004. How Politics Shapes Our Spiritual Formation ft. Michael Wear

What does it look like to follow Jesus when the culture insists that everything depends on the next election? Michael Wear joins John for a conversation about politics, allegiance, and the slow work of keeping ultimate things ultimate. A former White House staffer who came to faith as a teenager in a Wegmans grocery store, Michael has spent his career arguing that Christian knowledge is not just privately meaningful but publicly useful, and that the church has handed political parties a power that was never theirs to hold. This is a conversation about anger, constituency, and why the word of God does not change every four years.

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About Michael Wear:

Michael Wear is the founder, president, and CEO of the Center for Christianity and Public Life, an organization he built around a 30-year vision to contend for the credibility of Christian resources for the public good. He previously served in the Obama White House, where as a young staffer he helped move the issue of human trafficking onto the president's agenda after connecting a senior advisor to the 60,000 students who had gathered at the Passion Conference in Atlanta to worship and give. He is also the author of Reclaiming Hope (2017). Michael came to faith as a teenager, shaped significantly by his sister's conversion and a conversation on the Romans road in the middle of a grocery store. He has said that coming to faith immediately raised a question for him: if this is true, what does it mean for the whole of life?

What this Conversation Explores:

• What Michael means by "Christian knowledge" and why he insists it is publicly available, not merely privately held
• Why Dallas Willard believed politics has a unique capacity to create a pseudo-reality, and what Christians lose when they forget it
• The danger of going to politics to get spiritual needs met, and what it feels like when the results of an election shift the color of the sky
• What MLK's famous quote about the law gets right and how both the left and the right misuse it
• Why Christians should not be so quick to desire a constituency, and what it means to remember who sent them
• Anger in political life: when it is signal, when it becomes sin, and the question every Christian should ask before indulging it
• How politics is actually a healthy arena for spiritual formation, and why the person who cannot be kind in a political disagreement should ask where else they are rationalizing their way out

Resources Mentioned:

• Reclaiming Hope — Michael Wear
• Exuberance: The Passion for Life — Kay Redfield Jamison
• Center for Christianity and Public Life — ccpubliclife.org

About Formation:
Formation is a podcast that explores the science and soul of spiritual formation. Each episode brings together the ancient wisdom of the contemplative tradition and the best of modern research. John Ortberg sits down with some of the most rigorous and honest thinkers working at the intersection of faith and human flourishing for extended, unhurried conversations about how we are being shaped. New episodes every other week, wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:00

Politics is doing great spiritual harm in many Americans' lives. And the big reason for that is that many Americans are going to politics to get their spiritual needs met. People who are least inclined to believe in the false promises of politics are those closest to it. Because they know. Because they know.

SPEAKER_02 0:19

Every government is based on the fact that it can kill people. And that's just basic political theory.

SPEAKER_05 0:25

I'll actually hear people tell me this. If I give merit to the other side, aren't I just helping them to win? Who is them? Like, what are we what are we talking about here?

SPEAKER_02 0:36

Now we're watching an explosion of sports betting.

SPEAKER_05 0:40

Think about gambling as a form of magic.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

At the core of it is the desire to make something from nothing.

SPEAKER_05 0:46

The kind of people we are has much to do with the kind of politics we have. Christians ought to think about politics as an essential form in which they can love their needs.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

What about somebody who just feels overwhelmed and exhausted? Like, I can't make a difference, I can't make a change. What would you say to them? I'm delighted today to get to have a conversation with Michael Ware. Michael is the founder and is the correct title executive director, CEO for the Center for Here's the thing about being a founder, which is that you get to give yourself too many titles.

SPEAKER_05 1:30

Yeah, so founder, president, and CEO. Yeah. Okay. All right.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

Yeah. So super impressive. Um, I want to start with this, and this is kind of just a good example of it, because we're going to talk today about politics and faith, and that's the arena in which you're involved. That's a topic that feels very heavy to a lot of people. And I find anytime I see you, I cannot not smile. Um, there's a there's a book um by uh Kay Jameson. Um she writes on mental health stuff, she's a fabulous psych researcher. Uh herself has wrestled with bipolar, but the book is called Exuberance, and it's just about uh the gift of exuberance in life. And um you have that, and I'm wondering where does that come from? Is have you always had that? And and what's it like to live in Washington and be an exuberant person that brings joy to people? Uh uh.

SPEAKER_05 2:30

So I do think um uh some of it is just innate personality. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

I also Was your family an exuberant family?

SPEAKER_05 2:40

Yeah, yeah. Italian exuberant, you know.

SPEAKER_02 2:44

Yeah, Swedish, not exuberance is not the first thing you think of when you think of Scandinavia.

SPEAKER_05 2:49

Um you know, it's also um I I didn't have a uh tragic childhood, but didn't have the easiest childhood. And DC is not uh a a generally as you sort of uh insinuate, like a lighthearted place, generally speaking. Yes. Uh and so you know, it's um I have a lot of things to be grateful for. Uh when I see people I like and when I get to do things that I enjoy, um uh there's too much um I reject the need to uh suppress those emotions. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

Do people try to get you to do that?

SPEAKER_05 3:38

Uh I think there is a um a culture of performance in DC, um which can be um uh really um people lose touch with themselves. Um because they're always thinking about how they're perceived and not like what what they actually feel. Um so you know, there's there's there's there's some of that, but a lot of it's possible.

SPEAKER_02 4:06

I think everybody listening to us right now, culture of performance is kind of in the water, yeah, yeah, everywhere. And it probably gets exaggerated here. So for a lot of people listening, just that thought of you can be free of that could be could be pretty cool. Yeah. Say a little bit about the center, um, how you got started with that, what got you interested in the political arena in the first place.

SPEAKER_05 4:27

Oh wow. Uh so the center comes out of my my career. I mean, it so I came to DC as a pretty young Christian. I gave my faith my life to Jesus at 15. I was here for college, you know, obviously at 18. With the vocational question, you know, what does it mean to be faithful in and with public things? It's sort of the central guiding question that I had. Um, and we could talk more about what it was like to come to faith, but all of that was sort of bound up with it. Um, I ended up working at the White House and in presidential campaigns. And then I was a consultant for eight years. I wanted to help the church navigate what I thought would be an increasingly complex, fraught, at Points, antagonistic religious and political landscape. Yeah. Um, unfortunately turned out that that was the case. Yeah, yeah. Uh oops. Yeah. Uh and I liked, I liked consulting, but I'm an institutional kind of thinker. Uh, and I want, I'm the kind of person who wants to dedicate my life to something over the long haul. Consulting was a great transition. It allowed me to do a bunch of different things, but it was also really sad saying bye to clients after the work was done. And yeah, and you kind of look back and you're you're proud of each client, but you know, what does it all add up to? And I had both uh a vision and I think a better assessment of some institutional gaps in in the the the faith civic sector. Um and I was young enough that I thought I could think I I could plausibly think, of course, we don't know what what what time we have, but I could plausibly think in terms of a 30-year vision. And I I thought, well, I I won't be able to do that for forever. Yes. Um so if I'm gonna start with start something, it's not gonna do it now anymore. Yeah. And and uh so I saw a a window. Um, and so the Center for Christianity in Public Life is a national nonprofit with the mission to contend for the credibility of Christian resources in public life for the public good. And we say that one more time the mission to contend for the credibility of Christian resources in public life for the public good. The Christian offers is as as Dallas would say, knowledge that is publicly available, it's credible, and it's fit for public instruction and public decision making, and that knowledge is for the good of the public. So it's a beast.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

Yeah. Um uh unpack a little bit more that notion that there is Christian resources, knowledges that can serve the public good. What does that look like?

