Jonathan Mueller on Faith, Dialectic, and the Education That Endures (Part 1) | The Furrows

Jonathan Mueller grew up at the intersection of classical homeschooling and community college, encountering Plato in ninth grade and the Tao Te Ching at seventeen—two texts that cracked open the difference between a conception of God and the eternal thing itself.

In part one of this two-part conversation, Jonathan traces a winding path through dialectic and doubt, a year of construction work and wanderlust, and three months teaching English to atheist teenagers in Czech Republic. Along the way, the conversation circles one persistent question: what kind of education can't be taken away from you?

What's in This Episode:

• How Jonathan's homeschool foundation and a ninth-grade encounter with Plato's Euthyphro first opened him to the thrill of dialectic
• What the Tao Te Ching taught a seventeen-year-old about the difference between talking about God and the eternal God himself
• The tension between building faith and testing it—and why classical education treats truth as a tuning fork rather than a fragile inheritance
• Jonathan's year of construction and waiting tables before heading to Czech Republic, where teaching English to atheist teenagers rekindled his desire to share the faith
• How George MacDonald's Phantastes, Plato's Phaedo, and a "concentration camp education" philosophy shape Jonathan's vision for what education should do for the soul

Chapters:

• 00:00: Welcome and Introduction
• 01:10: Jonathan's Background and Classical Formation
• 03:50: The Euthyphro and the Thrill of Dialectic
• 08:44: The Tao Te Ching and Rethinking God
• 20:38: Building Faith vs. Testing Faith
• 37:47: Foundations for Children—Memory, Story, and Song
• 42:33: Working Construction and Heading to Czech Republic
• 47:50: Encountering Atheism in Prague
• 51:37: Phantastes and "Good Is Always Coming"
• 55:17: Discovering Torrey Honors College

Resources Mentioned:

• Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University
• Arcadia Education
• Classical Learning Test

Hosted by Ryan Klopak (Arcadia Education) and Alex Julian (CLT). The Furrows podcast features leaders in classical education who have been transformed by classical education.

Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to another episode of the Furrows Podcast. My name is Ryan Klopak, and I'm joined here by Alex Julian. And this is The Furrows, a podcast where we talk to people who have been transformed by classical education and who are taking on that flame, that mantle of leadership, and transforming others through that same means. Today we have a really exciting guest on. I'm going to have Alex actually introduce him a little bit more. Alex, who do we have on today?

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Yeah, we're bringing in John Mueller from the Houston area. And I got to meet John through some of our work in uh placing him at uh a classical institution from another classical institution. And uh and I also got to meet him at a conference that we were at at Belmont Abbey this past fall and and talk and dig into his story. And uh and just such a wonderful man with a wonderful story, and so wanted to have him on the podcast to share that today.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

So, John, uh tell us a little bit about uh your experience and who you were prior to jumping into classical education, uh in whatever form that means to you.

