Episode 1

In the inaugural episode of "The Long Obedience," host Dr. Santosh Ninan introduces his background in pastoral ministry and explains how a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche, later popularized by author Eugene Peterson, inspired the show's title. Sharing his plan to focus on expository Bible teaching, Santosh previews his upcoming study on the book of 1 Peter, which will explore what a "long obedience" truly looks like. He sets the stage for the series by unpacking the Apostle Peter's counter-cultural readiness to embrace suffering, the necessity of true humility, and why intimacy with Jesus is the only thing that ultimately matters in the Christian life.

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Hello, folks. My name is Santosh Ninan, and I want to welcome you to the first episode, the inaugural episode, the debut episode of the Long Obedience Podcast. I want to chat a little bit in this first episode. Well, I'll introduce myself. Why don't I start there? My name is Santosh Nainen. I was born in South India, in Velur, to be exact, in Christian Medical College, which is a prominent medical school in South Asia. And my family immigrated to Canada when I was three years old. So my life has really been formed more by the realities of living in Western Canada than anywhere else in the world. So I consider myself a Canadian. And I was born into a Christian home. Both my parents are followers of Jesus, and they raised me and my siblings in the faith. I have attended church for as long as I can remember. I became a Christian at the age of six through a vacation Bible school and was baptized at 13. And at 17, I felt a calling to enter pastoral ministry. And maybe at a later episode, I'll share a little bit about that story of how that happened. And so I uh went on to Bible school. I attended Canadian Bible College in Regina, Saskatchewan, which is now Ambrose University in Calgary. It's a denominational school. I grew up in the Christian Missionary Alliance and went to Canadian Bible College, then I went to Regent College in Vancouver, Canada. And we I lived in Vancouver for quite a number of years. I lived in Vancouver for about 20 years and feel very rooted to that city. Sometimes I say I left my heart in Vancouver. After Regent, and then I'm doing ministry this whole time as well. I've served in a few different churches in Vancouver and in Ithaca, New York. While I was living in New York, I also started a doctoral program, which I completed. So I hold a doctorate ministry and a master's of divinity. I'm married to Felicia. She is wonderful. She's a nurse, she works very hard, and she's a wonderful wife and mother. We met in Bible school. We have three kids, two adult children. Adam studies zoology at the University of British Columbia of the Okanagan in Kelowna, British Columbia. Sophia studies English at the University of Calgary, and our youngest son, James, is in 10th grade here in Saskatoon. And um I, as I said, I've served a few different churches. I currently now live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, uh, where I do adjunct work. I speak at various churches, I do some writings, I have a blog, and uh I'm sort of in a season of transition. And that's why one of the reasons I started this podcast to give myself a little bit of an outlet of uh just sharing what God's been doing in my life and what I'm observing about the world. So that's me and uh the long obedience. Why is it called the Long Obedience? This podcast is called The Long Obedience because it comes actually from a quote from Frederick Nietzsche. And I'm going to read the quote for you if I can find it. It's here is the quote. The essential thing in heaven and earth is that there should be a long obedience in the same direction. Thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living. The essential thing in heaven and earth is that there should be a long obedience in the same direction. Thereby results and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living. And this line, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, was picked up by pastor and writer Eugene Peterson a number of years ago. And he wrote a wonderful book of that same title, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an instant society. And I've had a copy of this book for three decades, I believe. I'm just looking at it right now. And I actually bought this in the bookstore of my Bible school when I was an undergraduate, and uh still have that book and still refer to it from time to time. But I liked that imagery of a long obedience and to look at the quote again. Nietzsche says it's the essential thing that a long obedience in the same direction results in something which has made life worth living. And so in this podcast, I'm hoping to explore what that long obedience looks like, to explore what it is that makes life worth living. I'm grateful for my friends, uh Malcolm White and Tasha, who uh are supporting this podcast and are making it possible. As I was considering what this podcast should really be about, I kind of settled on just simply teaching the Bible. That's sort of where I am gifted as a preacher and teacher in just doing expository teaching of the Bible. I've taught preaching at both an undergrad and a graduate level in college. And uh it's just something I love to do. And so that's what I'm going to do uh to start the podcast. I I'm planning to do this podcast for at least one year and kind of see where it goes. The plan is to put out an episode once a week that would contain my teaching. So it'd be primarily teaching, but then as I was thinking about it, I might do some book analysis, book reviews as well. Those of you who know me know that I love to read, that I read a lot. I read probably 50 to 60 books a year, and it's uh my favorite pastime. So maybe from time to time we'll do that as well. But this is just a teaser intro to the podcast. I'm hoping uh you will that I will be able to enrich your life in some way by just sharing with you some of the things that God is teaching me through his word. And to start off, I just want to read a description of 1 Peter of the book. So we're going to be looking at both 1st and 2 Peter, but this is what Eugene Peterson says about 1 and 2 Peter. The two letters Peter wrote exhibit the qualities of Jesus that the Holy Spirit shaped in him: a readiness to embrace suffering rather than prestige, a wisdom developed from experience and not imposed from a book, a humility that lacked nothing in vigor or imagination. From what we know of the early stories of Peter, he had in him all the makings of a bully, that he didn't become a bully, and religious bullies are the worst kind, but rather the boldly confident and humbly self-effacing servant of Jesus Christ that we discern in these