The Stand-Up Theologian
James Cary, BBC comedy writer, author and touring stand-up theologian is on a never-ending quest to understand comedy, the Bible, culture and the church.
The Stand-Up Theologian
Why can't we be friends?
James has a chat with pastor and author Ed Shaw about friendship, intimacy and his old school reports. Do we change? Can we change? And how can we be intimate with God?
Check out The Intimacy Deficit by Ed Shaw
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I really hate interrupting that bass line every time, but I must because this is a podcast. You're not just here for the theme tune. My guest this time is Ed Shaw, who is a pastor and an author, and well, here's one of his school reports.
SPEAKER_08:Ed was an extremely kind and helpful little boy who unfortunately allows this commendable trade to distract him from the task in hand.
SPEAKER_03:Do we change? Do we really know ourselves? We're back to where we started this podcast. Are we living in a sitcom? Maybe. Sometimes I feel like Ron Swanson.
SPEAKER_04:And I get to take 40% of your lunch.
SPEAKER_03:And why does Jack Reacher feel like a hero for our time?
SPEAKER_02:Wait! Who are you?
SPEAKER_05:Someone who prefers not getting involved.
SPEAKER_02:So I'm Miranda.
SPEAKER_05:Oh dear.
SPEAKER_02:I'm just going to waddle over here and make more of my life.
SPEAKER_07:So there'll be no blaming mother today.
SPEAKER_03:I think the 20th century is the ugliest century. It'll all make sense, trust me. So I'm with Ed Shaw, and he is an author, a writer, a pastor, and I'll be honest, a friend of mine, we have been for some years now. Thanks very much for being on the Stand Up Theologian podcast. It is great to be here. And we're talking because you have written a book uh called The Intimacy Deficit. And the word intimacy is already a frightening word. And I don't think it's just because I'm a 49-year-old man. Why are people worried about the word intimacy?
SPEAKER_08:Well, I think most people just think it'd be intimacy equals sex, and that a book about uh the intimacy deficit is about a lack of sex in the author's life or trying to start, you know, trying to help people with their own sex lives. So um it's always I'm gonna change the title deliberately to be a little bit provocative and say actually intimacy is a human need, but it's not just uh a human need that's met by sex.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And we're so naive about the need for friendship and how everything has become sort of homoerotic, and that any romance now has to have like if it's a movie or a road trip movie, it's almost like someone's gonna have to say that there's a homoerotic element to it. Whereas actual fact one of the great works of the 20th century, Lord of the Rings, is arguably about friendship, isn't it? I mean that's it feels like we've really lost something.
SPEAKER_08:I think nearly all the most popular yeah, I mean most popular books, TV series, almost everything is actually about friendship. If it's not if it's not a romance, it's about friendship. And I wonder whether the friendship ones are the ones that actually we find most connections with and most appealing. I mean Lord of the Rings would be a great example. But you know, if you think of so many well, you know, friends, the classic, yeah, is you know, it was all about friendship, isn't it? Um and more and more people seeing friendship as more significant than romance. That was one of the that's one of the things that people said quite a lot about the Friends sitcom, wasn't it? Was um actually it's about friendship, it's the friends that remain the stain, it's the romantic partners that come and go. Right. And I think that is a lot of people's experience of life now. And I do think uh Christians are perhaps slightly slow sometimes in catching up on the world's around us emphasis on friendship, because we probably are as always slightly slow behind the world, a little bit too obsessed with sex and romance at romance at times.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, or as we would uh call it family. So churches are very, very, very pro-family, and that that is ultimately at heart a sexual relationship, and what friends did, and the reason it was wild one of the reasons it's wildly successful, and I will never forget, by the way, when I lived in a small flat in Shepherd's Bush, my wife was watching Friends in the living room. I was in the bathroom, in the bath, and all I could hear was the studio audience laughter, and it just came like an absolute cuckoo clock the whole time. I mean, it's just joke after joke. Every line, if not you know, every other line, is a joke or a setup to a joke, it's just an incredibly funny movie. But the resonance was the fact that you've got people who have left home and now live in Manhattan and they haven't gotten married and had kids, so their family is their friends. So, in some senses, you could say friends is about family. Um, but actually, friendship is its own thing, isn't it? It feels like we don't have to say this is just Ursatz uh family marriage, because of course Jesus wasn't married, so it's presumably possible to be fully human, uh fully male uh without being married.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, and I think that's one of the lovely things about um the Gospels that we've often missed is how much they teach us about friendship. I once, in fact, for an event here, we're sitting in church building that in Bristol, one of the events we did here probably a couple of years ago was on friendship, and I just I just trawled John's gospel and thought actually, what can we learn about friendship from how Jesus interacts with his friends? And it was this amazing list of beautiful things that Jesus does, you know, on the you know, the challenge he provides them, the love and care he provides them, but just you know, just just creeping through John's gospel and seeing this was a guy who did friendship really well, this was a guy who had you know different circles of friendships and really close friends, a wider circle, a wider circle, but producing a wonderful model blueprint for us to follow when it comes to friendship.