SPEAKER_05 7:29

Yeah, so it looks there's a whole range in buckets that we talk about. I mean, there are just the purely sort of institutional. So we talk we think about the the um material resources of the Christian church in America, real estate, volunteers, financial resources. Uh, we think about the theological resources. So the idea uh that we are made in the image of God. Well, that has implications for everything, including our political life, the dignity of the human person. We think about theological, uh uh theologically imbued concepts like forgiveness and mercy and kindness. So those would be interesting things to think about in a in a political context. Um, think about um, I mean, we're having a lot of discussions about what does it even mean to be human right now? Well, the Christian tradition has quite to say about what it means to be to be human. And it's something that shouldn't just be uh uh uh resources that shouldn't just be quarantined to the four walls of the church, but actually there are some decision makers in this city uh who could benefit from that knowledge. And if they're going to be making decisions about these kinds of issues, issues of life and death, issues of uh uh technology, uh they would benefit from that knowledge. And then I think there's um there there's a history. So we think about the labor movements and civil rights movements and uh all the various social movements of the past and even in you know different contexts that were grounded by, undergirded by and and fueled by Christian institutions, people, ideas. And we could learn a lot from those and apply them today.

SPEAKER_02 9:15

Yeah. I just met, I think his name is Chris Evans, guy who wrote a recent biography of Francis Willard, who uh led the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Yeah, yeah. And uh now that sounds kind of hopelessly Victorian and prudish and so, but she was actually a remarkable person, very strong Methodist, uh uh a very strong impulse to bring reform. And in that day, uh alcohol had been recognized as such a scourge and destroyer of families, and the church was kind of in the forefront of saying we want to try to create a better day. Yes. But it seems like a lot of people don't associate the church with that in our day.

SPEAKER_05 9:55

No, no, no, no. Although, right, it's it's interesting. We're in a a kind of moment now where I think uh broadly held, we're having interest interesting conversations right now about things like online sports gambling. We're having an interesting um uh revisiting of some of the popular wisdom around what the legalization of marijuana would do in society and what the effects would be. And so uh, you know, there's an interesting uh it is I I would argue it's easier to talk about vice in public life now than it was 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 10:34

That's a subject that in the church used to get talked about. Yeah, doesn't much anymore. I remember several talks with Dallas. He's about the only guy that I know from our era who would sometimes talk about gambling as a sin. And he would talk about at the core of it is the desire to make something from nothing. Um but that it was a real problem in human life. And of course, now we're watching an explosion of uh sports betting and kind of the normalization of it. So say a little bit about that in our common life.

SPEAKER_05 11:11

Well, so what you just said prompted me to think about what our friend Andy Crouch says about technology as magic. And think about think about gambling as a form of magic. Yes, to to make something out of nothing or producing a good. That's right. Um so so that's that that that I'm gonna be thinking about that for uh some time. Um it it it's it's Dallas uh said the separation of church and state should be zealously upheld as a legal principle. But one of the philosophical uh ramifications of how the separation of church and state has played out, which I don't think is intrinsic to the legal principle itself, is to suggest as we were talking about earlier, that sort of anything that feels like coded as a moral judgment is therefore not permissible in politics. So um again, of course, you know, decisions about going to war should be read as moral decisions, but no, that's like defense policy. So we could have opinions on that. But gambling, that's a moral is it right to bring our morality into something like that? Um there are a number of ways to sort of deal with this. One way would be to say, well, again, you're making a moral decision by uh saying that the only policy answer to this would completely unregulated, unregulated gambling market uh markets, um, which of course all of these things require legal infrastructure to have anyway. So it's you're not able to just totally step out. There have to be some laws around the uh the the machinations of it. So actually you are providing legal sanction. But I I think we're we we need we have the right to ask as a political body um do we want uh uh everything, not just sports, but with this rise of predictive markets, um uh it is now you can bet on whether newscasters are going to use certain words in the course of their kidding, uh in the course of their reporting or podcasters and that sort of thing. And so this thing that has the potential, and already we've seen it, incredibly distortionary effects on reality that are unrelated to the um uh to the substance of what is being carried on, we ought to be able to have an open conversation about that. And and and maybe the way it shakes out is we actually uh value or are suspicious, uh too suspicious of or or um uh too uh skeptical of the ability of this to be regulated wisely, and so we decide not to regulate at all. That's a prudential disagreement. But let's not preempt the discussion before we even have it by saying, well, that sounds like a that sounds like a moral judgment and and really our politics isn't for that. Well, no, this is the society that we're gonna that we're gonna live in. This is where tax dollars are gonna need to go. So for instance, um I I always find it interesting, the same people who will say that we shouldn't regulate this or regulate uh uh again marijuana will will also be the ones to say that the public taxpayers need to fund public health campaigns uh to deal with the consequences of the legalization of these things.

SPEAKER_02 15:04

Well, it well it why why isn't it uh so Well we think about I think about the history of smoking. Correct. And when I was a kid, uh still anytime, anyplace, you could light up, and now there would be quite a consensus that it's a real good thing to have lots of places where you cannot do that. Yes, that's right. Uh and uh there's there's a whole range of potential restrictions or limitations as long as the conversation can be yes.

SPEAKER_05 15:29

So we have this fascinating conversation. There's a congressman in New York, Paul Tonco, who is the leading uh policymaker in Congress on the issue of sports gambling. And he interestingly came to this issue um because uh he's uh long been the longtime congressional champion on issues of addiction generally. And I spent a lot of time in his career dealing with uh different drug addictions and making sure the public health dollars went towards addressing uh addiction. And then he looked at the science around gambling and said, but like this neurologically, what this is an ad an issue of addiction. And then he looked at numbers that were coming out of um you know, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but it's it's like an obscene percentage of the uh gambling that takes place is from a uh minuscule percentage of the population. In other words, this is not some and is never going to be uh something where the um the costs are gonna be anywhere close to evenly distributed. Yeah. This is predatory. Yeah. And the and the and the and the money behind is predatory. Now, again, these are prudential things. We could we could disagree with them. Uh, you know, we we we could have conversations about them, and there are different things to balance, but this is precisely the kind of issue in which uh Christians and other people ought to bring the best that they have to offer to the conversation, not leave stuff uh uh including moral judgments, off the table about uh what what does it mean to be human? Uh, what what we know about how humans make decisions, what we know about what it means for human beings to flourish in community.

SPEAKER_02 17:23

Charles Duhig in his book The Power of Habit tells just tragic and horrifying stories of people who are trapped in gambling addictions, and then there will be predatory organizations or casinos who know this is a person who has been ruined financially and will make comp offers to pull them back in. And when you read that, it's just like it's so dark. Yes. I would say anybody that's listening, uh, gambling addiction is very, very common. There are 12-step groups, gamblers anonymous, and so and so you can find them if you just go online, uh Google that title. Yes, yes, yes. Uh, or or a good therapist to reach out for help if you find yourself sucked into that is a real good thing to do.

SPEAKER_05 18:06

Yes, absolutely. Here's a um really important thing. These things count as Christian knowledge too. So the Christian knowledge isn't just uh here are the things that everyone else ought to take up. Uh Christian knowledge includes here are the things that I'm I'm actually laying down. Like here are the things, here are the things that I I will not take up. And and that's a really that's a really important important thing.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

Say a little bit more because I know Dallas Willard was a big uh impact, has been, is a big impact on your own thinking and life. Um Christian knowledge will be a phrase that sounds a little odd. Yeah. Uh some people might think about the Christian tradition or Christian practices. Um why do you use that phrase Christian knowledge and what do you mean by it? And why does that matter?

