The Current

Father Greg Boyle's Radical Vision of Human Goodness with Rev Megan Pardue

• Chris Nafis • Season 2 • Episode 10

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Father Greg Boyle's decades long ministry in the gang-riddled neighborhoods of Los Angeles stands as one of the most powerful examples of faith in action today. As Pastor Chris and Pastor Megan unpack Boyle's latest book "Cherished Belonging," they explore how this Jesuit priest's radical vision has transformed thousands of lives through Homeboy Industries, now the world's largest gang rehabilitation program.

The conversation delves into Boyle's two guiding principles: "We are all inherently good, no exceptions" and "We belong to each other, no exceptions." These aren't mere platitudes but the foundation of a ministry that has seen former enemies from rival gangs working side by side. Through what Boyle calls "therapeutic mysticism," gang members experience genuine belonging and form healthy attachments, often for the first time in their lives.

What makes this episode particularly compelling is how Chris and Megan wrestle honestly with challenging aspects of Boyle's theology while still being deeply moved by his witness. They discuss his provocative framing of sin and mental illness, his understanding of systemic injustice, and how his approach challenges conventional religious thinking about human nature. The conversation weaves between theological reflection and practical ministry implications, offering insights for anyone working with marginalized communities.

One of the most powerful stories shared describes a Homeboy manager confronting a gun-wielding former employee, willing to sacrifice his life rather than perpetuate violence. Years later, when that same person returned seeking reconciliation, he was welcomed home with open arms – a profound example of boundaries maintained without demonization, accountability paired with unconditional love.

Whether you're familiar with Father Boyle's work or encountering it for the first time, this conversation will challenge you to see others with new eyes. As Megan notes, Boyle's ministry offers a compelling answer to those wondering if anyone is still following Jesus in meaningful ways. Listen in, and then grab one of Boyle's books to continue the journey toward seeing the divine in everyone you encounter.

Chris Nafis:

Hey and welcome back to the Current. This is Pastor Chris Nafis and for today's episode I've been reading a lot of the books by Father Greg Boyle, who founded Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, which we'll talk about in depth in the episode, and I just wanted to sort of process it with somebody. So I texted a friend, longtime friend, pastor Megan Pardue, who's a pastor of Refuge Home Church in Durham, north Carolina. We used to attend that church. Who's a pastor of Refuge Home Church in Durham, north Carolina. We used to attend that church together back in my Durham days and she now pastors the church. Is a thoughtful, intelligent, wonderful person to just process some of these things with. She also teaches preaching at Duke Divinity School today and just very glad that she was willing to share a little time with me so that I could process the things that I was reading and so that we can share it with you. I hope you enjoy our conversation here. It is Well. Hey, megan, thanks for coming on the podcast with me.

Megan Pardue:

Thanks, chris, it's good to be here.

Chris Nafis:

Just to kind of give the people listening like a little context. So, like this this conversation came out. Well, first of all, megan and I are good friends I would say the only you know you're closer friends even with Rachel, with my wife, than with me, but we are also good friends. I was reading Greg Boyle's book Cherished Belonging and really loving it. It was my first book of his that I had read.

Chris Nafis:

But then there was a few things in there that I was just really struggling to kind of get my mind around, like do I hate this? Do I love this? And I was like I feel like I need to process this aloud with somebody and I was like, well, I have a podcast, it's a perfect time to do that. I was talking to Rachel about it and she mentioned that Megan had just gotten that book, or had just read that book, and I was like, oh, that's great. So I called Megan, or I texted Megan, and was like, hey, megan, would you come on? And she was grateful and gracious enough to not only had she hadn't read the book yet, but to read it. I gave her a first podcast guest that I've given homework and then to agree to spend some time just chatting with me about it. So that's what we're doing today. So thank you for all of that, megan, I'm really glad that you're here with me. Thank you.

Megan Pardue:

I mean I'm a huge Greg Boyle fan, like huge, so I was going to read this book anyway I just hadn't read it yet and it is a really. It's really, really inspiring, it's a really challenging. I had questions. Also, I actually have a congregant who loves, loves, loves Greg Boyle also, and he has listened to this book three times, which I think just says like how much there is to unpack in it. So as we begin our conversation, I would just encourage you, like pick up a copy of Cherished Belonging or get it from the library or listen to it, because it's read by the author, by Father Greg Boyle.

Chris Nafis:

Which is kind of fun, like the, because I've been listening to I'm actually on my third now of his, since I read Cherished Belonging, and he does audio for all of them, which is kind of cool because he kind of does I don't know, he does voices and stuff. But yeah, you feel like you get a deeper sense of like okay, this is who wrote this and it's cool.

Megan Pardue:

Yeah, and sometimes he speaks Spanish and that's fun, like I'd rather have him, like say it aloud. Yeah, it's cool.

Chris Nafis:

For sure, for those who don't know who Greg Boyle is, you want to maybe introduce him a little bit, yeah absolutely so.