SPEAKER_03:And again, when people say, you know, what a friend we have in Jesus, it sounds, I'll be honest, insufferably naff, doesn't it? And you can hear the song as it's said. But I was thinking about the other day how, in fact, in the Anglican calendar, it was the day of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. They are friends of Jesus who are not disciples, they're slightly in an odd situation, aren't they? Because Jesus doesn't have many recurring friendships with non-disciples. And I did think to myself, a potential headline for the Wycliffe Papers, which is this facetious newsletter I do on Thursdays, sort of jokes about the Bible. There's a sort of an idea about disciples struggling over whether to add Lazarus to the WhatsApp group. Because he's not technically, it's like, do we add, is that okay? But Jesus has a lot of friends, and we I don't, I just think we we've completely looked past that, haven't we?
SPEAKER_08:And again, yeah, apart from perhaps what a friend we have in Jesus, we don't use that language of Jesus ourselves that he's our friend, and we don't see the advantages of the sort of friendship that Jesus offers. So, one of the things that I've just been reflecting on recently is that you you can read the gospels and get quite jealous of Lazarus and Co. actually saw the physical Jesus, had you know, could sit down for a meal with Jesus. Um, but actually there's advantages in having Jesus who is a friend who other people can't see, who goes with you everywhere, in the sense of you can take that Jesus into um a hospital appointment, you can take that Jesus with you into a job interview, you can take that Jesus with you, you know, anywhere. And that Jesus, and what I've spent a lot of time thinking about Lazarus actually this summer, because yeah, preached on uh John 11 at the funeral of really close friends. Wow, you know, one of the conversations I had with her before she died was we your friends and family are there is gonna come a moment very soon when we leave you behind, but Jesus is there, and this is a it's a beautiful JC Rao quote on this, but you know, Jesus is the friend who's there with you the moment before you die, as you die, and after you die in a way that nobody else can be. And that is a quality of friendship that is amazing.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and that friendship of we die with him, we are raised with him to be with him uh forever. And I think there's this huge cultural gap, and it's interesting how popular, and of course, that everything's about sitcoms as far as I'm concerned in comedy, but maybe one of the reasons that sitcoms have almost died in the last 20 years is the fact that sitcoms are all about relationships, and maybe we don't really know what to make of it, and yet sort of murder mysteries, which are very popular now, uh in this they're the same way, because I mean every a sitcom's a happy meal, every episode's the same, and you like it, it's a cookie, you know. Uh a murder mystery is the same. So I love the movie, I love the series Castle, um, with which is an NBC or no, was it uh ABC show or something like that? Murder mystery. Every episode's the same. Great, Death in Paradise. Every episode's the same, that's what people want, but they're just puzzles, and there are no real relationships there because people come in, they're suspects, and then they go. Um and whereas sitcoms, they don't go anywhere, it's just people together relating. So Brooklyn 9-9, they're all cops, they're all in the precinct of the 9-9, friends, they're friends. Uh, Miranda is all about her relationship with her mother, really. Perhaps try a bit of role play. Miranda as penny, penny as Miranda.
SPEAKER_11:Fine, good idea. Don't tell me look marvellous. Right. Look at me, please. I want to be the centre of all the call attention. The trigger war button has been. This is looking at the sending anything. Keeping up appearances.
SPEAKER_03:I didn't mean just insulting each other.
SPEAKER_02:Well, hello, I'm Miranda.
SPEAKER_03:Oh dear. I'm just going to waddle over here and race my and her friend Stevie, and then Gary, who's probably the third uh relationship in that, only falls and horses, is two brothers. Uh Porridge, one of the great sitcoms, is Fletcher and Godpa, which is older brother, younger brother, probably, isn't it? Rather than father and son. Whereas actually now, one of the great popular characters on TV is Jack Reacher. And in the trailer for the last series, at least, where he saves somebody and smashes a window and wait, who are you?
SPEAKER_05:Someone who prefers not getting involved.
SPEAKER_03:As he walks off, and you're just thinking, he is so cool. But that kind of icy isolation is pretty much where we are as a society, and we spend so long looking at screens and disappearing into them. We do have a real intimacy problem, I think. I don't know. I've am I overthinking that?
SPEAKER_08:No, but I it's interesting you say that, because one of the things that I've learned to do as a really healthy thing for me as a single person, particularly 10 o'clock at night, you know, I'll get in, I'm a church pastor, I'll get in from a meeting, I'll be exhausted, but not quite, you know, not quite ready to go to bed. And I I've just over the last what 10 plus years, I have recognised that is if I, you know, if I could put it in the terms of my book, that is an intimacy deficit moment. It's a moment when I would love to just perhaps have a chat with somebody or spend some time with some friends. But you know, 10 o'clock at night's not the most sociable time for giving people a a ring. So what I've what I've done is I just have a a cycle of some of the best sitcoms that I go through and I do the 20 minutes.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_08:And great length, aren't they? Great length. And I'm never quite sure, you know, part of me is always nervous to admit this because it can sound a little bit sad, but my intimacy deficit is met by just hanging out with Frasier and Niles. Right. Which, you know, that's what I'm I'm coming towards the end of you know the grand rewatch. Yeah, exactly. And but I've doing grand rewatches all the time. You know, I've basically on a cycle of Frasier, Mash. Oh, um, modern family.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's pretty good.
SPEAKER_08:Um, and friends pops up every so often. And then every you know, every so often something else pops up, but particularly, actually, particularly, I mean, MASH and Fraser have for me been two of the things that have most outfilled my intimacy deficit. Because you basically hang out with a group of friends. I mean, MASH is about friendship and relationship.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, yeah, it has to be, really. And is so funny. Hello, this is Dr. Niles Crane, filling in for my ailing brother, Dr. Frasier Crane. Although I feel fully qualified to fill Fraser's radio shoes, I should warn you that while Frasier is a Freudian, I am a Jungyun. So there'll be no blaming mother today.