SPEAKER_05 18:57

Yeah, so so Dallas would talk about this idea of moral knowledge, of which uh Christianity uh made contributions to moral knowledge, but for Dallas, moral knowledge is not a is not necessarily a religious or Christian category. Moral knowledge is knowledge about what is right and wrong, what is good and evil. And we live in a moral universe in which, whether we like it or not, our days uh uh consist of dozens, hundreds, infinite number of moral decisions. And just because we're not willing to acknowledge that they're moral decisions does not remove the the reality that they they're uh we we might try to um we might try to uh reduce it or sort of resituate it into, oh, I'm just like following the data, or I'm just but but that itself is a moral decision. Uh uh who is your teacher? Uh, Dallas would ask. A lot of people in this town, well, I just I just follow the evidence. Uh oh who who's evidence I wouldn't allow it.

SPEAKER_02 20:01

No, no, if you want to come into the public arena, it's fine for you in your private life to have a faith tradition and uh and a moral tradition. But if you come into the public square in the public arena, then uh you have to speak a language that everybody would be able to endorse. Yeah. And so to speak of moral knowledge would somehow violate being in the public square.

SPEAKER_05 20:26

Yeah. So I think two things I'd say to that. Um, one, our public square is full of moral assertions. So I think um you can there is the good faith argument that scripture shouldn't be invoked in public discussion uh to advance a particular point of view, and we could have that discussion. Uh like one of the first questions I'd ask is um, you know, to take a magnet and pull out all of the scriptural illusions from the civil rights movement and see what you're left with. Um but but we could have we could have that discussion. There are good, there are good reasons for it. What you what isn't really an argument is we shouldn't be making moral assertions when we're talking about public policy. Uh uh uh the former President Joe Biden would say the budget is a moral document. Uh that that is not a partisan for, I think that's a widely understood sort of sort of thing. It's yes, you want to learn from the data what's working, what's not. But the end of the day, what the government is funding and what it is not uh involves a decision about what is worth funding, what is not worth funding. And so some of these questions aren't moral claims.

SPEAKER_02 21:37

It's just are they is that overtly acknowledged, or is it kind of slipped under the rug?

SPEAKER_05 21:42

So one of the arguments um I think sometimes our conversations get uh stuck in categories that were once useful but but really aren't anymore. I'd say relativism is one of those terms that. I think there it was a dominant relativism was was dominant at one point. I would argue that uh relativism, if if it's not dead, it's it's uh it's it's limping quite a quite a bit. Interesting. Um again, go to a college campus right now and raise uh uh raise an issue of uh social justice and uh see if the students think, well, it doesn't really matter. Uh everything's relative. Everything's relative. You know, it depends on, you know, it depends, you know, if you just if you if you grew up in a context where it was okay to discriminate, then it's okay to discriminate. You know, I wouldn't want to make any judgments like relativism, that is not like the general approach. I think so much of the anxiety and franticness in our public discourse right now is uh not the absence of distinction or the absence of judgment, but the fact that people feel, and and it's just a reality, people feel like they're put in a place of having to make judgments and and make moral judgments uh as a matter of mere assertion without any possible hope of authority for those decisions. So so the only thing that you have is the emotionality of the argument. The only thing that you have, like, like if if you can't say um uh uh human beings are made in the image of God and their dignity should not be violated. If if if you can't say that, then then all you all you can do is ring the other person, like recognize my right. What's your right based in talk louder in in my yelling? My right is based in my yelling. Um and so so so so yeah, so that so that's but but again, it's um there are some affirmative things that we could say. There's also um one of uh one aspect that Christian knowledge I think offers to our political life is that politics is not ultimate, that political instruments are uh imperfect. So we bring that that knowledge that what we're trying to do in politics. I have a friend Steve Garber who talks about the um the uh his favorite word he said uh is proximate, that when we're talking about politics or even in much of life uh here as we know it, the ultimate good is not going to be achieved because of sin, because of brokenness. But but proximacy, proximacy to goodness is something that we can aim for and strive for and work towards. But we keep in our minds that the proximacy is the best that we can hope for based on not just our own efforts, just based on what we know about the human condition.

SPEAKER_02 24:47

So um James Davidson Hunter is a sociologist, wrote a book uh To Change the World. Yeah. It's a very humbling book. The first couple of pages just list uh Christian, mostly evangelical organization, denomination after another whose mission is to change the world. I I've not read the mission statement for the center yet. Um uh but as he goes on in there, he talks about politics.

SPEAKER_04 25:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:13

And he says, in a society that's healthy, there are a lot of spheres that flourish philanthropy, education, religion, the arts. As a society gets unhealthier and more fractioned, everything gravitates towards politics. Yeah. And he says the reason it does is only politics have access to coercive power. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was listening not too long ago to a talk that Dallas Willard was giving to a group of people, and he said something that kind of drove everybody crazy. He would he often would in his mild way, but he said, uh, every government is based on uh the fact that it can kill people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's just basic political theory. Yeah, yeah, yeah. People wanted to say that's not true, or that's not true where we live. Um, but Hunter, I think, is getting at kind of the same point, which is coercive power, that um uh only the political realm governments are able to force your body to do something or put you in prison or punish you. And because coercive power appears to us to be the greatest, if I can make you do something against your will, that's the ultimate form of power. But for Steve Garber to say the political realm is proximate, is to say actually being able to make someone do something against their will. That's right. Is not all so say more about that. Because I think especially I I just think often in the church, being as a being a pastor, there's a sense for people on the left and the right both, that you know, if you don't talk about this, if your pastor doesn't talk about this issue this week, go to another church. Yeah, right. Because there's the thought that the really the ultimate relevant realm is politics. Yeah. And so the best the church can do is try to influence politics. And you're and you're saying something very different. Unpack that for folks.

SPEAKER_05 27:17

Oh, there's there's a lot here. Um so so one thing I'd say is right, um, you know, King has this line that's often misused by both sides, uh, and I don't have it in front of me, but but essentially uh Martin Luther King uh says uh he says, you know, the law cannot make my enemy love me. But the law can make uh make him not not kill me. Uh like there could be a there could be a law against that. And I think um sometimes those on the left use that quote to say that what he's saying is the love me part, the love part doesn't matter. What really matters is what the law can do. Is what the law can do. And and the right will use that to say what King is saying is uh politics really can't do anything meaningful at all. And what King is saying, I think, humbly, is uh politics can't do the most important thing. If politics could make man love me, there wouldn't need to be the law against him killing me. Um but the thing that politics can do is really important too, and we should we should try to do that without um making the fact that the law can only do something make up the whole of our reality or imagination for what kind of social relations are possible. So King did not think that the law alone could build the beloved community, but what was King's vision for? What was the vision he kept in mind, the beloved community? Well, that's really that's really interesting. You had this guy who was uh on the Washington mall, who was talking with politicians all the time, that was trying to put pressure on political leaders all the time, and yet his vision was something that he knew and said very clearly politics could not account. Well, that's that's really good to know. That's that's really um that's that's that's that's really helpful. Um I think there was something else you said that prompted um prompted another thought. And um it's it's I made the first point I wanted to make and then it slipped out of me. Yeah, uh you were saying something, and I I just can't remember, but maybe it'll it'll come back to me.

SPEAKER_02 29:34

Uh my grandmother always said, if you can't remember something, it must have been a lie. Yeah. That's what my grandmother said, and she might have been lying. Um uh it made me think as you were talking about what's ultimate and proximate, one way to think about ultimate is what really lasts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And uh if you think about Jesus um refusing political power, my kingdom is not of this world, render under Caesar. He wouldn't let the people make him king. Uh and a guy, uh I think it's I uh I think his last name is Numpyr, wrote a book with a really interesting insight when Jesus was talking to his disciples about who's the greatest, and he said about the Gentiles um, not those who rule the Gentiles, but those who appear to rule over the Gentiles. Lord it over them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's so fascinating to think now, you know, Jesus is playing the long game. Yeah. So do you want to be Caesar? Well, it looked like Caesar had a lot more power. Caesar could crucify people and he crucified Jesus, but 2,000 years later, not a lot of people are looking to Caesar for inspiration. That's right. And Jesus' reign continues to expand. So it's like even back then, this obscure rabbi knew no people that want to have coercive power look like they're in charge. But they're ultimately now like who was this guy that he saw that and could uh uh so there's there was um and the thought came back to me and it it applies to. I thought if I rambled on long enough, it would be a good one.