Megan Pardue:

Greg Boyle, also known as Father Greg or G as he's often called by homies, is a Jesuit priest and he's the founder of Homeboy Industries. Homeboy Industries is out of Los Angeles. It's the largest gang intervention, rehabilitation and reentry program in the world. So really specifically working with gang members, both through their transition out of incarceration into you know, rehabilitating, and trying to work on that recidivism rate, which is the recidivism is like the likelihood that you will reoffend and be incarcerated again. So he is one of these followers of Jesus that like blows me away. He's an ordained Jesuit priest and he was ordained in 1984 and has been doing this work in LA like for, I think, almost like 40 years, pastoring for even longer. He first was serving as a pastor of a church in Los Angeles called Dolores Mission and he was there in, that's in the Boylan Heights neighborhood of LA and then founded Homeboy Industries. Okay, I threw the 40 years out there, but I actually did write down a couple of things. So 40 years is not quite right, I can do math. Founded Homeboy Industries in 1988.

Megan Pardue:

Initially kind of like a jobs program, right, like addressing poverty through employment, but it eventually became Homeboy Industries, one of the things that's deeply profound to me about Craig Boyle is his faithfulness and sense of place, like this is where he was sent to serve, called to serve, and he has been serving there, like I just said, right since. Like the 80s, he's seen LA through crack, cocaine. He's seen LA through different variations of gangs rising and falling. Of course, in that amount of time you've seen so many different programs that have been offered by the city or the county, different nonprofits trying to address some of the systemic issues.

Megan Pardue:

But in his writing and his work I am so moved by just his deep commitment to this particular group of people, especially young people, especially people who have been or are currently incarcerated. A lot of his stories are about going and doing mass in different county jails or prisons across the LA County and surrounding areas and he often will talk about young men who remember him from coming and right presiding at mass and he'll give them their card and they won't come and see. They won't come and find their way to homeboy for another 20 or 30 years, but he's, he's been there and so many of the folks, if not all of their leadership team, are people who, in his language, like they're homies themselves, right People who have been gang involved, gang adjacent, dealt with many of the systemic issues that lead to gang violence and gang involvement and, like these are his people and it's I'm just like so moved by his life, his work, his faithfulness and I encourage everyone to check him out.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, his most famous book, I think, is Tattoos on the heart, which is his first book, and it's it's excellent. He writes like a lot of his his writing is these little snippet stories of encounters he's had with, you know, people that have come through his programs. Um, and they're they're funny, they're deep, they're like he kind of brings this profound, mystical kind of reflection out of these things and like're funny, they're deep, they're like he kind of brings this profound, mystical kind of reflection out of these things and, like you said, he's in this, he's in this context of like severe violence. I think like one of the things that stuck out to me because I've been reading his books kind of like in rapid succession here, is like in each book, at some point he'll give an update of like how many funerals he's done for people who've been murdered by gangs. And I think in his recent book it's like somewhere around 400, you know. And so I mean, just think about how many funerals, how many like dead young people, that is to, you know, mostly gun violence or other forms of violence. It's a lot and that's a deep part of his work and his context.

Chris Nafis:

And, like you said, his, I feel like his work. His even his theology is kind of like comes from this like place where he's been so deeply rooted for all these years and like, yeah, he has these, like he's much better than I am, at least, at, you know, just putting together these little sayings and things that are just like full of like richness and I don't know, reading his books. It's not like you're reading like a book of theology or something. He's not building a systemic theology so much, as he is just kind of like bringing you into like this mystical experience he's had of like community and relationship and the love of God and yeah, it's really, really good. I don't know, does that sound?

Megan Pardue:

Oh, absolutely. I'll say just maybe a couple more things about Homeboy Industries that feel important for those who aren't familiar with it. One is that Homeboy Industries has this kind of initial program and I don't know what it's called, but it's 18 months long. So you know, let's say you've been previously incarcerated, you're out, you know, you got a place to stay and you enroll in their kind of 18 month program and that is going to do all kinds of things. But one of the some of the language that he uses I think is really important, and he talks about therapeutic mysticism is kind of one of his phrases and the reason that their program is 18 months.

Megan Pardue:

It's not just like job training and therapy, Like it is those things, but it's 18 months because that's how long it takes to like, heal or form attachment, and this is, like I think, true of infants, right, this is like pop psychology. I'm trying to pull out of nowhere here. I'm trying to pull out of nowhere here, but there's, like these relational attachments that so many folks who have been gang involved are just missing, and so one of the first things that they're trying to do with this therapeutic mysticism approach is form attachments and bonds, because attachments can help to heal some of the disassociation and offer ways to cope with triggers, help you have a sense of community and belonging or for some folks, like maybe for the first time, family. So I think that's just like a really important like. This is not like a six week, like okay, let's get you on your feet again and send you out like an 18 month commitment to then and part of that um to then be working at homeboy.

