Unpacked In Santa Cruz
Mike Howard talking ....
Unpacked In Santa Cruz
EPISODE 29: Jen Selden Friendship, Life, and Being a Liberal Christian
Ever wondered what it takes to sustain a marriage for 36 years and raise adult children with grace? My good friend Jen Selden joins us on the Unpacked and Naked Podcast to share her unique insights and personal experiences. We get real about the rollercoaster ride of long-term relationships, from the intricate dance of communication to the bittersweet emotions of family milestones. Jen's candid reflections are complemented by my own journey into self-awareness and the transformative power of mirror therapy.
Travel back with us to the days of childhood ear infections and the life-defining moments at Vacation Bible School (VBS). We uncover how these shared experiences of managing health challenges and volunteering at VBS shaped our perspectives on community, service, and personal growth. The episode highlights the dedication and fulfillment derived from organizing such impactful events, and how those early mornings and late evenings at VBS left an indelible mark on our lives.
But it doesn’t stop there. We navigate the complexities of maintaining liberal Christian values in a predominantly conservative environment, discussing the importance of positive contributions over negative distractions. From the impact of the purity movement to fostering open communication in parenting, this episode examines the delicate balance of setting boundaries while allowing children the freedom to make their own choices. Tune in for a heartfelt discussion on faith, community, and the transformative journey of reassessing religious identities—a conversation filled with honesty, growth, and the continuous effort to improve both personally and professionally.
Welcome to the Unpacked and Naked Podcast. My name is Michael Howard. I am sitting here with a very good friend of mine, Jen Seldon, and we are enjoying Let your Heart Healing, or Let your Healing. Oh geez, why are you spoiling it?
Speaker 2:I'm spoiling. I Love you. It's a whole reading.
Speaker 1:You know, if you're listening to this, you know I love you. I'm a little dumb sometimes, but anyways, jen, yeah, we were just having a laugh. We were for all of you listeners. You know I'm back to back podcasting right now and if you listen to Michael Painter, before that I was bawling after my and I was laughing with Jen before she walked in. That I Busted's not the right word, you know, just enlightened about.
Speaker 2:Enlightened.
Speaker 1:About how I put pressures on my wife and I have a lot of writing to do after this. And poor Jen is just coming into this and in full disclosure, Jen has actually podcasted with me twice before. Yeah, Jen, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself first, and then I'll get to full disclosure moments about why we're redoing this?
Speaker 2:Okay, about me.
Speaker 1:About you. Yes, You're married.
Speaker 2:I am. I am married. I've been married for 36 years.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:As we were just discussing.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:I had a thought about my husband.
Speaker 1:We've been here for 36 years, and why do you not know this? And communication skills? Yeah, Exactly.
Speaker 2:But that's okay, we live in hope. There's many fine qualities, yes, so yes, I am married. I have two grown children. Today is Haley's birthday.
Speaker 1:Oh, happy birthday, Haley.
Speaker 2:She is 30.
Speaker 1:I can't. I'm sitting a year behind. Caleb just turned 29 just a couple weeks ago and was up.
Speaker 2:I know it's terrible, it's brutal, it is.
Speaker 1:I don't even know what to do with it.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're not that old, no, no.
Speaker 2:It's that I don't know common core math or something, how I can be 39 and my child can be 30.
Speaker 1:I'm sure there's something about that.
Speaker 2:There's some sort of formula yes, I was a little maybe weepy yesterday when I'm looking through pictures because you know you got to do the birthday.
Speaker 1:Facebook post.
Speaker 2:And I was almost like I'm not doing it, I'm just not doing it because I can't look through the pictures anymore. So, yes, yeah, so yes, that. Um, yeah, I don't know what else to what to say. I've done a lot of things. Yeah, yeah, I am one of those do a lot of things. I get bored and then I go do a different thing. Yes, I fix things. That's pretty much. That's probably better.
Speaker 1:I go in, I fix the situation and then I'm like great, it's fixed, now I can leave, so I'm gonna apologize to the audience a little bit because, you know, jen and I are very well-practiced in conversation, so there's a flow that's happening already. She's already gotten over the nerves of being in front of a microphone because and really, the reason why you're I don't have those podcasts available is actually because of me. So here's the full disclosure. Part is you know, I really felt a need to, as I expressed. Part is you know, I really felt a need to, uh, as I expressed, shut the fuck up.
Speaker 1:Before I realized that the last time we were doing it and listening back, I was defending some positions that, um, I I just didn't need to and, as part of my process of like, really reflecting on why it is I'm doing what I'm doing, I went back and had to listen to three of them. I was like, hmm, I don't like my tone of voice, I don't like how I'm angling and and and it's. You know, it really is this hidden spot that when you're in leadership, oftentimes you're you're controlling narratives, and not that the conversations that we had were so controlled. It was just that, you know, my heart wasn't in the right place when we were talking, you know, because there were some things that were affecting me and I just didn't like it, you know, and I don't feel I'm fine with anybody knowing that I'm that way.
Speaker 2:It's just, we all know, michael.
Speaker 1:To the parties that it wouldn't have been fair to that. That may have felt the nuance and know me well. It was not appropriate to you know, for me to have that interjected into the situation and and just wasn't cool, you know. So I'm working on that spot in my heart.
Speaker 2:And you know what I call it, though, right, you've heard me call it mirror therapy. Yeah, mirror therapy. Go look in that mirror. Relisten to those words.
Speaker 1:And then you're like oh, hmm, I have work, yeah, and as I've expressed to the audience, I'm really getting deep into this Jungian concept of shadow work and really seeing my shadow. And you know it's that thing, that that you know what, what you can't express, you suppress, and then the shadow shows up and you know it shows up in your ego, and your ego is not necessarily a bad thing, but when it is negative it is that short-sighted vision, myopic view that you have of things because of your traumas and whatever else. And and uh, my trauma was sitting in that conversation in a way that that I don't think was fair to everybody else. Might've been okay for me to be exposed, but it just that it's not cool. So there you go, people, I, I, I I'm getting reflective enough that I can catch myself.
Speaker 2:And we're done here that.
Speaker 1:I can catch myself and we're done here. No, we're done because I'm all better now, but you know it has been really fun to do these things. I think that the last time you were here, you found it far more enjoyable once that red light went on than you thought you might imagine.
Speaker 2:It was fun, I came back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you came back and you know I just want to really take this moment because, you know, there there are a lot of things going on politically. You know I, I think there's been some time it was May that was. That was about my year anniversary that we podcasted. You know, it's now August of the same year and I clearly took a little bit more time off from doing this.
Speaker 1:You know I, I just rebooted here about about two weeks ago and you know, we're we're we're running at a very fast click of of podcasting. So I'm getting used to this weird pace of like boom, boom, boom, one after the other. But I was just in Montana and and got to really reconnect with some, some family members that that we don't get to spend a lot of time with but we're the closest with, and uh, just coming off a really good reflective time and and, uh, feeling my mojo a little bit. And so you know, as you know, I called you right when I got back and, uh, one I actually, right before I left, got you in. You know, you don't have to wear those.
Speaker 1:No, it's okay, if they hurt, they hurt. You would think I would have gotten the big headphones back yet, but I got it by my own setup.
Speaker 2:I have little baby ears. I don't know what to tell you.
Speaker 1:It's these things I do too. I wear small Docs Pro plugs when I surf. The ear infections when we were young, oh man.
Speaker 2:You swam, oh man, you swam. Oh yeah, oh yeah, it's crazy, yeah, Crazy. You're forever on some kind of antibiotic or some kind of drops or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, just get the swelling down. Inflammation is the issue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the little hearing mobile would come to school, my mother would get a note your daughter's deaf, as opposed yes which was not true, but that's how it came across what not minding your game in the classroom yes, no, no, I didn't raise my hand every time there was a beep. Didn't you have those little hearing mobiles?
Speaker 1:oh, yeah, yeah, oh yeah, your daughter's deaf now she just has yet another ear infection right, right, just create more fear in the household exactly exactly, oh man.