SPEAKER_05 31:21

No, it did come back. Yeah, so it does so um the the the way I read Dallas and his his concerns, um his primary concern about politics was that um it it has this capacity to create a sort of pseudo-reality um and especially and this is why like moral knowledge is so important. So if if if we aren't clear that what we uh uh and we wanna we wanna assess it, we want to test it a bit uh uh uh uh because it's knowledge we don't need to be defensive about it. Um but if we don't think of what we have as knowledge, um it can be toppled with the slightest sort of pressure. So elections do this all the time. Oh yeah. So you think um if you think that um kindness is on the ballot or or to pick an issue if if if if if the political sages say, well, this this election is a referendum on this issue or this person, and and and and that issue or that person loses, DC, you could feel it. I mean, I I remember I was downtown for a meeting the day after the presidential election in 2016, and I had been in DC the day before the election. Uh like the winds had shifted. I mean, it was like uh like the color of the sky and buildings changed after the election. Um and and you start hearing people reflect, well, what needs to change now in response to the election? I guess this won't work any longer. Uh, I don't think that we could say this anymore. Um, and so Dallas, I think, was really concerned about the the building of politics, and he wasn't just thinking about elections, but but laws to create a sense, a false sense of order that was contrary to how things really are. And for Christians, we need to really guard against this. And it's one of the reasons why I get um concerned when I meet Christians who um uh I I had a uh my first book, uh Reclaiming Hope, came out in 2017. Uh and uh I remember doing events in the in the rollout of the book, and um uh someone came up to me after one of the events and said, uh uh a pastor and said, uh, Michael, I read your book. I was really convicted. I was indifferent towards politics. Now I understand how important it is, and I want you to know and I'm trying to get more invested in politics now. And he goes, uh, if you opened up my computer right now, uh you'd see the uh the real clear politics polling averages. And I I'm like refreshing that like every day. And I'm uh like like I'm I'm engaging politically. You know, you just go, that's not what I was talking about. That's not what I was talking about.

SPEAKER_02 34:49

Yeah, yeah, I've experienced that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:51

This is um the aim is not to have pastors checking the polls. Um, you know, that is not the kind of political engagement we were looking for.

SPEAKER_05 35:00

But you you so if if if we're obsessed with and following the dips in turns of political culture, we actually can subtly attune our sense of reality to that.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

What struck me when you said that politics can be a form of pseudo-reality was thinking about uh, as you all know, uh Dallas. Well there are folks listening, if you're not familiar with Dallas, he was a philosopher at USC and a writer about faith and life and spirituality. Uh and uh he famously had read pretty much everything and thought through how to define everything. So reality, he would say, is what you can count on. Yeah. And pain is what you experience when you run into reality. Yeah. Yeah. So when you said politics can become a pseudo-reality, what struck me is the political arena could be the place that people think ultimately defines reality. It's what I can most count on. Yes. If my person or party gets in, I can count on things being okay. If the other guys get in, I can count on things going to hell. Yeah. And so it becomes what I count on. And that is kind of the definition of pseudo-reality.

SPEAKER_05 36:14

Does that get at it? Yes, absolutely. Here's a here's a secret. Uh, the people who are the least inclined to believe that are those who are closest to it.

SPEAKER_02 36:26

Say that one more time, because I thought that might be where you're headed, and I think we all need to hear it.

SPEAKER_05 36:30

The people who are least inclined to believe in the false promises of politics are those closest to it. Yeah. Um because they know. Because they know. Because they because they they know um that the the claims that they make about how certain they are that if if just their guy gets in office or their policy is enacted, they had to go through the meetings where the people raised all of the ways and reasons in which they might be wrong. Um but what is projected out and what people uh scrolling on their phones are who maybe only check in around election time, they're getting the most polished um performative certainty. Yeah. Um, and if they're not testing that or pressuring that, they think like that, that's what's actually on the on the ballot. What's on the ballot is like good versus evil. What's on the ballot is um my children having a future versus uh not, and it's you know, like the race for you know county executives, you know, which you know, very important, very important roles.

SPEAKER_03 37:39

But yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:40

Um and so it's yeah, yeah. So let me talk about the intersection of politics and faith for a minute. And um I'll I'll have you respond to this question in a personal way about your own involvement. You were in the Obama White House. There will be people on the progressive side politically, uh, and it might be that they would say, Jesus talked more about the poor than anything except for the kingdom of God. And so if you don't have a progressive political view, if you're not part of the Democratic Party, you can't love the poor the way that he did, you can't really be a sincere follower of him. Um uh or there could be somebody uh on a conservative side that would say, Um, if you don't care about the life of the unborn, uh if you are not in the party that has been most active to protect that, you can't be a sincere follower of Jesus. So on either side, you can have folks who have very deep feelings about real important or significant issues who will say um your faith must mean that you're on this side or on that side. You're trying to do work with Christians. Most white evangelicals are more on the conservative side. You were in the Obama White House. How do you respond to that? How do you think about it? How do you think we all should hold those issues?

SPEAKER_05 38:55

Uh, yeah, so um it works out really well for politicians uh when we accept this notion that um, you know, if you're if you're a true believer, you'll just be on on my team. Uh and we're the ones who hear you. If you're if if we don't win, you're gonna be completely out in the wilderness. So really like we're doing you a favor. Like that works very well for the for the party system and for politicians. Means they don't have to really like earn your earn your vote. Um so so that's worth like that's that's worth paying attention to. Anytime when when when the the line that you're being sold makes it easiest for those with the most responsibility, that indicates that you might be playing into their own yellow flags should be going up playing into there. Um I think that um I I've said before that the crisis is not that Christians are politically homeless, but that we ever thought that we should make a home in politics at all. And and by that I mean um uh Christians should not be so quick to desire to be a constituency of one or the other party.

SPEAKER_02 40:14

Christians should not be so quick to desire to be a constituency. That's right. And why is that?

SPEAKER_05 40:19

Um there is no uh we have given political parties a power that is not there. So political parties are meant to mediate difference, not just between political parties, but within the parties themselves. Like that's the purpose of a political party. And and we've just lost an imagination for this. I I remember I I once um was speaking, um, was speaking at this college, Dort College. Um Iowa? Yeah, yeah, great school uh uh in in Iowa, and the Sioux County Democrats, the most conservative county in the state, heard that I was gonna be in town, invited me in, and I was giving a speech at Dort. Uh the that the reason why I was in town about resisting partisan idolatry. The local party invites me, and uh uh I just said, I'm just gonna give essentially the same speech to them. Uh so I go and I'm expecting to get run out of this place. And the I finish my talk, you know, the car is running outside the getaway car. Uh the the vice chair. Yeah, the vice chair of the party raises her hand, and I'm like, here, here it is. And she goes, uh something like I'm sorry, could you go back to that thing you were saying about local parties being able to contest what the national party is saying? So in Sioux County, it's a rural county in Iowa, they often disagree with the national party about agriculture policy. So we spent the next like 45 minutes of this literally talking through what it would look like for the local county in Sioux County to write to the national party saying, actually, like we need corn subsidies in Iowa, or like whatever the issue was. Um that's what parties are supposed to do. What it's much easier for them to do is say, like, here's the party line, you have to swallow every jot and tittle. In other words, uh, as a member of the party, you will owe us allegiance when it's supposed to be the party is supposed to owe allegiance to its members and and there to be some fidelity and exchange there. Um Christians ought to be able to get them. Christians in politics have to remember who sent them. They weren't sent by the political party, they were sent to the political party, they were sent to the political system, but they have to remember where they came from. And when they do that, one of the things our political parties need most right now is people from within the party who are willing to challenge the party from the inside. Why to say, I'm, I'm a, I'm a I'm a uh registered Republican, registered Democrat, I'm a part of the conversation. I'm I'm not throwing rocks from outside, I'm inside, and you're not doing right by this issue.