Megan Pardue:

Um, and so many, so many folks are in recovery. So that's a dynamic as well. Um, and another thing I'll say about homeboy industries is that there's these social enterprises, so there are opportunities for work alongside the healing. So there's Homeboy Bakery and Homeboy Silkscreen, Homegirl Cafe. For a while they had a graffiti removal service that then they actually closed down because it was putting former gang members and perhaps like again in like really dangerous situations of violence again. So there's these social enterprises that go alongside the work and I think that offering people meaningful work is also super important to their healing and sense of belonging.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, there's like a holistic-ness to what they do and you know he taught, like you mentioned, that the first part of that is he talks a lot about trauma and tells stories of like childhood trauma. And some of the stories that he tells of like the things these kids have been through are just like gut-wrenching and horrifying and you kind of realize why people have so much trouble kind of finding their way in the world, in a, in a into peace or community or connection. You know where some of the tribalism comes from through of the gang affiliations and you know like part of what they're like. Not only are they teaching and kind of not just teaching, but you know, as we've been talking about a lot at our church through some of the trauma work we've been doing like learning with their whole bodies, right, not just with your mind but with your whole nervous system, with everything, learning how to actually connect with others.

Chris Nafis:

But like they're doing this with people who are from like rival gangs and they're working together and so kind of overcoming some of these like really significant barriers, where these guys who and women but I think it's a lot of men who might see each other on the on the block and shoot each other are now finding themselves like baking together or, you know, making tea together or whatever, and I don't know. There's just such a profound witness to what can happen when we actually learn how to love one another, embrace our belovedness, as I think Father Boyle might say, and like, yeah, there's like this the spirituality is so. It like permeates everything, at least that he does and the way that he writes. And what I really love about it is how I mean in this, I think, is what I find Paul doing all the time, how the what he does first is sort of name, the reality of what sort of of God's identity for us, that like we are beloved people, that we are good, that we are made for one another, like that this is like who we are, like we belong in this place of loving, connection and community and goodness, and that like finding our way into who we already are is like the path, not what so many I think spiritual leaders I guess can kind of have the opposite of approach where, like you have to, like you are bad and you are terrible, especially with people who are, who, like some of these people, have like murdered people and stuff.

Chris Nafis:

You know, like you, you have to, you have to kind of like I don't know, find your way into you. You're not good enough now, like you need to become good enough and uh, and I think what, like what I see in Paul, which we've talked about some at church even recently, is this opposite approach where he's saying like, look, you are children of God. Now, now, like, be who you are.

Chris Nafis:

And I think that's the same approach that I find in in father Boyle. Would you say or would you add anything to that, megan?

Megan Pardue:

Yeah, he talks about um in this book in particular, that the choices that we make, that that don't make sense or aren't loving, or even do harm, and like intense harm. Right, that he uses his language like, oh, like he is a stranger to himself or she is a stranger to herself, like she hasn't been able to see God inside of her. In fact, he tells a story in chapter five of Cherished Belonging I had just mentioned the graffiti removal enterprise that they had. He tells a story about ultimately choosing to shut down that enterprise because two different people in a three-month period were murdered by rival gangs while working on the job for Homeboy in this graffiti removal enterprise. So imagine, like this would be kind of you know, okay, chris owns a cafe. Somebody graffitis the front of the cafe and then you know you would call up their enterprise to come remove it, kind of thing. Well, he tells a story about asking this group of people who worked on this team, this graffiti removal team, following these two murders, like should we keep doing this or should we shut it down? And all of the people on the graffiti team say like we should keep doing it. And Boyle reflects on that like as the fact, not that they were just like trying to take one for the team, but they see themselves as disposable, right, like they're, which I think is this like really deeply internalized messaging, right, and so, ultimately, like, even though they all said like, yes, let's keep doing it, he decided to shut it down because he needed to keep them safe, right, and they're what I mean by that like stranger to yourself, like we know that God doesn't see us as disposable. So inside of us, is this like goodness, this like you are a child of god, like you are not disposable, like your life is worth protecting, right, your life is worth, like keeping safe.

Megan Pardue:

So that's kind of a different angle on what you're talking about, chris, but we know that, like, we internalize messages from you.

Megan Pardue:

Know, the language I would use is like from the powers and principalities he would maybe talk about, like messages from trauma, which is, of course, the same thing we're connected in many cases. Messages about like our worth, our dignity, and especially for folks who have been incarcerated, like the times that I've spent in prison, right, I have found one of the most important things I can do when I'm in worship in prison is like call people by their first name, because that's another place in which, like, the system is dehumanizing right, you are your surname or your last name, you are your number, you are just another like body on a particular block, instead of like being called by name, and all of that is, I think, what you're talking about like this deep sense of within ourselves. We are children of God and he taps into that goodness instead of going in reverse Like you. It's not that you start as bad and you have to get to good, it's like you are already good.

