Episode 343 - Michael John Cusick, "Two Kinds of Christians"

Welcome to another episode of "Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick." Today, we delve into the compelling concept of what it means to be a Christian – a question that sparks a fascinating discussion on the dichotomy between list makers and storytellers. Inspired by the insights of Dr. Rodney Reeves, Michael and AJ Denson explore themes from Michael's book, "Sacred Attachment," emphasizing the importance of moving beyond doctrines and commandments to embrace a vibrant, embodied faith. 

Join us as we unpack the profound invitation to experience God not just through belief but through the intimate storytelling of our journey with Him. Whether you're a steadfast list maker or a passionate storyteller, this episode is a clarion call to lean into the heart of spiritual life, where love and relationship triumph over rigid adherence to theological checklists. 

Transcript

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Hi, everybody. Welcome to Restoring the Soul. I'm Michael, and I'm with my friend AJ In Texas. Hello. Hi, aj. Man, great to be here. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. It's great to be with you. This has been fun as what started out as an experiment has really felt like a smooth, fun set of conversations. Absolutely. I've so enjoyed having these conversations and going deeper into this. It's a great time. Thank you for having me. You bet. Here's the topic for today, and we just thought this up yesterday, but it's been close to my heart. We've been talking a lot about sacred attachment, and I don't want to just go through chapter by chapter and say, here's the high points. Rather, I've wanted to take some of the major and minor themes and present them kind of freestanding and then give people a taste of, okay, this is the conversation. This is the language. This is the lens for the book. And now I might go read the book. And not trying to become a publishing mogul, but I want. I want people to receive this message because I believe that it's life changing, it's paradigm changing for how we walk with God, how we become whole. So I'd like to start with the topic. The topic today is two kinds of Christians. Two kinds of Christians. Now, some people might say this is reductionistic. You know, you can't boil down every follower of Jesus in the world to these two categories. But this is not me speaking. This is the eminent, widely respected professor, Dr. Rodney Reeves, who I had on our podcast a few years back. He wrote a little book called the Spirituality of John, and he looked at the heart of John and how we develop an interior life through all of John's writings, first, second, and third John, as well as the Gospel of John, and then, of course, revelation. That's awesome. And I read that book for my interview, and the opening paragraph of that book, the Spirituality of John, had these words in it. And as soon as I read these, this long paragraph, I thought, that's going to be on the front end of my book. I have since learned that it's called an epigraph. I thought epi was, like, @ the end, but that's not necessarily what it means, because epilogue, we all know that. Right? That's what happens after the last chapter, where it's the closing of the story. So here's what Rodney Reeves wrote, and I'll just read this one time slowly. But this sets up the conversation around two kinds of Christians. So Reeves writes, there are two kinds of Christians, list makers and. And storytellers. Answering one question reveals the difference. What does it take to be a Christian? List makers will talk about doctrines you must believe or commandments you must keep. As long as you believe the right things or do the right things, that's what makes you a Christian. Storytellers, on the other hand, will say, let me tell you about my grandmother. That's when I lean in, because I find the art of Christian living far more compelling than a theological argument. It didn't used to be that way, though. When I was a young man, I relished the opportunity to jump into the middle of doctrinal scrums over Christian beliefs. But these days, I'd rather hear about an embodied faith, a story that must be imagined to be believed. So there's those words, and we're going to unpack that. What it is in that, that I think is so important, so compelling, what drew me to it, what really feels like prophetic truth to me for the current generation. And so much of what I wrote about in Sacred Attachment has these ideas. So let's jump in. Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. Michael, I want to thank you for putting that at the beginning of the book. I really do think it sets the tone for every topic. You dive in and it's just. It's a great quote. I love it. Right off the bat, why did you. What. What pulled you towards putting that quote in the book? Well, first I said, I don't mean to be reductionistic, but there is a part of me that. That thinks at the 30, 000 foot level and thinks really big. So when I hear there's two kinds of Christians, I don't think that it's about narrowing, but that it's about expanding, you know, so it's a continuum. On one end of the continuum, there's storytellers, and on the other end of the continuum there's list makers, just as we talk about, you know, there's a continuum of political belief. And on one end of the continuum is the far right, and on the other end there's the far left, and in between there's an infinite number of political beliefs because they're individualized. So I'll just start by saying that, right, that there's probably people that are a combination of list makers and storytellers and true confession. I'm probably in that category much of the time. In other words, I've