Speaker 1:Well, um, jen, you know, you and I have been been friends for for a bit. Um know we met at church and so you know this is kind of the segue in is our church experience together. We, we, we certainly crossed paths in the hallway, but it was really at Vacation Bible School where, where, where we got to see each other. You know, you kind of more on the theater end of things and, and my mind more in on the theater end of things and my mind more in minding the game with all of our team leaders.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly, you had a much harder job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, my mind was always in conflict resolution and helping people learn to take care of other people's children. To take care of other people's children. And you know it's funny. In my own life right now it's weird. I feel like I just got married again because the thought of being with a child is so foreign to me. Right, it's true, you know, and it's weird because you know, I didn't even know I wanted kids until after I got married and then, once I had one, I, you know, kept going.
Speaker 1:And I just absolutely love and adore. You know being with kids, being around kids, helping them.
Speaker 2:You know coaching doing all the things that I've done.
Speaker 1:But it's so weird, it's like now I'm back to that guy like a kid.
Speaker 2:Maybe I'll feel different when I have my own grandkids. What would you like me to do with it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's got a lot of weird conflict going on right now. Yes, the contradiction of being Michael Howard.
Speaker 2:Oh well, yes, there you go, but you did it well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you were there for BBS. You were an important thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you were there at VBS. You were an important thing. Yeah, I was there.
Speaker 1:You know, make them laugh, make them laugh, that's you know, yeah, yeah, and you're like all right, we have these children. Stop being jerks, right.
Speaker 2:How do I make people laugh? How do I make people laugh? Yeah, there's skills in that area.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, but we can actually talk about VBS a little bit and really what an integral part of, I think, the Coastlands ministry was and it will for our audience really get an idea of where I come from. On the ministry side of things, I think you share, principally, most of the things that we would aspire to in doing what we did. But Vacation Bible School was just this wonderful moment it was how it sounded and yet the whole county showed up, most of which were not Christian kids or many of which were not Christian kids, because it was just really fun and safe atmosphere and a week of just self-discovery and and and fun, like somehow.
Speaker 2:As we say, F-U-N.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it just, it just was this great thing, but but it really lives principally in, in, in, in why I was in ministry and that if we can serve the least amongst us and give them a safe, beautiful atmosphere to learn more about themselves, to function with other people, that the hard, arduous task that was VBS and and and you know the, the the staff for VBS got about a month off you know, before planning began, and then it would. It would get. Oh, I see what you're saying.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, we would end in June and, like in July, people are going what are we going to do next year? What are we going to do next year? You?
Speaker 1:know it sounds simple, but there's nothing simple about it. And you know, for me VBS really was a changing point in my heart. I started serving at Vacation Bible School when I was 22. And then by the time I had kids. It just all ends up being this lead up into what you get by giving. And VBS is not easy, it is exhausting. You start at 6 in the morning, you're done maybe at 6.30.
Speaker 2:Maybe at 6.37.
Speaker 1:In your case it was more later, because you still had to follow up with the theater crew right, there was stuff exactly, yeah just takes a while so you know it's.
Speaker 1:But what you wouldn't imagine just listening is, of, of the you know, three to 500 kids that showed up, there were closer to seven to 800 volunteers that came and helped. So for these people who came and volunteered, that was our summer vacation. Right, that was very willingly given in a strange way and I know, for me I didn't have vacation for years in the summer just because I had to be well, I didn't have to be, I chose to be involved in this thing. That was just so life-giving. I don't know how it was, but it was Right, because it really was very hard. It was very hard, but it was very good work, right.
Speaker 2:I was in the middle of producing summer Shakespeare festivals. Oh yeah, and figure out how to take a whole week off like that. That were 12 hour days, and then sometimes I would leave from there and have to leave a little early because I have a box office to open at six over the hill. I'm like, okay, then here we go, I'm dirty and you've got like your nails will never be clean again. It's because it's outside and you're just dusty and dirty and you just go on to the next thing and it's fantastic.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I've never been so energized while so exhausted I don't know how to even how to even put that You're just like and I'm not. Michael will attest I'm not a morning person. No never, not even a little bit, not even a morning person.
Speaker 1:No, ever. Not even a little bit, not even a noon person. Not even a noon person, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's true, it's true, I'm not going to deny it Anyway. So theater suits me right, yeah. Vbs. That was a tough one. They're like, well you know, to do the theater part of VBS. The latest you can be there is 7.30 in the morning, 7.30 in the morning. That is firmly yesterday for me. I'm just saying, it's not even today yet it's before 7.30 in the morning.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's classic.
Speaker 2:But it was so great, like everything about it was great, even the hard stuff, even when you're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe this is happening right now.
Speaker 1:And then you look back and you think that was such a great thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that really whatever big giant awkward sauce thing that happened, because then good things all came out of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you just didn't realize that you had to got to endure the awkward sometimes to get to the good yeah, and and you know, with this podcast, you know part of it is highlighting friendships of mine and and and my own process of of what I'm stepping out of and learning to step into. But you know, the other side of it is is I really wanted to incorporate people that are very, very important in the county and have been for a long time. You know that makes santa cruz santa cruz. You know people have a perception of this place but not realizing the real diversity that that I found in most humans that live here. And you know, let's talk about Shakespeare, santa Cruz, I think that's….
Speaker 2:Well, I wasn't at Shakespeare Santa Cruz though. Yeah, Los Gatos, I had to go over the hill. Oh, gotcha yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but the level of talent that lives here and somehow this place it just tracks. It's a really beautiful spot, and not just physically but for the people that walk amongst us. Oh yeah, and the reason why I brought VBS up at first was really because I think, for both you and I, VBS lives in this reality of what we believe about God, that if we can look through a child's eyes a child who has hope and wonder, curiosity, all those things we can have a better view, rather than the view that we have a tendency to filter through, which is of our own fathers, about what love looks like, about the kind of pains that we experience that really taint this idea that there is a good God. That's kind. And there's no other ministry that I've ever done, other than coaching baseball. That has been more of an opportunity to just love people that way.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And as a church it was really the highlight of what we did. It really was the example of the brain trust in some way, of our perception of who God was, and I really can't recall a bad experience that didn't end well, right, right, exactly.
Speaker 2:Because anytime you get that many hundreds of children together, that many hundreds of adults together, there will be things that come up that are not ideal. However, that's the environment you want those things to come up in, because, like you said, it just ends well, you know everybody's, you're just going to work it out and then you might have a revelation about yourself or revelation about somebody else, and that changes your whole focus moving forward like it's it's life-changing, and it seemed like this little conflict that just turned out to be revelationary.
Speaker 2:I don't know a better word for that.
Speaker 1:You know that you kind of move forward in a different way.
Speaker 2:You feel a little lighter, you feel a little illuminated, you feel you know just better. You feel a little better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, because you're seeing things for what they are, right, you know, because the purity of the moment, that is really really taking care of young hearts and minds and giving them hope in the future.
Speaker 1:You know, seeing the world through their lens is just a whole different approach because of the cynicism we adopt as we start to quote unquote mature you know and have to deal with all the bullshit that kind of comes our way as your adults, and I'm wanting to highlight this a lot because I think most of the conversation, I think that that pertains to church, gets really missed because we're focused on the problems of church without contextualizing them. You know, for us, I think it's a little bit more traumatic because we've seen church really, really work and what it has turned into. You know, Christian nationalist movement, you know all of this. Yeah, it is such a dichotomy to our own experiences at church. Not that there wasn't conflict, not that there wasn't cult-like behavior within the organization etc.
Speaker 2:Right, again, not many people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, groupthink happens all those sorts of things and we don't need to get too far down that road at this portion of the conversation. But you know, for those of us who have had really beautiful experiences at church, you know what was so unique about VBS and it was constant with me because I had such a far reach within the county that a lot of my clients' children were coming to this thing, many of whom were atheists who then all of a sudden found themselves in church At the example that was being presented as the way life could be. Rather than sitting there and rationalizing with somebody about whether God exists, they were experiencing it the way that we understood it at the time and it was beautiful back then.
Speaker 1:And once we get away from the dogma and all the things that kind of come with religious structures and groupthink and all those kind of parenting behaviors that end up harming people rather than people being their full selves. Right, vbs removed that and uh, I can't. It's literally countless numbers for me. I I can't tell you how many people had their arms crossed in the back that showed up at first the next year they were serving you know, and they weren't even part of our church.
Speaker 1:They weren't even Christians Like. No, we want to be part of this.
