SPEAKER_04: Located in what is now Central Turkey on his first missionary journey.
SPEAKER_04: A short time later he was disturbed by reports that troublemakers had visited Galatians.
SPEAKER_04: They were insisting that it was necessary for Gentile converts to be circumcised.
SPEAKER_04: Paul wrote this letter to clarify the matter in no uncertain terms.
SPEAKER_04: In the process, he also revealed much about how he understood his apostleship.
SPEAKER_04: Galatians is one of Paul's earliest letters, probably written while he was in Ephesus.
SPEAKER_04: And it is full of important teaching.
SPEAKER_04: For this video segment, I'll be both host and presenter.
SPEAKER_04: I will focus on a frequently overlooked emphasis in this and other letters.
SPEAKER_04: Paul's use of maternal imagery.
SPEAKER_04: The writer George Bernard Shaw once called the Apostle Paul the eternal enemy of men.
SPEAKER_04: Vast numbers of people, many of whom may never have read Paul's letters, share that opinion.
SPEAKER_04: They may know only that he said women should be silent in church and should keep their heads covered.
SPEAKER_04: We don't have to search hard to find passages that seem to support Shaw's claim.
SPEAKER_04: In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul argues that women should keep their heads covered and men their hair short.
SPEAKER_04: He bases that argument on the claim that the husband is the head of his wife.
SPEAKER_04: Later in the same letter, he, or perhaps a follower of his, insists that women should keep silent in the church.
SPEAKER_04: Other passages conflict sharply with these perspectives.
SPEAKER_04: In Romans 16, Paul recommends Phoebe, whom he calls a deacon of the church.
SPEAKER_04: Later in that same chapter, he greets a woman named Julia, who is said to be prominent among the apostles.
SPEAKER_04: These references seem to make clear there were women in leadership roles in the churches Paul founded.
SPEAKER_04: Galatians 3.28 forcefully underscores our impression that Paul saw the gospel as a radical challenge to all social distinctions.
SPEAKER_04: There is no longer Jew or Greek.
SPEAKER_04: There is no longer slave or free.
SPEAKER_04: There is no longer male and female.
SPEAKER_04: So the evidence is confusing.
SPEAKER_04: It has prompted almost endless discussion.
SPEAKER_04: And often people seem to line up to do battle, using these and other passages to support their particular points of view.
SPEAKER_04: Instead of declaring war, we might look at another and very striking set of texts.
SPEAKER_04: Those in which Paul speaks of himself as if he were the mother of his churches.
SPEAKER_04: Perhaps the most fascinating of these texts is Galatians 4.19.
SPEAKER_04: My little children, for whom I am again in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.
SPEAKER_04: Notice how complex this statement is.
SPEAKER_04: Paul is the mother of believers.
SPEAKER_04: He is in the process of giving birth to them again.
SPEAKER_04: The threat to their faith is so powerful that you can think of this as a second labor.
SPEAKER_04: Paul remains in labor not until the child is born, but until Christ is born in the child.
SPEAKER_04: I think we catch a glimpse here of just how much anguish Paul experienced over his churches.
SPEAKER_04: He uses similar language in other letters.
SPEAKER_04: In 1 Thessalonians 2, 7, as he is speaking about his initial visit to Thessalonica, Paul recalls that he and his associates were like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children.
SPEAKER_04: What an evocative image.
SPEAKER_04: In Roman society, many families employed wet nurses to feed infants.
SPEAKER_04: These were often beloved figures, warmly remembered and honored by their charges when they matured.
SPEAKER_04: Paul invokes that association, but he multiplies it.
SPEAKER_04: He was not just a nurse caring for a child, but a nurse caring for her own children.
SPEAKER_04: Another passage in 1 Corinthians 3 has a somewhat scald tone.
SPEAKER_04: Paul is chiding the Corinthians for their immature behavior, and says, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.
SPEAKER_04: I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food.
SPEAKER_04: That may not sound like maternal language to us, accustomed as we are to the baby bottle and infant formula.
SPEAKER_04: In Paul's world, however, feeding with milk was the task of the mother or the wet nurse and no one else.
SPEAKER_04: What does it mean to find Paul using language that belongs to the world of mothers and their children?
SPEAKER_04: Three things come to mind, although you may think of others as well.
SPEAKER_04: First, Paul's use of maternal language is another way of cultivating a family relationship among Christians.
SPEAKER_04: To be in some sense a child of the apostle is to be closely connected to him and to others who are also children of the apostle.
SPEAKER_04: We are in the same family.
SPEAKER_04: Although we may experience difficulties in our families, we remain part of the family in good times and bad.
SPEAKER_04: Second, when Paul speaks of himself as a mother, he makes himself vulnerable.
SPEAKER_04: A woman who is in labor with a child knows she is vulnerable.
SPEAKER_04: She is not in control of how her labor will progress or when the child will actually appear.
SPEAKER_04: A nursing mother is also at the disposal of a baby.
SPEAKER_04: Despite all attempts at organizing infant feeding schedules, it is the baby who knows when she or he is hungry.
SPEAKER_04: Third, in Paul's culture, mothers did not have the authority of fathers.
SPEAKER_04: When Paul presents himself as a mother, he voluntarily hands over the authority of a patriarch in favor of a role that will bring him shame.
SPEAKER_04: The shame of a female-identified male.
SPEAKER_04: It is fascinating that we talk about these passages so seldom.
SPEAKER_04: Even scholarly commentaries have little to say about them.
SPEAKER_04: That was not true for earlier generations in the church's life, where there was a real appreciation for Paul's language.
SPEAKER_04: In the 11th century, Anselmo Canterbury composed a prayer to Paul in which he wrote, Oh, Saint Paul, where is he that was called the nurse of the faithful?
SPEAKER_04: Who is that affectionate mother who declares everywhere that she is in labor?
SPEAKER_04: Sweet nurse, sweet mother, who are the children you are in labor with and nurse?
SPEAKER_04: But those whom by teaching the faith of Christ you bear and instruct.
SPEAKER_04: Was Shaw right?
SPEAKER_04: Is Paul an enemy of women?
SPEAKER_04: Or is he, as others would have it, an early champion of women?
SPEAKER_04: If we insist on asking the question that way, the answer must be neither.
SPEAKER_04: Paul is not an enemy to women, set out to subject them to male authority.
SPEAKER_04: Neither is Paul intentionally trying to liberate women.
SPEAKER_04: Still, a man who images himself as a mother to others is a man who knows that the gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to standards of evaluation that are not determined by what the rest of the world thinks is masculine or feminine.
SPEAKER_04: This is a man women can welcome as a partner.