got my list of, here's what it means to have the right faith in Jesus, even though part of my approach is that there is no right faith in Jesus, that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, and that he embodies all of what's in scripture. And that yes, we need to stay within certain guardrails from the beginning of the story in Genesis to the end of the story. And yet Jesus, I have discovered, often removes the guardrails. He expands the guardrails. Sometimes he's riding with us between those guardrails and then he says, let's get out of the way, there's a train coming. And he lifts us up over the guardrails and then other times he brings us back into the guardrails. And let me just give a quick analogy. When I was nine years old, my family moved from Cleveland, Ohio to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Why? Because my older brother, six years older than me, needed drug and alcohol treatment at the age of 15. And this was 1973. And treatment programs barely existed for people that were adults inpatient and they were non existent for kids, for teenagers. So my family found this program, we moved across the country and the whole family had to be involved. And we were probably lower middle class. And a friend of a friend gave us some passes, some one day passes to Disney World, which had just opened one year earlier. So this was kind of a big deal, right? The Disneyland in Anaheim had come, you know, to the, to the west coast. So we went to Disneyland. And my strongest memory of that day is riding the antique cars. And I was just convinced that, that I was going to actually drive a car all by myself and that this was a real thing. But I get in the car and there was a governor on the pedal. So it went like three miles an hour, you know, pedal to the metal. But then there was this metal rail in the middle. And so it wasn't a guardrail on the left and the right that kept you in, it was a guardrail in the middle that allowed you to navigate back and forth. But ultimately that middle rail was straight down the middle. It was aligned with the road. And what needed to happen to keep a nine year old boy from, you know, driving into the grass and into the lake next to the log ride. Or something like that end up in Splash Mountain. Yeah. And so I think that the rails that I'm speaking of which are, you know, metaphors for boundaries that God has put in place, that those are not so much left and right as they are in the center, that it doesn't keep me from wandering to the left and the right too far. It actually Allows me to go to the left and the right. But what's in the center is actually what keeps me coming back to that place where I'm guided and where I can't go too far. And so this idea of list makers and storytellers, it really clarified for me my experience of probably the first 14 to 20 years of my faith and of my spiritual journey. I was a list maker. I've talked about a number of times on this podcast that I was beautifully discipled by really good men. And I believe that when we're young and when we're coming into faith, that we need real clarity and real understanding, a place to hang our hat. That's very clear. And that doctrine is important. But what happened to me is that the doctrine became the point and the doing the right things became the point. And I lost the plot. I lost the story. And for me, the plot and the story became, as Rodney Reeves suggests in this quote, it became doing the right things and believing the right things. And the problem with that is that kind of life didn't really require faith. It didn't require me to have to trust God on a daily basis, except maybe give me a little more strength to stop doing the things that bring me shame or give me a little more strength to help obey you. But it didn't require trust. In Matthew 15. I was reading this this morning. It's this very convicting passage where the Pharisees are trying to trick Jesus into, you know, why don't your disciples go through the ceremonial rituals and wash their hands? Jesus starts talking about how it's what's on the inside, not the outside. And then in verse eight and nine, he says, these people, and he's referring to the legalists, the people that are all about being self righteous because they're doing the right things. These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me and their worship is in vain. And I know I'm a little bit off the main point, but that's so important because what God wants is for people to engage in a story of their heart and how their heart encounters the heart of God that is revealed in Jesus, the God Revealer. And so I believe that this quote, inviting people to be storytellers and not list makers, is really an invitation into our own hearts, where we find both glory and ruin, dignity and distress, where we find, as one of my old professors, Dr. Tom Varney, used to say, that within us there is a masterpiece and a mess. You know, all of that duality inside of us. And that's the invitation. Because that's where story takes place. That's actually where a really good story takes place. As opposed to here's this wonderful epic novel. Page one. Jack and Jill ran up a hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack took the pail of water back down and he filled up the horse troughs and the horse drank and Jill rode the horse and it was a sunny day. The end. As opposed to Jack and Jill. You're not going to believe this. They went up this hill and they had this pale of water. We don't know if the pale water, if the pale had a hole in it or if it was rusty. And Jack cut himself on the edge where it was really sharp. And it was probably a long time ago that Jack and Jill ran up this hill. But that's beside the point. But here, listen to this. He