SPEAKER_08:And then also can do sadness and poignancy so well.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, you love a bit of poignancy as well, don't you? Yeah, this is I if a book you're uh uh we've we've had a J Bacrow conversation with Wendell Ferry, and I can't do all that stuff.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, if a book can't make you cry, what is the point of reading them?
SPEAKER_03:I can relate to it, I get it, but it's just not my personal preference.
SPEAKER_08:Whatever children that get children born into this church get given Dogger by Shirley Hughes, which was the first book that most regularly made me cry. Okay, and have got achieved one of my I think my sister-in-law basically has done a psychological analysis on me based on Dogger being the first book I fell in love with, and now it's basically programmed my mind over.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, I I do happen to know that book quite well. I do remember our our our kids uh reading it to our kids, and yeah, there are there are some books like that that you just go, Oh my goodness, and it kind of does a number on you. So um the other thing you so you mentioned in your book, and this is uh related, I think, to sitcom characters as well, though, because the relationship is about the gap between two characters. And I was really interested that you've done a certain amount of self-examination and you are clearly quite a reflective person, and you went back to some school reports and discovered, oh my goodness, you were completely laid bare by the fact that you're essentially the same person you were. Um what what was that one uh you uh that you were uh had lined up?
SPEAKER_08:What is partly because I've been I've had a I've I've been working with a mentor recently. That's I mean you can't get much more sort of 21st century than that, can you? And we were discussing this uh about how similar I've been over the last well, basically the whole of my life. Yeah. And to prove it, I sent I sent him a school report because I had that stage about 10-15 years ago when my parents were downsizing, and every time I went home, there was an there was another box of things they'd found, which could I please remove? Yeah. And one of them was school reports. But yeah, this is the opening sentence of a school report on Edward Shaw when I was eight, and I love the so I mean it was an Ed was an extremely kind and helpful little boy who unfortunately allows this commendable trade to distract him from the task in hand. And that is I mean, that's this morning. That's that is every morning of my life.
SPEAKER_03:Here you are recording a podcast when you got work today.
SPEAKER_08:Exactly, and it's just it made me laugh out loud. And I was reading an English report, English A-level report, about my essays, and it was basically the same feedback I'd had on my sermon the previous Sunday, and that's getting started well, Peter Dolph, you know, has been working on no um but yeah, I am very similar, have been very similar, um, basically all the way through uh my life. And that is, yeah, that is quite a I mean, yeah, and life yeah, I would I would be a very good sitcom character because I just haven't changed at all.
SPEAKER_03:Well, I mean, I think that is that is all sitcom characters, and your one is that I was struck by the sentence personally, I cannot stop myself from sensing and then trying to solve any structural or people problems in any organisation I'm part of. That kind of jumped out at me where you're kind of continually frustrated that you're part of an institution that seems unable or uninterested in reforming itself, and yet you are going to commit yourself to doing that. I mean, you're in in another way, you know, with another hat, you're doing it with the Church of England as well, as am I. And this is this completely ossified organization that was begun round about 597. So it's it's fairly entrenched. Yeah. But in a way, that's the tragedy, and but the comedy of the of the sitcom character is they're doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
SPEAKER_08:And I do think that part of the pleasure God takes him, which I believe he does take me because he's my loving father, is actually watching me try. Yeah. I think I'm, you know, I'm trying to say my license sitcom for God's enjoyment, because that might be you know not particularly helpful.
SPEAKER_03:But as long as you're in on the joke, I think.
SPEAKER_08:I think I am on the joke. There's this lovely moment of the West Wing, which is another great passion in life, um, where oh yeah, Bartlett decides Bartlett decides to hit to sort of end cancer, you know, and his wife just goes, you know, basically you idiot, but I'm gonna enjoy I'm gonna enjoy watching you try. And I've and I've often thought to myself, God must just think, oh my goodness, and sure, off he goes again, massar complex to the fore. What's he gonna try and solve today? And must have a good hoop at the sort of you know, the the the next episode of the sitcom.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and I think why are sitcoms so historically wildly popular? And it's a huge frustration for me because as it was revealed in a previous episode uh by a comedian called Andy Kind, where we agreed that I was both more successful and less successful than I thought I was as a sitcom writer. As in, if you'd started out um and just thought, oh, this is what you would achieve. You go, oh, that's great, I'd be happy with that. But having then got a certain distance, you just think, oh, I've sort of feels like I've peaked here. But what's particularly frustrating for me is the fact that uh situation comedy is expensive to produce, it's scripted, but it is so wildly successful when it works because you've mentioned about 10 sitcoms that you've watched many times over. You don't you don't watch Line of Duty twice, do you? I mean, I really enjoyed Stranger Things. I I don't, you know, and I'm excited for the season finale, you know, for the finale last season. Don't particularly want to go back and watch it all over again because I sort of know what happens. The only reason I would go back is because I love the relationships, particularly between Steve the Hare and the kid with the bad teeth, whose name I've forgotten. That's an amazing relationship that I never tire of.