SPEAKER_03 1:24

Great. Well, uh thank you both, uh Alex and Ryan, for having me on. It's a pleasure uh to get a chance to talk more with you guys. Um I've enjoyed that in the past. So um, yeah, there's it's it's hard to say um a kind of before and after classical education for me. Um I I think I can divide it out into a few different stages. And so the reason that it's difficult is um I think I was raised classically uh in an important sense. Uh so I was homeschooled K through sixth grade. Um and uh a lot of what you know would be intelligible to a classical homeschooling environment now was how my mom and dad tried to raise me. Um my mom's a teacher before homeschooling, my sisters and I, I have three sisters, only boy with three sisters, which uh I thought of as a curse when I was little, uh, and that was a great blessing. Um but and so my mom's a teacher, my dad's a pastor in the Presbyterian church. Um so many gifts, you know, present in both parents as far as um deep engagement with texts, um, careful attention uh to not just thinking well, but then also living out your life in a way that that matched what what you believed. Um but I I think it would be fair to say that I had a kind of uh elevated classical education encounter for the first time as a student, um, more towards my ninth grade year. Um, and that's where I went to uh what was kind of properly termed a classical school for the first time. Um and there was a wonderful teacher there, right? I mean, I think many of us have have this in our background where uh there's a particular teacher that changes how we look at what's possible when it comes to how texts impact my life, right? Um, and so that teacher uh was the first one that I remember reading any platonic dialogue with. Um and we were reading the Euthyphro, and of course we get to the Euthyphro dilemma, and we're discussing that. And I just it it was like you know, a light went on in a dark place, even having been raised, like I said, by thoughtful, uh devout parents, um that just the formulation in a in a discussion environment of that question that comes from the euthyphro, whether um something is holy because it is dear to the gods, or whether it's dear to the gods because it's holy. Um it just set me back on my feet. And and I realized like I haven't been thinking this way. I haven't been like really, and I think it's appropriate, right? Maybe before ninth grade, it doesn't even occur to you that such questions can be asked uh necessarily. And so that was that was a good time for it. And um another another thing that I'll probably come back to is um that teacher actually um was uh he left the school after that year, um, and the school itself uh kind of meandered um af after that year um and kind of moved away from from class school. And uh so my parents knew what a strong connection I had had with that teacher and sort of continued just kind of uh there was a small group uh literature class that this teacher offered. And we read The Divine Comedy, um, we read more Plato, um, and we read George McDonald, we read The Golden Key and Fantasties, which has turned out to be um very important in my life, and um so there was that setting, and then uh I I ended up being in community college um for the remainder of high school. Um, because like I said, uh the the school I had been attending stopped offering classes. My parents, I think, rightly intuited that I was maybe not going to do well just being uh fully back in homeschool. Um and so but it was an odd arrangement. I was enrolled uh completely in community college classes um for the remainder of my high school career, um, which did mean that by the time I was 18 and I graduated uh from high school, I also had my AA. I had you know 70 odd units of college credit, um, but I had a really jaded and cynical view of uh I would say many things. Yeah, I mean teenagers often do. Um but I had a jaded view of what was available in terms of college, right? I had been at a community college. Now I had some really great professors there, um, but I kind of also, you know, and maybe, maybe this is in part just hubris, um, but I think it was in part because of the environment where I was. Um, I kind of had this thought by the time I was 17, 18, well, if this is what college is, I don't know that I want to go do more of it. Um and so I uh I also had been kind of drifting in an interior way, um, in as far as my Christian faith went, you know, through through high school. Um and I kept that fairly private. Um I never I never stopped attending church, I never uh rebelled and and you know uh rejected the faith of my parents. Um, you know, I I've always had a good relationship with my parents, even when I felt like this was something I couldn't share with them as um as completely as I wanted to, you know, as completely as I could tell they wanted me to. Um but definitely in my soul I was I I felt unmoored, I felt like I was drifting. Um and uh you know it's strange how these things happen, but um a professor at the community college who I think was um not a Christian, um maybe not any particular religion, kind of just a uh a consumer in a way, um as far as world religions, uh, but a careful thinker and a lover of great literature. Um he uh put the Dabei Qing in front of me and said, Read this, you'll enjoy it. Um and and oddly enough, at a time when you know there was kind of deep cynicism in my soul and dabbling with uh you know existential philosophy, uh nihilism of you know, various stripes, uh, you know, as as you do when you're a teenager, but I I was earnest. Um I was earnestly like seeking through the earnest nihilist. What was that? I'm earnest nihilist. Ernest nihilist. I I I wanted to know the truth, and if I hadn't been believing the truth, I wanted to confront that. Um and uh but strangely, uh the Tao Te Ching, I think in part because it was so unfamiliar and from such a separate um tradition than the one I had been raised in, turned out to be really important. Um because it while in completely unfamiliar terms, certainly to me at that point, it emphasizes the the eternal persistence and consistency of the way, right? Tao in Chinese means way. And there is there is the path that characterizes virtue. There is like the way that good men and women are, uh, there is the way of heaven um and the way of earth, right? And and there was something that just, I mean, I don't know if if you've read it before, but uh in the first the first saying, um, it begins, the Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao, the Tao that can be named is not the eternal name. And uh that just also knocked my socks off because I realized like so much of what I was doing when I said, I don't know if I believe in God or the the picture of things that I've been given. I was not talking about the eternal thing as it is, I was talking about my conception of the eternal thing, and those are really different. Um, and that was a very I I received that lesson, you know, at around 17 in a really humbling way, and that was good for me because you know I didn't, it's taken me years, I would say I'm still unpacking the implications of that lesson, but the lesson that I had made a kind of hubristic mistake of like thinking that I had comprehended something just by talking about it, by being able to talk about it. Um that had been a huge error. Um, right. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Yeah, I it's really interesting uh how your that last point, especially what you're talking about with uh the argument that you had been having all along was your conception of who God is or what reality is, and that had been the thing that needed to be challenged, uh not not reality itself necessarily. And it's a discovery that I had I had the wrong image, and then learning to uh reimagine God around this this new image that you're slowly discovering over time. Um I don't know if that's something that a lot of people are aware of, that a lot of the arguments that they're having are with that internalized image of who God is or uh uh what I imagine him to be. Could you maybe talk a little bit more about what was the image that you had as a child and why was it insufficient for you as you got older?

SPEAKER_03 12:24

Well, that's that's a great question. I mean, because I think a lot of times people do have this experience and they they attribute it to like let's say that they're raised uh you know Protestant and they become Catholic, or the Protestant and they become Orthodox, or something like that, um, or or vice versa, though. I think that happens less in this country, um, though not in other countries necessarily. But um I there's a I I feel uncomfortable, so you know, to be fair, I was raised Presbyterian, I'm Anglican, um, so I'm not exactly in the same tradition I was raised in. Um, but I'm hesitant even to say there was something insufficient about like the the theology of the tradition I was raised in, in part because I know that I what I really registered at this point was when I was 17, was that I had an inferior view myself, right? Like it wasn't just that, oh, the my specific community or tradition or the people I spend time with have an insufficient view. Like I have an insufficient view. You know, I have not been uh when I talk about God, I've been talking about my idea of God, not the eternal God, right? Um, like that you know, that that language from the Tao helped me, the Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. Like when you are talking about it, you have to recognize that it's different, it's separate from the eternal thing that that exists independently of you, and you might have some way towards it, some way to participate, but it it is not itself what you are saying it is right now in this moment.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Um there's were there some theological uh was there some like uh some theological images for you that you didn't feel like met matched up with the reality you were experiencing at 17 or as a teenager?