cut himself. And Jill said, when was your last tetanus shot? And he said, what's a tetanus shot? And she explained to him what was going to happen in the future. Suddenly, Jim, Jack's face turned red. He got 104.5 fever. He fell down. Jill dragged him by his toes down to the bottom of the hill. They put him on a covered wagon. They took him to Doc Olson who gave him a mustard pack and miraculously he was healed. And then Jack decided to be a doctor and sail on a ship to the far Lands so that he could care for people in know, Southeast Asia that didn't have medical care. Now I'm being facetious, right? And I'm improvising, but that's a great story. Yeah, I'd watch a movie about that. But it's not a great story about. Here's the facts, here's the boxes that Jack and Jill checked as they went up the hill. It's not compelling and there's really no point to it because there's no humanity in it. So I think that when Dr. Reeves is talking about list makers versus storytellers, list makers, we can't really bring our humanity list. We can't bring our brokenness. We can't bring our hunger and thirst and our deep longing and yearning. We've just got to perform. We've just got to do it right. We've just got to get God to pat us on the back. Yeah. Storytellers, on the other hand, it's a wild, woolly journey. Yeah, absolutely. While we're talking about, let's dive deep in these differences between the list makers and the storytellers. And like you Said you fall into the middle. What does that look like for you? Well, I think I live in the storytelling side of this as it's unpacked, as he talks about having an embodied faith that can only be imagined to be believed. But my nervous system, my neurology, the neural pathways, my sin nature, my ego, my false self, whatever you want to call it, can fall back into that. That place of, you know, I have this routine that I do every morning with God. I read this liturgy that you and I talked about and shared part of the prayer a few episodes back. And as long as I do that every morning, you know, I can feel good about my spiritual life. But if I miss a morning or miss a day, let's say that, you know, my daughter had a performance at school and we went out for pancakes afterwards and we stayed up late and I didn't get up the next morning, and I had to just get up, take a shower and go somewhere. There's a part of me still, and it's less binding than it used to be, but there's a part of me that goes, yeah, my spirituality. I got a B plus today instead of an A plus, maybe an A minus if I said a prayer along the way or something like that. But there's this part of me that says, here's the boxes I have to check on the list that will make me okay. That's fundamentally what a list maker is. Okay, so then with list makers, and I feel like there might be some people listening who genuinely thrive off lists. I'm not one of them, but I know of people who thrive off lists. Is there a way where you can be a form of list maker and still thrive in this Christian relationship with Jesus? Or is there have to be some balance between list making and storytelling? Well, yeah, I'm glad you asked that, because first of all, I want to clarify for our listeners that we're not talking about literal lists. If you have a, you know, a planning system, a to do list, an app where you make lists of things, even spiritual practices or spiritual disciplines, there's nothing wrong with that if that serves you. But the question is, is it serving you or are you serving it? David Benner, the great spiritual writer, said that discipline is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. So if discipline becomes the end point, I'm being disciplined so that discipline will get me to where I want to be, that I'll be in bondage to that, as opposed to that eventually something comes along on the inside where I go, I want to do this. So Recently, I started back with a physical therapist, a doctor of physical therapy, who is also a certified personal trainer. I'm recovering from a back injury, and I was really looking forward to this first session and it really went well. And he and I connected on multiple levels. And I thought, I can't wait to come back. But there was a not too distant past in my life when I signed up for a health club, paying that monthly fee, and month after month went by and those credit card charges went ding, ding, ding. And I never went to the health club. Right. Why? Because going to the health club is like, you know, eating your least favorite vegetable. Let's just say that it's cauliflower. And it's like the doctor told me, it's good for me, I should have more fiber. You know, it has great vitamins, but I don't like cauliflower. And that's how, you know, going to the gym and the trainer used to be to me. And so something shifted for a lot of different reasons that we don't have time to go into here from the discipline of making myself do something because I don't like it, and finding a joy and a motivation and an aliveness around doing that. And it's a whole different experience. One is pressure and performing, and then the other side, it's a flowing and it's a being, and I get to show up. Now, probably the most helpful thing that we've talked about before on the podcast, about your question, you know, between list making and storytelling and, you know, what does God do and what do we do is what Dallas Willard said, that grace is not opposed to effort, it's opposed to earning. So we can put forth effort. We can at times flex our muscles. I don't want to get out of bed today. I went to bed late. I didn't sleep well. I feel like a cold is coming on. And because of grace, maybe we stay in bed and if we don't get up early and, you know, do our practice or whatever that is then or later