SPEAKER_00: But I hope it was helpful because it's one of those big questions that people usually bring.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we could start though with either your reactions to that or images, um rhetoric, or themes in Galatians from your reading that were really um could be inspiring, could be off-putting.
SPEAKER_03: I've made reference in the past to my across before we started the study to do extra reading in order to work on making readings with all because I have in the past seen as an what I want to do with the video.
SPEAKER_03: So this is a very helpful.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Is it okay if I engage that just a little bit?
SPEAKER_00: And then let's come come back to Galatians too, because this is a big sort of study-wide theme.
SPEAKER_00: And um I I hope it's helpful to say just a few examples of how I think we use culturally laden language without always realizing the implications that it makes.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're reading your daily blogs in John, there's a lot of discussion about light, which is great.
SPEAKER_00: We're afraid of the dark.
SPEAKER_00: Light is helpful to see, but part of that implies that light is better than dark.
SPEAKER_00: And the way that's been mapped out a little bit is white is better than black.
SPEAKER_00: And we sure have picked that up, and we may say, like, no, no, no, nobody really thinks that.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, we do think that, and our use like, good, dark, bad, unwittingly, I think, fortifies that.
SPEAKER_00: And the proof of that is in these DOD tests or this Harvard test about you can make a correlation between um like cockroaches and good uh and flowers and bad, and you will be much slower doing that than if you're associating flowers with good and roaches with bad.
SPEAKER_00: So you can do that with racial terms as well, and it will reveal implicit bias.
SPEAKER_00: This is all in a book called Blind Spot, and again, the DOD has been doing this for a long time.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you can even do this uh online yourself.
SPEAKER_00: You can take an implicit bias test, it's totally free, but part of what they do is it gauges how long it takes you to complete this inventory where you have to associate flowers with bad and black with good.
SPEAKER_00: It will take you longer than if you do black with bad and flowers with good.
SPEAKER_00: Or I should say, if it takes you longer, it reveals an implicit bias that you may not even be aware of.
SPEAKER_00: Um lest we just think I'm talking about race, um, John also talks about being blind.
SPEAKER_00: He talks about people being blinded.
SPEAKER_00: So our association is blind is bad.
SPEAKER_00: Well, what if you're a blind person?
SPEAKER_00: In the Gospel of John, it's very clear that the people of Jesus' day thought being blind meant there was something wrong with you.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know that we think you earn or deserve it now, but we often associate blind people as people to be pitied.
SPEAKER_05: And we are often afraid of it.
SPEAKER_00: We're afraid.
SPEAKER_00: Same as if you've got a birthmark that covers part of your face, or you've got a shriveled digit or a shriveled arm.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and and so I don't think we're even aware of our implicit bias around these things.
SPEAKER_00: If you know and love somebody who has to live with one of those conditions, you start to realize the depth of that bias.
SPEAKER_00: And I think the the thing the Bible does more than anything, light and dark, okay, sided and unsided, but it does use cultural associations of women in some really negative ways.
SPEAKER_00: So remember when we were reading the prophets, there's all this discussion about Israel as a prostitute.
SPEAKER_00: And um at the time of the day, right, that was describing a way of practicing religion that the prophets were calling idolatrous.
SPEAKER_00: However, we still grow up in a culture where I hear, I've heard people who I would go to church and worship with, who are educated people, say things like, Yeah, that happened to her, but she was asking for it because she was wearing short shorts, or they went on a date, and that meant she was giving consent.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've heard really smart people say things like that.
SPEAKER_00: And I I think that kind of coded cultural language permeates the scriptures, which is a reminder that this is a document written by people to people with God's inspiration, but through our own cultural concepts, and we still have to make some work on how we do that.
SPEAKER_00: So I think Paul's riding in the idiom of his day, and maybe he's even more liberated than the idiom of his day, but he still is riding in it.
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't mind me saying one more bit, you know, Elizabeth Warren just dropped down to the race.
SPEAKER_00: And so now we have another race where there's no woman represented.
SPEAKER_00: And there's been these studies, and you can agree or disagree about this, it's fine, but um women have a much harder job running for president because they're they're viewed a different way than male candidates.
SPEAKER_00: And what I constantly hear people say, and actually I hear this voice in myself, is look, the first woman to run has to be flawless because otherwise she'll be dismissed for some unfair reason.
SPEAKER_00: But that idea is what makes it likely no woman's gonna make it.
SPEAKER_03: And any any natural character flaw or any natural mistake will be attributed to her femininity, not to her having a professional gap like any man does.
SPEAKER_00: Right.
SPEAKER_05: What I don't understand is is that a United States bias?
SPEAKER_05: Because England had a very famous woman prime minister.
SPEAKER_00: And look what she was called.
unknown: I don't remember that.
SPEAKER_00: The Iron Lady because she was unfeminine.
SPEAKER_00: She wore football player shoulder pads that were absolutely square, and her reputation was that lady, right, she bulldozes China shops.
SPEAKER_00: She's more masculine than men are.
SPEAKER_03: As if masculinity was the only place for strength.
SPEAKER_00: And so I I don't want you to necessarily share my political ideas.
SPEAKER_00: I'm even telling you what my ideas are.
SPEAKER_00: What I'm trying to reflect is we still have this culturally laden use of language, and we don't always realize that there's implicit bias in it.
SPEAKER_00: And um, I would suggest to you that permeates the entire Bible when we talk about images like fidelity versus prostitution, because what we usually think still is that prostitutes are the ones should be arrested instead of arresting the people who buy that.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: We rarely assign blame to men.
SPEAKER_00: We usually think of women as being the licentious ones who are just trying to benefit off their bodies instead of thinking, oh, maybe those women don't have other choices.
SPEAKER_00: So this is part of the things that we we have to think around, I think, when we read anything and judge anybody.
SPEAKER_05: So we go to the bias.
SPEAKER_05: And we know we're talking about time.
SPEAKER_05: Um how do we how do we kind of turn that or down the road?
SPEAKER_03: Well, how do we tease out what is biased and what is inspired?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it's a great question, and I think this is what again, I think it depends on your whole view of scripture.
SPEAKER_00: So if this is it, if God disclosed this and we don't get anything else, it's harder.
SPEAKER_00: If, on the other hand, this is meant to be a holy conversation starter, uh then the conversation really ought to continue.
SPEAKER_00: And I think what's interesting is women faced even more challenges then compared to now, and there's still women who are apostles, deacons.
SPEAKER_00: So imagine in that culture, that's sort of your deal.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to say, look how far we've come.