SPEAKER_02 43:23

And that's the way that parties are supposed to work, the role that Christians ought to play within them.

SPEAKER_05 43:28

And they work that way when they're forced to work that way. So um their job is to say that change is impossible uh until they make the change. So uh um I remember, and this is a relatively benign example of this, or at least benign in terms of um like it won't uh um uh in 2016, the Democratic Party had a contested primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, and Bernie was running from the uh left and critical. Criticizing NAFTA and criticizing a sort of anti-union policies. The chief foreign policy priority of the sitting president of the United States, who was the head of the Democratic Party, was something called the TPP, the Trans Pacific Partnership, this big new trade deal. But like 45% of Democrats were supporting Bernie Sanders, who was like, burn it all to the ground. Like this has been awful for and if you look at the Democratic Party platform in 2016, referring to the sitting president's chief foreign policy priority, the language basically says we can agree to disagree. Well, where does that come from? It comes from the fact that there was a huge debate in the Democratic Party that the party leaders had to acknowledge. And you could like see this everywhere. But but there's this idea of you're betraying the party. Betraying the party, I I don't what you don't owe the party anything. You don't.

SPEAKER_02 44:56

One of the one of the comments you wrote about a while ago that I thought was so interesting, and it it it it didn't strike me so much as uh a criticism, so much as it was simply an observation of the way that things work, that it is in the interest of parties for you, me, voters, not to think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So say more about how that's kind of built into the system.

SPEAKER_05 45:27

Um the the party claims to represent a certain interest or a value set or and whatever the party does under that banner that well, if you really side with working people, you'll accept this policy position. Well, that's that's interesting because four years ago you were advancing the exact opposite policy policy position under the same justification. You know, so I yeah, but well, just don't think about it. Um uh and so uh it really is this idea that um there's an allegiance to political party or even to an ideology. Well, well, well, that's not, you know, aren't you aren't you a thorough girl going, uh, you know, the socialist manual doesn't say that, or you know, Milton Friedman, you know, he he uh I didn't find in the well oh okay, I'll I'll consult Milton Friedman, but but uh I don't worship Milton Friedman. I don't I I I don't I don't um my sacred text is not the Democratic or Republican Party platform, which is a good thing because the word of God never changes. These platforms change every four years if if they have them. And so um this sort of false sense of uh allegiance or loyalty is something we need to be really cautious about because it it sacrifices our witness, it sacrifices our our clarity of thought, it it sacrifices our ability to actually side with people as opposed to siding with people who claim to be representing interests and issues that they might not have uh the right to do so.

SPEAKER_02 47:01

You alluded to this earlier, but I think it'd be great for folks listening to here. Say a little bit more about your own journey towards Jesus and what led you to him and and then into kind of vocational interests, but but let's just start with that one. What is it that made uh Jesus Christ become the person that you felt not your proximate but your ultimate allegiance was owed to?

SPEAKER_05 47:26

Yeah. Um a lot a lot sort of went went into it. I I um there were some cultural influences that were really um meaningful. There were there were some I was hearing about the gospel from sort of music artists I like, and I was I was very interested in music. I was hearing from the gospel from certain um I I always say I used to on Sunday mornings I used to uh wait for um music videos to come on BET and they'd come on at like one o'clock, but prior to one o'clock, it would be uh it would be it would be uh like church services. And so I I'd watch the church services just waiting for the music videos.

SPEAKER_03 48:15

Uh and so there were there was that.

SPEAKER_05 48:17

Um my uh um there were some people I corresponded with. This is like early days of the internet, and there were just some really faithful people that, you know, now that I think about it, like I don't know, like were they were they I only mean this really half in just, but like were they were they ain't like I don't I don't know how I found these people, but they just like faithfully responded to this with 14, 15-year-olds questions about, yeah, sure. Um uh uh I had um there was a ministry in Buffalo called the a church called the chapel, and uh the pastor there, Jerry Gillis, was really um uh influential in my coming to faith and is still a dear person to me. But the the the main thing that happened was uh my sister, who um became a Christian a few years before I did, uh our parents got divorced when I when I was five, when she was 10 or 11. Um we're from Buffalo, so Wegmans, the grocery store. I know you're a West Coaster, but Wegmans is a very popular, the best grocery store. Uh we both worked there as teenagers, and my my sister was drawn into this young married couple that worked at Wegmans together. Turned out that they were Christians. She started going to church with them, and then all of a sudden I had an evangelist next door um uh who was uh trying to walk me down Romans Road.

SPEAKER_02 49:47

And um long long story short, my So sorry, but for folks who don't know what the Romans Road is.

SPEAKER_05 49:52

Oh yeah, no, she she she was she was trying to um uh uh she she was she was trying to make uh lead me to make a confession of faith. And then if you confess that's right that lies to uh uh I was uh a little brother, so very resistant to this. But long story short, she dragged me to her her high school youth group, and while there I was handed tractive Romans and it changed my life. Um now this was happening in you know 2003, 2004, which was a time in American culture in which not dissimilar to what we have now, which is there was a lot of mainstream discussion about Christianity doing more harm in public life than positive and concerns about theocracy and and all of the all of these kinds of things, like um Christians are doing uh bad things in in public life. And so my coming to faith was not just uh coming to terms with questions about justification and theodicy and sort of core theological concepts. It was also like, what does this mean for the whole of my life? Does this mean I need to uh uh belong to a certain political party? Does this mean I need to believe certain things politically? I I had a civic bug before I had the Jesus bug. My grandfather was a uh civically minded guy. Um, and so so coming to faith was here here's the thing that it was helpful for, and and this is why I was drawn to Dallas's work when I discovered it later, which was it was clear to me coming to faith that either this was for all of life or it really wasn't anything that I was the or it just wasn't the thing. Right, you know, like like I just coming to it with relatively fresh eyes, it was just very clear that this was not a, oh, what's being asked of me is that I mutter some doctrine so that when I die I could go to heaven. It was clear to me that there was there was that uh it was the turning over of my heart and life in the here and now that had all kinds of implications, but um it it it required me um uh placing my political views, required me placing my views about relationships and all kinds of things. Um, and so so that was um the that that was part of what it meant even at 1516 to think about what it what it meant to become a Christian.

SPEAKER_02 52:34

Yeah. Wow. And so what you're doing now is really trying to take what is ultimate, um, which is to follow Jesus and figure out what are the implications of that uh in in that part of our life that does fit in politics.

SPEAKER_05 52:49

That's right. That's right. And so we work with um both senior civic leaders, and by civic, I mean, yes, elected officials, but also ministry leaders and academics and journalists, people in our civic life broadly. So we do leadership development and uh all kinds of things with civic leaders, high school students. Um, and then we run a think tank that that uh seeks to explain Christianity to the public and again offer Christian resources to the public for the public good. Um, we run an annual summit every fall that allows us to bring together hundreds of civic leaders from across the country, uh, many of whom are not Christian, but uh are looking to do their jobs well and have discovered that Christianity has something to offer them as they do their jobs well. So um we have uh last year we had uh a sitting mayor of a major American city came not because he was speaking, but was just in the audience, which was a pretty cool, pretty cool thing. And they hear from over the course of two days, 30 plus speakers um uh uh that are either trying to uh provoke, draw Christians' attention to some pressing civic issue, or they're Christians themselves offering some insights, some solution that they have to to a civic problem.