SPEAKER_08:And then I wonder, because I would watch, I do watch West Wing again and again. Yeah, but that's because it's all about friendship, actually. It's a group, well, and it actually it basically ties together what we've been talking about. It's about it's about friendship and the power of these friendships, but it's also a group of friends who want to change the world. Yeah. So it ties in with both my love of friendship and my Masaya complex as well. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_03:Hope you're enjoying this episode. If you have things to say, I'd love to hear them. And the best way to do it is to join the Facebook group for this podcast. Yes, I'm still gonna persevere with that. Not many have joined, but what that means is if you do join, I'm gonna read your message and probably respond to it. So why don't you jump in, have a look at Facebook. If you're my generation, at least you probably still use Facebook. I quite like Facebook, to be honest. Twitter is pretty awful and Instagram is a huge time suck, although I still like it, but there's no engagement there. Facebook is where it's at. Let's at least pretend that's the case. So why not get stuck in to the Stand Up Theologian Podcast Facebook group? There's also a Facebook page for the Wycliffe Papers. Again, if you don't particularly want to subscribe to that, I don't know why you wouldn't. Go over to the Wycliffe Papers for funny jokes if you are serious about the Bible and church history. And there's loads more to come as well. I've been writing a load more this week and made myself laugh quite a few times. So let me make you laugh too. That's my job. Why don't you go over to the Wycliffe Papers? But there's also a Facebook page for that too, where you get glimpses of funnies from the archives. Anyway, those are the two things. You're only meant to have one call to action. I've given you two, so I've already ruined my chances of success. Anyway, that's comedy for you. And I think let's get back to the podcast, shall we? Yeah, good idea.
SPEAKER_07:So there'll be no blaming mother today.
SPEAKER_03:So sometimes though we can think, well, surely I should be able to free myself from these things. But it's like, no, that's that's who you are. That's a that's actually a gift, isn't it? And a gift, and that's quite often when I'm encouraging people to come up with sitcom characters, I would say, um, don't okay, this character's annoying or bad or whatever. To actually take their good quality and just push it so that it becomes slightly annoying, it becomes a fault. So your wonderful gift and desire to reform things is a wonderful thing, but you do it with everything, and that now becomes a problem as well as a a blessing, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, and also so we we had a staff we had a staff training day here, which I was leading yesterday, and it was in uh well, it's just it was out of Bristol, and I was in the car late with some colleagues, and we were running late, and we we spent we were spending the day talking about personality types, and they all knew, and I knew, that this was an absolute crisis for me. You know, that I was gonna be late to a day that I was running, and it was just it was a comic moment. And I'd love I think you know, in some ways, if you can see kind of actually it was really helpful for me and for them just to think this is this is a comic moment. Yeah, Ed is late to a personality day type day, which is gonna tell us that this is one of the things he finds hardest in life, yeah. And you know, I right you know, just and you just and you've got to and they were very sweet in the car. They basically decided just to sort of just keep talking over me and just try and pretend that I wasn't about to explode. Um, but that's that's comedy, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that totally is. I'm interested you pick up on personality chaps because I've suggested using them for sitcoms in terms of just shortcuts due characters. I although it has murky origins, I think slightly esoteric origins, I think the Enneagram has an awful lot of explanatory power, particularly where it shades it over the Myers-Briggs stuff, is that it tells you what you really, really want. Essentially, it is it will tell you your idol and the thing that you're really going for. And so for me, I think I'm a type eight, uh eight-wing nine. I just want to be left alone and I just want to be, I want to do my thing. I don't want to join anything, I don't want to ever wear a lanyard. You know, I'm a bit of a Ron Swanson in that kind of situation.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, if you see Andy, will you not tell him I'm here?
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Because of what happened, I don't want him to think.
SPEAKER_04:Shut up. Don't want to know. The less I know about other people's affairs, the happier I am. I'm not interested in caring about people. I once worked with a guy for three years and never learned his name. Best friend I ever had. We still never talk sometimes.
SPEAKER_03:The other day I was part of a sort of small committee who was saying, Do we need to register our information database with the information commission? And I said, No, I don't want permission from the government to take someone's email address, actually. Um, and I was outvoted and that was fine.
SPEAKER_06:But my report's due tomorrow.
SPEAKER_04:What's it on?
SPEAKER_06:My government matters.
SPEAKER_04:Really? It's never too early to learn that the government is a greedy piglet that suckles on a taxpayer's teeth until they have sore chabbed nipples. I'm gonna need a different metaphor to give this nine-year-old. What's your name, ma'am?
SPEAKER_06:Lauren Burkis.
SPEAKER_04:Lauren. My name is Ron Swanson, and I'm gonna tell you everything you need to know about the miserable, screwed-up world of local government. Life, liberty, and property. John Locke. This is your lunch. Now, you should be able to do whatever you want to with this, right? If you want to eat all of it, great. If you want to throw it away in the garbage, that's your prerogative. But here I come, the government. And I get to take 40% of your lunch. And that, Lauren, is how taxes work.
SPEAKER_06:But that's not fair.
SPEAKER_04:You're learning. Uh-oh. Capital gains tax.
SPEAKER_03:And the the only thing that age gives you is knowing yourself more. Because I can't not be that. And maybe as a Christian, I need to develop away from that in one sense, but also know that it has advantages, but also know that I can develop and grow, but that that's never going to go away. I'm not intrinsic. I've been a freelance writer my whole life. I've never had a salary job since I left university. And to have one would be awful.