SPEAKER_00: That's a little bit silly, but then as now, um I don't want to say Paul is speaking out of both sides of his mouth.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's really easy for us to see, actually, Paul was actually pretty forward-thinking in his own day, but his language is still locked down in these images that honestly are at other people's expense.
SPEAKER_00: I would task you with like an impossible spiritual discipline.
SPEAKER_00: You go through a day without using an analogy that costs somebody something.
SPEAKER_00: It's a tough one.
SPEAKER_00: Think how how often we use sports metaphors.
SPEAKER_00: That's a home run, that's a slam dunk, you know, these these kinds of things we do.
SPEAKER_00: And um again, there's a little bit of athletic bias in some of these sorts of things.
SPEAKER_00: Oh Mike, that's just a way of talking.
SPEAKER_00: But uh the words we use create the reality we live in, and and just to be really fair, uh, and I wouldn't have known this except um I'm married to somebody who's who pays attention to things.
SPEAKER_00: Women are different sizes than men.
SPEAKER_00: Women's shoes are a totally different size because women should be smaller.
SPEAKER_00: So we've just arbitrarily made up a women's size.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, look, you could have a universal sizing system, like that would be fine.
SPEAKER_02: Um there is one, but we don't use it.
SPEAKER_00: We don't use it.
SPEAKER_02: But everywhere else on the size 38.
SPEAKER_00: Women's clothing sizes are arbitrarily different because women should be smaller than men.
SPEAKER_00: The clothes are sometimes even cut exactly the same way, which is really sad because women's bodies are different from men's bodies, and we don't make room for that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: So um, those are the tough ones.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we made some real progress in the 80s.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have firemen, we have firefighters.
SPEAKER_00: Like we figured that out.
SPEAKER_00: I think we got that one.
SPEAKER_00: In general, we have police officers, not policemen.
SPEAKER_00: I think we've mostly figured that one out.
SPEAKER_00: We have flight attendants, we don't have stewardesses, right?
SPEAKER_00: We're starting to make the deal between servers and waitresses, but I mean, these are just some small examples.
SPEAKER_00: You could say those are really, really petty, but I would tell you the devil, that is the slanderer, is in the details.
SPEAKER_00: So I think this is part of what we have to tease, tease out a bit.
SPEAKER_00: And just to give you an example of uh Galatians language, right?
SPEAKER_00: As for those mutilators of the flesh, Paul says, I wish they'd just cut the whole thing off.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he says in Greek.
SPEAKER_00: Emasculate themselves is the pretty way of saying that, which is still not pretty.
SPEAKER_00: So these are kinds of words, and you know, that's what's really helpful.
SPEAKER_00: Um in the Baptist church I grew up in, I would never say something like that in a sermon.
SPEAKER_00: Here I'm actually a little divided about whether I would.
SPEAKER_00: I've heard bishops use profanity in sermons, but hey, they're bishops.
SPEAKER_00: So there's really no one you can complain to.
SPEAKER_00: About them, you know, there's the sort of the deal, and we're still in the middle of what kind of language do we use that's offensive and non-offensive, at whose expense is it?
SPEAKER_00: And I do think that's part of this conversation that's really important.
SPEAKER_00: And it comes back to how we view scripture, Tim.
SPEAKER_00: I think, as to like, you know, are these words so set that they can't be argued with, or are these like, again, are these conversations starters?
SPEAKER_00: And we have an opportunity to say, hey, I really like where you're going, so let's think about how we can get there more safely.
SPEAKER_05: I I think it's interesting that these scriptures, or at least many people, um seem to think that they don't evolve.
SPEAKER_05: Um and I would think that as the world changes, scriptures have to be evolved too.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think, you know, and I hope this is helpful.
SPEAKER_00: Um, scriptures, sacraments, whatever we want to call, right?
SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's helpful to think sacraments just for a second.
SPEAKER_00: There's seven, right?
SPEAKER_00: And I would tell you most people only do two or three of them.
SPEAKER_00: And I would also tell you for me, there's sacraments that didn't make the seven.
SPEAKER_00: Like learning for me is sacramental.
SPEAKER_00: Well, it didn't make it into the seven.
SPEAKER_00: I think everybody's got sacraments that didn't make it in the seven, but what we said is here's our shared common basis.
SPEAKER_00: So go ahead and have more, but here's what we're seeing is the minimum we have in common.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what we've done with the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: We've sort of said, look, I if we're honest, right?
SPEAKER_00: I've got novels that are in my book of scripture.
SPEAKER_00: And you've got different novels or nonfiction books that are in your canon of scripture, but these are the ones we're going to share and say, here's our minimum.
SPEAKER_00: And what's curious is there's books in the minimum we don't like and that don't even seem to align with one another.
SPEAKER_00: I actually think there's something really beautiful about that because the question then is we're forced to include in our sacred writings writings that don't agree with us.
SPEAKER_00: And how will we treat them?
SPEAKER_00: If we're Thomas Jefferson, we'll just sniff at what we don't like.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, there's an opportunity to say, I'm gonna make room for you even though I don't like you.
SPEAKER_03: Which is the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I think so.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Paul may not be making much room for the Judaizers.
SPEAKER_00: He may not.
SPEAKER_00: Well, and and and that's our fundamental issue here, right?
SPEAKER_00: And you know, it maybe it's helpful to just point out that in a letter we write, we would write, Dear Gina.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the way Paul is writing a letter goes like this Dear Gina, I'm mad as hell at you.
SPEAKER_00: So interesting he chose to use dear Gina, that social convention.
SPEAKER_00: Paul gives this greeting that is very not heartfelt, right?
SPEAKER_00: To the people in Galatia, grace and peace with you.
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm gonna take it a task.
SPEAKER_02: But I think it's such a it helps me to realize this is a snapshot in time.
SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02: That's how he felt at that time.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: In root and responding to that particular set of circumstances.
SPEAKER_02: When I first left the denomination I was raised in, and and I found Galatians, I was like, I was, I'm out every line I was like, yes, yes, you know, I really was really, this meant the world to me.
SPEAKER_02: But ten years later, you know, I can look at it through a different lens.
SPEAKER_02: You see what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00: And that's a great thing.
SPEAKER_00: Like Tim's saying is like not only do we have like this world global evolution going on of thought and interaction with one another, which by the way helps pandemic spread, but we also have evolution going on in our own lives, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so, in in the in the one sense, Paul is telling people, I hope you'll just go and cut the whole thing off, but he's also saying we're one body many parts, and we really can't do without parts of the body.
SPEAKER_00: So that's an inherent contradiction.
SPEAKER_00: And and I do think there's many ways we can view this.