Speaker 2:We want to be part of UDS. Exactly. Yeah, we had similar things. My kids were, I wasn't, I didn't have clients.
Speaker 2:but you know my kids did sports in the area and went to a school all the way South County. So them talking about it towards the end of the school year and oh, next week's VBS, blah, blah, blah. Coming back afterwards, so VBS is the first week right after school ends. My kids would still be talking about it when they went back to school at the end of the summer and then their friends' parents would ask me your kids are going, my kid is going on about this thing. I'm like they should come. It's fun and it's okay, whatever you believe.
Speaker 1:That's what was great about it.
Speaker 2:It is perfectly okay. Whatever you believe, whatever you don't believe, whatever you bring to the table, your kid is welcome, you are welcome, Come do the things and no, no one's gonna beat you over the head with a bible when you get there. You know, yeah, but you know truth.
Speaker 2:Truths will be presented, but um you know, but no one's gonna bible bash you, no one's gonna tell you you're wrong. No, you know, we're just gonna love on you for a little bit. Your kids are gonna have such a good time and you're gonna be like, wow, can't my family be like this all the time? Basically, is this possible?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and again, a lot of conflict during. Bbs, but mostly resolution, which is what's beautiful about it. It really was an atmosphere where things really came up. If you had a bad attitude, it showed up like a shining North Star and nobody was going to follow you down the down the dark road of what, wherever you were at, and you really got to see yourself and see how much harm had been done to you, how much harm you create in that atmosphere.
Speaker 2:If you have whatever it is, bad attitude is probably a really good and universal, one Gentle way to say it. Exactly Because that's how most of our junk comes out. First is some sort of bad attitude. You know what I mean. That's generally it, but it was never approached as an accusation or a. You know what I mean. It's time for you to get over it, you're having a bad attitude, no one would even say those words. You're having a bad attitude.
Speaker 1:Hey, it would say those words you're having a bad attitude.
Speaker 2:Hey, you know it always start with like, hey, let's go with you, um, and it would just be a nice conversation that then turned into mirror therapy, where you're like, oh, I've got a bad attitude, but in the just the best way, and let us help you out of it way not a you need to go, you, you, you, you. It's like, hey, you know, here we are together working this through yeah, I mean, it's a.
Speaker 1:It's a really unique experience to be able to serve your way out of something. You know that just by doing. You don't even have to think, Just go do a good thing. And somehow this stuff starts just falling off you, you and, and you know it. Certainly in my life it it has been a perspective I had, you know, since I was an adult, of that the more I can do for others, the less of the junk that's in my life is is is going to be taking charge I guess you know it's it's.
Speaker 1:you know, I like how brian's been saying you know you only have 20 coins in a day, so don't waste them. And and you know, and how many coins do you want to? How much energy do you want to be putting toward, towards this stuff when something so good could happen? It's all going to be hard. Let the hard work for you. Yeah, so it's VBS one. Then, like I said, it wasn't any other thing in my life was really the shining example of really getting large groups of people again not all good people, you know, but somehow well, not just somehow with a lot of diligence, we kept that place very safe.
Speaker 1:Oh yes and uh, you know really really, um, you know really really, you know I will sit with that reality that for what 25 years we ran it, no child was improperly touched in some way.
Speaker 2:Nothing exactly.
Speaker 1:There were situations but not those ones that police departments, or counseling afterwards or anything like that. So you know the record, the record shows. You know it's one of those few places that we can demonstrate that, oh, this does work.
Speaker 1:And you know you mind your P's and Q's you know you do your background checks and all that, but but all the element was was was great, but there was a place for them too, and that that that you know it wasn't next to the children per se, but it still was in the body of the organization doing the thing that was necessary to make the whole thing work even though keep everybody safe even though there there's some luggage that might come with that person.
Speaker 1:Yes, and so seeing that demonstrated, you know, in my heart is part of the heartbreak of what we're calling the church now, and I wanted to bring you on first to really talk about it Because, you know, when Brian was first interviewing me, the thought of a liberal Christian was like, so foreign, you know, he's like I don't even know where to put you. You know, because of the cultural conservatism. Not that it's wrong, it's just that it is the dominant voice in Christianity, while many of us who live with a little bit more liberal proclivities, both in politics and in life, still sit within that conservative structure and function normally and actually don't hate it, even though we might disagree with some of the pretense and some of the motivation, I would say, of know why we're doing it. We're not doing it because it's the right thing. We're doing it because it's good, because it's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I've lost track of how many people told me that there's no such thing as a liberal Christian.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because if you're liberal, you can't be a Christian. I'm like huh, I don't read that word. Back that up right. Show me the scriptures where that is that you know like. Well, here I am existing. I don't know what to tell you, but you know, uh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's an interesting place to be.
Speaker 1:I want to kind of venture into to what it's meant to you to be, you know, a screaming liberal, you know I. You know I had to live far more silently in the space just because of my proximity to the pulpit, Right. You know my function within the organization. I didn't have the same kinds of freedoms that you might have, you know, and operating quietly the way you can. You know my experience is extra quiet, Right, and while you're very much disagreeing with the conversations in the hallways about elections or the problems with society and all this kind of stuff where you're just rolling your eyes, it's not always political too.
Speaker 2:It could be how you raise your child. Oh yeah, I took a lot of heat about how I raised my children and, looking back, I think I was too conservative Like I should have been even more liberal with that raising than I was, but it seemed, in contrast with some some of like the hallway conversations and some just blatant conversations, that people would approach me and say so I'm like yeah yeah, that's what we're doing.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what we're doing and I'm sorry that that you think that's bad. I don't't know, I don't know what else to say because you know I'm very much like I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna apologize a lot about it, because we all get to make our decisions about how we do things. So it's not just I just want to make a point it's not just political things, because I think right now, everything's, everything's political, they've made everything.
Speaker 1:Well. I was using political, political as a key into the door of the realities.
Speaker 2:Exactly, but there's a lot of things Of the lack of subtlety. Yes, exactly that really happens once you're inside the building.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly, there's a lot of people with a lot of I don't know maybe the best way to put it is maybe rigid views, and I think those rigid views often are rooted in fear. Right, because if I just draw the line right here, I can't possibly get to something that could be bad. Right, even though the something that might, might possibly be bad is miles away. We're going to draw the line right over here, about an inch from my body, so that I never move, you know. So I can't possibly be in danger in any way. I can't function like that.
Speaker 2:I don't think that that's, I don't know. I don't think it's healthy to function like that, to be that rigid, because I think it puts limitations. You're not just putting limitations on yourself, but you're putting limitations on God. You're putting limitations on how he sees you, you're putting limitations on what he can and cannot do, what he does and does not tolerate these sorts of things, and I think God is just way bigger than we allow Him to be when we set the boundaries an inch from our nose.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And so I don't know if you share this worldview. I'm presuming you do a little bit.
Speaker 2:You know, I'll tell you.
Speaker 1:if I don't, Obviously I'm going to ask the question the function of religion as opposed to the function of who we believe is God.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:This thing that we are calling God. That is bigger, the I am, I am, that I am I like how Augustine put it as best as he could the I am. Well, how did he say that exactly? Shoot, now, I've forgotten, oh geez. Anyways, this reality that, yes, I am everything right, but dare call me that thing that you think that I am, yes and I am not that Right. You know this reality that the world's religions are all trying to interpret this reality and not wanting to live in the mystery of it.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:You know that.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah of it. You know that that, yeah, you know. It's this perception of you know, when, when I go to the hills and lay on the ground and hug a tree, which is the first thing I do, is like I was going to center myself. Okay, let's, let's connect with this thing. That is also God called the planet, knowing full well that that tree is not God. Yes, except that I'm connecting also, god Right Called the planet, right, knowing full well that that tree is not God.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly, except that.
Speaker 1:I'm connecting with God when I lay on the boulders next to the tree.
Speaker 2:God is in the tree, yeah, but the tree is not God. The tree is not God.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly yes, and you know there's a language issue and I understand why it is that way. It is that way and certainly the way you know that it was coming through. Through. Uh, you know this, this kind of kind of neo version of of mysticism. You know where everything is everything and you're like right, either there's something bigger or there's not. And the vernacular issues between you know scriptural, you know interpretation and that reality that God is, is and is not Right. That's what Augustine said.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1:That some of us who embrace the God that is, yes, you know, a little bit broader than having to live within the construct of the language that we developed about God to fit inside of a theology paradigm of salvation. You know, orienting ourselves to good works as though we were being like God because we're doing good things, not because we are like God.