unknown 14:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

Um where you know the reason I'm asking that is you have such an interesting journey compared to a lot of the people we that we talk to, where you start out being homeschooled, you start out doing class school, and then you go into basically like public community college like at 15. Yeah. And so you're in the reverse. You know, we have a lot of people, it's like public school to classical school, there's a conversion. Um you go from like this euthyphro moment in ninth grade, and then having this these this reading group to uh and then there's this quote higher mode of education that you're experiencing as a teenager, you know, that that most other people aren't experiencing at your age. So it's like, oh, this here's this next thing that's being offered to me, and it seems worse than the thing I was doing. Um yeah, so that that's why I'm asking, like, huh, did did where there where you were in school, where you were in life, was that starting to not match up, and your view of the world starting to not match up with your conception of God?

SPEAKER_03 15:52

Yeah, I think I think a couple of things um on that point. I um so you know, there in the in the Presbyterian tradition that I was raised in, you know, there's robust systematic theology, right? And I think I thought I was well enough first in that. I surely wasn't at that point, but I didn't feel that it was expansive enough. Um you know, and this is maybe maybe the the not so great side of me reading uh the Dao Buching and the Bhagavad Gita and so forth for the first time when I was a teenager. I I had the, I think if you if you track it down, this turns out to be a common experience of like that early phase where you read these other like major texts from world religions where the the reader me sort of thinks like, oh, there must be more going on than I had previously thought because look at this, look at this, you know. Um and so I it it wasn't that I had the experience that, oh, that means the God of Christianity is false. I just had a I had a sense that the way I've been thinking about God, maybe the way I've been used to talking about God in church isn't sufficient given what else I want to know. Like I want to know how Lao Tzu, you know, the writer of the Tao De Qing, could have this idea of the eternal Tao and really seem to be right about that, right? Um not be in a Christian tradition. And not be in a Christian tradition, and in fact, be you know, like way before a Christian tradition. Um and and not even, you know, as with Plato, I mean, there there's the sometimes the question of like, did Plato, you know, uh who's writing near enough to the time of Laos, so you know, maybe a hundred years different. Um did Plato uh make it to Egypt or some other part of the Mediterranean at some point where the Hebraic texts were and he sort of read Genesis and that's how we got to Maeus? Like uh, you know, there's there's that line of thought. I I don't think that has to be true. Um I think I think there's good reason to think that he's operating from some other traditions there. But but yeah, so I think I think, as I said, I was I was earnest and foolish. But also I was I was there was the right impulse to want to track things down, right? Um, but the but the foolishness came with the sort of like small conclusions you make along the way of trying to the worthy goal of tracking down like what is what is at the bottom of everything? What is the truth? Like what is going on when it when it comes to this thing many traditions call God? And and is there a way for me to understand God within the Christian tradition in a way that I can also like hear Lao Tzu as as making some sense? Like not saying the same thing, not not trying to be syncretistic here, but as if he is saying the Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao, I think he's making sense and he's saying something true. Um and and I want to follow that, follow that through. That was kind of where I was. And um I probably, you know, as as a over the years I've gone on to talk with my dad about these things and about and with, of course, many other Christian teachers, and um you know, have discovered that they're willing to have those conversations. I think uh at the time I felt like um no one will want to talk about this with me because it it seems it seems outside the bounds, right? Um it's it's uh it's not John Calvin, it's not Augustine. Um and so I probably wrongfully assumed at many points also that those conversations couldn't be had, which then increased my sense interiorly of isolation, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Man, there's so much good stuff here. Like I don't even know where to where to go next because there's so many things that we could we could talk about and unpack. So I think where I think where I want to go next is the euthyphro. Yeah. Because I just can't resist. Um so so yeah, let's spend a little bit of time with not you know with ninth grade John, and we'll go back to to seventh grade John beyond or 17-year-old John beyond.

SPEAKER_03 20:37

So 17-year-old John does go to college, which is part of the uh re-enchantment to education and classical education story, but we can get we can get there.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we see you know, we can see a great finished product in front of you know very many respectable books and clothing. But how how do we get there? So, okay, so the Euthyphro. I mean, when you're talking about even the the Tao and Soc and then and then shifting over to Socrates, I mean, Euthyphro for me was this gateway drug into the idea that there's truth. Uh you know, I I was I was kind of in my own.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

What is Euthyphro? Like talk about that more for our audience that may not be familiar.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