SPEAKER_08:I mean, that would be a sitcom, wouldn't it? To give you a sitcom.
SPEAKER_03:A salary job. Yeah. Um, through economic necessity, I had to get a job. And there are sitcoms where you have that and actually you just think this character would never do that because to them it's death and and that kind of situation. But I so where where are you on kind of personality test? It sounds like you're quite a fan, but that you don't want to be slaves to them, I guess.
SPEAKER_08:Well, one of the I mean, one of the sort of unhelpfully named chapters in the book is about intimacy with yourself, which let's be honest, sounds dodgy. Um, but actually I think it's about just really knowing yourself. And I worry that in Christian communities, um, we are very wary about any talk of getting to know yourself and discovering your strengths and weaknesses. Um, you know, particularly because I think sometimes there's that sort of very simplistic, well, you're just a sinner, full stop. Yeah, which isn't actually Christian theology. Um, you're I love the Francis Schaefer uh Glorious Ruins as a way of describing Oh, that's great. You know, describing the fact we're it's beautiful, yeah, created in the image of God, glorious, original sin, ruins. I just want my church family, want myself to have much more of a concept of these are the ways in which you know I am a delight, a joy, these are the way in which I am a challenge and a bit of a pain. This is who I am, yeah, because that's going to allow me to um serve people, that's gonna allow me to praise God, that's gonna allow me to see how I fit into this world and in particular how God wants me to use me to fulfil both uh the creation mandate and the Great Commission in pretty unique ed sure ways, rather than being squeezed into other people's ways of doing things.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Yeah, I do worry that sometimes when we talk about you know Christian character and godliness and all those sorts of things, there's some kind of Platonic ideal, uh, which I guess is in one sense is Jesus, but and you know, what what what what type is Jesus? Is he type type five? Is he just like me? Yeah, well that's just it, isn't it? Jesus agrees with me, and here is my proof text to say that he thinks that my thing that I think is most important is the most important. As you get older, you just notice yourself more doing those things, and I'm now much more. What is it about this process that I don't like? And how can I, you know, I'm making a YouTube video at the moment, and I lost uh a whole load of um footage yesterday when an SD card corrupted. Part of me was relieved, and I thought, oh, that's interesting. Why was I relieved? Because the whole time I was doing it, I was just thinking, I don't want to make this YouTube video this way, it's a hassle, it's a faff. I want a different way of doing it. And but you know, I got here early and spent made some notes and just go, oh, okay, this is how I want to make it, in a way that will bring me joy, because I feel that God has gifted me to make this sort of video rather than the kind of like a very cheap TV documentary, which is not, you know, that's that's not it. But I think if you can pay attention to the bits that annoy you, it's just go, well, why is that annoying me? What is it about that that's annoying me? And I think we're very, and this is the other thing that sitcom characters do is they push their own neuroses and solutions onto other people so that if, for example, you're a list maker and you love a list and you love ticking things off a list, if I come to you with a problem, your solution will be okay. So, what you need to do is you need to make a list. No, no, no, that's what you would do. If I try that for about three or four minutes of sitcom screen time, I'm gonna try and it's gonna drive me absolutely mad, and I'm gonna be furious with you. You haven't done anything wrong, you're just different from me. And I wonder if that we just think that there's this one personality type we should all be aiming for, and that's just not who we are, and we can't be intimate with ourselves on that basis or with other people if we don't appreciate or with God, because I think the other way in which I think this works out is that everybody there's a presumption that everybody's gonna have this thing called a quart time and everybody's gonna do it in the same way, yeah.
SPEAKER_08:And I think that's pretty disastrous, and I, you know, and I'm I'm puzzling through in my what late 40s what that looks like for me because I've been trying to squeeze myself into how it works for I don't know, the people that write the books on it, or how it worked for some of the sort of the greats of Christian history. It does not work like that for me. Yeah, and it's taken me ages to recognise that actually I'm at liberty to work out a way of talking to God and hearing from God that works for me. I do not have to do the 20 minutes or 30 minutes or 40 minutes or you know, four hours at the beginning of the day. I can work something out, but I've only felt permission, I've only given myself permission to begin to think about doing that in my mid late forties, which is a bit of a tragedy.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, no, totally. Yeah, I'm not gonna get onto the quiet times as well. Well, there's a whole thing. But it's only my it's only in my mid forties that I did actually work out how to do it, and that was COVID that did that for me up until that point. I was trying to do it somebody else's way. And I think we are very reluctant to be intimate with God in the way that we've been made because we're all different. And in the same way that I have two daughters who are completely different from each other. They're very, very, very good friends with each other. But they're I wouldn't re I don't I do talk to them in the same way, but actually now they've got phones and stuff. I relate to them. I send them different clips. I don't just share everything with us as a family because we're different. Tell me about the Jolzner question, which I thought was a lovely, uh interesting part of the book. Do you want to explain what that is and and why you've talked about that?
