Andy Crouch

That’s why I set up this two by two, where we actually have two axes. I put authority on the vertical and vulnerability on the horizontal. Up and to the right. That place everybody wants to be is up and to the right, is actually high authority and high vulnerability, by which I mean high risk. Actually, a flourishing life is a life where you’re aware that something’s at stake and you’re not sure how it’s going to go, kind of like this interview, right? What makes this worth doing? What you and I are doing right now. I mean, people could go read the book, right? But there would be very little risk in that. Even for me as the author, I wrote that book a long time ago, and it’s out in the world. I hope it’s helpful. It was a risk at the time. But part of why I think people want to watch, and we want to see an author show up and talk, is that you’re going to ask questions that I don’t know what they are. We haven’t rehearsed this. You haven’t promised me script control or anything, right? Actually, what you’re doing in this interaction, we’re experiencing, and we’re modeling, is a kind of risk that is like part of being human. Yes, I bring some authority, maybe. I’ve thought about these topics. But what makes it a healthy conversation, a flourishing conversation, will be if we both actually find ways to take risks. So up and to the right is the flourishing we’re made for. But then, I don’t know, do you want me to quickly go through the other quadrants?

Jason Daye
Yeah, let’s go ahead. Let’s dive in. Yeah, there’s three others, right?

Andy Crouch
There are three other options, right? We human beings spend a lot of our time, in a way, in some of the other options. So let’s go just down and to the right. So that’s where you have high vulnerability but low authority. So you’re very much at risk. You’re very conscious that something could go really wrong, but you have no capacity to act. I would actually fundamentally call that experience, the experience of suffering. 9:22ish All of us have been in a situation where we were very aware of risk, but we had no capacity to change the situation or affect the situation. These are the most traumatic experiences of our lives and the most difficult experiences. So that corner of suffering is very real. All human beings go there. Then there’s the lower left corner, which is always kind of interesting. It’s like neither one. No, no. It’s no authority and no vulnerability. I would actually call that safety, which is to say, it’s an environment where you’re not being asked to do anything, and you don’t, at least sense, that you’re risking anything. I would actually say this is where every healthy human life is meant to start. That when we ourselves, if we have children, part of what parents do is limit their child’s authority and also protect their child. That’s a healthy thing, but it’s not where we’re meant to stay. The issue with the lower left corner is not that it’s not a good place to begin. It’s that it’s not a good place to end up. But when we end up there, I would call it withdrawal, and that’s where I just back away from the world. I back away from the action that I’m called to in the world and the risk I’m called to. We might want to talk about, why we end up choosing that corner. It’s one thing for a child to naturally, appropriately be in that corner. Why do grown-ups end up back sort of sucking their thumb and wanting to sort of curl up in a ball? Well, there are reasons, and they’re often related to the suffering corner. Then the third one is, in some ways the most interesting, which is authority without vulnerability. That’s up and to the left. High authority, low vulnerability. In the book, I have a name for it, which I’ll mention in a moment. But I’ve realized one of the frustrating things about writing the book. Books are done, or, as they say, books aren’t actually finished, but they are abandoned. So every book, the writer has just abandoned it at some point, like it has to be good enough. I wish I hadn’t abandoned Strong and Weak before I realized the right name for this corner. 11:18 – 11:48 The proper name for the corner of authority without vulnerability is control. When I can act, but with no risk, I have control. I actually think in many ways, this is kind of the human dream. We wish we could have control. In the book, though, I call it exploiting because what happens when we seek control is we actually use and, at the limit case, abuse other people to gain a sense of control over the world that we’re not meant to have because we’re meant to live with risk. So that’s the basic structure of the book. The book is just a very simple exploration of what each of those corners is like, how we end up there, and how we move back toward the flourishing we’re made for.

Jason Daye
Yeah. Excellent, Andy. Thank you for that overview. It was very helpful. As you’re explaining those, I’m sure everyone watching, or everyone listening, is doing some self-reflection, as we often do. As we read through books, we hear these kinds of conversations and say, Okay, what quadrant do I find myself in today? I mean, because what’s fascinating is we think of pastors and ministry leaders, right? We all want to be in that flourishing space. Obviously, that’s where we really feel like that’s where we’re most effective.

Andy Crouch
In our heart of hearts that’s where we want to be.

Jason Daye
Yet, in seasons, we find ourselves in different quadrants. Now I would say, Andy, and I’m not gonna put words in your mouth, but I believe you’d agree with this, that there are things external that put us sometimes in these different quadrants, right? Then there are things internal, things and decisions that we make, that move us into these quadrants. I’d like to kind of explore both of those. So talk about this a bit. Andy, if you’re talking to a ministry leader who finds themselves in a suffering season right now, from external choices that they did not make. What’s the encouragement there? How do we begin to process through that time in a way that allows us to draw near to God and continue the hope for moving into the flourishing again, right?