Yeah, so that's good. So um, you know, you Euthyphro is the first dialogue in this grouping of five dialogues that is often read when people are introduced to Plato. Um, it's not it's not chronologically the first, but it's just a really great intro to Plato because it takes place when he's on his way to uh being tried by the Athenian state for corrupting the youth, and then you know ultimately is made to drink the hemlock and all of that. So so the the euthiphro is a discussion between. Between Socrates and Euthyphro about what piety is because um uh because Euthyphro is uh is basically meets Socrates on the road to his trial and says, Oh yeah, I've uh I was just in the courthouse, I was prosecuting my father for impiety. And so, you know, Socrates, like, I'm sure if it was a cartoon, he'd like screech in his tracks on his way to the trial, and was like, Oh, okay, I we need to talk about this. Like, you must be a great understanding, you must have a great understanding of piety to do something so bold as to prosecute your own father uh for impiety, right? And then, and then they have this discussion about about piety. Um so so that's yeah, that's kind of the intro, but but the you know, and then and then like in many of the dialogues, Plato and and Euthro kind of go through this systematic uh definition and then counterargument, and then a new definition, and then another counter-argument trying to find the truth. Um so yeah, that for me was this this clear understanding that uh truth it is something you can pursue, and it's certainly when you make a claim, there are there are ways to measure it as though it uh how logical it is, how reasonable it is. Um but yeah, I'm just curious what you're like digging into that. You're talking a little bit about holiness and the gods. Like what really struck you there, and did you bring any of that along with you, even though your classical experience kind of fell apart for a few years?

SPEAKER_03 23:50

Yeah, I think I think it was um it this is gonna sound maybe ridiculously simple. It was the formulation of that key question from the text that uh more so than the subject matter of piety, just just the, you know, as you mentioned, the systematic way that, I mean, it's kind of a paradigmatic Socratic dialogue, right? Where Socrates works through the different offerings by Euthyphro, helps Euthyphro realize that they're insufficient. Well, Euthyphro doesn't, in fact, realize Euthyphro gets frustrated enough that he can't defend any particular premise, but he doesn't admit that he's been wrong. He he goes merrily on his way, uh thinking, yep, I'm gonna keep uh prosecuting my father. Um but it was so one, I think just the thrill of the dialectic like playing out in that dialogue. Um in kind of the the first time that I was looking at it that way of yeah, a truth-oriented conversation where they were really going to get to the bottom of something. And it turns out they didn't really get to the bottom of something, but they got to the bottom of realizing what a problem they had on their hands, and that's important, right? It's kind of like uh Elizabeth Anscomb says um, you know, I want to work on it from scratch, and it takes a long time to get to scratch. Um just just realizing how much there is in a question like that, uh, I found really exciting. You know, and but but just the phrasing of the key question um of what makes something pious, you know, just in those kind of pure philosophical terms, I found I found really compelling and and realizing, okay, if you get a question like this, you can really be off to the races on something important. And if you you know, if you learn how to discuss the way that Socrates knows how to discuss, you that's that's a new mode. Like I was just not thinking or discussing that way before. Um and so I think I had been very well taught before ninth grade, as far as like the books that I put in front of me and the classes that I had both at home and you know, uh a co-op here and there. Um and but just that like participating in the dialectic that way, that was a new mode for me. And that was I've so I think maybe that's an underwhelming answer, Alex. But that that really is the answer to what excited me about the dialogue so much. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

No, it's great. I mean, now there's so many places we can go from here because you know, when you look at classical homeschooling, and of course we want to, you know, I don't I don't have a lot of um experience with that. I want to be respectful and and honoring to all of the parents who take that on. I mean, that's a huge undertaking. Um but what I what I'm seeing one of the threads of what kind of shocks students awake about classical is that there's these adults who are willing to challenge the children's assumptions while they're challenging their own assumptions as adults, and that they're going through this you know Socratic irony of uh constantly like having the way I see it is this you have so much faith in the truth that you're willing to uh test it over and over again. Yeah, you know, it's not a lack of faith that you're testing the truth, it's that this is a standard, and so uh, you know, this is a tuning fork, and so I'm gonna hit the tuning fork over and over again. And uh, and that sometimes in the homeschool space or in the Christian ed space or whatever, it's it kind of is taught almost as fragile. Yes. Like, look, you have got to make this so internal to yourself. Uh and and and and the students kind of then feel like, gosh, you know, can it not be tested? Can can we not what if we assumed it's not true? What would happen then? Right. Uh could it stand up to that sort of scrutiny? And and the beautiful thing I think I I see about the classical education mode is because you believe in the truth so much, assuming it's not true just makes it that much stronger when you pers when you you know you don't fail to pursue it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

So is that the piece I was missing before that your conception of God had never been tested, and now you found that there is a way to test whether or not something is true, and you can be certain with a particular conclusion that derives from those questions.