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, so Jolzner's a dear friend of mine uh here in Bristol. And just over the years of, I think we'd had small groups together, we were involved in student work together. The question she would always ask when somebody's life was unraveling in whatever way was who are their friends. Huh. And after a while, if after a while, we just called it the Jolzner question because so often the answer was who are their friends? And then the response was just silence, because we'd all be sitting there thinking, Oh, I don't know. Or we'd be thinking, well, I think they're good friends with, and then somebody else would go, Oh no, no, no, not yeah. And you'd suddenly realize that at the heart of you know what was going wrong was probably a lack of friendship, or the solution to helping this person keep going through the grief or the depression or the unemployment or whatever it was was them developing friends and having a support network that would keep them going through that. So it's become known as the Jolsener question um amongst the staff team uh here at Emmanuel Bristol. Jolzner's slightly embarrassed that it's her name attached to it. Um, but it's a great question, and I still find that when I ask it, the answer so often is silence, or you find out that actually perhaps historically this person had really got good, deep connections, but things like the fact they've moved away, or friends have moved away, or the fact that they got married has taken away the friendship, or the fact they've had kids take away the friendships, or whatever else it is. And I always say to people here involved in ministry, um, if they were about to have me do my annual lecture on the subject, that so much of Christian ministry is being a friendship catalyst and actually helping people build up the network of friendships that they need and that others need to not just survive in life but thrive.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. I think that community building is that great untapped asset of the church, isn't it? And again, we call it community and church, but actually it is friendship when it comes down to it, isn't it? I love the fact that your church door has a doorbell sound again, which sounds very friendly, isn't it?
SPEAKER_08:It does.
SPEAKER_03:Who's coming to visit? That's right. It does, yeah. Yeah, it feels like we're on a game. Um, there's like a Noel Edmonds house party or something. Oh, there's someone at the door, yeah.
SPEAKER_08:And perhaps that's you know, we went for the sound option. Perhaps we went for the Noel Edmonds.
SPEAKER_03:Open the door when it's sound here's Brosnan and everyone. Yay!
SPEAKER_08:Studio audience chill.
SPEAKER_03:It sounds like the the main worry about that question is that they don't actually have any friends or enough friends, is the question sometimes, who are their friends? Oh, they've got this friend who is X, Y, and Z, and they are extremely influenced by that person. And I think one thing that we're again a bit naive to, and it's an expression you hear a lot now. I must have heard it from Elizabeth Oldfield, but I I think she's heard it from others, which is you know, you are the you are what you pay attention to, and people are who are your friends, you will sort of become like them as well, won't you?
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, and that is a new way of asking that question. And I certainly, I mean, I you know, I know that as I'm godfather to 13 godchildren. Wow, and one of the things I do regularly pray for them is their friends because I know that's gonna be the most significant thing, yeah, actually in helping them grow and develop as people, particularly as Christians. If they have Christian friends when they're teenagers, that is going to massively influence them positively. If they don't, that's gonna be really difficult. Yeah, um, so yeah, I I do think the right the right sort of friends. I mean, I'm again you begin to sound a little parental here, don't you? Yeah, I've still got some friends that my my parents refer to. I've got a friend who um yeah, that my parents still refer to as your nice friend James. It's not you, I'm a friend. No, it's somebody else. But you know, because you know, they just see him as a really good influence on me. Okay, yeah. Yeah, my your nice friend James. Yeah. He's always in that and but we do all need, yeah, friendships that will influence us in the right direction. And there are some I don't know about you, but there are some times when I know that the worst possible friend for me to spend some time with that that day would be this friend, and the best person for me to spend time with this day would be a different friend. Yeah. Um, because again, friendships in your different friendships do different things, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Um on that, the uh though to flip it, another sentence really stuck out for me. Those without friends shouldn't be Christian ministers. Stop, don't want to know.
SPEAKER_04:The less I know about other people's affairs, the happier I am. I'm not interested in caring about people.
SPEAKER_05:Who are you? Someone who prefers not getting involved.
SPEAKER_03:And I thought, oh wow. In a way, you just think, yes, obviously, but why, obviously? What is it? Is it I mean they will go mad uh if they don't have friends. But you know, what what in particular made you say that?
SPEAKER_08:Well, it's uh John Wyatt got me onto this in his book about actually his friendship with John Stott and the healthiness of his intergenerational friendship with John Stott. And he quotes uh Henry Henry now, Nuen, I'm never quite sure. I just pronounce it with conviction and people think you're the expert. Okay, yeah. And he writes this of uh, you know, of power, basically. Um, one thing is clear to me the temptation of power is greatest when intimacy is a threat. Much Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire builders have been people unable to give and receive love. I just think that's so true.
SPEAKER_09:Yes.
SPEAKER_08:And I just again, I you know, again, wearing another hat, I did a working party on culture and power and abuse for the Church of England's Evangelical Council, which I'm the co-chair of, and so read through a huge amount of material on church leaders that have gone wrong and done a huge amount of harm and damage to people, and that would seem to be one of the recurring themes that was less commented on because you can't really sort of say the problem about Christian leaders is they don't have friends, but that desire to find intimacy in wrong ways because they weren't able to express and enjoy intimacy in right ways, yeah, I think is key. We recently employed a new member of staff here. I didn't ask in his interview, have you got any friends or please name your friends? Yeah, but I was delighted to read in references uh people testifying to the quality of the friendship that he provided them with. Right. Because I thought, great, um, he knows what healthy intimacy is looking like. Yeah, he's not going to be uh attracted to unhealthy intimacy.