in the day, that God's not wringing his hands and God's not disappointed. And there's times where I say, because I know that this is life giving, because this is actually something that when I sit down and begin to pray through my liturgy, I'm going to start to feel joy because it happens every time, and I'm going to start to relax and I'm starting to prepare myself for the day. So the effort that I put in the flexing is worth it, but it's not Earning. It's not me saying, God, you will love me or like me or give me affection or affirmation or even security based on what I'm doing here. Because then that becomes precarious. If I stop doing it, then the love, the affection, the security is not there. And that's why so many people are living with this spiritual exhaustion, spiritual anxiety, and what we call in mental health, an insecure attachment. Wow. Yeah. That's a great, great example of that. I'm still wrapping my brain around it. Thank you. Kind of going back 30,000ft on this epigraph. There's a statement in there that says, what does it take to be a Christian? What intrigues you about that? I think the thing that intrigues me about that is that he gave an answer that was compelling to me, but it wasn't the four spiritual laws or the Roman road or an invitation to accept Christ into your heart for many, many, many people. And maybe in the conservative Christian evangelical Bible, believing community and worldview, maybe that's what most people do. But what he was talking about, and I'm going to pull up the exact phrase here, is that he calls out the idea without actually saying it, that it's not trying to obey certain commandments and it's not agreeing with certain doctrines that makes you a Christian. He turns to his grandmother and that basically says, it's about a relationship. It's about my relationship with my grandmother. It's about her relationship with God. That makes me lean in and let's do another improv thing. Grandma didn't say to Rodney Reeves, oh, Rodney, those ten commandments, here's how I've obeyed them all. And I think that God is pleased with me. But. But, you know, most people that I talk to, when they think of their grandmother, warm memories come up. You know, so often when we're doing trauma work and we invite people to think of a safe place or a place of peace. Oh, my grandparents, or maybe it was another relative, but a place where our heart could just rest. And so, you know, I just want to be very, very clear with so much controversy around this, what it takes to be a Christian is to say, I want to follow Jesus. And there's a New York Times writer by the name of Bill Kristol, and I've written him a letter that I never mailed. He wrote a book called Half the Sky, which was a book about the oppression of women. He is definitely a progressive on the left. And every year at Easter, this is probably coming up in a couple weeks, he writes A column in the New York Times, and he's one of the most celebrated columnists. And he has asked Tim Keller to respond to his article. He's asked Philip Yancey to respond to his article, I believe Russell Moore, you know, all these famous and eminent evangelical thinkers and writers. And one year he said, I love the teachings of Jesus and all that he stands for, but I can't believe in the resurrection. Can I be a Christian and not believe in the resurrection? And so I started to write him a letter as if I was one of these people, just because I love this man's heart and I love what he does in the world. So much curiosity and. And I'm not going to get into the topic of whether we can be a Christian without believing in the resurrection. But here's the thing about what it means to be a Christian. I'm not believing in an idea like I believe in John F. Kennedy, but I've never met him. I was a 1960s history minor as an undergrad, and I read a lot about the Kennedys, Robert F. Kennedy Sr. Or number one, John F. Kennedy, but I never met either of them, so I never had that encounter. And so to be a Christian is to have an encounter with Jesus and say, I want this. I want to follow him. And to the resurrection question. We believe in a living God, so we don't believe in a historical idea. We don't believe in a piece of stone that is in a temple somewhere. We believe in a living, breathing being, the second member of the Trinity that has a body and will for eternity that requires the resurrection. Otherwise, I'm believing in the teachings of a dead guy from 33 A.D. Yeah. Interesting. Wow. Yeah, that makes sense. You're probably going, how did we get onto this topic? I mean, it's so good because the idea is that it's active, it's curious, it's relational, it's personal, it's extremely engaging, similar to your story, not just in a how to engage with others, but engaging with God. And so, I mean, yeah, we're all over the place, but it just all paints this beautiful picture of how active and how vibrant a Christian walk can be. Later down, it says, like talking about doctoral scrums, just in this idea of list making and do you know all the good things? How do you relate relishing in, quote, doctoral scrums over Christian beliefs? Yeah. You know, not just the culture wars, but the doctrine wars and the theological wars. Calvinists versus Armenians. There are many of them. Yeah. And different interpretations of scripture. And you Know, I. I worked with a man many years ago who is still very dear to me. And when I think of him, my heart just smiles. And he grew up in a conservative Mennonite tradition. And he told me once about a church split that happened because members were passionately arguing about what color car you could drive. And in that community, if you had something that was red or yellow or certainly lime green, that was considered pride and