Speaker 2:Because we are like God, even though we may not be acting like God at the time. Yes, yes.
Speaker 1:But what I've been trying to understand, because I've been watching kitty cat videos and fish and things like that and realizing, oh, we're not smarter than them, we're just the apex predator and there's a responsibility that comes with being the apex predator. That's a weird reality.
Speaker 2:It doesn't mean we just get to have lorded over the whole everything and just destroy it at will and survival of the fittest. That's not what it means.
Speaker 1:Right, right, can't, can't. Yeah, we want to be Mufasa. What was his brother's?
Speaker 2:name Scar Scar. You don't want to be Scar. Don't be Scar. It's a little shirt, it's just don't be Scar.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but there's this benchmark and again, we were raising kids at this moment. We were watching what was happening with millennials. Is that the purity movement really stepped in? And we had this whole moment where what was the book? Why I Left Dating Behind?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, which I did not allow in my house, that was to me again.
Speaker 1:This is some time ago. It was what 19, or why I Kissed Dating Goodbye.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was 2001,.
Speaker 1:I think it was where it really established itself, Right. Within our community, right when our kids were kind of and they were little, yeah, but they weren't that little and at the time I was very connected with young people, age range of 14 to 24, what it was doing to them. I knew the stories. The parents were like, oh, everything's good, they just don't do this. And I'm like, dear God, do you know what's happening?
Speaker 1:Just the aloof behavior and and the fear that that came in any time a child made what would be a simple mistake. Right, you know, for themselves, like not for the family, but just for themselves, like personal.
Speaker 2:You learn, you know, because you know 15 year, because 15-year-olds make them. Yeah. 50-year-olds make them, yeah, yeah, 15-year-olds make them, yeah, yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1:And watching that conflict happen with that last generation, the boomers raised, was really like, wow, I had these conversations coming at me also from people we know and love and just sitting there like they're expressing to you how much more you should have boundaries on your kids and all this stuff. I'm like your kid talks to me and you have no idea what your boundaries are creating other than secrecy, right, and you know it's certainly now emerged.
Speaker 1:You know what's gone on and we can sit here and talk for hours about porn and its influence on culture and you know the best way to talk about it is the scatological view that church decided to pick up, and when you have that viewpoint, you're obsessed with the obscene. Oh, right so it's one side or the other. Either you are acting obscene, which is really what emerged out of that. It did.
Speaker 1:And this is, I think, partially what we're culturally trying to sift through. This is, I think, partially what we're culturally trying to sift through. Is that the obscenity, in a way not that I'm laying that on all of what millennials participated?
Speaker 2:in down to our generation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, no, no. But the church's obsession with the obscene, from a quote-unquote purity view, did so much harm. Yeah, and. And then you know, I spent my whole time raising my children to work around the harm of, of of scatological view, right that was coming emerging from the church because they were so obsessed with the wrong thing not living.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, I mean we. I would have conversations with my kids about here's what I. I tried to approach things. I didn't know, I wasn't always successful, but I tried to say here's, here's how I think about that, here's what I believe about that. This is why I think this way and why I believe it, and some honesty about my own past and behaviors, of why I've think that this would be maybe a better situation. However, and you always, if you don't have the however, however you are you, your body's yours, your mind is yours, your beliefs are yours, right, yours, and you have to develop them. But please think about why. Do you believe this may be a new thing that you believe? Maybe someone said something you're like? Oh, I believe that. Why, you know, do you believe this may be a new thing that you believe? Maybe someone said something you're like? Oh, I believe that. Why, you know?
Speaker 2:I believe, do you believe it because they said so, but that kind of thing. So this is, this is what I believe, this is how I believe, why I believe and why I think it's good. But you are you and you have to come up with your own boundaries. And I think when parents set down such rigid boundaries and I'm not talking two-year-olds those are boundaries you may not touch. That you know what I mean. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about when your kids get older and they're making choices, and that's how you get critical thinking, that's how you get discernment, that's how you learn the physics of life in your brain. And if you don't ever let them make any of those decisions maybe the wrong ones, I don't know how they learn those things you know, and then they get into situations where they have to have discernment and they don't have it, yeah, yeah, because they haven't guarded from everything.
Speaker 2:Developed it Like you put up the chain link fence, you threw the razor wire over the top of it and you said thou shalt not, yeah, and then they don't know. Okay, so thou shalt not. But what shall I do? Yeah, right, like, what should I do? What can I do? Where are my boundaries? What do I think about that? And then you know, safety around that and reality around that, some opening, openness about talking about that, you know. I mean you can come talk to me about that.
Speaker 2:I'm not gonna I'm not gonna ground you because I think you might go do a thing right, I'm not gonna do that. If you go do a thing that's dangerous, whatever you might get grounded but you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:But I'm gonna let you go live your life, make your choices the good, the bad and the ugly of those and then we go through it as a family and through that you learn like that, to me, is the testing right. You gotta go out there and test it. If you just tell your kids, believe this, believe this, believe this, they really in the end have no idea what they believe yeah, they don't have no idea.
Speaker 1:it's pretty self-apparent at this point that that there is a real lack of belief in anything right now. That doesn't just have to do with God, right.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Yeah, I wasn't really talking necessarily about religion as such, or sex as such, or politics as such, just everything, just everything you don't know what you believe. You don't know what you think Cause you can't trust it, because you were never given room to build that trust within yourself or with your parents. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to build that agency. Yeah yeah, I did this with all three of my boys. It came time because Santa Cruz is a party town and I was smoking weed when I was 13, so I was going to a Christian school doing it behind the woodshop. Look at my shocked face Behind the it, behind the you know behind the woodshop building. So I know what the town is. You know it was interesting listening to parents. Oh, it's not that way anymore and it's like, oh my God because you showed up, everything changed.
Speaker 1:But, but you know I would have the same discussion with my sons, cause you know it was always oh, oh, dad, can I go to a bonfire tonight? But that was always the beginning. Oh great, the bonfire conversation. Well, first of all, the bonfire is a party.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, it's a party.
Speaker 1:That's called a party, it's okay and there's really only two things that you need to know, and I would say first of all, you know you're building a relationship with me. Now. I'm not building one with you, and what I need from you is to know which dumb ass parent bought the booze, just so I know what I'm looking at, because everybody's hiding something, right, right, I'm not snitching, I just need to know where it's coming from. You know, generally said, you know down the first, sip the second, skip the third, right, you know like and the first sip the second, skip the third.
Speaker 2:Right Right Right, Right Right.
Speaker 1:And when the cops show up and they will, because they always do don't run. Right, you know, and guess what? You're the one that won't get the ticket or get arrested. And you know, all three of them all had the same experience. They all stood there with their drink in hand. Right, the cops all came up and said thank you. Just so you know, all your friends are getting busted. You're not supposed to do this.
Speaker 2:Pour it out. Thank you for your honesty, can you?
Speaker 1:clean up, pour everything, throw it away and I don't want to see you again. And that built a modicum of trust with my sons. And, of course, they have to live their own lives.
Speaker 2:Right, right. We're not foolish enough to think we know everything, but yes, yeah, you know and, and, and.
Speaker 1:Was there a tool like that that you incorporated into your house as it, as it pertained to? Parties yeah, parties, bonfires.
Speaker 2:Well, luckily Haley.
Speaker 1:So I we laughingly refer to her as our experimental child, because she was the first one and we're like first one that gets all the damage.
Speaker 2:Here we go I know, I know, haley, I love you. Um, anyway, yeah, um, but I had, I had a leg up on you in this era. Um haley has a very unnatural fear of puking or being around those who puke. And can I just say this makes it really a lot easier, the parent of a teenager. So I was like, do it? Go to the parties, go do the things. And her first big party she wanted to go to was some baseball dude.
