so much of my discipleship, so much my spiritual formation, so much my leadership was about if I really lay the hammer down on this sermon, if I really, if I really sit down over a cup of coffee and say it just the right way, boy, they're they're really going to be like, Whoa. And now it's like, oh, just, just be loved. Be Be. Be more free find, find what God is. It's not my I think it's me getting out of the way more and more so that people can find a God who's just chasing them relentlessly. And I know that's very poetic and abstract, but, but man, I think it shapes my discipleship in those ways.

Joshua Johnson: 45:24

So then how does it move from from you discipling others and into what do we do as the church to disciple What are give us some some tips for communities of faith that are trying to lead congregations to this. What? What does it look like for us? I don't know how

Unknown: 45:44

much I would presume to talk about I think of so many ways that I've learned from my United Methodist brothers and sisters, or the things I'm learning at my Jesuit institution, or my own faith tradition in the church of Christ, Christian Church, independent movement, like we're all we're all pursuing God in our own unique ways. I wouldn't want to presume, but to answer your question, I think I just keep thinking of Eugene Peterson's quote and the last part of our conversation where he said, like a church is really a big body of gathered sinners. I think it might be Henry noun, but I think it's Eugene Peterson, but a church is a body of gathered sinners, and one of those sinners has been given the task of keeping us attentive to what God's doing. That's the call of the pastor. And so whether we're the pastor or whether we're somebody that's in like, our job is to realize we're just one of a group of people who's trying to help others be attentive to what God is doing. So how will we do that? Well, we'll do that by practicing and. At impact. We talk about pursuing modeling and teaching. It has to start with my own pursuit. I have to be attentive to that. And so I love how it ties back to curiosity, attention and wonder and wonder. I have to be attentive to what God is doing. I have to pursue that. I have to do that in a way that other people can see it, model it, and come along with me. And then I have to help fill in the gaps, and I have to explain why, and I have to help get people over obstacles and remove obstacles so that people can do the same thing. But it will have to start with me being attentive to God and and making sure that other people can join me in the in the journey,

Joshua Johnson: 47:24

as I look at the early church and look at Acts 237, through 47 and I could see a lot of ways that we want to be discipled, and, you know, commands of Christ to follow like we want to repent and believe. They were baptized. They broke bread together, and, you know, and they started to love one another. Well. They gave generously. They prayed, they made more disciples. And I think we often skip over some of the parts where, you know they're not just hearing the the apostles teaching, but they're seeing signs and wonders. There's awe and there's wonder in the midst of the early church, and you get to the place of wonder, I think we we're missing some wonder in this discipleship. Where does that play a part? How do you we bring in the wonder of God into

Unknown: 48:22

our discipleship? Oh, man, I'm wishing you would have wrote that chapter. Now, the way you just worded that, that's fantastic. I wish I would have made that connection acts and wonder, signs and wonders and so good when you said that, I just kept thinking in our culture, in our first world, Western society, Hellenistic America, especially in our culture, The things we ascribe wonder two are baffling to me, and I don't know if we work hard enough to see you talk. You talked earlier in the interview about forgiveness, like the scandal, what if? What is that, if not like the miracle of what the gospel can do in my hearts and impacting relationships or or just unbridled generosity, just the way that we can. I mean, that's what you're seeing in the book of Acts too, like the way that a church can come together and do something for a community, or find somebody that and just with no strings attached, just share and lavishly give or be generous. These, these are wonders. And I think sometimes we just go, oh, I can explain why that happened. I can explain because we can explain everything. And we don't ever stop and go, Okay, we can explain it, but that's but that's God at work in in his people, and that's not us. That's God. And I wonder, I wonder if the Wonder is is something that we because the things that we are like, Oh, look at what chat GPT can do. Oh, look at like, the things we ascribe wonder to. It's like, okay, but it really reveals sometimes our idolatry. When the things that are amazing are are are things that we we tend to be so cynical we would lose hope for you. And it's happening all around us, and we just don't take the time to go, Look miracle, look miracle. And that's not taking away from miracle, miracles, but I mean, like it's happening all the time. Why in the world would you forgive that person for doing that? Why would you why would you do work that you shouldn't have to do for because that's what the gospel does, and that's changes the world, because you can't put the world back together by giving everybody what they deserve. So we're going to give people what they don't deserve. That's That's wonder, like those are signs and wonders. And I think it's what we're tapping into when we read the book of Acts, potentially maybe beautiful,

Joshua Johnson: 50:54

beautiful, if we could tap into that wonder. Just that just brings us into the place. God is constantly at work. God is moving. We are reflections of God in this world, it's beautiful if you can now, then talk to your readers. People pick up the gospel being human. What do you hope for your readers? What do you hope this brings

Unknown: 51:18

I would hope for two things, and I'd be thrilled if both could happen, but I'll take either or one that they would just be some of that freedom I was talking about earlier, like that reading, it would be this journey of like, like, doors being opened, windows being thrown open for some theological fresh air, like, kind of like the a weight being lifted off of maybe some shoulders. That'd be one great thing. The other thing would just be more curiosity, like the word maybe, maybe, like. A lot of people might read the book and be like, I'm not sure I'm there yet, okay, but maybe, and that's enough, because that curiosity keeps us from the cold, rigid I've got all the answers. It's all been figured that possibility, that curiosity of is that bush being consumed or not? I'll let you watch it, and you can decide whether or not that bush is being consumed. But those two movements would be great for me.

Joshua Johnson: 52:11

So good a couple quick questions here at the end. One, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give?

Unknown: 52:17

Oh, goodness, go to therapy earlier. I would, I would, I would, I would ask myself to get curious about my own fear and insecurity. That's what I would tell myself. 21 year old self, get more curious about what I'm afraid of, because that's going to unlock things in seven or eight years. I really wish I would have unlocked sooner for everybody's benefit. People I led and pastored, my wife, my children, it'd be nice.

Joshua Johnson: 52:44

Scott, anything you've been reading or watching lately you could recommend, boy.

Unknown: 52:48

I've been in a, I've been in a, wow, I've been in a bunch of old NT, that shelf right back there behind me that you can see is full of NT write books on Christology that I've been powering through. So always recommend a good NT write book, whether it's the academic variety or not, but there's been some good stuff

Joshua Johnson: 53:04

there. Nice. Well, I can't go wrong.

Unknown: 53:07

That's right, that's right, that's fantastic.

Joshua Johnson: 53:11

That's good. Well, the gospel of being human will will be out available anywhere books are sold. How can people connect with you? Where would you like to point people to? Is there anywhere you'd like to point people to get the book?

Unknown: 53:22

Yeah, just easiest place would be Marty solomon.com and there is a Book link there if you want to pre order the book, get the last book, or find YouTube content, the podcasts that we've been talking about, all that can be found at Marty

Joshua Johnson: 53:34

solomon.com Excellent. Well, Marty, this is fantastic. What a wonderful conversation figuring out who we are. What does it mean to be human? What is the good news? How do we start with belovedness, that we could hold things in tension, that were beloved and broken, that there is good news, that Jesus has come incarnate, and then we could participate in the shalom of God in the world man. We could see enemies as humans. So many incredible things that we walk through here. So thank you for this conversation. I'd love to have a conversation about Ignatian spirituality sometimes with you, because that was fun as well. But Marty, thank you. It was

Unknown: 54:11

fantastic. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. You.