SPEAKER_02 54:16

I know you were not too long ago interviewing John Kasich, who is the former Republican governor of Ohio, and you guys are both talking about Dallas Willard.

SPEAKER_05 54:23

Yeah, no, that was fun. That was fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and even Tremper came up, you know, which uh Tremper Longman. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so uh so yeah, you know, uh uh John is is is one one of those civic leaders who I think in um in just key shining moments made decisions that were contrary to what the typical political incentive structure would have had someone in his position do. And that's that's that's what it I mean this goes back to where we've spent so much of this conversation, which is what a powerful thing it would be to have Christians who can participate in politics without giving over to politics totally its sense of what is real.

SPEAKER_02 55:13

So let me let me bring us to um uh one dimension of discipleship to Jesus and politics that you write about in your book, The Spirit of Our Politics. Um when Jesus is teaching on the Sermon on the Mount and describing what life in the kingdom looks like and illustrating it, uh Dallas would say it's not by accident that he starts with anger. Yeah. You know, you have heard it that it said, Thou shalt not kill. But I say to you, and then just goes through um call somebody fool, rock uh anger in your heart. Um, there are probably few arenas in life that evoke more anger right now than politics. And my my great-grandfather and great-grandmother were of opposite political parties. They had an agreement every time there was an election that neither one of them would vote because they would cancel each other out until one year when he waited until five minutes before the polls and then closed, and then he snuck out and voted.

SPEAKER_03 56:20

It must have been a really important election.

SPEAKER_02 56:21

I don't think she ever forgave him. Um it's it's interesting because uh, as I'm sure you're aware, in the in 1960, sociologists will ask a question about others, othering. Yes. Uh how would you feel if your child married A? Yes, that's right. And around 1960, the big concern was member of the uh another race. Yes. Now that one kind of doesn't show up on surveys. Yep. Uh, but at that time, the one that didn't show up is of an opposite political party. That's right. And and now it shows up quite highly. Yeah. So this anger of um uh I think in a lot of uh political discussions, there's kind of a sense of um if you're not angry with and about the other side, then you're lukewarm and you're apathetic and you're not a very moral person. Yeah. And uh uh if you're not angry, you're not paying attention, the as the saying goes, you write. Yeah. And here and I want to quote you here and then have you comment on this. You're right. Now I'm convinced anger is of some utility to political actors. I've seen it up close. Your anger is very useful to others. Affirm someone who is angry, and you'll find you have influence with them, even if they may not have influence with you. This is part of the nature of anger. It is easily manipulated. It's not difficult for actions motivated by a cultivate anger, cultivated anger, to become detached from any practical redress of the source of anger in the first place. We begin to cultivate anger only to find that anger is cultivating us. And I can remember um folks like Tony Campolo, yeah, uh a Christian speaker passed away a couple years ago, uh, did a lot of good, I think. But I remember him saying, Young people, I want you to get angry. Talk about anger in politics. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 58:28

Um and and I I know you I know you uh right, anger itself is not a sin. Um anger I I I think it uh it it can be uh useful. I think there is sound scriptural um warnings against the delusion that you can use anger. So it's good to be attentive to if anger arises within you. It might be indicating something important. Um it's I think folly to find yourself angry and think, how can I use this? What can this do for me? Um and our politics is full of the delusion that we could use our anger and that we need our anger to accomplish something. So it is just conventional wisdom now uh uh in uh any political analysis. And sometimes it's not even analysis, sometimes it's reported news. You'll you'll you'll see candidate so-and-so was successful. Why they more effectively channeled voters' anger. Well, that's that's um. I I I I I find I find um you know, uh uh uh Augustine says, you know, be wary of admitting even legitimate anger. So like so A, there's anger that is legitimate. Like we don't like this whole um people want to run right. Well, I have things to be angry about. Yes, you do, you do have things to be angry about. Uh so be wary of admitting even legitimate anger into your heart because once there it has the capacity to sour the whole vessel. And then Dallas would would add to that. You might discover that you've even become an angry person. So it again, this is sort of I'm riffing off of it. Uh what Dallas is saying is you you might you might find that you're not a person who has legitimate eight reasons to be angry. You might find that you're just an angry person. Yeah, and the anger just takes and then then you're angry at things. Um, I have a I have a family member who um is uh just a a very peaceable man. Um I'd never heard him really raise raise his voice, but his wife had to uh ask him to stop watching cable news because she would discover if she approached him with a question of any nature or any kind of interruption really, after he had watched cable news for a certain amount of time, he'd snap at her. And it wasn't even really him doing it, but his blood pressure had been raised so much, even just physically, just literally so tense, so like even though he wasn't yelling at the TV, again, this wasn't a guy who yelled, his his body was so um primed to lash out, yes, um, that all he needed was the slightest sort of uh unsettling to to do so. And I find looking at the public scene now, we have a lot of people who are primed to lash out. Um what I would ask people is yes, there are legitimate reasons to be angry. Um is anger the best that you have to offer? And I think that we tell ourselves these stories of um as if we're doing people a favor by being angry on their behalf. Is anger the best you have to offer? And and what what I find um is that Christians have something much better to offer than anger, and and that's love. You don't need anger to will someone's good. And the second that we get into saying, Well, i i if I'm not angry, what good am I to some you get in very, very tricky, tricky position because anger does tend to involve a willingness to do harm. Right. And and and again, like just to get it, so you wonder why we have a political life which so often justifies doing harm to one group on behalf of another, and that's because we're guided by our anger and not by our loss. Wow, wow, and we could do better, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:21

I I I I think it's tricky because on the one hand, the absence of anger isn't necessarily a virtue.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:30

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:31

So, my best friend from high school days back in Rockford, um, uh his folks died some time ago, and his sisters lived in the house. They just sold it. The family bought it in 1948. He sent me the D, this is in Rockford, Illinois, 1948. To buy the house, they had to agree not to sell it to anyone of African or Southern Italian ancestry.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:56

And so if I can read that and experience no anger, it may well be because I'm apathetic. You know, if somebody can see a child abused and not be angry, that may indicate something wrong. But I I wonder if it's a bit like Dallas would say when Jesus was talking about lust, um, to have the uh attraction, that's not a sin, but when I indulge it, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the point at which I've crossed the line and it becomes sin. And uh will to malice, ill will towards another person, will to harm.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:31

Uh the experience of anger may be inevitable. And in some cases, it may be because I care about that child or that I care about justice that I feel it. But as soon as I begin to indulge superiority, self-righteousness, um, will to harm somebody else, and it is exceedingly difficult for us to indulge the feeling of anger without those thoughts. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:57

So um I think when I talk about anger, uh, and as with so many things, it it's primarily for the purpose of self-assessment. Um I said, um, you know, so I I I I've written before that I think politics is doing great spiritual harm in Americans' uh lives, and a big reason for that is people are going to politics to get their spiritual needs met.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:26

Say that one more time, please.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:28

Politics is doing great spiritual harm in many Americans' lives, and a big reason for that is that many Americans are going to politics to get their spiritual needs met. That is a good thing to ask for yourself. Wow, if you are going to politics to get spiritual needs met. What I don't advise is in the middle of a conversation about some political disagreement, to say to the person you're talking to, I think you're going to politics to get your spiritual needs met. You know, like these Dark, because I thought that sounded like a really, really Good argument. These things can so quickly become weapons to use against other people. Yes, yes, yes. And we need to be, I think for those of us who care a lot about spiritual formation generally, we just need to be very careful that we're not either using it or giving these kinds of things to um as an excuse for condemnation or an excuse as just one more tool in the tool belt for people to win arguments or to feel superior. Like we just need to be careful. And anger is a similar, similar thing. Now, there may be there may be certain interpersonal contexts in which even the spiritual harm question, like someone I've known for years, we're in a we're studying script, you know, like we have a there's a relationship of trust. Maybe anger similarly, you know, it may in the context of a certain relationship. Maybe I'd feel permission and feel like I was doing it to serve the other person to say, you know, like have you ever noticed that whenever politics comes up, like your whole body tenses, like have you ever like thought about that? Do you feel that way?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:02