SPEAKER_00: Um, liturgically, I think it's really interesting that sometimes we say things that aren't true, but that we feel.
SPEAKER_00: I'm really positive that what I like about our liturgy when I'm thinking about it properly, is I can say things like God, I am wretched.
SPEAKER_00: Because I feel like that, I truly feel that way.
SPEAKER_00: But then I get to hear that it is God's property to have mercy and compassion, which means my feelings aren't the last word.
SPEAKER_00: There's also God's truth.
SPEAKER_00: So I may feel wretched, but God doesn't feel that way about me.
SPEAKER_00: And so this I think is part of that.
SPEAKER_00: Like we can be really mad, particularly because we want to be associated as a body, as one body, and we're mad at people who are cutting off other parts of our body or might not even have anything to do with us.
SPEAKER_00: It's sort of like, how do you include somebody who doesn't want to be included with you?
SPEAKER_00: Or and we've talked about that sort of thing before, and I think it shows up, or how do you include somebody who is excluding others?
SPEAKER_00: And here's Paul getting really mad about that situation.
SPEAKER_05: But also, I think you mentioned the the church you grew up in.
SPEAKER_05: I grew up in as a ring church.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: Probably about the same thing.
SPEAKER_05: And I think Paul, when you chastise or you identify as the group that follows the law.
SPEAKER_05: I see that as also saying that fundamentalists, like the Baptists, are in the same boat as the people who try to impose the law.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to pick you up there if I can and say what I think is like the biggest theme of this book, which is what every Christian, every person I know struggles with.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: There's this idea, and Paul's gonna say it, that there is no difference between slaves and free, Jews and Greeks.
SPEAKER_00: Really, the whole idea is that everybody, God has leveled the playing field for everybody.
SPEAKER_00: So imagine the hierarchies that we're used to being smooshed flat.
SPEAKER_00: So a triangle goes to a line.
SPEAKER_00: It's a really great idea, but we have a really hard time living there because we're hierarchical people.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I would even tell you, hierarchy is so natural that my chickens have a pecking order.
SPEAKER_00: My dogs have an order, and sometimes they'll push on it.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it has nothing to do even with who's bigger or who's older or who's more athletically inclined.
SPEAKER_00: Like my puppy has ascended over my 11-year-old dog who's much bigger than her, did that really fast.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe she's just got a little more vinegar in her.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but but my older dog let that happen without challenging it.
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting how that goes.
SPEAKER_00: So in Galatians, everybody's the same, except how do you have better piety than somebody else?
SPEAKER_00: Now I want to tell you, having better piety than somebody else is like fundamentally a challenge in every community organization or religion I've ever been a part of.
SPEAKER_00: So, as a teenager, the way this looked was: hey, there's these missionaries who are smuggling Bibles into Russia.
SPEAKER_00: Look how faithful they are, more faithful than you.
SPEAKER_00: There's these people who are going to live in Africa and put up with all kinds of weird African things for the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: These were the stories I got fed as a teen, right?
SPEAKER_00: And I even worried, like maybe my piety wasn't good enough when I was gonna be a priest.
SPEAKER_00: Like maybe there were people more pious, like they they prayed more authentically, or they prayed more, or they were better Bible studiers, or they did more good works.
SPEAKER_00: These are the kinds of things I think we still struggle with.
SPEAKER_00: Because what we want to do is say, how do we have confirmation we're doing the right stuff?
SPEAKER_00: Well, let's point to what we're doing, or to people who are doing less than us.
SPEAKER_00: And that way we can sort of rank and file.
SPEAKER_00: So look, we're all free in Christ, the Galatians say, but man, we would have a better confirmation if we went ahead and became Jewish as well.
SPEAKER_00: And we can say that's really foreign, but I don't think so.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's very domestic.
SPEAKER_00: Very domestic to our own faith lives.
SPEAKER_00: I listen to radio preachers sometimes, and I say, my education is so much better than theirs.
SPEAKER_00: How can they spout that stuff down?
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, I think there's room for that.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know that I have to make room for really bad stuff, but somehow I need to continue to make room for people.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the that's what Galatians is dealing with, right?
SPEAKER_00: How do I listen to somebody say, if you give money to God, God will pay you back literally?
SPEAKER_00: I disagree with that.
SPEAKER_00: So how do I stay in communion with that person?
SPEAKER_00: There's people in the church I grew up with who just, if they listened to this, they would want to defrock me.
SPEAKER_00: How do I stay in communion with them?
SPEAKER_00: I could say, look, I'll accept our difference, but they won't accept mine.
SPEAKER_00: How do I deal with that?
SPEAKER_05: Doesn't Paul say somewhere that if your hand is not doing the right thing, you cut it off?
SPEAKER_00: That's Jesus, right?
SPEAKER_00: And if your eye is causing you to sin, you gouge it out.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the question: does your eye cause you to sin?
SPEAKER_00: I wonder if that isn't just a little bit of blame, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Where it's interesting because when we read in James, each one of us is dragged away by our own desire.
SPEAKER_00: We want what we don't have, and we'll do anything we can to get it.
SPEAKER_00: Is it your eye that does that, or is there something in our spirit that we're meant to not cut off and destroy, but to grow out of?
SPEAKER_00: And this I think is a really interesting image that Paul uses in Galatians.
SPEAKER_00: We've been crucified with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We're supposed to be dead to the law and to sin, otherwise, all of this was for nothing.
SPEAKER_00: And if I can unpack it just a bit, people don't get crucified for stealing bread.
SPEAKER_00: If you steal bread, you get your thumb cut off.
SPEAKER_00: People were only crucified if A, they were poor, and B, they were doing something like that was considered insurrection or treason.
SPEAKER_00: So crosses are not even for murder.
SPEAKER_00: You murder somebody, you're gonna get stoned, you're gonna get your head cut off.
SPEAKER_00: Crosses are billboards that say here's what happens when you mess with the domination system of Rome.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what happens when you try to overthrow the culture that we've all decided to live by.
SPEAKER_00: And what's culture mean?
SPEAKER_00: The way we do things around here.
SPEAKER_00: So I think what Paul is really inviting us to say is we're supposed to die to the way we do things around here so that we can live a new and different way.
SPEAKER_00: Francis, Saint Francis experiences this when he kisses a leper.
SPEAKER_00: There was also a quarantine going on.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, I'm not suggesting we violate that quarantine.
SPEAKER_00: But but Francis saw a leper and was overwhelmed with that person's humanity, and instead of maintaining appropriate distance, he didn't just go touch that leper, he kissed that leper, and that was his real conversion moment.