Chris Nafis:

He says in this book quite a bit in multiple different ways, but in his previous book as well, he has this line, which I have used in a sermon in prison before you are exactly who God wants you to be already, like, it is already in you, you already are like you are good, not like you are bad, and I think that shift is really, really important yeah, I think so and I think you know, I think, like where people get would push back against that or something is in this idea of like original sin and we have, you know, like we can see, you know, and I've sometimes even shared like I think, like the doctrine of original sin or something like that is like for me it's one of the most easy things to believe in the Christian tradition, because you can look out and just see how much awful there is and how people just perpetrate these horrible things. And it's not that he hasn't seen that stuff. Like you, you listen to the story, you read the stories that he's telling and you're like, oh man, he has seen like just the worst of the worst, like people you know abusing their children and murdering one another, you know in cold blood and and so it's not like that's part of what's so radical about his witnesses, that, like you know that he has seen the truly awful, tragic stuff and felt it and lived with it and he's not dismissing it, felt it and lived with it and he's not dismissing it, and so and I feel like I've seen that too. But I think, like where we go back, at least for me, where I go back in the stories that like we were created as good and there is something in this world that like degrades us of who God made us to be. And I think he's kind of picking up on that part of the tradition where it's not.

Chris Nafis:

You know he, I think he actually does challenge some of the doctrines of the Catholic church in terms of original sin and those things, but at least, for me, oh, 100%, he's not Orthodox.

Chris Nafis:

No, he can be. Yeah, like I'm sure, he's offended many Catholics.

Chris Nafis:

And even some of the things that he says in there and we'll get to some of this is like challenges me. I'm like, oh, you know, at one point he says that Jesus mistook someone for a demoniac, who was actually just mentally ill, and I was like, wait a minute. Are we allowed to say that Jesus was mistaken about somebody? And we'll talk about some of that in a minute.

Chris Nafis:

But, yeah, like I think going back to like even before, the sense of like the corruption that we all kind of have through our harms and the things that have happened to us, like kind of remembering that who we were made to be is actually good and I think there's such a that's so important and so much of the church I think just misses that and then gives us this self-image of just negativity and I think it limits our imagination of like who and how we can be. I think it gives us a sense of like worthlessness, disposability, just kind of beating up on ourselves all the time, when I think the calling is not to be easy on ourselves and just be like well, do whatever you want, but it's to remember that like God has goodness, has put goodness in us and calls us into that goodness right.

Megan Pardue:

Yeah, I think actually the subtitle is maybe important to name because we haven't named that yet, but this book is called Cherished Belonging the Healing Power of Love in Divided Times.

Megan Pardue:

So I say that to say that if we start with brokenness and you're bad, get good.

Megan Pardue:

One of the things that he talks about is how that assumption, like always others and separates right and increases the divide, increases our inability to like be at the table together and again we can talk about oh, we live in a divided country, et cetera, et cetera.

Megan Pardue:

Like we're talking about a man who's buried over 400 young people because of the divides that they live with. Right, these like I mean the tribalism, the division of gang violence. Like the young people have found a sense of belonging in place in gangs because they haven't had that attachment elsewhere, right, so he knows about division. Like these are people, like you said, working together baking bread, who have had these really deep divides. Like sometimes we only talk about division in terms of, like our current political state and I he speaks to that, yes, but I, I, you know, I like, I think he challenges us to like move beyond that and consider some of the other ways we're divided from each other. But if we, if we start with goodness and you really look at someone you disagree with and you start with goodness, like it is so much harder to demonize, right.

Chris Nafis:

It really is.

Megan Pardue:

It's so much harder, like, oh, like, I'm trying to get to that place of goodness. If you start there, it changes the whole conversation right, it changes everything.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, and it's so hard. I mean so like just to. He has these two kind of I don't know what would you call them Principles that, like everything at Homeboy, is supposed to run by. That he emphasizes in this book especially, but I think it's been probably laced throughout his ministry and the first is that we are all inherently good, no exceptions. That's what he said, which, again, that sounds like one of those phrases Everybody would be like oh yeah, and then. But then you think about it and you start like putting people in your head and you're like oh, that actually is really difficult to do.

Chris Nafis:

And then the second is that we belong to each other, no exceptions, which again is there's this like community. I mean, I love those two principles so much but like when you actually begin to like think about what it actually means, you know and you can think of the people that you don't see any goodness in, and whether that's like politicians or family members or you know enemies or people who have done harm to you or others, and you know, you just kind of start like no exceptions. You know, like it's an important thing there and it is like a very radical claim that I think is also like so profoundly Christian, I guess, for you know that it's, I don't know, like what do you? What do you? Where does that challenge you, megan?

Megan Pardue:

Well, he has a way that he suggests we do this, at least in this book, which is he suggests that we practice awe, that we look at another person, like the person in front of us, with awe, and that that is one of the ways that we can tap into the goodness of God in them already no exceptions. So I'm glad he doesn't leave us without a way to do it and it's really hard do it and it's really hard. You know, I've I've was reflecting this morning in staff meeting at church and then, knowing we were going to have this conversation as well, about a challenging relationship that I'm in with a person who has suffered a lot of trauma, and trauma that's not disconnected from the same kinds of traumas that we're, you know, talking about here. And I said to the other another pastor at our church like I'm, I'm desiring to get to this place of awe, because I do, I can actually feel it shifting something in me right To like look at awe, like what this person has endured, look with awe at the fact that everything's been against them and they're still making it, and it definitely helps. And I think this is why we would call it a practice, because it's something that you have to do over and over and over and over and over again practice, because it's something that you have to do over and over and over and over and over again.