it was considered haughty. And so you could be removed from the fellowship because of that. So, you know, those seem to be about defending positions for the sake of preserving tradition and community and those kinds of things. But let me just say that for me, engaging in theological arguments and doctrinal scrums as a young Christian, and I'm going to say from about 16 to 26 years old, I did it because I believed that the most important thing was to be right. To be right. And if I was right, then that would validate me and at least in the eyes of the other person, not necessarily with God. But I know there was something that I was thinking in my relationship with God, that if I was right and if I could convince other people to be right, that God would be happy with that. Because, of course, we've got to defend the truth and God wants the truth. And the arrogance was that my position is right. You know, I had some theology and seminary under my wing. So, you know, now I've got this. You know, the problem is that there are people with multiple PhDs, and I know a man and I'm going to butcher his name. Thomas Schlehrmacher, who up until recently was the president of the World Evangelistic association, the wea. And my friend knows him and was mentored by him for a while. And Thomas had five PhDs, five PhDs. Now, I'm just assuming he's a great guy and he loves God, but I could earn five PhDs, one in Hebrew, one in Greek, one in New Testament, one in Old Testament, one in whatever. And I still don't have the authority to say this is the right way, this interpretation is the right way. Why? Because for almost 2100 years, we have seen traditions that have come and go. And this is why to Rodney Reeves, great point. Our focus has to be on Jesus and anything and anyone. That is a peripheral issue. From that at the top of the list, we're distracting ourselves and we open ourselves up to. To the potential of making an idol out of whatever is on that list below Jesus. I think at times I've made an idol out of the Bible. And I think there's Christian traditions today that have made an idol out of the Bible and that they worship the Bible more than they actually worship Jesus. Because it's terrifying to entrust a person. It's a lot less terrifying and gives us a lot of certainty. If we trust a book that we believe, we have the right perspective, the right interpretation on. And therefore our requirements and our creeds are the ones that need to be followed and obeyed. And we need to get other people to see those. So often what passes for the Christian life does not require faith and trust. And so we always need to be evaluating that, you know, okay, so I asked Jesus, who's my Savior into my heart, and now I have eternal life. But the question is, what do I need Jesus for today? What do I need Jesus for tomorrow? As I've got kids that are moving into their future, what do I need Jesus for? With a dad who wants to control the outcomes of their life and direct them towards certain careers that might not bring them joy or even be their calling, what do I need Jesus for? To help me to see his wisdom, to help me to relinquish, to surrender. And the answer shouldn't be, well, I need him so that I'm trusting in him for eternal life. Because eternal life is now. Eternal life is now. When we pray, our Father who art in heaven, Thy kingdom come and thy will be done, we're saying, bring heaven here. Let heaven happen here, in me, in my marriage, in my family, and going out in rippling concentric circles so that the kingdom comes now. Because God's plan in Revelation 21 is to bring heaven to earth, not to destroy the earth, not to take us up and out from this bad place, but to make all things new. And in large part doing that as he brings heaven to earth. That's awesome. Yeah. So then bringing it back towards the question with the doctrinal scrum. So what I'm hearing is that it's mostly based on intent because you can be curious and have asked questions and doc about, you know, theology and whatnot, but if it's to serve your pride rather than to serve your faith, maybe that's more of a self reflection. Is that what I'm picking up? Yeah. Yeah. And that pride may not necessarily be like, oh, this person is arrogant or haughty or conceited, but a sense of I'm right. Occasionally I will unfortunately go on YouTube and sometimes scrolling through Instagram, and I will see certain speakers that are inspirational speakers, or if they're a particular political persuasion where they'll be speaking somewhere. And they're very passionate about their point about here's how the world operates and here's the right approach. And you know what's sad? They're angry, they're shrill, they're not humble. In. You've probably seen these on social media where someone is giving a speech and then they let people walk up to the microphone and there might be a little text box across the bottom that says, you know, this person had them for lunch. This. This speaker destroyed this lib, or this conservative. And I'm like, how dare we, in the name of Jesus, destroy someone because they have a differing belief? I don't see that in the Gospels and in the heart of God as Jesus is the God Revealer. I want to read a quote, and this may be challenging to some. I almost put this quote in Sacred Attachment. It's from one of my favorite novelists, Toni Morrison. Who? The late great African American novelist and essayist. She won a Nobel Prize. Not even just a Pulitzer Prize, a Nobel Prize. And in her book, the Bluest Eyes, this is a novel, she said, our world feasts at the table of God, the judge, and is left starved and malnourished. This table has been set up in exclusive buildings and agreed upon creeds and membership. But ours is a time to feast at the table of God