SPEAKER_00: And then that way, he not only died to social expectations, he died a little bit to his internal values that have raised him so that he could live a different way.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, I don't know, I'm not recommending we do something silly, but I think what Paul is saying is this idea of living as equals is so new and so hard.
SPEAKER_00: It's like we have to die to everything we're used to.
SPEAKER_00: Again, there's no way we can take little bits of the gospel and just add, you know, add a little here, add a little there, that will ruin both things.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel is about us emptying ourselves utterly so that we can make room for something that's new.
SPEAKER_00: It's a total schematic, total worldview change.
SPEAKER_00: I haven't made it.
SPEAKER_00: I can tell because when I read Galatians, I get really mad at those people.
SPEAKER_00: And that's proof I haven't made it.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, those people aren't the ones going around circumcising, those people are the ones who preach like or who do like or who blank.
SPEAKER_00: I was a little over preaching, but I but I I I think this is the core the core bit.
SPEAKER_00: Um I just happened to be reading Brene Brown again, and and she talks about really that there's a difference between things like hustling for our worth.
SPEAKER_00: She says the hustle for worth is when we try, try, try to justify our existence, and when we do things for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to tell you, I think it's a razor's edge between those bits, you know, because sometimes I'll go jogging and it might start out for me in the middle.
SPEAKER_00: I think about how I'm jogging faster than other joggers, or how I'm increasing in my training program, and that's gonna let me do blank in relation to other people.
SPEAKER_00: It's really hard to separate that stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not sure faith is really different.
SPEAKER_00: Again, I tell you right now, like in my head, I'm like, well, I'm working full time, but I'm not with people full-time, so how do I like give full-time bank for the book?
SPEAKER_00: I know what I should do.
SPEAKER_00: More recordings, more this, more that, more this, more that, so I can hustle for worth.
SPEAKER_00: And um, I think Paul's asking us to get off the treadmill.
SPEAKER_00: And he's mad that people are on the treadmill because in this case, being on the treadmill is hurting everybody else.
SPEAKER_00: It's inviting people to get up on the treadmill, not to get off.
SPEAKER_00: It's saying, your faith counts like nothing unless you get up here and run with me.
SPEAKER_00: You ever felt that way?
SPEAKER_00: This is where I think it really speaks to us.
SPEAKER_00: If we dismiss this as an old problem, we've misread it.
SPEAKER_03: I thought not only not in terms of rescuing, but in terms of teaching helping them to make better decisions, helping them to uh live stuff rather than getting handouts and when I would try to explain to the team why and how just getting a handout was hurting that person.
SPEAKER_03: I was challenged.
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes I was horrible, but sometimes I was verbally, aggressively challenged, and my faith was a question how could you be a Christian and think that way?
SPEAKER_03: So so the difference in approach, the difference in thinking was the same as being radical.
SPEAKER_03: So it was it was a difficult function without becoming defensive or angry.
SPEAKER_03: So I had to set those things aside in order to teach the team to consider a different view.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And if it's okay, if you don't mind me, following, did you often feel like the handout approach was unchristian yourself?
SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And so both of you had strong visceral resistance to the mindset of one another and you're working on the same team.
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: And and the question was, how long could you do that?
SPEAKER_00: Could you reconcile those differences and appreciate what each other's intentions were, or was there a point where you needed for your own mental health to say, I've got to step back?
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
SPEAKER_03: I struggled with that for years, trying very desperately to fit in and be a part of the team and lift the team up to a higher level of serving.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: What I considered, my my thought was a higher level of serving.
SPEAKER_03: And finally I realized they don't want to be lifted up, they don't want to hear me anymore, I'm not being useful, and the turmoil that I felt every time I went in there because I was ready for their pushback.
SPEAKER_03: And it was not a it was years I did that.
SPEAKER_03: And then I finally made the break and just resigned.
SPEAKER_03: And I didn't do it in an angry way, I just said I need to this.
SPEAKER_03: I'm resigning.
SPEAKER_03: And I was invited to come in or asked to come in and give some feedback on how they worked, and I declined that because they hadn't listened to me all these years, and I didn't want to put myself through that agony of speaking out and being rejected again.
SPEAKER_03: And being rejected again.
SPEAKER_00: So, what would it have taken now that you've had some distance?
SPEAKER_00: What do you think would have had a little more holding power for you?
SPEAKER_03: Holding on me?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like what do you think could have helped manage that situation a little bit better, obviously, where you didn't get burned out and come in anticipating resistance?
SPEAKER_00: Or at least come in like utterly defensive, you know.
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
SPEAKER_03: I think I wanted to be a part of that so much, and we wanted to be of service.
SPEAKER_03: Not just not a part of that, but to be of service for the church to use what gifts have been given.
SPEAKER_03: That if I had any idea of what would have helped, I would have done it.
SPEAKER_03: I would have done it.
SPEAKER_03: Where I am now, I shifted in terms of I'm done explaining, I'm done teaching.
SPEAKER_03: Where I am now is is if I tell somebody that I have changed churches, and I've just done that within the last week, have made that step to say not only am I not a part of the team anymore, I am not attending a church.
SPEAKER_03: I have, and what I say is I have found another church that is a better fit for me.
SPEAKER_03: Because if I explain why it's a better fit for me.
SPEAKER_03: That I am criticizing what is key to their faith basis.
SPEAKER_03: And I don't want to do that.
SPEAKER_03: That works for them.
SPEAKER_03: It doesn't work for me, so I'm not explaining.
SPEAKER_03: I'm just saying this is a better fit.
SPEAKER_03: I'm done.
SPEAKER_03: I'm tired.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it seems like one thing in the story that you told, and thank you for sharing, because I know it's very personal, that there's a difference between us offering why we've made changes and us being invited to share.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's part of the way we do it.
SPEAKER_00: And I I don't know if it's helpful to say when people come to my door and they ask me what I think, I could just say, get out of here, you're not going to listen, or I could say, listen, if I'm going to share something really personal, I need you to accept that you're not going to criticize or judge or repeat.
SPEAKER_00: And if you'll if you'll do that, I will share my story.
SPEAKER_00: And then I'm going to expect you to go.
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm not ready to hear your side, you haven't earned that from me.
SPEAKER_00: The way you'll earn it is by listening to, you know, I wonder if there isn't a way that we can set some boundaries that might allow for a little bit of disagreement.
SPEAKER_00: And if they don't take them, they don't take them, but we offered.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying you should have done that.
SPEAKER_00: This occurs to me as ways that we can deal when we know we've got some differences of opinion, is we say, do you really want to, if you'd really like to know, here's what I need in order to feel safe sharing.
SPEAKER_00: And um I'll ask you your opinion next week after I've, you know, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: I I I don't either.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think that you're right.