SPEAKER_03:That's a very interesting um observation that, as you say, I can imagine it's very hard to put into data, which is what people want these days. And actually, you know, the highest profile from our side of the pond would be probably Ravi Zacharias, had this massive ministry. If only um your friend had asked that question, who are his friends? I think we would have discovered he probably didn't have any, and certainly because we think, oh, lack of trustee oversight. It's like, well, yeah, okay, fine. But that's usually trying to stop a thing from going wrong. But actually, it's not healthy, is it, to be isolated in that way. I'm not picking up that example, but I can totally imagine how we want to think make sure that things are in place. Governance. Now, governance is essential and has its place, but I mean, friends is pretty basic, isn't it?
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, but we also can't, I think things are sometimes more complicated in Christian communities, which is when somebody is in leadership positions, then their friendships become complicated. Yeah, it can be more isolating. And you know, middle-age problem is increased responsibility, and increased responsibility in organizations that actually are made up of people who you are friends. This is this is me speaking, does mean that friendship gets more complicated. Yeah. Because I've got people who are my friends, been friends for 20 years, but I'm also their line manager. Yeah. And things like that that could mean, and this is me telling myself that I need to read my own book, um, that I need to watch that as I become more senior in organizations, yeah, that I don't actually fall into exactly the trap um highlighting the book, which is becoming more relationally isolated. Yeah. Because again, one of our instinctive responses to complicated relationships and how do you navigate being somebody's friend and their line manager is to sort of take a step back and stop being, you know, isolate yourself a bit. Yeah. And I think political history, another great passion of my would show that political leaders go can increasingly isolate themselves. And again, that is where it goes wrong for them in every way. So how you can lead and also keep good levels of intimate friendships going, I think is a massive challenge for church leaders, certainly a massive challenge for me.
SPEAKER_03:Uh, last thing I'd love to talk about, because I hadn't expected to read it in the book, was intimacy with creation, which felt like a nice little gem at the at the end. Why did you put that in? Why is Herm Island your happy place?
SPEAKER_08:I have been massively exercised about this for a while because years ago I read a book called Maxim and Life by Julian Hardiman that was genuinely a life-changing book because it basically said we can enjoy and feel good about all the good things that God has given us. Yeah. And it starts with a parody of a CU, which is this CU in a university city where the only things that really matter are evangelism and Christian ministry. And and Jeannie Hardeman says this is a parody, and I read it and I thought, no, I was there. And you were there too. Yeah. We were part of a Christian subculture where the only things of value were evangelism and Christian ministry. And the only thing you'd want to spend your life doing were evangelism and Christian ministry, or to be honest, if you couldn't do it, paying for it by earning loads of money.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_08:And for me, it was this massively releasing book, Maximum Life, to make me think, oh no, I can enjoy these things. And actually, if I enjoy all the good things that God's given, it's going to help me in my Christian ministry and my evangelism. It's not an either or, it's actually this is how you do it effectively. So ever since then, I've had a beam up on it of making sure that we as Christians are enjoying creation, are listening not just to the Great Commission, but the creation mandate that we get right at the beginning of the Bible. And um the particular place where I do that is this place called Herm Island, which is a Channel Island, um, small little island just off uh Guernsey. And for me, it is well, because I went there as a child, it is the first place I think I probably really enjoyed beauty and really enjoyed freedom because there's no cars, so my parents could just Yeah, I was allowed you could just explore the island. So for me it has that added significance, but it's stunningly beautiful, and actually back to quiet times, the best quiet time of my year is getting up at what 5 30 in the morning as well and watching the dawn happen, yeah, listening to the dawn chorus, watching the sun slowly come over the um the horizon saying Psalm 19 out loud. Wow, and then extra sort of thing for the last two years, actually then going in the sea.
SPEAKER_09:Wow.
SPEAKER_08:Um, which which is good fun. I mean, I did actually the first time I did it, I as I looked, as I look back at the bar of clothes, I was thinking, I wonder which of my friends will realise that this was me enjoying intimacy with God and creation and stuff, and which of my friends will think, yeah, we always knew it was going to happen. He's finally left his clothes on the beach. This was always going to be the end of this sitcom. This was always going to be the end. Um but I do think that sort of experience for me of intimacy with you know, intimacy with God, creation and self that actually happens as you swim in the sea, you know, particularly when it's is just a beautiful experience. And one of the big things I argue in the book is actually intimacy with God, self, others, and creation, they all they all power each other and interact with each other. And if you want to enjoy a closer relationship with God, get outside, enjoy beauty and creation. If you want to enjoy intimacy um, you know, with others, you do need to know yourself and how you best interact with others. And all of them interact with each other. And for me, a particular moment every year when I enjoy that is Dawn Swimming off Herm Island.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, the nature thing I think is incredibly important, and I'm just aware that, and I've so I write a weekly substack called Carrie's Armanag, which is about England and the Christian calendar and all those sorts of things, but I'm always trying to be a little bit bucolic and a bit nature-y about it. I'm the son of a dairy farmer, and one thing that occurred to me, I think it was last year when I was writing about the harvest, I learned that in the 19th century, and I guess I must have known this because I did study history. In the 19th century, the population of the UK went from 80% in the countryside to 20%. The countryside just emptied out, which has problem, you know, uh has problems for the countryside, but it just means that suddenly everyone's living in cities, and they are weird places to live, and they are living in hastily constructed cities that are ugly and have gotten uglier. I think the 20th century is the ugliest century, it's it's awful, and you know, the fact that people can win awards for an architecture style called brutalism, I think shows you that something has gone really, really seriously wrong. And there were kind of like artistic movements in the past, but I do think that we've become completely denatured. And as you were talking earlier, I was just thinking, why is that? And those people that we look back to spiritually, like the reformers, particularly and the Puritans, they don't write about this because they didn't know they needed to, because they were living it.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, although Jonathan Edwards does. Okay, you know, so actually one of the you know, because I think you know, I was slightly worried that all my stuff about intimacy with creation would be seen as a you know a little bit dodgy by some of our more reforms and friends. Um, and actually, you know, my de my defence shield is Jonathan Edwards. Okay, go on. Because Jonathan Edwards, you know, love, you know, was massively into creation. He goes on not on nature walks on nature rides, and and he and he has you know real spiritual experiences in the New England of his day. Yeah. Um and I don't think yeah, I just don't think we we recognise that or do that enough. There's so many things that stop us from doing that. You know, I live in a in a city, but we need to find opportunities to actually enjoy the glory of God in creation. Um, and Jonathan Edwards would be a massive example of somebody that did that and shows us how to do that in a lot of um his writings and works.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So I think that sense of escaping to the country feels like a bit hack or a bit, it's like, no, I think it's absolutely necessary.