as redeemer, God as healer, God as mother, the church as a hospital. I'll just let that sink in for a minute. Yeah. And then there's people that heard that quote. And some might be saying, oh, I'm going to pull off to the side of the road or hit pause and write that down. And others are going, oh, what a heretic, because he said, God as mother, God as mother. Can't. God is not a mother. You know God, the Bible says father. Well, first of all, let me. Let me say that several weeks back on the podcast I had on Dr. Andrew Bauman and talking about his book Safe Church, and we discussed how he posted online on Instagram, I think how God is not a man. And he said he got thousands of responses, and so many of them were filled with vitriol and hatred and judgment. And so when people hear God as mother, I'm not saying that God is a woman, because I don't believe that God is a man or a woman. Culturally speaking, the reason why the word father was used is because to say mother, that would have been unthinkable because women were already oppressed. And the other thing is that

Genesis 1: 33:09

1 and here's where people that might be offended by this idea of the phrase God as mother, they're the very people that lock in to what it means in Genesis when it says that God made them in his image, male and female, they have a precise understanding and interpretation of what that means. So they would definitely say male and female in order to fulfill his image. But those same people would say, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of God as mother. So I'm not saying that God is a man or a woman. What I am saying is that the image of God, who He is, what he's actually like when we look at him, has characteristics of maleness and characteristics of femaleness. And God as mother is this compelling image of fierce strength and tenderness. It's the image of one who can carry and bear life with great suffering, great capacity for long suffering on behalf of others, in the instance of carrying a baby for nine months, long suffering on behalf of that child that is growing and developing, and that what our world is hungry for, and particularly here in the west, and especially in America, I believe that the. The men and women in this country, whether they know it or can admit it, are hungry for the tenderness of God, the mercy of God. And that quote just speaks to me that when Rodney Reeves is talking about, you know, the doctrinal scrums over theology and right belief, that is completely missing the point. One of my. One of my dear friends who's a pastor, I have great respect for him, Denver Seminary graduate, Master of Divinity. I'm not sure if he has yet finished his doctoral degree, but he was working on it for a while. And when we get into this idea of right belief, doctrinal scrums, arguments about theology, we sometimes turn to the topic of apologetics, right? So studying what the right thing is so that we can help people to understand the truth and then therefore, to convert. The problem is, my friend said that. That apologetics is learning how to brilliantly answer questions that nobody's asking. So I will give you the answer in a brilliant way, in a. In a wonderfully packaged way, in a way that I believe is true, and I will defend it with all of my energy. I'm going to answer a question that you're not asking and the question that's being asked, not verbally, per se, although in my circles of therapy and counseling and restoration and spiritual direction, boy, oh, boy, are people asking these questions. I can't live any longer in this world where I'm feasting at this table, where God is the judge and Where I'm left starved and malnourished. The question people are asking is, my heart is hungry. Where can I find food? My soul is thirsty. Where can I find drink? Yeah, that living water. That's the question. And there are some people that I know that came to faith through apologetics and through reading C.S. lewis and commentaries. But eventually, even there, the hunger of their heart and the thirst of their heart for the tender care of the church, which is a hospital for God's restoration and the fact that he's the Redeemer. If the heart doesn't experience that, then at best we'll have right beliefs, faithful church attendance, maybe excellent behavior. Who does that describe? It describes the Legalists and the Pharisees in the conversations that Jesus had. And we come right back to you. Honor me with your lips, your beliefs, your behaviors, but your heart is far from me and your worship is in vain. Yeah, kind of tying along with that, at the end of it, it talks about an embodied faith. Can you breathe into that and like what that looks like? Yeah. The last line of Rodney Reeves quote here, he said, these days I'd rather hear it about an embodied faith, one that needs to be imagined to be believed. This was the clincher on why I said, I'm going to put this in the book. I have a chapter in Sacred Attachment on embodiment, and I have a chapter on imagination. So if. If we are not taking what we know about God, God is love, God is kind, God is compassionate, slow to anger and bounding in love. He forgives our sins and heals all of our diseases and crowns us with love and compassion. If we're not embodying that somehow, where we're feeling that, where we're integrating that into our physical being, then things will remain intellectual. And really what I'm talking about, if we're not having a right brain experience of our faith, it will remain belief. As we go from left brain to right brain, it becomes spirituality, it becomes belief that is internalized. And we start to develop a rich, robust, deep interior life out of which good things flow. And that's the soil where the fruit grows. And so embodiment is