SPEAKER_00: I I don't I'm I don't I don't want to be right or wrong.
SPEAKER_00: What I want to say is living in tension is is is tense.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_02: I can share one thing that was helpful for me and probably uh allowed me to stay at least another six months, if not another year, trying to get my timeline down.
SPEAKER_02: But uh from the church that I went, staff-wise, to have I mean it was one staff member, not a ministry staff member, but just one person in the organization, when I offer to say, you know, maybe it would just be best if I went ahead and stepped down, for him to say to me, hold up, I just don't know that we're ready to lose your knowledge base yet.
SPEAKER_02: He acknowledged that I know what I'm doing.
SPEAKER_02: Just to have someone acknowledge that yes, your wisdom or your knowledge or your skills are valuable to us.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, that made a huge difference in terms of, I think your question was how could it have been a better, or maybe lasted a little longer to me just for someone in that building to acknowledge that, yeah, I really do know what I'm talking about, made a huge difference to me.
SPEAKER_00: So even if it comes to stepping down, it's stepping down with dignity is part is part of it, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like here's what you've been doing, so we can hold institutional knowledge of that, even if we choose to like tinker with that or change the direction, we've got a clear understanding of what and how you were doing, which is affirmative, right?
SPEAKER_00: Right.
SPEAKER_02: So if he would have offered an exit interview, absolutely I would have been happy to sit down with him and tell him what I thought what didn't.
SPEAKER_02: But the other people on the staff that offered an exit interview, no.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Because it's really not going to change anything.
SPEAKER_00: That's that's really interesting to hear.
SPEAKER_00: And in some ways, right, thinking about how we exit might determine whether we need to exit.
SPEAKER_00: If we're open to that at the end, we may preclude the ending.
SPEAKER_00: There's an interesting thought, right?
SPEAKER_00: And and and Lila, who's not here today, has said this a bunch of times.
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's this word schism, which means like ripping a paper.
SPEAKER_00: So like a schizophrenic, right, is really ripped between personalities.
SPEAKER_00: But um her her her the thing she said a few times that I remember is choose heresy over schism, which is an interesting approach.
SPEAKER_00: Choose heresy over schism because when you when you rip a body in half, it's mangled.
SPEAKER_00: And um the holding power allows you to function together and share life.
SPEAKER_00: And I, if you didn't mind, I we talked a little bit about other churches, but I did grow up Southern Baptist, and there was a um concerted effort, and this is all verified, this is not disputed, in the early to mid-80s for the conservative element um fiscally, theologically, to take over the convention.
SPEAKER_00: It was very clear that this is what they wanted to do, and they did it.
SPEAKER_00: And as a result, the the biggest owner of missionary capital in the world ripped in half.
SPEAKER_00: And what happens when you lose your progressive element is that the progressives get more progressive, the conservatives get more conservative, and there's no middle anymore.
SPEAKER_00: And what that means is there's no sort of tension to pull us away from our own natural leanings, which is idolatry, where we don't have any dialogue, we just have monologue.
SPEAKER_00: So there's really this interesting thing: heresy over schism, is really choosing community over conformity.
SPEAKER_00: And that's going on right now in every aspect of life.
SPEAKER_00: And it's and it's tough.
SPEAKER_05: And it's getting worse.
SPEAKER_00: I I think it could be getting worse.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I think there's this interesting trend in social media, for example, that we can find all kinds of people who agree with us and just spend time with people who think like us.
SPEAKER_00: But oddly enough, the research seems to indicate that increases our loneliness, it doesn't decrease it.
SPEAKER_00: So there's this really interesting idea, I think, and this is like perplexing to me why the Episcopal Church isn't growing by leaps and bounds, because the Episcopal Church says we're not united in doctrine, we're united in worship.
SPEAKER_00: And that is that essentially means there's room for everybody, and actually, if we'll play on our conversations with a minimum of tolerance but a goal of respect, we'll all grow together.
SPEAKER_05: Um I was reading this old pamphlet the other day that what 70% of disc agreements came from the faith.
SPEAKER_00: Clergy, I would tell you, especially.
SPEAKER_00: I was talking to somebody the other day who wants to work here and like me grew up in a bunch of different denominations.
SPEAKER_00: And I would tell you in my own journey, this was it.
SPEAKER_00: If the Episcopal Church didn't hold me, I was done.
SPEAKER_00: And it did.
SPEAKER_00: It does.
SPEAKER_00: It's still sometimes hard.
SPEAKER_00: It's still sometimes hard because it's hard for me to think about how do I include people that don't want to include me.
SPEAKER_00: And there are these stages, and everybody's different.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the stages of group development are like forming, norming, and then there's storming.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I can't be bothered with that order.
SPEAKER_00: I prefer to go ahead and do the storm first to figure out whether you're going to reject me or not, so we can just get over it.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's really healthy because it's like approaching everybody like this and seeing whether or not somebody runs the other way.
SPEAKER_00: But you know, I will tell you, I and I and I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: I don't, I don't, um, I want to live my own life and be in my own skin, but I also want to respect literally that my skin might preclude me offering grace to people.
SPEAKER_00: So how do I balance that?
SPEAKER_00: It's really, really hard.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe I shouldn't be that worried about it, but because of the way I grew up, I am worried about it.
SPEAKER_00: That obviously hasn't stopped me.
SPEAKER_00: But it what it does create is a lot of tension and enjoying my own skin.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know that that's good.
SPEAKER_00: I I just want to be honest, it's real.
SPEAKER_02: As far as language in my own head, that helps me is to be able to, and and I have to I'm not good at it, but the goal is what I have to say is I may be your enemy, but you are not my enemy.
SPEAKER_02: And really try to embrace that.
SPEAKER_02: And you know, I may be your enemy, but I'm not gonna make you my enemy.
SPEAKER_02: You're not my enemy, yeah, kind of thing.
SPEAKER_02: That's helpful to me.
SPEAKER_02: I'm not saying I'm good at it, but you know, at least the words help me.
SPEAKER_00: If it's okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna upfront a blog you're gonna read in Holy Week.
SPEAKER_00: I know when it comes out because I scheduled it yesterday.
SPEAKER_00: And um, Jesus sort of says, you know, my goal is that all of you may be one as I and the Father are one.
SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting to think about St.
SPEAKER_00: Patrick's idea is that the Trinity is three leaves on the same plant, but they're different leaves.
SPEAKER_00: And I've never grown up with this idea.
SPEAKER_00: I've always heard like the Trinity is like Neapolitan ice cream, different colors, but let's be honest, they all really taste the same.