letters is a compelling witness to what he himself describes as a brand new life with everything to live for. A brand new life with everything to live for. So let's unpack a little bit of that, of what Peterson there writes. He says that the Holy Spirit had shaped within Peter certain qualities. One was a readiness to embrace suffering rather than prestige. And I find that to be a very counter-cultural quality. Uh, I grew up in the West. I assume most of you listening live in North America somewhere. But we are allergic to suffering. We do not want to suffer, and we don't really suffer well. We uh we are addicted to pleasure, we are addicted to leisure, we are addicted to comfort, and anything that comes in the way of those realities, we react to very, very strongly. And yet Peterson here is suggesting that Peter embraced suffering, embraced suffering rather than prestige. So that's one of the themes we'll unlock as we're going through it. Another thing Peterson says is that he had a wisdom developed from experience and not imposed from a book. And uh that's one thing I've really noticed as I have been in ministry for three decades now, that there are a lot of people that I'm not even sure if I would call it wisdom, but they carry a lot of knowledge. They carry a lot of theological knowledge, they carry a lot of biblical knowledge, they may even have um some uh thoughtful things to say about culture, but they don't really have a wisdom that has been formed by experience. And what I mean by that is that they have not actually been very active in their faith. They have not done things like serve the poor, teach in kids ministries, been an usher, or just do these little things that people don't may not ever see. And yet it is in those little things that our character is formed, and then we access a type of wisdom that is actually inaccessible from just book knowledge. And you know, I would say one of the most profound things that I've learned over the past year is that the only thing that matters in life is intimacy with Jesus. The only things that matters in the Christian life is intimacy with Jesus. People do a lot of different things in ministry. People get PhDs, people lead large organizations or lead megachurches and all those kinds of things. And I've known those people. I I'm friends with some well-known Christian leaders, and that's all great, that's fine. But if you're not close with Jesus, if you're not in love with Jesus, if you're not obsessed with Jesus, then I don't really care what you do. I don't really care how smart you are, I don't really care how big your church is, man. Because the only thing that matters is intimacy with Jesus. The other thing Peterson says here is that Peter had a humility that lacked nothing in vigor or imagination, a humility that lacked nothing in vigor or imagination. That's a pretty interesting statement that is a little bit difficult to understand when you first see it. But I think what Peterson is getting that there is that Peter had a humility that did not hold him back from doing great things. He didn't, he didn't have a humility that was sort of um like self-pity. Sometimes I think we think humility means self-pity, that I'm no good or who would want me, or or anything like that. That's not truly what human true humility is. True humility is just simply having a realistic perspective of who you are in light of the grand scheme of things. True humility is just knowing that you are weak, that you have a lot of flaws, and yet you are also this prized, beautiful creation that God loves and God wants to use to build his kingdom. And I think that's a very powerful combination. You know, I said um I preached last uh I preached on Palm Sunday at my church here in Saskatoon. And um one of the points that I made was I was talking about in 1st uh Samuel 8, um, there's a very poignant um event that takes place in 1 Samuel 8. Um, Samuel is the last judge of Israel, and he's getting old, he's he's he's he's old, he's coming to the end of his ministry life. He has two boys, and these young men are immoral, or they're unethical. And they the the elders are very concerned, and so they come to Samuel and they say to him, Look, you're old, your boys, like they're losers, like they we can't trust them. We need a new game plan. And they tell him, We we want a king, we want a king to rule over us, and then they have this line: they say, We want a king, then we will be like every other nation, then we will be like every other nation. And I said, this represented a crisis in the history of Israel, because these men, these elders, these leaders had forgotten who they were, they've forgotten their identity as Israel. Because if there was any nation that was not supposed to be like other nations, it was Israel. I said these guys were suffering from historical amnesia, because if you look at the covenants of Israel, if you look at the Abrahamic covenant, right, in Genesis 12, and this whole thing gets started, God tells Abraham, I am going to make you into a great nation. They were going to be a great nation. And then later on, he tells Moses, he has another covenant with Moses, and he says that you will be a chosen people, you will be a treasured possession, right? So he has these incredible promises. So if there was any nation that was not supposed to be like all the other nations, it was the nation of Israel. And yet these guys forgot. And this is my point is that most of the problems in life, maybe I would even say all the problems in life, stem from when we forget who God is, when we forget who we are, and when we forget what the relationship between God and we are, God and us, the relationship between God and us. All the problems in life stem from not knowing who God is, not knowing who we are, and not knowing what that relationship is like between humans and God. Right? And that's why we that's where humility comes in, is in this correct understanding of who God is, a correct understanding of who we are, and a correct understanding of that relationship between us. So, anyways, I'm gonna wrap this up. This was uh, again, I said just a short teaser. Most of these um episodes, I think, will be about 30 minutes long. And like I said, I'll try to be putting out one a uh one a week. So uh I'm new to this whole thing. I'm sure I'm gonna make some mistakes along the way, but I know one thing that's super important is for you to subscribe to the podcast, to write a review, and to share it with others to sort of spread the word a little bit more. Thanks so much for listening. I'm excited at uh at uh how God may use uh my words coming through this microphone and how he might um just start a new thing in your own life. Uh so have a great day, have a great week, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, and uh God bless you richly.