Speaker 1:His dad worked for the Giants and he was all down bag of chips.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, oh man, I've been to those baseball parties Like it's probably the worst, but I'm like, okay, you know. So where is it? Where are you going with the use? Because we did have rules about you couldn't go to a party by yourself, because if something does happen, you don't have anybody. You know, maybe you can't drive, maybe you didn't sip that third one, you know what I mean. And then you're realizing, hmm, it's always nice to have somebody else, you know? Um, so you had to have somebody go with you. That was fine, um, and then where are you going to be? And we generally we set curfews based on what they were doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, you know there wasn't a hard and fast. You will always be home by 10. Right, just kind of the realities of what's happening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what the heck is that?
Speaker 1:That was a picture that just fell off the wall. Oh, and we're going to leave that there for the moment. Sorry about that, people. It's all good Swirl.
Speaker 2:So I said you know, go to this party. And I said you know, and she was fifth, don't know, no, she was 15. Somebody else drove, she was 15. And I was like, is this okay, we're going to do this? And she was home 10 o'clock, like 10. And I literally was like, why are you home? Why?
Speaker 1:are you here?
Speaker 2:you should still be out. I told you you didn't have to be back till midnight, like you should be. 11, 50, 90, you know what I mean? Um, and she said well, the beer cup pong was getting a little out of hand and I figured the was starting soon and so I just left.
Speaker 1:I asked for it right now, exactly.
Speaker 2:And so I was like excellent, excellent, I said this was a good choice and so from there, that really helped. And then when my younger one came up, then that's, it's just easier to have those conversations because her older sister had already said I've been at a party with beer pong going on and all of us are underage, and I didn't call anybody, I didn't you know, we just laughed. Yep, you're right, the puking is going to start and.
Speaker 2:I you should make some phone calls like super early in the morning, that could be fun you know, that sort of thing. But then we I would get stories, you know, or Haley or Hannah both of my kids would be Hannah more particularly particularly because she's a little more mothery of her friends. She's a little more mommy about things. So she would say can we harbor some people overnight tonight?
Speaker 1:Yes, can we harbor some friends. Let's create a safe space, exactly.
Speaker 2:We're going to party and I know my friends right and I know which ones just are going to do what they're going to do, and no amount of sense is going to help them these kids. By the way, valedictorians, yeah, full ride scholarships to big giant universities, the weekends were the weekends and uh so so I would get some great stories. I was like always, you can always have a sleepover here yeah always.
Speaker 2:Your kids, your friends, are always, always, always welcome to be here. Their parents just need to know where they are and I'm not going to shop them out. Unless I think it's health dangerous, I need to take them to the emergency room. They have had too much Like too much, but as long as it's whatever, it's teenager-ness Anyway. So Hannah told me a great story about having to drive multiple runs of kids home from a party because they were so drunk none of them could drive and with one of them just puking out the window the whole time Staining the paint.
Speaker 2:Exactly Just keep going, keep going, keep going. And she had stopped, she goes. I remember you told me that if somebody's really puking they need a lot of water, Like you have to give them a lot of water. So she had stopped at like quick stop to get some water for this kid. And she comes out and there's sheriff.
Speaker 2:She's like so? I'm like okay. So the alcohol I took from all my friends while I left them there, while I took, this batch is in my trunk and I'm 18, 17, something still in high school. She turned 18 while she was there. You know what do I do. And so she decided to overwhelm them with almost all of the truth. Yes, you know hey, I was at a party. Everybody's super drunk. I'm trying to go home, my friend is puking, I'm trying to, and just ah, and here's some water, whatever.
Speaker 1:And then and here's some water, whatever, and then you know, in the back of her head please lord jesus, don't let them open my trunk, like my sin runneth over exactly, but she said they were so nice to me like I'm so glad you're taking your friends home.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well then, keeping them safe, keep going, be safe you know be safe. Um, and that was great. I I don't know if that conversation would be like that if you lived in, I don't know, LA or Stockton, but in this town that's how those conversations go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and honestly, you know, I think most of the parents that we were around, you know, had a similar view. It wasn't necessarily coming from, you know, from a church or Christian standpoint. It was just kind of how many things were handled here, church or Christian standpoint, it was just kind of how many things were handled here. So we, we have a culture of of being a little bit more open in those areas.
Speaker 1:You know, at at for for me, you know, getting back to what you were saying earlier about, about helping your kids make, learn to make their own decisions, you know I I just put simple parameters up. You know, like, like here here's, like you haven't been through this, here's how to think about it, and like you're going to get a feeling in the night as it starts moving into the situations that arise. Once everything starts flowing and once you see one confirmation of that yucky that's hitting your heart, that's the time to go Right. And for the most part, you know watching them as adults. They still do it, but they got to choose what the yucky was and they got to choose when to leave. And that freedom right there is the kind of decision making that I would hope that many parents learn to equip their kids with, rather than here's a set of rules. Follow them, always follow them. You know it sounds like structure, but in reality the kids really aren't thinking.
Speaker 2:Because it sounds so reasonable, right? Your kids need boundaries. It's good for them, right? It keeps them from harm. I'm like, yes, it keeps them from that harm, but it creates other harm that you're just not really seeing. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Again, we're not talking about two-year-olds running the street, yeah, but they're not listening to themselves.
Speaker 2:Exactly they're not learning. They just know, oh, that's the line. And so they either are the rule followees Okay, that's the line, and then they never come into themselves because they've never bounced up again, they never tested the fences, or you have fence testers.
Speaker 1:Those are a joy to raise. That's very tempting. What are you talking about? I?
Speaker 2:know it's very tempting to build a higher wall and add the razor wire and do the things, and I'm totally guilty of that. I did that with my fence tester.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or punching down on top of the wall and totally regret, yeah, or punching down on top of the wall and totally regret, like, oh, I didn't approach that right. Yes, she needed to learn that my fences were where they were, but that she gets to build her fences where she feels they need to be, which means she might have to cross my fence before she realizes that what's on the other side may not be the greatest thing you know what I mean and it may decide oh, actually, maybe I'll go back over on the other side of this fence that was there for my protection. But if you don't allow a little of that, or at least when you see it happen, don't overreact. And it's very hard, you know it's very hard because you're just like, what are you doing?
Speaker 2:You're trying to get the stupid out of them at the same time, Right right, but then that just it kind of pours out of them into you and then you start doing stupid stuff as a parent.
Speaker 1:You're like wait, wait, oh, that's too clear of a picture. Where do I feel stupid? When they're stupid? Show it up, and I got stupid, Exactly. Stupid makes stupid.
Speaker 2:Exactly, but I think you know. Then you get sneaky.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, and I would see it, sometimes my kids would tell me about friends sneaky, which always, I think then, is an enlightenment about how do they feel about their own sneaky, you know.
Speaker 2:And that puts you in an odd place because you're like I know their parent has a rule about this, but I think they need to talk to it with their parent about that and I would just come back to well, everybody makes their choices. Everybody gets to raise their kids the way they raise their kids and make their choices about their kids, and I'm not sure that your friends are making the best choice by being sneaky and you might talk to them about that. Maybe you could go with them to talk with their parent to say, hey, can we look at this boundary and can we maybe wiggle it a little?
Speaker 2:You know something that's making them feel like they just must tunnel under the wall. You know, maybe you could go with them, Maybe that would be helpful. No-transcript, it's not you know things that you then need to shop them out for, but just showing them that kind of impairment and that they can then empower their friends and have influence, like positive peer pressure. What I thought, and again, not always successful.
Speaker 1:Not always successful, no, but the mistakes live, you know, in the lexicon of memories, you know. I think this is probably a time to kind of segue a little bit, to change not what we're talking about but, how we're talking about it. You know because you use a term like liberal, christian, conservative, christian. You know, unfortunately, politics has hijacked those words right. You know if you're liberal, you're a Marxist or whatever else, and you know. You know if you're conservative, you love Ronald Reagan, or you know whatever that means.
Speaker 1:But really, you know, what we're actually talking about is openness. When as that's what I'm thinking when I say, you know, when, as that's what I'm thinking, when I say, you know, I am quote, unquote a liberal, I am open, you know, to the fluidity of the realities of what life is coming right to me. You know, whereas more conservative worldview would be like, I'm not open. This is how life should be right, right and and uh, you know, it was funny because when, when I at least saw my sons sneaking and they did what you know not needing to, which is always the most ironic thing.
Speaker 1:Exactly it's like I want to have this. These are the fun conversations Like tell me how it was, what happened, how do you feel?