SPEAKER_03 28:58

Yeah, I think maybe that's a helpful way of putting it, that uh it's one thing to build something, it's another thing to test something, right? And so um my my conception of God, my own faith had been built um, but not tested in in the way that perhaps I was desirous of. You know, I I wanted and and yeah, I I I think a lot of uh contemporary Christianity of various traditions, a lot of um Christian schooling circles, but you know, honestly, out outside of Christianity as well. But I I'd like to just pick on my own uh group, uh that's more fair. Um, but I don't think this is an exclusive claim, is you know, the the framework of the group is treated more as fragile, Alex, to your point. Like, you know, we've got to really think just this, and then we'll be safe, right? This is how we know we're right. And I just I felt even if people weren't saying that to me directly, I felt that sense often. And I wanted to just really test, and I wanted to like go to the hilt and find out if it was true. Um and and I think you know, I came to understand that better. I mean, sometimes that's a that can be a destructive impulse, but um often it's the it's the healthy one that we see uh Socrates model um in a dialogue where, you know, like in the Phaedrus or um well, yeah, Phaedrus might be the the example that I'm thinking of right here. Yeah, um where he says, to say what the soul really is, my dear Phaedrus, is a task fit for the gods alone. Uh or maybe if we had more time, a mortal man could do it. But such as it is, to say what it is like, that's a task that we can pursue, right? So I don't want to try to encompass the whole thing. I want to say maybe I I could speak analogically for a moment and get closer, right? Um, but that that sort of demands that you be willing to keep um you know striking the tuner and saying, Did this match? Like was that was that it right? You know, tell me again from the beginning, what do you say virtue is? You know, Socrates questioned Amino, uh you know, after they've already been talking for pages and pages about what virtue is. Um and that that demand that the teacher be willing to enter into that inquiry as well. I think that was something that I saw in the Socratic dialogues and then later uh in college as well.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Yeah, I don't think that's a specific problem tied to any one denomination as far as being given a conception of the faith or the paradigm, but being too afraid to actually test it because uh either the teacher or the students haven't been well coached in how to explore inquiry in such a way where we can feel like we actually are getting somewhere and we have some concrete understanding of a thing that we're trying to study. Um I think that's universally applicable. And when I think about all the people that I know who have left the Christian faith, it's because either life itself or someone that they met or some class they had in college posed a question that they didn't know how to answer, and then they just sat there with that question, and that question dominated them and it and it ate them. And at no point did they ever uh feel like they had the power to fight back with it. So it just it really is not enough to just give the story the the feltboard animation of like what is our faith, um the indoctrination, I guess you would call it, where you're just cramming a worldview without putting it under scrutiny. It you have to be able to flex uh those intellectual muscles to see if it's stands up. Because it it is just inevitable that we're going to encounter something that doesn't fit the paradigm that we grew up with. Yeah. And we have to make some sort of reconciliation of like, does this actually fit under the umbrella that I have been given?

SPEAKER_03 33:51

And this is, yeah, I think that's right. And this is such a hard thing, right, for parents and teachers, especially of small children. So I have I have four kids, uh all between the ages of two and nine. Um, and this is something I think about, you know, uh and we can go outside of a Christian context for a moment to find, you know, Plato, for instance, suggests, or Socrates suggests in Republic that, yeah, don't have people engage in dialectic until they're about 30. Um, you know, and that's just an interesting big because in the educational framework that he's building in the republic, uh, music and gymnastic, by which we should, you know, we should also hear like games um and uh folk tales and poetry, that that's what they should be doing through high school, basically, music and gymnastic. Um, and then some arithmetic, but uh not too much, not till later, right? But dialectic, no, don't do it till you're about 30. Um, and so just interesting, like you don't given that Plato thought that, and he's you know, he doesn't have the same concerns that you know Christian parents have in in that regard of like the at least the felt board um uh kind of motif you were talking about just now. Um, but this idea that it really is appropriate to just give story and cultivate wonder at especially those early ages. And if you do cultivate wonder, don't do it in a in so rigorous a way that you destroy the ability to inhabit a particular world, right? Um I think about this with my nine-year-old, she loves to uh what she calls do a philosophy with me, and we'll just like sit at the um you know breakfast table and and ask, like, what is a number? Um, you know, what are things like that. And and so I I want to have those discussions with her, provided that she's interested, but I also am careful in those to not be so rigorous that she ends up feeling like nothing can be said, right? Nothing can nothing is sure, right? Because that's a bad outcome of the dialectic sort of indiscriminately applied, I think.

SPEAKER_01 36:16

Yeah, that's really important because uh, you know, another piece about uh this mode of education that we're you know so big on and you know so seeking stories of of transformation around is that when students are younger, there's this really delicate dance of creating an environment that uh is beautiful, that is that's good, that's uplifting, uh giving them real heroes to believe in. Um you know, right, g giving them all these beautiful examples, uh, but then also giving them the trust again that truth is there, you know, even if it's even if it's not fully formed, that it that there's the there's there's kind of sensing intellect in them that can pick up on when something's not quite right. Uh, and and exploring that. And like, you know, and and that's why there's images of evil constantly in in even the fairy tales um as a perversion of the good. Um so yeah, I just how did that maybe connect? How does that either connect with you know that you have kids now or looking back to to being raised that the the way that you were? Were there any kind of strong foundations being laid in that way that you were able to return to or that you're returning to with your kids?