SPEAKER_08:And and it's also, I think for me, I found it's it's also the sort of the apologetic link I've found in I've done at least one talk where a church asked me to come in and say, do your intimacy deficit stuff, but could you do it for could you do it for for non-Christians? And instead of starting with intimacy of God and ending with intimacy of creation, we started with creation. Yeah. And you know, talked about because it's such a content, I mean, think of the number of books that have been that are written of people, you know, going escaping to the country or you know, bringing up a hare in their house or whatever else it is to start there and actually work through has been quite powerful.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, definitely. Let's wrap up with the last uh bit of advice in the book, which I think is very helpful, and you've you've hinted at it earlier. Adopt a psalm. Tell me about that.
SPEAKER_08:What I love about the psalms is I think almost every life circumstance, almost well, I think every life circumstance, every personality type, there's a psalm for you. Right. And it's trying to find the psalm that fits who you are, what you're going through, and then just camping out in it and allowing God to speak to you through its language or its imagery and to you know to comfort you or challenge you or whatever. You know, so the cynic in me loves Psalm 73. I'm really looking forward to to actually meeting the psalmist to behind it and saying, What caused your cynicism? Um, yeah. But Psalm 23 is the particular one I use in the book. I think it's quite a multi-parpose one. It's been popular down the years because it fits with a whole host of different circumstances. And I've adopted it, I've learned it. Um, I've done a whole series of sort of things that enable me to meditate on it and for it to accompany me through life. So it can just pop into my mind, shape my prayers, pop into my mind, comfort me, pop into my mind, be used to encourage somebody else.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Yeah, and you just want to commit to one and get it into your bones. Yes. Um, and you will find it is a multi-purpose uh tool.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, and the great thing about Psalm 23 is you sort of know it already.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Um, and doesn't actually take too much time to learn.
SPEAKER_03:But of course, if you're a type 8 Enneagram, it's like, no, no, no, I'm not going to learn Psalm 23. Everyone will do that. What are you going to do? I'll take. Well, actually, I I I I do like Psalm 1 a lot, particularly for me, because it's about not just not walking in the way of you know, uh mockers and sitting in the seat of mockers and that sort of stuff. And uh that beautiful picture of the tree by the river as well. So it's got it that so psalm one, I think might I might adopt that one.
SPEAKER_08:Well, the and the other thing actually, I always which I picked up chapter in the school we went to just encouraging me to get into the habit of reading the psalm for my age on my birthday, and that's been a really good thing all the way through my life since I was 16. Um, you know, and it nicely gets depressing in your early 40s, which just fits beautifully.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, I'm about to hit 50, so I think that's good.
SPEAKER_08:Or Psalm 50. I mean, next year, you know, yeah, Psalm 51. You can have to be careful.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, well, that's good. Well, that's a bit of a cliffhanger. You can go and look up Psalm 51 to see what's I mean, obviously obviously you know it, uh, but uh do go and look up that. The intimacy deficit is available in probably very few good bookshops because bookshops only really stock books by Rowan Williams uh and Karen Armstrong and C.S. Lewis, that's about it. But the intimacy deficit will be available from all the usual places by Ed Shaw. Ed, thanks very much for joining us. Absolute pleasure. Talk there at the end about Psalms, and I've actually written a book called Psalm Supplement, and that's like a series of daily devotionals. There's like 40, 41, in fact, I think, which is a bit annoying. They'll be available for Lent, but if you want to get hold of them early, then do go over to my blog Carrie's Almanac and you'll get updated about when it's available, when you can pre-order it. Uh, because I'm going to be getting some printed before Christmas, so you want to be sure to get in on that. And also at Carrie's Almanac, you'll see where I write about not just Christian history and faith, but also days of the year in the calendar coupled with nature and Englishness. If you found the end of that conversation interesting, then you would really like Carrie's Almanac. So do go over and become a subscriber. Every Friday lunchtime there is a nice little instalment, something that will interest you. So go on over to Carrie's Almanac and it's free like this podcast. Links in the show notes for that. Anyway, thanks very much for listening all the way to the end. I trust you haven't just skipped here. Is this how it ends? Yeah.