Speaker 2:How'd that go for you? Does it feel good? Does it feel yucky?
Speaker 1:You know the things you want to get imprinted. You know you. You had this distinct privilege of not being a pastor, so I never had anybody come to my house. My house was empty you know because everybody was scared of me. You know because I was the pastor's kids. So I always felt so bad for my kids because they had friends but they had to go to their friend's house to have them Right.
Speaker 2:And I'm thinking I wish my kids because they had friends but they had to go to their friend's house to have them Right. And I'm thinking I wish my kids were more friends with the Howard boys because they would go to the Howard's house. And I know they would be greeted with love and empathy and tell me what you did. Oh sweetie, I'm sorry you did that thing Right.
Speaker 1:There's no problem here. I get it. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:But they're like, we're never going over there. We can't be friends with those boys. Their dad's a pastor.
Speaker 1:We can't go there. It's so funny who I call my nephew, it's really my second cousin.
Speaker 1:We were just in Montana for a wedding and literally the most beautiful thing I have seen in a decade happened. You know, the wedding itself was great. The love in the room was awesome. The grandfather married his granddaughter and I can I tell you the ceremony they performed Like I want to do them again based based on how he structured it, all that kind of stuff. It was very Christian but somehow pulled it off Right, and so you know this is someone who hates doing weddings, just so you know when my kids get married.
Speaker 2:I'm going to send them to you now. I stopped doing them 10 years ago. I'm going to send you to him now.
Speaker 1:I don't know where I'd be licensed from anymore. I'd have to get that universal church license. But but you know, my, my, my, my. I would rather call him my brother, that's just really how I view him, but it's. It's Kim's cousin's husband. You know he was infamous for doing the Humpty dance from like and just a dork. You know this guy's six foot five, he's a menace Like. He's one of the scariest persons I've ever been around. I love it. But the whole wedding gets to this moment right, and all of a sudden that song comes on and he is behind the microphone. I swear, if the video gets out like it will go viral and they're not sure whether they're going to put it out.
Speaker 2:No, I need it in my life. Put it out.
Speaker 1:He had 150 young people just just going. He's proud, proud, doing crowd work and he does the thing perfectly. But it was such a beautiful reminder that you know these things that oftentimes seem like foolishness that we pick up when we were young. That foolishness turned into that moment and what it did to bring the crowd together.
Speaker 2:I say create connection.
Speaker 1:Kid after kid, I'm having to go. Hey, we were all 21s. But they're like oh my God, that was so good. It was as though that particular dude had done it Right. It was as though that particular dude had done it.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And just the beauty of the experience, yet sitting in the foolishness in the way of a child, it just did something to my heart. I don't quite know how to interpret it, but it's like it's these things that are sitting in between our conversation of what we want our kids, as they're growing, to experience as they become adults, so that in the future it pays away for young people to connect to their adult parents, who were once kids too, and what they've grown into is also good. But there's that child that's still inside of all of us.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly.
Speaker 1:And like. Vbs like this moment we're talking about and the things in between that are hard, right. They're hard lessons, right? I'm not sure that every time he did the Humpty Dance when he was in college the night ended well, exactly.
Speaker 1:Right, he was in college. The night ended well, but it is. You know, when we extract or take away those things from our children's experience, you know that we then call Christianity and God. It was a torture to me to watch as a pastor trying to help people raise kids. You know, of course I have everybody in the world go oh, your kids have turned out so great. I don't really view that as anything I did. It's because of their choices and the responsibility. I had to create a place where they could make those choices. But that's my responsibility. I don't get to parade that around.
Speaker 2:No, I often think my children turned out well, despite me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really how I look at it, despite my ridiculous efforts of trying to do it. They managed to navigate it. I went too long saying I was lucky where I've had a lot of older people in my life going. You're not lucky, you did the work.
Speaker 2:But there still is an element of. I don't know if you want to call it luck or you want to call it, but there is an element of I had nothing to do with that and I tend to I put those in the Jesus loves me files.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, right, where you're just like I know I totally blew that out my ear and yet it turned out okay. And there's no reason why it should have turned out okay, because I did not do that well and I know I didn't do it well and I communicated. Hey, I didn't do that well and I'm really sorry and maybe that's a thing to apologize you know, but I think those are in my mind. Those are the Jesus moments right when you're like you did your best.
Speaker 2:You're right, you totally screwed that up. I totally screwed it up. Bless you. Let me let me come in and help you know, let me help that. Um, but I was thinking about some when you were talking about these moments and whatever and and and and religious speak, you know, we talk about um, setting up altars, you know, and milestones, um, not milestones, not really the right word but, you know altars in our life that we look back to and pastors talk about it all the time.
Speaker 2:So those are anchor points in your life. You can look back at those things. That ridiculous Humpty dance we don't think about that as an altar. That's been placed in people's lives, but it will be for some of those people. They'll look back at that and be like that was the moment right.
Speaker 1:That was the thing. It really was one of those things. That's what I mean. It was palpable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's an anchor in my life now and it was a ridiculous Humpty dance. I mean it wasn't anything hard or deep or philosophical or breakthrough-y or anything on the surface that you would think that was a big thing. But that's an altar now, probably in your life, right. That's going to be a point to look back to, and that's a good thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and as you're speaking, it's coming a little bit clearer to me by you using those words that it was palpable, as I've experienced at any worship service and any teaching moment, any pivotal moment in my life. I'm watching all these young people go oh, that's what love looks like, and it was like the whole arrangement was already in that position to have that moment be what it was. But it was such an icing on a beautiful cake of like this is good, Right, Like this can be good. It's all cross-generational. Got all the grandparents in the back.
Speaker 2:Exactly Like.
Speaker 1:it was just like wow, like this is just so good, right, and it's celebration.
Speaker 2:Right, god is in it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:God is not the Humpty Dance, but right.
Speaker 1:No, no, but somehow God hijacked the humpty dance like it was nuts right it's about getting laid yeah, it is, but yeah, but there's life in that too, right but to just relax a minute.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like it's yeah, yeah yeah, so so let's, let's, let's segue this into like a really a more serious topic, which which is, I know that you and I share the absolute heartbreak of what the church has become. Oh, man and um, I'll share a little contrast point, you know, to what I've been observing really the last six months. But but how has it affected you personally to see it come to this, that Christian nationalists are openly talking about dismantling all the constitutional things that have been achieved in the last 50 years? You know it was for freedom that Jesus said that he came to set us free. You know that, whatever free will is, I'm not completely convinced of it, but whatever agency is, you know, like choice in the middle of this concept. Whatever free will is, I'm not completely convinced of it, but but whatever agency is you know choice in the middle of this concept of free, will you know um to see it come to this?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I mean I. I mean I left the business, you know so it's.
Speaker 2:it's really hard because it just seems in my head and I have to this is something where I need mirror therapy because I can get really judgy about it Like how you just look at these people and you're like, how can you believe what you say? You believe and then say these things you know what I mean. Like how can this? It just seems so antithetical to one another. Like you're saying it's black and it's white at the same time, but gray is bad, there can't be any gray. But somehow in your head it can be black and white at the same time. You know what I mean. It's really hard because when you try to make what you think is a reasonable argument, often mostly I try to back them up with scriptures.
Speaker 2:You know, hey, multiple, multiple, right. This is what the Bible says and this is what's coming out of your mouth, and I know you believe this. And especially people you've had a relationship with for a long time, even if it was just VBS. You have VBS with them every year because you do get to know people really well in those situations where you think really well in those situations and you see the good person that's in there, you know you're like, you're such, your heart is such a good thing and what's happened to it? Why is it so callous now? Why is it trapped in this cage of barbed wire? I don't even know. And it's just, it's just heartbreaking. And I I go in and out of it because sometimes I have plenty of bandwidth to have the conversation. You know what I mean Plenty of bandwidth. I'm here for it. I know I'm going to take some abuse and I'm just going to do it anyway.
Speaker 2:And then sometimes I'm a complete coward and I'm like fine, I just think whatever you want to think, whatever you do you, whatever you know, because I can't yeah, I can't have another conversation.
Speaker 1:Of course, you have your famous and infamous Facebook posts that you fairly regularly.
Speaker 2:I do.
Speaker 1:No, I mean, it's good, you know I'm watching. You're one of the few people that I watch flow through my feed when I generally look at Facebook, which is not that often, unless I'm selling something.