Andy Crouch
Wow, yes. I have two thoughts about that. One is something you can do, in a sense, on your own or with God, really, but alone in a way. The other is the role of other people at those moments. So to start with what I can actually choose when I’m in that suffering corner? I mean, one of the amazing things about Scripture is that it gives us models, pictures, and kind of stories of people in all of the corners actually right. The characteristic faithful response to the suffering corner is what we call lament. I’m thinking especially of the Psalms of lament. Though there are other places in the Bible where we read and encounter laments. Jeremiah, Job, and so forth. The key quality, or the key distinctiveness of lament, is that it actually brings into my relationship with God, the pain of where I am. So it’s not just acknowledging and rehearsing to myself the pain I’m in. It’s actually going to God, up to and including confronting God in a kind of adversarial way with the conditions that surround me. About a third of the Psalms are primarily characterized by, hey, you up there, I’m in trouble. You don’t seem to be moving, or you’ve allowed my enemy to triumph, or you allow the wicked to prosper. There are lots of different nuances to this and dimensions of this that get unfolded in the Psalms. But what they all have in common, with an interesting, almost exception in Psalm 88, is that there is also this active rehearsal of but I am still going to trust you. I’m going to tell you exactly what’s going on in my life, but I’m also going to rehearse my trust in you. Psalm 88 is interesting because it ends without a lot of hope in God. It ends dark. My friends you put away from me and darkness is my only friend or my only companion. I actually think it’s very significant that that Psalm is in the Bible. 15:47--I think it’s tremendously encouraging that we can have, represented in the Bible, someone who, in the end, as they lay out their case, by the time they’re done, they’re like, I got nothing and I don’t see you anywhere. Literally, the only thing that makes it not just a total cry of despair is literally the first word of the Psalm. I don’t have it all memorized, but it’s basically “My God”. The psalmist is still laying this out in relationship with God. As far as he feels from God and he clearly feels extremely far. 16:19 One other thing about Psalm 88 and I think this is worth dwelling on because this is so much part of our reality. Every human but also in ministry, and very often in ministry, no one is ever given permission to bring your complaint to God, right? Even though that’s a huge part of what is effective. What did Elijah do? What did Jeremiah do? They all brought their complaints to God. Why haven’t we had that modeled for us in ministry? Malcolm Guide is a poet who during Covid, wrote his way through all 150 Psalms and wrote a sonnet for each Psalm. It’s called David’s Crown. It’s an amazing collection of Psalms. In the forward, I don’t remember the name of the author, but the author of the forward observes that if you open the Psalms up to the middle of the book, you would think that would be Psalm 75 because that would be the middle. There are 150 divided by two. But because Psalm 119 is so long, for various reasons, 17:15 the actual middle of the Psalms is 88. So essentially, where does Psalms start? Blessed is the man who does not walk in the Council of Godly but has this blessed life of God. Psalm 1. Psalm 150, praise the Lord. Everything in creation, praise the Lord. So it starts with a kind of righteousness and uprightness and ends in praise, and it goes all the way down to the valley of Psalm 88 where we also find God acknowledged. So that work of lament is the work of the lower right corner, and when you neglect it, I actually think that’s when you end up in withdrawal. When you don’t bring the very justifiable complaint you have to God about your circumstances, you will end up withdrawing into a kind of detachment, depression, or suppressed anger. 18:03 So I know that was a very long answer. Let me just say the one other thing I think you need, though, in that corner. The three corners that are not the healthy corner. Actually, I have to put it a slightly different way. There are three things leaders do in ancient Israel. Prophet, Priest, and King. I think they correspond to what brings us out of the three corners. This is also not in the book, by the way, I abandoned it. So the Prophet, we can get back to this. But the prophet confronts people in the upper left corner. People who are exploiting and people who are seeking control. The King, I think is meant to draw people out of the safety corner. The king is meant to live this kind of flourishing life. The king lives the flourishing life, ideally, and takes risks on behalf of the people, too. In the spring of the year, when kings go out to war, they take risks on behalf of the good of their people. The king is meant to pull you out of the withdrawal corner. Then the Priest is the one who meets you when you don’t have authority on your own. Originally, you don’t have the authority to come before God, but the priest gives you a way, in your vulnerability before God, to also have authority with God through the sacrifice that you offer and that the priest ratifies and offers on your behalf. Well, I think we can extend that to say, 19:23—19:51 whenever we are lacking in ourselves the capacity for meaningful action, we should pray for and seek out a priest, in that sense. Someone who will lay their hands on you, who will sacrificially accompany you and say, you do have authority here. It may feel like you have no authority, but you do have authority as a child of God. So lament is kind of a private practice, but seeking out someone who can play that priestly role is a shared practice. Someone pointed out to me, the very worst thing that can happen to you is to need a priest and have a prophet show up.

Jason Daye
Oh, yeah. Right.

Andy Crouch
You need someone who will comfort you and bear the suffering with you. That’s what a good priestly kind of posture is. The worst thing in the world is when the critic arrives and is like, let me tell you about your idolatry and injustice now. But on the other hand, communities that only have priests and never have prophets also have a failure mode, right? So you need both just at the right time, each one.

Jason Daye 

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