But but I I want to be really careful about like folks taking away from this conversation, like, oh, there are like five people in my contact list, and I need to call and just say, Do you know what your problem is? You know? Um, and so we want to be really careful about that. The other thing I can't help but say is um uh your friend with the deed on the house.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:23

Um, as a Sicilian who got saved watching black entertainment television, I think I would have been I would have been those are two lexes.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:32

There's no way I'm getting that in the middle of the day. I can't be on the block. This is a real problem.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:39

No, and that is that is a true story. I have those words in a in a screenshot of my phone. So answer um uh uh so uh oh, I was thinking as you were talking to you, just a great question, just for me, and then for everybody listening right now, I think, is to do a body check periodically and ask what I read about politics and when I watch somebody and when I hear certain names, what's happening in my body? And if I'm not able to experience that with a body that's at peace enough to be able to think clearly and without self-righteousness, uh, and with my muscles getting tense and the cortisol is starting to pump. Uh not that I need to use that against other people, but that's a wonderful check for my own spirit and for everybody listening to us.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And just make sure you're asking of yourself the questions that you're asking them.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:42

So, so I'm I want to read another little section of your book and then have you comment on it because you talk about uh what followers of Jesus can bring to the political arena, and I think a lot of people are confused about this. They feel like if I can't bring enough money or influence to get a candidate elected, I really don't matter in the public arena. And um so this is what you write. Uh I want you to keep in mind the stakes, the consequences and costs of continuing on our current path where the spirit of Christ is not the spirit of our politics. One, the public in our politics will continue to suffer from a lack of Christian resources. Our social relations will be strained and regularly fracture. Two, Christians' own formation into Christ-likeness will continue to be undermined by their own lack of confidence that the way of Jesus holds up in politics and public life. A lack of confidence that cannot help but infect the whole life of the person. And then three, this lack of confidence displayed in public leads Christians to doubt the very reality of their faith and leads non-Christians to never consider whether the faith testifies to reality at all. Just pause a moment. I think God was inspiring when those words were written. I think that's coming from beyond the human place. Say a little bit more, unpack it a little bit, and and did you feel when those words came to you? The way dummy.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:11

So yeah, I mean, the first thing is just personal, which is just like that that paragraph you picked out is just like that strikes like the the deepest sense of calling, I feel. Um and it also gets to the heart of so you're reading from from the spirit of of our politics. The heart of that book was to try it it is not a politics book that draws on ideas of spiritual formation. It's a spiritual formation book.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:47

Our newsletter, by the way, talks about this book precisely because that because it is such a gift to spiritual formation.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:01

It all it all goes it all goes together. Um like that that that that that that paragraph is my my attempt as concisely as possible say that we cannot separate out the life we're living with Jesus from our thoughts and actions in any sphere of life, but including the political and the and the public. When we do think we can parse things out in that way, um we not just uh discredit uh and um uh um discount our politics, we also discredit and discount our our faith. Uh the the the claim that that Jesus is Lord.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:53

Yeah, we we diminish the light on which we focus the savior.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:58

That's right. Now it's just again, and we've talked we've talked about this, but um that does not mean that Christians need to enter into political life with this false sense of certainty because that is not how Christians need to enter into anything. Yeah. But but I found that um Dallas says says this thing. He's he said, um, someone uh I mean, I think he writes this into my conspiracy, but I think it's it was in response to a question. He says, um uh uh uh does this mean we need to be uh certain? And and he talks about the cheerleader who is uh even though the team is 70 points down, we're gonna know we're gonna win, we're gonna win. It doesn't mean that we need to enter into politics with this false sense of, well, Christians gotta know things. And so that means that thing that I'm that I'm advocating for, I I need to really make clear, like this is the foundation of everything. No, uh part of what it means to put our confidence in Jesus and enter political life is to keep our confidence placed in Jesus, not our political ideas, and to know the difference.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:18

Yeah, yeah. Um another question around politics and and kind of spiritual formation. Um uh power is a very important word in the political sphere. And so as a young person to uh work in the White House, you know, you're at a place where there's a lot of power emanating. Uh and of course, power sex the money, kind of the big trifecta. How what are your observations about the way that power affects people? Um uh how does it affect uh church leaders, Christians? How should we think about power?

SPEAKER_05 1:15:09

Um so power um power can be uh used to get people in trouble and to get people out of trouble, and that is both uh others and it's yourself. Um I I really benefited mostly from uh the fact that I was so young when I started working in the White House because I had uh I saw a lot of people uh who and I worked with wonderful, incredible people, but but what something you did see is people who had worked their entire lives to work at the White House, and then they get there. It's like, well, I better wring everything I can out of this experience because this is this is it, this is it. Yeah. Um I was uh just kind of bewildered that I was there at all.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:14

You know, I just walked around and and you were not even old enough to go to a bar. No, but nobody knew that you were not old enough. So if they were going to a bar after work, you had to come up with some lame excuse for what you couldn't get.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:30

Yeah, right. And and uh the lame excuse was uh I'm sorry, the president's giving me too much too much work to do. Yeah. Oh, you have enough time to go to the bar?

SPEAKER_03 1:16:40

Oh interesting, interesting.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:43

Um lie is an abomination under the Lord and a very present help in time of trouble.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:50

That's right. That's right. Uh when I um when I left the White House, I I recognized um how many times power was getting me out of trouble when I didn't know it, or getting getting me, but you know, people wouldn't if I if I um people wouldn't challenge me when I deserve to be challenged. Yeah. Um the other thing I recognized was how much um I did get a sense of uh I got a charge out of it. And not not not the use of power. I just mean like I got a I got a charge out of the fact that I could walk over to the West Wing of the White House and get a cup of coffee. I mean it's very hard. I think people could could imagine that. But that's very that's something that was really important for me to under to understand. Um I I am in general agreement with uh our friend Andy Crouch. So I think I think I think um I think Christians should not love power. I also am concerned with this sort of rhetorical turn in which it is sort of the um polite thing to do for uh Christian talkers in particular to talk uh often with immense power themselves, to talk about all the ways in which they're um turning over power without recognizing the power that they have. Like, like I I get I get a little uh I'm like there just but you know, trying, but there's some there appears to be a shell game going on going on here because you still you know like they still you're making a lot of decisions. Um and so we we want to do with power, we want to steward the power that we have uh in a similar way that we do with any other kind of resource that we have. And if we have more time, we can talk about the difference between different resources, but but power to love. So, how do I, in the best sense of discernment and faithfulness, how do I use the power that I have? Um, which you know, I think it's interesting to think about power uh as as agency, as the range of my effective will. How do I use uh the power that I have to love and bless others? And that's how I want to think in all of life. In politics, because of what you said earlier, it has both the scaling effect and also the the um power of coercion behind it that requires a different kind of kind of analysis. But the basic principle is is the same. And we ought to, Christians ought to think about politics as an essential, not the only, not the essential, but an essential form in which they can love their neighbor. If they're not showing up in political life to love, then that ought to provoke some real um, that ought to provoke some some real questions.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:09

So you're a dad, little kids, think about the future. Uh I know that our ultimate hope is or we want it to be in God and what he's doing in Jesus. So I'll acknowledge that. But then ask, as you look around at our country these days, um, where there's so much angst in the political realm, um, what do you see that encourages you? What are bright spots, if any, um, you know, what are what are events that maybe people don't know a lot about, uh, that when you look at them, you think, uh, I I think I think there are uh places on which we can build.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:58