SPEAKER_03 37:46

Yes, wow, that's a good question. Um so I think you know, the the foundations that were laid, um often oftentimes I mean there there were theological foundations laid, you know. As I said, my dad's a pastor, so there's uh it even when I wanted to escape the theological foundations, there was there was no escape. And now I'm thankful, you know. Um, but you're not always thankful for that when you're 12, 15. Um but you know, the habits of of prayer and scripture reading that my parents cultivated in the home, um, but also uh time spent reading together things outside of scripture. Um, you know, I my mom read so much to us um because she was our primary teacher for so many years. Um, but then you know, and so I remember her reading Chronicles of Narnia to us. I remember my dad reading The Hobbit and the Lord The Lord of the Rings to us. Um and so those are things that I've tried to take forward with my kids, and you know, it's it's that time of year, so including the Father Christmas letters uh that Tolkien wrote. Um so we're reading those now. Um, but also, you know, there I was I was raised in a tradition um where you know the kind of Trinity hymnal was always ready to hand. And um I'm thankful for the hymns that are still kind of word for word in my mind, um, even when I haven't sung them in my particular tradition in quite some time. You know, we'll go back home and visit uh my parents' church, and I'll find that I can sing, you know, uh all of great is thy faithfulness or how firm a foundation um do you go without looking at the hymnal, uh, just because of being raised that way. Um and there that's that's a great gift too, that I I can't underestimate, you know, being raised with the a prioritization of memory work, um, and also just the fact that when you really do have those habits in the home of psalm reading, scripture reading, and singing hymns, those things become deep memory, even when they're not being pitched as like memorization work. Um, you know, I don't at no point did my parents say, now you're going to memorize this hymn, right? The way you memorize a hymn that stays in there pretty much your whole life is to sing it many, many weeks out of the first, you know, 20 years of your life, and then you have it. Um so that's something I think about with my own kids too. I I sort of, you know, with my children and my students, I've thought of it as kind of like the uh, I know this is gonna sound uh very dark, but like the concentration camp education. Like if you were shipped off to a concentration camp, um do you have an education that couldn't be taken away from you? You know, do you have something that couldn't be taken away because you know they can take your books, they can take, of course, your computer and all your tech, they can take away Google, your your access to, you know, we have more at our fingertips than ever. And I and yet we have this sense that we maybe are less familiar with the things that we should be. Um so what do you have that can't be taken away from you? Uh is a question I think a lot about when it comes to um memory work and education.

SPEAKER_01 41:30

Um that's so good. That's such a great way to do that.

SPEAKER_00 41:34

I want to go down that road, and I'm worried about hijacking off we story. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 41:38

Yeah, I'd love to go down that road. Of course, you know, with all of our guests, we're starting to say, like, okay, part two. Yeah, we gotta do a part two.

SPEAKER_00 41:44

And three and four.

SPEAKER_01 41:45

Yeah. Um, so we'll we'll save that for part two. With the last kind of 20 minutes here, I really want to dig into, okay, so um, you know, I know you went overseas for a while, and then there was kind of like a providential moment where you returned. So can you tell us about that? And then I'd also then love to kind of end with um where were you able to give back to your students and and how are you forming you know people now uh with the tradition that you that you return to? So so yeah, uh 17-year-old John doesn't want to have anything to do with college because he thinks it's rubbish. Uh and then I think you go overseas. Can you let's let's go there.

SPEAKER_03 42:29

Yeah. Um so 17-year-old John doesn't want to have anything to do with college, thinks it's rubbish. Um, and so I decided, okay, I I finished, I would graduate, um, but then I would work, you know, and I I really I had it in my head that I wanted to travel. I just didn't know where um or or what for. I just I just wanted to go.

SPEAKER_01 42:55

Um and uh was that the tuk side of you?