Megan Pardue:

Delight is another word that he doesn't so much use, but I've spent some time with Ross Gay's work over the last couple of years. He's a poet and we just read a group of us at church just read his book Sorry, wrong book. He has a book of delights. We actually read a book called Inciting Joy. But again like this, these practices of like awe or delight, or noticing these practices of like awe or delight, or noticing Boyle quotes Mary Oliver like he loves her. It's so hard to do and it's like he's offering us a tool to notice the goodness in people and without judgment, right, like I am in awe of you or I see the light of God in you. I don't know how to get there, chris, but I think it's. It's an incredible starting place, deeply challenging, and my guess is that it gets easier the more that I practice it.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, and I think like just another encouragement for anybody listening that hasn't, like, picked up his books. I've found that I guess you know I've been like I said I've listened to Cherish Bullhanging now one time and then, before we were going to do this, I was like, oh, I better start listening to this again. And I've listened to it on two times speed for the last week trying to get through it most of it again. And I listened to Tattoos on the Heart and I'm halfway through Barking at the Choir, which is another one of his books, and like the it's almost like. It's almost like I feel the, the repetition of it in my like I can see why you're kind of listen to it three times, because I feel like it's like sinking into me in this way over and over again about some of the way, like the way that he approaches people and again knowing that he's seen like this tremendous harm, but still with this like with such grace and love, and just like there's just forgiveness and mercy baked into, like how he sees another person and it's like you can feel it kind of penetrating you. You know what I mean, but it takes. I'm not there all the way either. I don't think he would say that he is either.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, there's something of like, the more you kind of do it and you open your eyes and begin to see each other not as the things that we've done to one another in a negative way, but in like who we can be if we are most loved is your home. And he says I don't think that's quite right. He says I think that love is the way and that loving is your home. Actually, like you are most home when you are loving someone else and just kind of like finding, like okay, this is where not only me, but this is where all of us find our most central place of home is when we are actually loving one another. Well, and kind of shifting that perspective on what it means to be a person, what it means to be faithful, what it means to be whole, is such a helpful move, you know, and but then?

Chris Nafis:

So then this is where I was struggling because, uh, where the what I've been struggling with in cherished belonging is that he wants. So let me just, I want to give him grace because he's brilliant and I don't want to challenge him anyway. This is where I'm just kind of wrestling through myself. You know what he says is basically people who commit these horrible crimes that, like no one well does a X, y, z you know uses like the Las Vegas shooting as an example. Like no one who is mentally well you know loads a hotel room full of guns and then shoots at people in a concert and kills all these people you know like. And he wants to lump in my mind what he's doing and I think he might even just explicitly be doing this to say that, like, essentially, sin or bad behavior or bad decisions, harmful things that we do to others, are all rooted in mental illness is where he goes with it, and I find that really problematic.

Chris Nafis:

We were talking a little bit, uh, just before we started. Megan, how did that sit with you? Like, what do you?

Megan Pardue:

well, he knows that this is going to land poorly with some of us, right, Because he actually says that he was presenting to like of course, he's asked to speak like all over the world, right, All the time. And he actually says like I was presenting this, you know assumption to a group of mental health professionals and they didn't like it because they thought I was stigmatizing the mentally ill. And he's like, you know, call me new school, but I want to talk about things. So he knows that it's going to sit with some of us. On the one hand, Chris, thank God that someone is like, instead of just calling people evil or deplorable or whatever awful ways that we describe one another. On the one hand, thank God that he's like taking seriously mental illness and trauma and the various factors that can like lead a person to, you know, horrendous acts that are not loving and are violent. And I think, on the one hand, I'm like okay, I'm glad we've named that. On the other hand, I think that he takes it farther than I'm comfortable with. I think one of the places I feel uncomfortable with it. He spends a lot of time talking about racism and kind of lumps in like racism as mental health behavior and it just becomes like very individualistic. And I have a pretty communal or systems and structures kind of understanding of sin. So on the one hand, Boyle's work is like not turning things upside down for me in his desire for us to move away from original sin or this kind of you know, I mean, I think I can let that one go, you know, it's just like, just to be honest, All right, I've confessed it on air. I'm really not stressed about being Orthodox these days, so I'm rambling a bit. I guess I'm with him on that, starting with goodness.

Megan Pardue:

I think the mental health stuff is just like really, really broad and it makes me uncomfortable in how individualistic it is. And it makes me uncomfortable in how individualistic it is since a lot of sin or I would use Paul's language of powers and principalities are about systems and structures. Right, my little snippet here is when Paul talks about powers and principalities, he's talking about things that are both material in nature, like systems and structures, and spiritual, and those are not distinct from each other. Right, we know that systems we talk about the spirit of capitalism, Like that's like a phrase we use right, that structures aren't merely material or merely spiritual, but that they have both material and spiritual components. So we you know the isms are a great kind of example here.

Megan Pardue:

Racism, sexism, patriotism, these are kind of a driving force within systems and structures that keep people from being liberated, from being free or, to use Boyle's language, from being whole Right like uncomfortable with how individualistic the mental health stuff is and also uncomfortable with some of the language of wellness and health, because I think you can be whole when your body is also not healthy, and so I think there's some kind of like, some things that make me uncomfortable there around disability or chronic illness, ableism. But maybe I've tried to do too much in in answering your question.