so important. And I'm going to give an example of how embodiment and imagination come together. When people hear the word imagination, sometimes they get a little nervous around that they're saying, oh, you're going to just visualize whatever you want to believe. And I've even heard people say that if you close your eyes and try to visualize something spiritually, that demons can come in. And first of all, we are hidden in Christ. And I don't think that there's any support for the fact that demons can come in. When I'm praying and closing my eyes, visualizing Jesus, demons have access either through our turning away from the love of God, I. E. Sinning, or someone else sinning against us and causing us harm. It's always in places of darkness and pain where evil has access. So how do embodiment and imagination come together? So yesterday morning, in my prayer time, this liturgy that I read, I get to Psalm 23, and I probably read a number of psalms and a number of prayers, and that takes about 10 minutes. And there's probably five minutes left in this exercise. I get to Psalm 23 and I pray the psalm out loud. And as I pray it, I interact with the psalm. So, for example, here's what happened yesterday. Sometimes my eyes are closed, sometimes not. But the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. The Lord is my shepherd. I lack nothing. Oh, Jesus, how I want that I say, and how it feels like right now I lack so much. There's that ten thousand dollar Omega watch that I fantasize about. And Lord, I know I don't need that, but if I had that, oh gosh, I'd feel so satisfied. Or, okay, I don't need that watch, Lord. My car's three years old and the advanced video screen in my car, I actually have to take three seconds and plug it, plug in the cord to my phone. And I'm really hoping that for convenience and ease, but more than anything, this would just make my life great. This would give me joy and peace. I think I should trade in my car and get a high car payment, because, you know, right now that wouldn't really affect me. This is all my prayer life, right? This is happening in prayer. This is what's called conversation, conversational intimacy. And I say, so I. This, this one car I've had my eye on, I'm gonna, I'm gonna trade that in. And he doesn't say, yes, No, I just go, oh, I, I know that's my false self, okay. No, Lord's my shepherd. I shall not be in want. I lack nothing. And I hear, come closer. And I exhale. And then I, I see Jesus. And I, I now see a green pasture. And as I hiked through Scotland and England a year ago, I've got images of green pastures and sheep and shepherds everywhere, literally. And I see this one green pasture and I see Jesus off in it, and he Says, come closer. Now, I do this kind of thing through the whole psalm, and I was completely unprepared for this because every time it's different. In this conversational intimacy, I get through the valley of the shadow of death, and I kind of skip through the next line. It says, he prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies. So I'm visualizing that. And the reason why I'm both modeling this prayer time of conversational intimacy and why I'm also kind of opening my eyes and doing a teachable moment, two different things at once is because this example is about embodiment and imagination. So as I'm doing this, I'm breathing, I'm feeling it, I'm seeing in the eyes of my heart and in my mind's eye this table prepared before me. And I'm suddenly sitting at this table, and I hear this still, quiet voice that says, what would you like me to serve you at this table? And I just tear up. And then I hear this voice that says, that's okay, I know. And my memory goes to my first anniversary, where. I'm sorry, it was my first birthday, which was near my first anniversary when I was newly married. I'm married 34 years this June. Julianne said, what do you want me to make you for your birthday? I'd love to make you a meal, no hesitation. Homemade macaroni and cheese, a BLT on toasted white bread, and I'd like just a really, really ice cold Classic Coke, because I don't drink alcohol. I'm sober, and I'm watching this table that God has prepared before me in the presence of my enemies. He says, that's okay. I know just what you want. And he sets down a blt, toasted, a big icy Classic Coke, and homemade macaroni and cheese. And then I just start giggling like I'm now laughing with joy. And Jesus and I are having this bantering, playful moment as I'm praying through Psalm 23. There might be people who say, this is awfully convenient. You know, you're projecting your desires onto God and you're making him like an Aladdin's lamp, where you have three wishes and you just used all three of your wishes on the Classic Coke, the macaroni and cheese, and the blt. And the blt, yeah. What does it mean? Therefore, when I pray through at the beginning of this time, Psalm 103, I'll say it again. I said it a moment ago. Praise the Lord, O my soul, all my inmost being, praise his Holy name, Praise the Lord, my soul, who forget not all his benefits, forgives your sins, heals your diseases. He redeems your life from the pit. He crowns you with love and compassion. He satisfies your desires so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. And my desire in that moment wasn't for macaroni and cheese and a blt. My desire was God. I'm sitting here and I don't know if I can trust you, that I lack nothing. I don't know if I can trust you, that you're my good shepherd and I shall not be want. Because there's a whole bunch of stuff I want. I want my kids to turn out a certain way. I want a raise. I want my health to be okay. I want my back pain to go away. I want to remodel my kitchen. I want that new car, I want the watch, et cetera. And I'm not at peace. I'm restless. And I need to know that you know me and that you see me. And guess what? A BLT and homemade macaroni and cheese shows up. That's not a doctrine. That's something that shows how intimately God knows me and how intimately he's relating to me and how that promise of Scripture which Christians and Jews and probably unbelievers have have. You know, a lot of people have memorized that prayer for centuries and centuries. Those words of, you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies suddenly became embodied and in my imagination, which is nothing more then the eyes of