Yeah, there are there are so many. Um none of them I think sort of unadulterated goods. You know, I think as we said before, all of it's proximate. Um I I think the question of um agency is a critical one right now. And I think both political and technological forces are pressing on it. But the political reforms and the kind of engagement that can result from a renewed thinking about one's what's agency, uh how how we relate to the structures and systems of the day, a lot of good can come from that. And so I do think that there are really serious conversations happening right now about political reform in recognition of the fact that the, you know, think that there's real reason to think that the way that we the House of Representatives, for instance, runs right now is not working. And so I don't mean to, I'm not gonna use this podcast to endorse one model. Um uh, but uh there are some good people who are thinking about whether it's multi-member districts or uh thinking about how we deal with with how districts are drawn. Um how can we give people back a sense that their their vote means something, that there's some uh increased accountability between uh their elected officials and the districts that they serve. So I think that's that's really good. I I think that um I I I wonder if the um I wonder if we're reaching this is gonna sound like a depressing note to end on, but I uh but it's it's it's not for me. I I wonder if we're reaching the the bottom of our of the false hopes that we've placed in politics. And if out of that can come hopes that are less utopian but also uh more rightly sized in politics itself. Yeah. And and um it's going to require, as you as you know, uh the the the kind of people we are has much to do with the kind of politics we have. And so if people are placing on politicians desires for a politics of retribution or a politics of utopianism, uh more likely than not, that is what politicians are going to offer them in response. But if the people are deciding, have decided that a politics of contempt, a politics of retribution, a politics of uh utopian uh designs has not been serving them well and they demand something different, um our our politics is responsive, not perfectly, but can be responsive to the desires of the people. And so I find a lot as I like travel the country, um uh in in this city, one of like the darkest numbers is the right track, wrong track numbers, because it means like if if 72%, which I think is about the number now, say we're on the wrong track, it's seen as sort of a uh uh a judgment on what's happening in the city, and in many ways it is. Um what it does seed is this potential of imagining how how differently our politics can function, and that's that's what we need.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:07

There's a lot of cynicism and despair in politics now. People talk about the exhausted majority. What about somebody who just feels overwhelmed and exhausted, like I can't make a difference, I can't make a change? What would you say to them?

SPEAKER_05 1:25:27

First thing I'd say is um you are only responsible for what you're responsible for. Um and so if if um uh d do not overburden yourself with uh like as an individual, yeah, it's it's uh depending on what you're talking about at what level, yes, you as an individual are probably not going to change the course of a decision that's made. Um uh and depending on your situation, the other responsibilities that you have, it may not be wise for you, a good stewardship of the responsibility that you have to uh like what else would you what else within your sort of uh a sphere of influence would you be uh and probably closer to you, would you be so like all those kinds of things. I I think the last thing I want people to hear is um well now here's another checklist of activity. Like I had like my work, my family, uh church responsibilities, and now Michael's coming here and adding a whole list of civic things. That's not what any of this is about. That being said, um I've seen individuals and particularly individuals in community um change things, like absolutely change things. Um, this is what our friend John Kasich's last book was about. Um I I let me let me let me tell you a story. Um I was uh I think I was 22 at the time, 22-year-old White House staffer. Uh I got called in to brief one of the present senior advisors um about um issues that young Christians cared about. And I hadn't yet learned to write brief memos. So I, you know, it was like the memo had way too much in it. It was like 13 different issues. And uh the senior advisor asked exactly the right question on my way out, which was Michael, if we could only do one of these things, what would it be? Um and I had in my binder a CNN article from just a few days earlier of uh the Passion Conference uh that had been held in the Georgia Dome just. A few days earlier, 60,000 uh students packed out the Georgia Dome for multiple days. And for the first time at the Passion Conference that year, uh uh combating human trafficking was uh an issue focus. So for Passion is a worship conference for for students, but but they had this this passion and this this call to focus on human trafficking. Um I showed the president's advisor that article and said, you know, for for many Christians, this is the human rights issue of of our time. Uh within five weeks, the president's uh uh interagency cabinet meeting on human trafficking was moved from some like moldy basement in the State Department to the east wing of the White House. Within a few more weeks, the president was citing the Passion Conference at the National Prayer Breakfast. Within nine months of that, uh the president was giving a speech at the Clinton Global Initiative that was the longest speech on slavery of any American president since Abraham Lincoln, a speech that brought with it hundreds of millions of dollars of additional financial commitments to combating human trafficking. There were a lot of other things going on, things that made that speech possible. But I was on the inside and I could draw a direct line from 60,000 teenage college students, Christians, who were decided to go to a stadium to worship God and donate some money to combat human trafficking. And that directly got in on the president's desk and shifted the machinery of not just the US government, but a global coalition of governments to focus more attention on this on this issue. Now, those college students, now, right, what's interesting about this story, it's like those college students, the the purpose they gathered was not to be heard by presidents, but they were heard by presidents. Um, so you know, I I think you are not responsible for affecting uh for deciding outcomes that are not yours to decide. But you can steward the influence that you have and the decisions that you make to will the good and to and to try to influence the process for the good. And and uh what makes this easier for folks if is if they are not doing it in order to get credit for the good that is done.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:41

That's great. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, you may not be able to balance the federal budget, but it's still a good idea to pay your taxes. That's right.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think I I think that's right. And um you just never you just never know. Um and you never know in kind of a bad way, in that um you could write your local council person every day and not know if it affected anything. Um uh but also people overestimate how often their elected officials are hearing from people, from like real people. Um President Obama uh infamously um uh um or I guess famously, um every night would respond to 10 letters from constituents out of millions. So like if you're one of if you're one of the millions of Americans writing, you don't have any like sensible expectation that the president himself is gonna read your letter and respond. But for 10 people who did every day for eight years, uh there was a letter worth writing. Yeah. And decisions happened because of it. Yeah. Uh, even though they didn't know that on the front end, and so much of our politics is is is about that. But I I find that that's one of the reasons why politics is actually a really healthy arena for spiritual formation. If if we can't operate in politics when responsibility is so diffuse, like like if we say, well, if we say, well, I I can't be kind in political disagreements because like what if my and I'll actually hear people tell me this. Yeah, you know, if I give merit to the other side, aren't I aren't I just helping them to win? And it's like you're not on CNN. You're like at a dime, like what who is them?

SPEAKER_03 1:32:49

Like what are we what are we talking about here? You know, like just just but this is like we put on a everyone is wearing the political strategist hat.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:00

And it's like just be like a human being, like you're not James Carvinal on stage, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:07

I don't want to give them an edge. Give them an give them an edge. You're this is your eighth hour on Facebook and and you got five followers.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:15

I don't think, I don't think you know the fate of and stuff, it's so like if we can't be kind when the stakes are there, yeah. If we can't be honest when the stakes are there, how are we gonna be honest when we're balancing the books of our small business? How are we gonna be kind uh uh uh in the school drop-off line with the people that we need to that we see every every day? And so politics is actually, I think there's all this like politics so you know corrupting, so it's a secular world. It's actually put on Christ in our political life, I find it's what what other areas of our life are we are we not are are we are we rationalizing uh our our way out of out of thinking that well the stakes are too high, uh stakes are too high there.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:10

I was thinking as you were talking about the word disillusionment. Yeah, right. And that can be a painful thing, but what's worse is illusionment. Right. Yes, and so that's right, actually to be disillusioned is kind of a first step towards being able to embrace reality, which is what we can count on. Yes, and at its core is a Trinitarian fellowship of love. Yes, so that's a good place to end. Yes, Michael, thank you so much. I look forward to our next conversation. This is Joy.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:40

Great to be with you.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:41

Thanks, Sean.