Speaker 2:But it's yeah Right. I feel like if you don't say anything in whatever microphone you have, whether that's a coffee with a friend, whether you're in a church group, you're in a book club, whatever if you don't use, you have Facebook for whatever you think that is. If you don't use your voice, then you're enabling and you're also to me, it's allowing people to label me unjustly. If you're going to label me, do it. Big fat capital L liberal.
Speaker 1:Like that's what I am. If that's what you want to call me, then I'll take it. Do it accurately Big fat capital L liberal. Like that's what I am. If that's what you want to call me, then I'll take it.
Speaker 2:Right, I will take that, because if this is your criteria to get to that label, yeah, if we're picking teams, I'm on that team.
Speaker 2:I'm on that team, yeah, but if I don't say things and people know that I go to church you know these things, I'm a christian then what assumptions are they going to make about me? Whether they? I'm more worried of the people that think I agree with them than the people that think I don't agree with them. So there are people out there that believe liberal things and think that I wouldn't agree with them because I'm a christian. Right, I'm like, no, actually super agree with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're 99 there, and have agreed with you since you know the 80s when, I was, you know, graduating high school, doing the things, and you know that I may or may not have been as loud about through the 90s, because yeah, we were raising kids and going to church and there were, you know, big sticks involved or perceived big sticks involved, but I, you know, haven't really changed my beliefs.
Speaker 2:I did talk to some of our mutual pastors about that recently. I was like actually my beliefs have not changed measurably, you know, over time they have evolved because growth.
Speaker 1:Of course, Because growth right Exactly Of all people.
Speaker 2:So I'm less worried about people that thinking that than people that have these Christian nationalist beliefs, this thought that we should be a theocracy. Oh my gosh, do you even read the Bible? Do you read any of it? Any of it?
Speaker 1:Did you read in the Old Testament where God said you don't want this?
Speaker 2:You don't want this.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Even though the Jews were very, at the time, a very us culture them outside.
Speaker 2:Right, right, right. But that kind of thing, people that think I believe those things and believe that whole swaths of our fellow humans should just be discriminated against, persecuted, demonized, all those things I'm like what about the whole child of God thing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, all of them all. Eight billion of them, all, all, all. And, by the way, all the animals and the trees and the rocks.
Speaker 2:The all y'all. Like the whole all. I worry more about them, thinking I agree with them. So that's why I tend to put out some public things.
Speaker 1:Gotcha Just to keep that distance.
Speaker 2:Right, because you can't have the conversations with everybody.
Speaker 1:That's just not possible.
Speaker 2:Right, right. But I can throw that out there and be like hey that's what I think about this.
Speaker 1:That's what I actually think.
Speaker 2:That's what I actually think, and if you want to come at me, do it. Yeah, you know or don't?
Speaker 1:That's fine. I get private messages. They're not coming at you. Well, I guess it's not on public display as much.
Speaker 2:I get private messages. I got a private message when I posted the Christians Against Christian Nationalism post yeah, ooh. It's big, it's the, it's my, it's the big. Whatever that is cover photo. That'll show you how much I know.
Speaker 1:Did you see that one, that one talk that the congressman did about Christian nationalism?
Speaker 2:Oh, the one that's a pastor, oh, yes, I posted it ages ago and now it's like a big. I'm like yes it's finally catching on. I posted it in stories. I don't even know.
Speaker 1:Like three days after he said it, so when did that come out?
Speaker 2:Oh, months, months ago, I'd have to look Really, really so it's just now gaining a little bit of momentum. It's gaining a little bit of momentum.
Speaker 1:I had that texted to me all the way around and you haven't heard this interview yet. But I brought a gentleman into my life. Well, brought a gentleman into my life. Well, I brought a gentleman to the podcast right after that Cause he, he, he was one of the people that sent it to me. He happens to be gay and he's like this is the Christianity I've I've been wanting to hear about.
Speaker 1:And you know, you know I get to share a very hard story with him, you know on the podcast of one of the breakpoints of me leaving ministry which was actually addressing, you know, the issue of gay marriage and you know it was a very rough moment.
Speaker 1:It was a few years, you know, just a few short years before I ended up quitting. But that meme is very important. You know and I'm hoping that there is some momentum gained which kind of leads me to what I was saying before that there's this contrast point where I have the last six months from many of the friendship group, my circle of influence that's in their mid-20s, early 30s, that are all of a sudden getting saved and don't know where to go to church.
Speaker 2:I'm with them and I am not in my 20s.
Speaker 1:Well, it's a very strange moment because, as a pastor in the long haul pastor, you know in the long haul like it feels like a pivot point. You know where these younger folks I won't call them young, they're not young, they're adults.
Speaker 2:Right, right. We were married and having kids by then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know that. You know are experiencing God for the first time. You know mostly atheist backgrounds, humanist backgrounds, but recognizing that there is just something bigger. You know again their choices to identify with Christianity. You know I have no judgment either way as it pertains to that. That being said, not having an answer and wondering boy seeing this thing, and again my longing, which I'm not stuffing, but how do you create space in this culture for that?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:While still bringing some structure of belief system. You know I, I, you know, history has proven that that it will emerge in some way and then get recalibrated terms, conservative, as it always does.
Speaker 2:The minute, you try to put some sort of structure to something which we need right. Structure is not a bad thing. It's why the roof isn't hitting our heads right now. But when that structure starts to evolve slowly and sneakily, and whatever, into a cage, yeah, you know what I mean it was this good shelter, it was this good thing that provided us a space to function in.
Speaker 2:You know, a safe space to function in becomes then this cage we live in and the evolution of that is just insidious and slow and since we've lived through it, seen it happen, didn't even realize, if we're honest, we didn't realize it was happening when it really was first happening. Right, we, we, we noticed it a little later some me later than you, probably, because I wasn't really in there and the people with the hammers and the nails, you know, but, um, but you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Like, how do you, how do you see it? So then that puts us in a position where, like we have a little structural fear. Is it okay for us to build a little? Bit of a structure you know what I mean, and am I doing it well enough that it can't become a cage, which is stupid, as you say? History says it's going to do it.
Speaker 2:It's going to become the cage, however nicely you put it together now and you build a nice flowy tent or whatever you're gonna do. It's gonna become a cage, but we're just, at least for me. I'm afraid, like, and I don't want to make decisions out of fear, but I do think I need to acknowledge that. That's the fear that's there. You know what I mean. Like how do I? How would I build a structure for these people? You know how would I help build a structure for them and create a safe shelter for them?
Speaker 2:yeah to to move about this new way of thinking that they have um without creating a cage for them yeah, it's really hard.
Speaker 1:So I I'm going to take just a moment to be very careful about some things here, and first and foremost, I want to acknowledge that when I showed up, the Coastlands, what was there and available was very, very open and the level of kindness that I experienced when I was getting out of lifestyle choices that just didn't fit with who I was, all that kind of stuff that, the leadership that I'm referring to, that were my pastors, people I love still, you know, to this day.
Speaker 1:We're very close. We don't agree about everything, but we love each other and we agree about most things, you know, and where my theology really, you know, gets away from what is common to us, we just let bygones be bygones there, and so I don't want to diminish in any way what we did experience, what was there before the cage got built, which I can look back because of the mechanics of church. That's where I was most critical, living in the background as an associate pastor, as a type of eldership leader that I was. Before that, I did see the cages getting built. Again. I have these pivot points?
Speaker 2:You certainly do. For sure I have the years.
Speaker 1:I know when it started, I know what information content I know when it started. I know what information content got added to it. I know what we institutionally were trying to just get all of it away from us. But the culture is just overwhelmed. Right, well, and I wasn't really speaking specifically about that specific church. I'm talking about me specifically.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, right, because we didn't come into our. I didn't go to the coastlines till.
Speaker 1:Haley was six, like I was 36 years old, and so I was further down. So what I'm being careful about pertains to me that I don't want anybody from my words to feel as though I'm critical of these moments because they were good, they were pure. Yes, of course, looking back, the information's kind of crap now, compared to what we know now, because we all evolve as humans. That just comes with life and structure and all those sorts of things. So I hate this immature response that we have from oh, church sucks.