the heart which Paul refers to in Ephesians 1: 46:04

18. There I encountered the gospel that God is nourishing and feeding me. Now, let me. Let me just say one more thing. AJ that's absolutely stunning. Please. It's easy for me to focus on the first part of that verse. You prepare a table before me. Okay, Wonderful. Jesus gave me the classic Coke, the homemade macaroni and cheese, and the blt. But the second part of that, in the presence of my enemies, huge implication in parentheses. Michael, you are to feed them. You are to welcome them to the table. You are invited to have them sit down. And even though there has been harm caused, there's disagreement, there's distance. I'm a God who draws all things together. And how I do that is not by giving you a command or a creed or denomination that says, these are our enemies and these are our allies. But I know you so intimately, and I reveal that intimacy to you. And I bring the things that you delight in so that your youth is renewed. Like the eagles. So now your heart is expanding in trust and attachment and you're trusting that. Yes, you are. And you will be seen and soothed and safe. And you exhale and there's a security. And security is, I've got nothing to lose. There's no harm coming against me. All is well with my soul, because backing up, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, where my enemies are shooting arrows and throwing rocks and calling me names, blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Why blessed? Because that's what God looks like. He loves his enemies. God in one sense has no enemies. The God that is revealed in Jesus. So as we sit at the table and as we're nourished and as we are known, and as we literally feast, the next verse is, my cup overflows. Who does it overflow to? The people that I, yesterday or five minutes ago, or maybe even still in the moment, consider my enemies. But now it's not a me and them, it's an us. And that's where the love of Christ shows up. That's where the light of Christ shows up. That is. That is the essence of evangelism. And I'll end with this. I wrote this this morning. Every morning I'm writing, I try to write 250 to 500 words, which is, you know, two to four pages. Some days I barely write anything. This morning it was really flowing. And I thought of the movie When Harry Met Sally, probably 30 years ago now. And there's a famous scene for those of us that are older and remember this, where Meg Ryan, who is Sally, and Billy Crystal, who is Harry, they go out to lunch and the whole plot of the movie is they're really good friends, they're besties, and they don't know if they can actually, like, be friends as man and woman, boy and girl, and not have it become romantic and sexualized. So they meet up at this restaurant after not seeing each other for a while, and they're talking back and forth. And the famous scene is that Meg Ryan, Sally, fakes an orgasm in the middle of this busy cafeteria. And they're talking somehow about sexual intimacy. And she begins to moan quietly. And it rises and it rises and. And the table starts to shake and she's going, oh, oh, oh. And the entire restaurant quiets down and everyone's staring at her. And Billy Crystal playing Harry is just horrified at what's happening. And this older woman across just the aisle of the table turns and looks at the waitress who's there to take her order, and she says, I'll have what she's having. And like, in other words, whoa, here's this ecstasy, this freedom, this not caring what other people think, this aliveness. I'll have what she's having. And I think that when we begin to live in this way where our faith is not hanging on the hooks of belief, and I believe in belief and I believe in doctrines and I pray the creeds on a regular basis, but when we don't have an embodied faith with a joined imagination, no one will say, I'll have what he's having. They could go believe in any particular worldview that's a set of beliefs. They could join the Kiwanis or the jcs or whatever their local fraternal organization is. But when we live in this place where embodied spirituality in Jesus and imagination comes together, we have an aliveness and a freedom and a restfulness that is compelling. And not only non believers, but other believers will come along and say, I want what he's having. I want what she's having, because I don't have that. My heart is still hungry and thirsty and there's still this gap between what I believe and what I experience. And maybe, just maybe, I've been mostly a list maker in my life, that if I do and believe what's on the list, then God will somehow like me, bless me, change me. And I'm not yet aware of his story in my life and how he's working and how it actually looks when he says in Hebrews chapter 12 that he's the author of my story and he's the author of my faith. Invitations. Clear. Come to the table. It is. It is. Come to the table. So let's sign off and I want to start a little tradition. Let's do it. Every podcast, this is the very first time we'll start this. And from now on, we won't explain it. I'll just say, thank you, everybody, for listening. Love has you. Talk to you next time.