Chris Nafis:

No, no, totally, Because I think you're getting at a lot of the things that I'm kind of trying to work through in my own mind, because some of it not just physically, like the ableism, but also mentally. You know there are people that have chronic mental health issues and like I guess part of what my response is like, well, I've seen severe mental illness. I have it in my congregation I work in like acute mental health facilities. Like I've seen what that looks like and it doesn't. I wouldn't, I wouldn't just sort of like combine that with like evil or sin or something like that.

Chris Nafis:

Like I think it does drive people to bad decisions in a number of ways. Like mental health can cause people to do just wild things sometimes when people are like hallucinating or when they're delusional or when they're lost. But it can also kind of get people stuck on themselves and sort of be self-obsessive and you know like there's all kinds of ways that it can. It can cause people to do problematic things, but I don't think that that's the same as someone who's making decisions that are like decisions of harm. I also don't think decisions that people make that are harmful for others are made in a vacuum. Like I do think there's like there are all these factors involved, including trauma and mental health and and the bigger systems and powers. You know, like when we talk about racism, for example, like people, people aren't just born racist. You know, like they, they have it baked in through. You know, I think there's lots of influences now. I think online radicalization is happening a lot and around race, race issues, but for a lot of people, they're just born into family where this is like what they're taught to think about other people that look different ways. You know it's trained, but that that also doesn't just like excuse decisions that someone would make to like commit a hate crime or something. You know what I mean. Like I just think that there's there is some culpability that we have for the decisions that we make, and some of that comes from myself knowing that, like I've been in, I've made bad decisions that I don't, I can't excuse because I was mentally unwell or because I can blame on my upbringing or something like that. Like I've just been selfish and that's just the way that it is. Um and so for me, like part of I do tend to so, like I feel like sin has different dynamics. I'm sorry, I'm talking a lot, megan, I want to get your opinion on all this.

Chris Nafis:

So, like John Wesley, who we, both of us have been trained at least in Wesleyan tradition he talks about sin primarily as like a known, like knowingly breaking a known law, right, so like willfully transgressing a known law, I think is what he says, which to me is very individualistic, it's very much like just all my decision.

Chris Nafis:

What he says, which to me is very individualistic, it's very much like just all my decision, and I think it neglects the sin that is described in scripture by Jesus, by Paul, by so many, as like this thing that is beyond us, it's like a power that you know it's lurking at the door, it's hunger, is for you and I think, like to me, that is the primary way that Jesus, we believe, has overcome sin right, has put to death sin. But I do think there is some of that individual decision making and I guess what I'm wrestling with is like all right, how do we I don't think mental health is the way to talk about it, but how do we helpfully talk about sin in a way that invites people into their goodness, acknowledges the systemic influences and also doesn't just dismiss, doesn't just disempower us and say well, you have nothing to do with your decisions that you make, because I think we do. You know what I mean. That's a lot.

Megan Pardue:

But I guess what is coming to me. There's like there's lots of places I think I could respond there. So, to come back to the language of powers and principalities, this is like where I hang my hat, Like I feel like I can talk about this all day long.

Chris Nafis:

I've never seen you wear a hat, megan, do you?

Megan Pardue:

wear hats. Oh my gosh, I wear hats so much. I love hats.

Chris Nafis:

Oh, I'm sorry when you hang them up, this is where it is.

Megan Pardue:

Like sometimes I'm like how many days has it been since I haven't worn a hat? That's how much I wear hats. I'm not wearing a hat, right now. People can't see me, but it's because of my headphones. So Paul says our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, authorities and powers of this world or this dark world, depending on your translation.

Megan Pardue:

Okay, this is actually so helpful to me in talking about sin, because our struggle is not against flesh and blood, which means our struggle is not against individual people. Right, our struggle is against. So, then, if our struggle is not against individual people, then it's easier to say that people can be inherently good. Right, so our struggle is against the rulers, powers and authorities, or powers and principalities of this world, the systems and structures that hold people captive, that the work of Christ on the cross and continually is inviting us to get free. So I think that's really, really helpful as a step towards being able to both name our goodness and say, like we're captive. Right, we're caught up in a world. In particular, like you said, you're not born racist, but our whole system in the United States is like built on a history of racism. We live in right, in a I send my kids to public school, which is still in 2025, like divided across racial lines.

Megan Pardue:

There's messaging and media about race. I'm thinking about, especially in light of this conversation. I'm thinking about standing at the bank one day. I'm in line and you know, there's this kind of photo at little warning sign there. That's like. You know, fraud is punishable by X, y, z years in prison. And the messaging in the photo is like this pretty racially loaded image it has a set of hands holding the bars, and what color are those hands? Those are a black man's hands. Like this messaging is around us all the time.

Megan Pardue:

So this is the way that something like racism, I would say, is pervasive in the systems and structures in which we live and eat and go to school and go to church. Certainly it's around us all the time. And the work of Christ is like how do we get free from that? How do we confess our sin, our complicity, our participation in those systems and structures?