SPEAKER_03 42:59

Yeah, something definitely was there. Um and and so I I did. I you know, I graduated high school and then I worked for basically a year. Um I worked construction and I uh weighted tables um and saved up enough money um for traveling, and in the meantime found an avenue to do it. I uh my dad actually suggested that I reach out to um a missionary family in the Czech Republic um that was connected with our denomination. And I was, you know, I thought, like, no, I don't want to do that. I I I didn't feel like I could authentically you know pitch in with missionaries because I felt confused, you know. Um and my dad, this was I may, you know, the more when you get older you realize like your parents are sometimes playing the long game, and my dad was like, just talk to him and you know, keep He's not gonna make you like do anything you don't want to do. Um just find out what's going on over there. And uh so I wrote to this missionary pastor, and I was like, uh, hello, um I would like to come live in the Czech Republic with you. Um so so ridiculous. Um and I was like, um, I don't speak Czech, uh, but if you need help teaching English or building things, uh, I feel like I could do either of those things. Um because I've been working in construction, and it's just like the dumbest proposal letter of all time. Um but they took me up on it, God bless them. Um and so I I saved up money and then um went overseas for about four months total. Um, three of those months were in the Czech Republic, and I actually I flew into Paris um because I had a friend there, and so I stayed in Paris for a week, um, and then took a took a bus over to Prague, um, stayed there for three months, and then spent about three weeks doing uh, you know, like the Eurorail Pass, where you can, if you buy the Eurorail pass, you can get on basically any train um in Europe. Um so I did that for three weeks on the way back. Um and it was just it's kind of an endlessly important period in my life, um where my you know, so many things that I had been sort of sensing about maybe the importance of, I always loved history, so the importance of history, but the importance of tradition, but also the importance of beauty, you know. Um when you when you grow up, I grew up in California, so there's lots of natural beauty. Um, you know, in a way I was reminded of, I just visited, uh took my family to see my parents and and my wife's parents over Thanksgiving break, and you know, stood there on the shore watching the sunset over the Pacific Ocean and just thought, whoa, why would anyone ever leave here? Um it's so beautiful, but cultural beauty um and beauty and architecture and so forth, that that's not really something I had had access to, especially in that historical sense, right? And so when you go to Paris uh and Prague and some of the cities in Germany that I went to, the medieval town, uh Rotenburg, um uh it's just you know, you it's a it's a new kind of experience, a new engagement with beauty and tradition and history that I had not had before. And and also working closely with a missionary family, um, you know, and seeing the the care that they provided for their church and their community in the Czech Republic. I mean, it was such a such an interesting thing to engage with that culture because I had no knowledge of the Czech Republic before that. Um it's just at this very interesting sort of uh juncture between Eastern Europe and uh Western Europe, and you know, there's the there's an Orthodox tradition there, there's a Catholic tradition there, there's a strong Protestant tradition there because of Jan Hus. Um and and so just this like collusion of worlds, um, and then also the fact that uh Prague had been under uh you know communism and uh behind the Iron Curtain. Um and the effects of that were still very evident, right? And uh a high rate of atheism despite such a rich religious um tradition, Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant. Um, and so it was just really amazing to engage with that culture and to find like you know, what did what did this this group that I was having this this encounter with want, you know, oftentimes they didn't actually want um to talk much about Christianity, except for the people who were in that that small missionary church. But you know, the people who would come to English classes didn't want Christianity, but they did want English. Um, and so that was kind of uh, though I I say it with some chagrin, that was kind of perfect for me because I was like, well, I don't feel like I want to talk with you about Christianity either, but I can talk with you about English. And um, but I also then found over the course of my time there that I found myself wanting to talk with people about Christianity because to start out with, I was I thought, okay, totally, let's just do English. But then hearing them talk about their lives, you know, I was working with people who are not too far from my own age. Like um I I was kind of the the youth group leader for a while, but it was not youth group, it was just like they would have them over to play games and um and watch a movie, but not it wasn't a Bible study, right? Because I think they the idea was that the kids wouldn't have come. Um but I was I was only 18 and these kids were all uh 16, 17, 18. Um, and so did a lot of ultimate frisbee, you know. But then um as at the more time I spent talking with them and the more you know um I would get to know them and hear their kind of devout atheism, the more I had the impulse internally of well no, that's not right either. Come on, like have you thought about X, right? And and finding that you know, what you often, when you're in a Christian context, like sort of a saturated Christian context, you sort of feel like a bit more cavalier about atheism, but when you see it um more directly impacting people's lives and and uh creating a state of more like internal and spiritual impoverishment, then you realize like, well, no, somebody should bring this up right now. Uh okay, fine, I'll do it.

SPEAKER_01 50:37

Um and yeah, that I think there's a Flannery O'Connor story about this. Yeah. Like when you're confronted with true atheism or true nihilism, it gets scary really fast and your your fake leg gets stolen.

SPEAKER_00 50:53

Wow, that's really interesting because usually when I hear about the challenge to the paradigm, I think of like the seductive quality of the strange worldview that you could be lured into, but you're seeing it uh totally having lived out uh the real implications of it and eating the fruits of real-life atheism, and you're seeing the the terror and the horror behind it. Uh, could you talk a little bit more about what were some of the things that surprised you that were just completely absent from their their worldview that you felt the the need to rush in and fill with a better story?

SPEAKER_03 51:37

Yeah. Um the the idea of the possibility that there could be a good and loving God. Um I mean I've been I've been really uh compelled, you know, I referenced reading Fantastis for the first time in early high school. Um but you know, Anodos, the main character in Fantastis, makes so many mistakes. Uh I f I feel like he's a very sympathetic character for me. Um but he he makes so many mistakes in part because he's so earnest and he loves beauty. Um and you know, without without like going into everything in the story, uh, you know, he after a series of utterly destructive failures at some points, um he uh he is able to say by the end of the novel, um, yet I know that good is coming to me, that good is always coming, though few have at all times the courage and simplicity to believe it. And that line has stuck with me forever, and I think it will, um, as long as I have memory that you know that good is always coming. And I felt somehow strangely compelled, like I believed that in my teenage years, uh, even if I didn't believe, even if I didn't feel like I could say I believed everything that I had been raised with in the Christian faith, that that I, or that I could say exactly what kind of Christian I was. Um somehow that line broke through. And and so when I was encountered with, you know, because there was nothing seductive or or yeah uh or fascinating about the atheism of the the kids I met in the Czech Republic, it because they they hadn't done it to themselves, they hadn't found like the cool, rebellious way to be atheists, they were just raised in that kind of spiritual desolation, right? And so it was very boring. It was very and you know they I think they felt like it was uninteresting, but they also felt like, well, we also mock Christians because who's gonna believe in the guy in the sky, right? Um, but there was no like awesome alternative for them either. And it led to a kind of yeah, uh being a sense of being sort of metaphysically unmoored and a listlessness for them that I think when I saw it and and started to perceive clearly what was at the root, I wanted to be able to say but good is coming. And I don't know how I can explain that yet, but trust me. And then I and then I realized I was gonna have to get much better at finding the account for that.