SPEAKER_00: What if those flavors were dramatically different?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, really, what if they were really, really different?
SPEAKER_00: What if the Holy Spirit was some eccentric personality, uh, type A, and somehow God the Father is type B, and God the Son is some entirely different thing, and so they really are not mono flavors.
SPEAKER_00: They disagree a lot.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, what if they actually disagreed within the Godhead?
SPEAKER_00: But their unity is based not on uniformity, but on being unified in their disagreements so that they share the same stem.
SPEAKER_00: Um, that may be heretical, but it's really inspiring for me to think about the Godhead could really disagree with each other.
SPEAKER_00: They could even have totally different interests.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus might really like gangster rap, and God the Father prefers Muzak.
SPEAKER_00: Could you imagine that?
SPEAKER_00: I know it sounds crazy, but that's the life we live.
SPEAKER_03: It's a crazy.
SPEAKER_00: And there's this wonderful picture since this lady talked about Paul and women from the Kabbalah that when God created the world, God, like a pregnant woman, had to make room inside of God for something different.
SPEAKER_00: And like a pregnant woman, God doesn't just make room, God sends nourishment.
SPEAKER_00: It's really easy for me to nourish things that enjoy my nourishment, that say thank you, that do what I want them to do.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's really, really hard for people to send nourishment, for me to nourish people who are overtly rejecting the nourishment I send.
SPEAKER_00: And so for me, there's been this really helpful way of thinking about people, like in the Buddhist tradition, that the nourishment I send is may you be free from pain.
SPEAKER_00: And in that way, instead of I hope you get what you deserve, it's really I do hope you find happiness.
SPEAKER_00: And if I can send that hope and that nourishment in my spirit, then then we're united in that little stem, even if the leaves are really, really different.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that's a great conclusion.
SPEAKER_00: I I just it's on my mind because I wrote it yesterday.
SPEAKER_05: Does Paul offer us any kind of way of addressing that?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I think he does.
SPEAKER_00: I and I think the real climax of the book is when Paul talks about, and fruit is not the right word.
SPEAKER_00: Um, Paul calls out a litany of vices.
SPEAKER_00: So I think really what he does is he offers us um sort of proof in the pudding, ways that we are living or not living into this equality that God intends.
SPEAKER_00: And if you didn't mind, I'm gonna read those vices to you.
SPEAKER_00: He contrasts them with the fruit of the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: So let's think about the thorns, the thorns we settle for versus the fruit God intends.
SPEAKER_00: Um, when we hear works of the flesh, fruit of the spirit, we're kind of buying into this idea that spirit is good, flesh is bad.
SPEAKER_00: Paul did not believe that at all.
SPEAKER_00: Did not.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, Paul believes in a physical bodily resurrection that we don't even believe in anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Because he believes we don't have souls, we are souls.
SPEAKER_00: What Paul is saying, I think, is that there's a way in which we can live into reptilian evolution or mammalian evolution.
SPEAKER_00: We can either live as reptiles, fight, flight, freeze, food, reproduction, the five F's, or we can live into this higher nature of our being, which is about nurturing and caring.
SPEAKER_00: So listen to the thorns.
SPEAKER_00: They're obvious, he says.
SPEAKER_00: Fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolity, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions.
SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, when you hear the word drunkenness, let's not just think about too much alcohol.
SPEAKER_00: Let's think about people who are drunk on data right now.
SPEAKER_00: Drunk, consuming so much data that their spirit has no rest.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, like I'm a mathematician, believe in data, but I don't believe in being drunk on data.
SPEAKER_00: I had, and if it's okay to call this one out, right after 9-11, they kept sharing these planes, flying over and over, just these planes flying and blowing up.
SPEAKER_00: And I had a professor say, this is really what Greek has in mind with the word pornea.
SPEAKER_00: It's pornographic.
SPEAKER_00: There's a level of intimacy with something that you have not earned intimacy with.
SPEAKER_00: So to saturate yourself with these images of destruction is drunkenness.
SPEAKER_00: Now contrast that with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
SPEAKER_00: None of those are feelings, not a single one of them.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Love is a set of practices.
SPEAKER_00: I show my love with my commitments to you.
SPEAKER_00: Peace.
SPEAKER_00: Remember that peace is not the cessation of conflict, but the presence of justice.
SPEAKER_00: Peace is about building new bridges where the old ones have burned down.
SPEAKER_00: This is ways we live in community when it's hard.
SPEAKER_00: We build peace.
SPEAKER_00: When we're in the middle of disagreement, we find something we can agree on.
SPEAKER_00: Even if the other person doesn't want that.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe all we agree on is we're both human beings created in God's image-likeness.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how, it's a mystery, I'll take it on faith.
SPEAKER_00: That allows a basis for some kind of shared foundation so that we can build differently, but at least there's a common basis, right?
SPEAKER_00: Practicing peace is really, really hard because our brain, when it's confronted with disagreement, likes to go to what do you know, um, factions.
SPEAKER_00: We're hardwired to be factional people for our evolutionary survival.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's saying, no, no, you practice peace, which is instead of cutting each other off, practice having a common basis.
SPEAKER_00: Gentleness and self-control.
SPEAKER_00: See, these are really interesting things.
SPEAKER_00: Anger, by the way, is not even a good feeling.
SPEAKER_00: The therapists I know say anger is a dumping ground for I haven't, I don't know how I'm feeling, but it's really like full of adrenaline and cortisol.
SPEAKER_00: So anger is this dumping ground, and really it's not even a feeling.
SPEAKER_00: We should use words like disappointment or frustration or disrespected.
SPEAKER_00: So the question is: when we have that feeling, do we let it sit somewhere or do we practice self-control?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, really, Paul is contrasting the difference between thorns, which choke fruit and can hurt the vine, and fruits that essentially not only feed and nourish other people, but remember these are like wine fruits.
SPEAKER_00: And this fruit then is a symbol of God's joy.
SPEAKER_00: That I want to tell you, I think, the fruit of the spirit, which all of us who went through Iwana or grew up seven Baptists, we had to memorize this anyway.
SPEAKER_00: Um, this is like Paul's key to living.
SPEAKER_00: And interestingly, we know this stuff, we just don't do it.
SPEAKER_00: We use the fruit of the spirit in a way that is factional and full of envy because we say, I've got the fruits of the spirit, and I don't see you having them, so there's something wrong with you.
SPEAKER_00: Which is factionalism.
SPEAKER_00: That's the interesting and the whole book of Galatians is about not living into a faction about who's got better piety.
SPEAKER_00: I just I said I was done preaching and I'm not done, so I'm sorry about that.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul does say you reap what you sow.