Megan Pardue:

For me, as, like a person who is white, who has all kinds of access and privilege that you know, so many other, I mean we're just sticking with, like the US here because it's a big wide world right that so many other Americans like don't have access to, or even the fact that I can live in a neighborhood that still has gang activity today and my children will not like the chances that my white son is wrapped up in that right Is like he won't be invited into that life, whatever.

Megan Pardue:

You know that culture around gangs because of race, like. So I think father Greg is like he's inviting us to start with goodness, that we start seeing the other as bad, and I don't know if this is helpful, but I really just come back to that over and over again, like our struggle is not against flesh and blood and that means that it's maybe easier to see the goodness in a person we disagree with and it's easier to start there because it tries to pull. I think Paul is like trying to pull us out of this like blame game and this super individualistic understanding of sin Right.

Chris Nafis:

And I think that was all over the place.

Chris Nafis:

I don't know if that was clear at all.

Chris Nafis:

No, it was very good and I think I think part of what Boyle's trying to do is to say that, like when this person he wants to build some compassion and understanding across, like our, our differences and our frustrations with one another.

Chris Nafis:

So like when this person is acting racist or or you know whatever that looks like, when they're doing something that that it just furthers this racial disparity, or, you know, like they're treating someone with prejudice or whatever, but that's them not being who they were made to be.

Chris Nafis:

You know what I mean and I think I'm all, I'm on board with that. I think, like saying that that's them exhibiting mental health issue. I don't think that's very helpful to say, but I think what he wants to kind of say is that, like when we are made whole and well, that's when we find our way out of those things, and that that's where I want to keep it and that's where I think, like his primary message through all these books is so profound Because, as we said earlier, like it, it forces us, if we really take that seriously, to see people that we really struggle with, you know, and to see them as as people who are just not fully who they, who they have the potential to be, I guess right and that there's also the other thing I struggle with a bit in.

Chris Nafis:

That is there is some like kind of paternalism in there where you're like, well, I know who you should be, even if you you know what I mean like there's some some sense of that in there too. But but yeah, like the, yeah, I don't know. But I also want to maintain some ability for like, because I think with that also, like you said earlier, it does make it very individual, right. So this is just like you as an individual not being who you are meant to be, and I wonder if we can expand those same principles to like a communal reality of like. This is not who we were meant to be together you know what I mean.

Megan Pardue:

Well, and I actually think that's where his, that's where the piece about sin and mental health gets a little tricky, is it's really individual, but then kind of his suggestion for how we to use like the liberation language, like for getting free, or or sorry, that's my language with powers, principalities. His language would be like and, to be clear, I didn't like make this language up, this is drawing from William Stringfellow, walter Wink, charles Campbell. That's my language. Sorry, that felt really paternalistic. Oh, you, megan, claim it. Man should write that book. Just kidding, it's been written. I think that this is where it's kind of funny, because his method for being whole is what you said. Like the two principles of Homeboy are everyone is inherently good, no exceptions, and we belong to each other. So is that it, chris? We belong to each other.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, we belong to each other, no exceptions.

Megan Pardue:

So this is how we are no longer strangers to ourselves, for Boyle, right, this is how we tap into this kind of therapeutic healing. This is how we encounter the goodness of one another is in how we belong to each other. So it feels like that's kind of where the argument falls flat a bit is the individualism of mental health and sin, but we need each other in order to be whole. So I think that a more communal, less individualistic way of understanding or talking about sin, we can be swept up in that liberation, and I mean I think that's important, right, if our struggle is not against flesh and blood. Like I'm also not going to get free alone, right, I can't.

Megan Pardue:

And the invitation I think of Paul in speaking about the powers and principalities is to live lives of resistance. It's not that racism is going to, like, end overnight, it's that we're going to continually resist it. Right, we're going to resist our complicity, we're going to resist our culpability, and and that is really only possible when you're doing so alongside others, because I need to be accountable in that work, right, and the accountability comes when that resistance is happening in community, when someone can say, like that, I got it wrong and then I can say I'm sorry, I was wrong, or that I didn't see them or I didn't see my privilege, whatever the misstep might be. I need that accountability, and part of that happens, if not most of it, in community.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, and that's the hard part, that's honestly like I've emailed Homeboy, I'm like can you guys send me someone to talk to?

Chris Nafis:

Because what I want to know if I had a conversation with them on the podcast or just outside of it is how do they practically enforce that?

Chris Nafis:

Because I know from being in a context that's it's not the same, like we're not, it's not like we have gang stuff in around our neighborhood in East village also, but it's, but like our, you know, homelessness is kind of our thing, but it's like a lot of similar, a lot of similar. I find a ton of parallels between what he's dealing with and what we're dealing with and I know that, like and he talks some about some of the discipline measures, you know where, like you can still recognize the like, who someone is, that they are inherently good, no exceptions but that they, that they also are not fit for this position right now and that they need, they need this intervention right now because they are not themselves and for their own good, like we have to, like they're fired, you know because they're coming, they're showing up and starting fights or you know they're showing up high or whatever, and that that's where I think it gets really like it's really hard to actually live well that way.