SPEAKER_01 54:45

That's great. All right, well, there's so much more to talk about there. We could stay in in your experience in Europe for the rest of the time, but um yeah, just briefly, you know, where we probably should have spent most of the time was Tory Honors College. But that's for part two. So briefly uh what shifted for you there, and then what do you feel like you were most equipped to bring to young people after that experience?

SPEAKER_03 55:17

Yeah, after the after the experience of Tory or so, yeah, I was in Europe when I uh found out about Tory's existence, right? And the the idea that there was a great books program out there that was kind of like the stripped-down, like just the good stuff version of college. Um and I was immediately sold, in part because you know, there I was in in the middle of Europe with this beauty and tradition and history all around me for the first time. And I just thought, okay, this is connected to that reading of fantastic, that reading of Plato and Dante and Shakespeare and other things that I had had a glimpse of, but this, you know, where I where I'm standing right now, that's connected to those texts. And Tori is at least saying that it's going to be more of that, right? It's going to it's going to help me engage with this tradition that I am surrounded by right now and that I find that I love so much. Um, and yes, it sounds like it's doing the things that I've uh found myself wanting, you know, during the high school years at community college that I wished college would do, but that I was finding that it wasn't doing. You know, we were going to be in groups of 14 to 16, sitting in front of Plato and Augustine and Aquinas and Shakespeare and Calvin and just digging in. And that's what I want. Um, and so I I applied uh to Tory from the Czech Republic. I had my interview on Skype, which was very dicey in those days. Um, but it worked out. Um, had the interview with the uh with Paul Spears um and uh was accepted to the program and then uh went there very soon after I returned to the country. Um and so you know I've I was an English major and and in the Tory Honors Institute there, and and that was just an excellent pairing for me. Um you know, there was they still had an English track at that time where with Dr. Aaron Kleist, I was able to learn Anglo-Saxon and work on translating Beowulf in addition to doing like the Shakespeare classes and things like that. But then this important strain all throughout of the great books' experience at Tory was just immensely formative for me. And I knew, you know, I had had that experience teaching English in the Czech Republic, um, and I came out on the other side of Tory thinking, okay, I actually really loved teaching English. That was surprising to me. Um, but if I can teach great books, that's what I want to do. Like that experience of teaching that I've had before, if I can do that with these books and help young people grapple with some of the things I know I was grappling with as a junior high and high school aged person, um, if I can help them do that in a way that one equips them for the things that they need to be equipped for, but also gives them hope that good is coming, right? That because we need to be ready to confront like the most difficult things. You know, this goes back to our building versus testing. You get to a point when you realize, like, I mean, God forbid, but we know from history that at some point the concentration camp does come, right? Uh, or the disaster comes, the the the thing that you really had hoped wouldn't happen. Um, how can an education that grapples with eternal things help you be ready for that? Um that's what I wanted to do with young people.

SPEAKER_00 59:27

Yeah, I think when you keep talking about waiting for a disaster to strike, I think you're talking about the need to prepare people for death.

SPEAKER_05 59:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:36

Um because that that is the thing that comes for everyone. The concentration can't may not, but um like you you even see this with people who have Alzheimer's who are in the process of dying and all is being stripped away from them, their money, their health, their memory. Yeah. Yet somehow there's still something alive and active in them that when they hear a certain song or hear a certain story, see memory come back to life and re-vivified. And it's yeah, it's kind of a long game we're playing in a question of what is going to bring us back to life. I mean, I in a way, it's almost like are we priming ourselves for a resurrection? Yeah. Because death is coming. Um so how do we spend our hours doing that? Well, go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:32

Yeah, no, I was just gonna echo your point that you know Socrates says this in the photo, um, that philosophy is nothing other than the preparation for death. Um and the or training for death, depending on how you translate it. He said, he uses this phrase melete thanatu, um, which melite is like this um, yeah, like think like Olympic yard training. Um so training for death. That's that's what a good education should be doing, um, because the stakes are high.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:10

I think that's so good and and such a great place to end it. Uh but you know, when when yeah, just your analogy earlier of what can they not take from you? I mean, it's really only the things that are in your soul, right, that can't be taken away. And so how is that not also then preparation for death? And um, like when I don't think it's ever been more obvious that that's the sort of education that human beings need when all sorts of forces in this world are willing to take knowledge and like and and and you know, you're you're able to just give your knowledge over to that thing. Take give your responsibility of knowing over to the phone or the internet or the AI. And it's like, well, then what's what's in your soul? You know, forget about even being in the marketplace. Like, who are you if you give up all of those things? Um, and man, what a great existential question to to end this episode with. So, John, thank you so much for giving us your time. You know you're you're busy, and we really hope we get a part two with you. Yeah. We have to get a part two with you. Yeah, I would love that.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:29

So, yeah, just let me know. But thanks, thanks again. I enjoyed the conversation.