Speaker 2:No, that's not true. See I don't think that's true either, but I think you can get. Maybe I'm overly cautious now about it. Like I said, there's a little bit of fear about maybe I'm overly cautious because I've seen what happens right. And I don't know that I could stop it from happening again. Does that make?
Speaker 1:sense, even if I were right there in the middle of it. You're going to speak to the second point that I want to be careful about, because, for all of you that are listening to this portion right now, you've heard me allude to getting courted by other organizations that are far more open, far more in the lane of my theology, far more acceptable of all these things that you and I are, liberalities are. That being said, I look at the congregants right and it's like is what I bring? Something good?
Speaker 2:Or is it?
Speaker 1:just something old, and that's my resonant fear about ever getting back in. When I went to do it, I prayerfully went through the process and realized it was a shadow portion of my ego that was still longing to belong, in an unhealthy way, and have my information matter, even though my information is good information for what we're suffering from right now. Hence the reason why I would hope that people listen to me talking into a microphone. But, that being said, sticking into a building was a hard. No hair was a hard, no right. Yet I mean, I will tell you that in short order, that is, one week I had a congregation of 30 adults, just by mere mention right of what that?
Speaker 1:yes yes, you know, and and in that I am now not doing hair and making a living, like it was crazy to have the thing that I had worked so hard for to kind of get to. Then boop, here you go and just going right?
Speaker 2:No Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but the but, the but, the longing is deep and wanting to be the answer. You know, again, there there's that shadow part of the ego.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:I got answers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:And they're good ones.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Is it right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:You know, and I couldn't answer that question, and you know it pains me. It pains me to have to sit through the three or four conversations I've had in the last two weeks, sitting and listening to people going what do, I do next and me basically going good luck.
Speaker 2:Don't know, let me know when you figure it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you guys kind of have to figure it out and you re-approach the word how you see it, which has been my conversations. It's like whatever God is telling you when you're reading your Bible, not being influenced by this thing that we call the church. Whatever God says to you, that's the thing. That's what following God looks like. You do that thing, stay obedient to what's being spoken in your heart. You're going to make mistakes, You're going to do it wrong, but that's what makes everybody grow. Back to raising kids.
Speaker 2:Back to the conflict, back to the realities.
Speaker 1:You know that your ideas are great and they can work for you. But if they don't affect other people, nobody cares. Number one. But if you're going to avoid suffering in that process, sorry people, you're going to suffer.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Good luck with that, yeah.
Speaker 1:We suffer now at our age-old ways of having to position ourselves right Of like. We're not that Right, right, right, and I don't even have the extra.
Speaker 2:I was never a pastor. Yeah, I resisted that type of leadership. So I had leadership roles in the church, but they were not leading Bible studies. They were not. I was the ICU cooler. I wasn't the ICU leader. I left a string of dead ICUs behind me. That was funny. You just have to decide it's funny after a while. But I tried not to put myself into positions where somebody would look to me for an answer that was not a practical answer to something.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean. How do I do this practical thing? I am here for you.
Speaker 1:How do I?
Speaker 2:think about this spiritual concept. Oh, yeah I don't. You should think about it the way the bible speaks to you about it right, I don't. I don't have an answer.
Speaker 2:I can tell you how I think about it, but that may not be your answer yeah you know, and I was very cognizant of that, like one person's answer that I think is the biggest thing in the church, like christian nationalism, they want an answer, the thing yeah, this, these are the rules, this is how you do it, pharisees, whatever, um that. And they without the thought that if god created us individually in diversity in our, our, uniqueness right. Then maybe he has unique things to say to us. Maybe he created us to do things uniquely.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. Do you listen to Sam Harris at all?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Okay, sam Harris. He's a brilliant scientist, just a very kind man, humanist. He really put it best is that you know, the problem of religion, specifically the Christian religion, is that if you believe in a God that created all these beings just to love them and have relationship with them, and yet there are parameters on that relationship that you must, you know, succumb to in some way, so that you can have the ultimate relationship in eternity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just foolishness. I, I, I don't imagine how any god could ever be loving right and with these parameters, with parameters you, know, and that, the, that, the parameters, and you know, as I've shared multiple times, you know, boundaries are for us, they're not for God. Right, you know it's my boundaries are my boundaries. They're not your boundaries with me.
Speaker 2:Right my boundaries with you yes, and owning that.
Speaker 1:You know that if I'm choosing to live this lifestyle, you know whatever it is, you know whether it's taking care of my heart, my brain, whatever it is, it's for my well-being. I'm not imposing my judgment on your well-being or whatever you're perceiving Right and Christianity's seeming inability to think that way. It just Right. Wow, you know so.
Speaker 2:About the rules. Give me the rules, give me the rules, give me the rules. Yeah, and I'm like, but it's not about the rules and and the whole bible is talking about how, it's not about the rules, like the whole second half yeah, about how it's not about the rules.
Speaker 1:Um yeah, all of that but even that, you know I'm gonna gonna press you on that. Yeah, do it. You know, mostly because you know. One of the big theology questions you have to ask yourself if you go to a good seminary is you have to decide what God you're worshiping. Do you believe in a God that made the law so that you follow it? And if you follow it, then you're part of the team.
Speaker 1:So was the law made for man or was man made for the law? And that is what connects you to whatever God you're perceiving.
Speaker 2:Right, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's a hard question to ask and answer, especially in those settings, because there is a structure and there are rules, because there is a structure and there are rules and very quickly as you're going through whatever kind of theology experience as you're getting your license, you find out very quickly that even the right answer to that in my heart is not easily expressed. Because there's another set of rules that is being taken upon by whatever administration is holding those rules Right.
Speaker 2:Well, see exactly.
Speaker 1:So you know again, we can pick on church all day, but it's everywhere. Now it's alarming to me that, look, I believe in climate change, all that kind of stuff, but that the climate change people have adopted the church's view of we're all going to die, right.
Speaker 2:You better get saved now, because we're all going to hell.
Speaker 1:You know it's like. You know we just did this. You know the last 20 years in church and how did that go for us. You know the message you'll get lost, which is, you know, taking some responsibility and holding your leaders accountable for their misdoings. They're the ones that could actually change things, but whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1:Lest, I start preaching.
Speaker 2:What.
Speaker 1:What, what? Anyways, so as we really begin to wrap this up, jen, I really appreciate you coming back Again. I want to apologize to you. I'm not sure what agenda I had. I just certainly felt it in those previous conversations. But you know, for all of you listening who have continued on this conversation, you know we're out there.
Speaker 1:There's more of us than you think. You know. Again, I would probably call myself far more liberal in my theology than Jen is. You've done a great job of expressing things, because I'm still pretty guarded about how it is. I express just how far off the deep edge I am from a Christian worldview. And yet here I am sitting with God, more than I have ever in my life Exactly. That's a very strange existence.
Speaker 2:I think God can get lost in our cage.
Speaker 1:Yes, when I quit, I threw all of my teachings and all of my notes away. Yes, it was four file boxes full and we're talking tens of thousands of pages. And this process of rediscovering who God is and and just deciding whatever is in me is what I actually know.
Speaker 2:Not my notes. What New wineskins? Yeah, right.
Speaker 1:You know deciding how I want to build those things again.
Speaker 2:You know having a different relationship with my Bible, just reading it, not taking notes not thinking about how I'm going to restructure this to someone else and doing all the things that that that were great at the time.
Speaker 1:But but you know the, the volumes and the books, you know the books that I started that were sitting there and just my wife just going. Really you're throwing it all away. It's like it's gotta go. It's gotta go. I'm there with you. Yeah, it's like it's gotta go.
Speaker 2:It's gotta go, I, I'm, I'm there with you, yeah, cause it's, it's easy to get pulled back into something you wrote back in the back Cause, even though I was not preaching, I, I wrote things you know, and I'm like, oh, delete, delete, delete. These things need to go away. You know, yeah, like, yeah, this is just dragging me backwards.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Don't want to go there, so Jen thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Love you, love you too. Yeah, I'm going to do her hair now.
Speaker 2:Yes, do my hair please. I'm going to make that thing that keeps coming out of the top of your head. Go away.
Speaker 1:It's so rude, it is really weird, it is so rude. All right, folks, we love you. You have a good rest of your day and hopefully we'll get back together soon. Ciao, bye.