Chris Nafis:

But like having those principles behind all of those things I guess can be like a guide as you make decisions around community. And not everyone's in that position of like employing people, but I think even in normal church communities or in family dynamics, family systems or whatever, like we do still have to have some boundaries and some accountability to one another, but without losing the sense, without like demonizing the other person.

Megan Pardue:

Yeah, I mean he says I don't think it's in this book, but in a couple other places like I love you so much, you are so good, we want you to be here. You cannot be here until you're clean, like. So I think that there's and this is like that we would not say the same of like someone worshiping in a church community, but this particular program, like it's a program and they have really very clear boundaries. I think this is a place that clear, is kind, right, like they're, like we'll pay for rehab, like we'll send you there, like come back when you're sober, um, come back when you have I don't, I don't know the exact like number of days, um, and you know, I think people have to negotiate, that. Every community has to like negotiate that. I think that the invitation, like you've said, chris, is to negotiate that with like a deep sense of goodness instead of starting from like a place of goodness and worth and not like failure or shame.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, yeah, he tells a story of a guy. There's like a dispute at I forget which one of his workplaces is, or if he even says, but you know, there's like a essentially a fight breaking out and one of the guys basically goes and gets a gun and is trying to come back into the place to potentially shoot or at least threaten someone. And one of the managers, who's like a longtime homeboy employee, like well-respected, well-loved guy, has to basically confront this guy who has a gun and say, like you're not, you can't come in there. And the guy's like I'm, you know threatens to shoot him and he says, well, you can shoot me. And he talks about how this guy, in reflection, was like I thought those were the last moments of my life and I thought that my he's like, I thought that you know, I was gonna die and I thought, well, at least I'm dying a good death and instead of like what I would have died, you know, 30 years ago, of a meaningless death on the streets and and the guy doesn't end up shooting him.

Chris Nafis:

But then this guy who had gone and gotten the gun, um, he tells a story of how he comes back like I think it's like 10 years later and sees the same, the same person who had confronted him, and they, like you know it, says you know, am I allowed back here? And he gives him a hug and he basically says welcome home. You know, and there's such profundity in that, like there's forgiveness in like there was a boundary that was held, a confrontation that was that required self-sacrifice or a willingness to sacrifice himself and, you know, an expulsion, like he was out, like he's no longer works there, obviously after he's trying to shoot someone in the place. But there's always that sort of welcome home when the time comes for the healing. You know, like in the sense that, like this is, this is home. You were not home when you had the gun, but like in coming here with a, with reconciliation and love in your heart, like that's when you're actually home.

Chris Nafis:

I don't know, I found that example very profound in terms of like thinking through our ministries at Living Water and how we can kind of do some of the you know, because we have we haven't had people come in with a gun yet, but that I know of but you know like having to make some of those same hard decisions of like you can't be here right now and how to do that but still not lose the. We are all inherently good no exceptions and we belong to one another no exceptions. Even the person that we may be asking to leave right now still belongs to us, which is also a really challenging thing.

Megan Pardue:

Right, well, you, I just you know to all the listeners. I just like, I beg you to listen to one of his books, read one of his books because, like you know, chris is like choking up over here. I'm choking up, we're just recounting the story. You will listen or read, you will cry. There's such a sense of healing.

Megan Pardue:

And I'll say as we close, that I interact with a lot of people who are done with church or done with faith and don't know what's real or where to find God, or wonder if are people really still following Jesus? Cause, like I look out and I see suffering and I just wonder, like, where, where are the Christians? Greg Boyle is who I send them to, like he's my guy for and and honestly, like not just to, like send people to, but like when I read him like my faith, even though he spent, you know, 15 minutes talking about like places where we're uncomfortable or maybe disagreed some, but like he's a person, a follower of Jesus, that like, not just like restores my faith, but like sweeps me up in God's goodness too, like I also belong, not as like pastor, not as mother or partner, like as Megan, like this, this deep sense of God's radical, like goodness and me that's nurtured, as I feel like I kind of just like sit at his feet and I'm invited into yeah, my inherent goodness and belonging.

Chris Nafis:

Yeah, I'll, I'll. I'll just say I echo all of that Check out his books and then let us know, let me know, talk to somebody about them like share, share, read it and then give the book to somebody else and allow it to be something that kind of permeates you for living water. Folks Like I would highly recommend this as we continue our life together and anybody else listening. You know, like I said, there's a couple, a couple of points where I'm like ah, that makes me a little by and large, like I'm finding these books profoundly influential and in a good way, and I'm going to continue reading.

Chris Nafis:

There's still a few books of his that I haven't read yet. Megan, thank you so much for coming and spending the time. I hope this won't be the last time you come. Maybe I'll get talking to coming on again and talk about something else, but we love you, appreciate you and, you know, hope you'll come to San Diego sometime soon. We, you and you know, hope you'll come to San Diego sometime soon. We haven't seen you guys in a while. Thanks, pastor, chris, take care, all right, bye.

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