SPEAKER_00: And I think what's interesting is you can take that to mean the more I give the church, the more that God will give me.
SPEAKER_00: But I think what Paul really means is if we sow seeds at having to hustle for our worthiness and earn righteousness and justify our existence, that's exactly what we're gonna get back.
SPEAKER_00: So we can't think that if we, you know, try to justify ourselves before God, we're gonna get anything back other than that.
SPEAKER_00: Because if that's what we believe, that's what we're gonna see.
SPEAKER_00: Curiously enough, Paul says in this book, justification, your justification wasn't.
SPEAKER_00: It was given to you.
SPEAKER_00: So when you hear words about, you know, I think we're all clear, when we hear words like Judaizers and circumcisers of the flesh, Paul is really talking about people who say, you have to become Jewish first in order to become Christian.
SPEAKER_00: And you know that in the missionary tradition, there are people who went to Africa and said, you have to adopt European culture before you can become Christian.
SPEAKER_00: We have to convert you culturally before we can convert you spiritually.
SPEAKER_00: So you've been practicing polygamy.
SPEAKER_00: I see you've got eight wives, send seven of them away, even though that means they're gonna get stoned and killed.
SPEAKER_00: And missionaries could not figure out why people were not excited about adopting this.
SPEAKER_00: Because again, to do that lied at odds with the very gospel they were trying to proclaim.
SPEAKER_02: I've always had that question.
SPEAKER_02: Why is this good news to people that are looking for?
SPEAKER_02: I guess, like in the beginning, the good news was that hey, this Messiah that was prophesied, here he is.
SPEAKER_02: This is him.
SPEAKER_02: But why is that good news to people that were never looking for a messiah to begin with?
SPEAKER_00: So I think this is really, really great, and the Gospel of John does this better than any gospel, differentiates between Jesus being the Messiah with the small M and with a capital M.
SPEAKER_00: The Messiah with the small M is the one we want for American culture and American deliverance and American culture and value.
SPEAKER_00: The messiah we want is the one who's gonna make America great again.
SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna prosper from that.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that'll help the world.
SPEAKER_00: The messiah with a capital M is the one actually nobody is looking for because that messiah is gonna operate on behalf of everybody.
SPEAKER_00: There's not going to be this hierarchy when that one's done.
SPEAKER_00: There's gonna be this leveling of quality, and we don't want that.
SPEAKER_00: We say we want that, we don't want that.
SPEAKER_00: If we level the playing field with the earth, we would no longer be consuming 35% of the world's stuff with less than 10% of the world's population.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want to level that.
SPEAKER_00: We're really happy with what we've got.
SPEAKER_00: I'm happy with what I've got.
SPEAKER_00: So I think the real question is um, are we projecting the messiah that's good for us onto other people, or are we open to a messiah who works on behalf of humanity at the cost of nobody?
SPEAKER_00: They may have some inclinations, that's right.
SPEAKER_00: So I think the difference is I'm gonna convert you to my intellectual tradition, or I'm gonna be converted to God's idea of common humanity and community.
SPEAKER_00: I always think it's interesting because I the first time I had this faith challenge, I was living in a youth hostel in Malta and I met my first Muslims.
SPEAKER_00: They lived there.
SPEAKER_00: And um, I knew within like a minute because they just had this, and maybe I was wrong, I don't think so though, they just had this sort of like aura to them.
SPEAKER_00: I just knew they were better people than I was.
SPEAKER_00: Like they exuded peace.
SPEAKER_00: And I exuded like agitation and jockeying and trying to be right, you know, like I still do.
SPEAKER_00: And um and they exuded peace.
SPEAKER_00: And so, what was I gonna convert them to?
SPEAKER_00: The same misery I was already living into.
SPEAKER_00: And I think when we start thinking about right and wrong as categories that people fit into, is when we're doing exactly what the Judaizers are doing.
SPEAKER_00: You're wrong now.
SPEAKER_00: Let me snip off your wrongness and make you right like I am, and I'm miserable, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: And that was the interesting thing about laundry evangelism.
SPEAKER_00: I went out trying to make people as miserable as I was in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So we wonder why people don't respond to the good news, because it's not good.
SPEAKER_00: It's not good.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I do think, I do think that our theology matters.
SPEAKER_00: And I do think it's really important, for example, that um, you know, whether we're talking about Christians or Jews or Muslims or Hindus, that um our theology can guide us to live bigger.
SPEAKER_00: I think that.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I don't, you know, I I think particularly in world religions, there's uh which I used to teach, there's a lot of pitfalls and gains, depending on what there is, um, and and total replacement of one by another.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that's God's goal, that might be our goal, but I do think the the question is really about how do we live and function as one body?
SPEAKER_00: And who's included in that?
SPEAKER_00: Is that just Christians?
SPEAKER_00: Does that include Mormons?
SPEAKER_00: Does that include our Jewish brothers and sisters?
SPEAKER_00: And how do we speak about those people?
SPEAKER_00: I didn't think, and this is really interesting, I don't know if this is great, but you know, Gandhi, um Hindu is not even really a fair word, but Gandhi grew up with an indigenous Indian religion, and he met Jesus at Oxford, right?
SPEAKER_00: And he almost converted, the story goes to Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: But Gandhi ended up coming back and saying, you know, each person really should be as faithful as they can to their indigenous and culturated values because that's their native tongue.
SPEAKER_00: And just thinking linguistically, it's really, really hard if you don't grow up bilingual to become bilingual later.
SPEAKER_00: You can get close, but you lose some of that ability to pronounce indigenously.
SPEAKER_00: You push on this too hard, it doesn't work out.
SPEAKER_00: But it's but it's really interesting to think like, is our goal to share our way of thinking with you or to share life with you?
SPEAKER_00: And I think that applies in this book, and that's part of why Paul gets so mad, is there's people who are sharing their way of thinking at the cost of life.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it means I'm okay, you're okay, everybody do what they want.
SPEAKER_00: I think this book is about sharing life and what's in the way of life, those are the things we need to deal with.
SPEAKER_00: Life with a capital L.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that might take some kinds of religious conversion, either cross faith or within our own faith or whatever, so that we're no longer sort of setting barriers to the life God would send us.
SPEAKER_00: But I think that requires a lot of caution and respect and making room for each other before we go around creating blockades.
SPEAKER_00: And that's Galatians.
SPEAKER_00: That's Galatians.
SPEAKER_00: Um, okay, well, we will uh we'll do Colossians and Philemon next week.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and so far as I know, we'll still be meeting next week.
SPEAKER_00: So thank you guys for for coming in today.