Paul’s Radical Theology of Love with Dr. Nijay Gupta

In a time when empathy is seen by some as a threat and theology often feels emotionally detached, what if the Apostle Paul’s core message was actually centered on love? In this episode, we welcome back Dr. Nijay Gupta, New Testament scholar and author of The Affections of Christ Jesus: Love at the Heart of Paul’s Theology, to unpack Paul’s deeply emotional, relational, and revolutionary theology.

We also dive into the hot-button topic of toxic empathy—what it is, why it’s misunderstood, and how empathy, far from being a weakness, is actually a vital part of Christian maturity. Dr. Gupta explores how Paul’s transformation from violent nationalist to apostle of love offers a powerful model for the modern church.

Together, we examine Christian nationalism, church hypocrisy, social media toxicity, and why making the gospel good news again starts with self-sacrificial love—even for our enemies.

👤 Guest Bio

Dr. Nijay Gupta is a New Testament scholar, award-winning author, and professor at Northern Seminary. He is widely known for his work on Paul’s letters, biblical interpretation, and early Christian theology. His latest book, The Affections of Christ Jesus, reframes Paul’s theology through the lens of love and emotional depth.

🔗 Resources & Links

• The Affections of Christ Jesus
• Engaging Scripture (Substack): 
• Slow Theology Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/slow-theology-simple-faith-for-chaotic-times/id1556188087

Transcript

0:17

Well, hi there, Faithful Politics viewers and listeners. If you're joining us on our podcast stream and of course, those joining us on YouTube. Guys, thanks for being here for another episode of Faithful Politics podcast. My name is Josh Birch from I Am Your Faithful Host and I have, as always, Will, our political host. Good to see you, Will. It's good to see you too, and it's weird that you never say that after one of my political takes. Yes, and the insider baseball, someone's got to go to the pre a different episode and and see about the list of responses that will has for things that I say to him. I think it's awesome. And well, guys, we're excited for another episode here. And we have one of our favorites, Dr. Nijay Gupta. We're trying to say, what is it, Nijay? Is it the third or probably fourth time? third or fourth, yeah. Third or fourth time. like we again, got to get those plaques. Well, I don't know when, when that's going to happen when we're sending those out and a theme bathrobe, million dollar endorsement man, one day that hopefully will be able to happen. But let me introduce you just a little bit for the people who don't know. Nijay is a New Testament scholar, award winning author and professor of New Testament at Northern seminary. He's widely respected for his work on Paul's letters, early Christian theology and biblical interpretation. He is a prolific writer and engaging speaker. See that, Nijay? You're engaging. He's passionate. No, I just want you to know how much we care about you and how much we're saying these great things. And today we have Nijay on to talk about his latest book, The Affections of Christ Jesus, Love at the Heart of Paul's Theology, as well as getting into ideas of toxic empathy and wherever that conversation leads us. Nijay, thanks for coming on and being part of the show again. Thanks Josh, always great to be with you guys. Absolutely and so let's jump right into the right into the content if we can and let's talk about this book you wrote a book about love and love at the heart of Paul's theology so why did you write about Paul and love what's going on there So many reasons, but you know going back to seminary. went to a sort of reformed influenced seminary back in the early 2000s. I had a great experience there, but when we got talking about kind of the the hardcore stuff about Paul's theology It never resonated with me like we talk about justification by faith. We talk about ordo salutis, which means you have all these different categories in order of salvation, conversion, and regeneration and sanctification. And I'm just going like, blah, blah, blah, get to the real stuff. Like, what's this all about? Like, and what I always joke about with my students is, is there going to be like someone with a clipboard when you get to the pearly gates and you're going have to take a theology exam? And you're going to have to be able to explain the Trinity and you have to be explained to virgin birth, know, all this stuff. And something just has never sat well with me with the way that people talk about theology, as if it's this crusty, dry, boring thing that's kind of an aside to your life. Like, you do laundry, you buy groceries, but then also you gotta study theology to pass the theology exam, because St. Peter's gonna ask you this stuff at the pearly gates. And never sat well with me. so one of the inspirations behind this really comes from St. Augustine. I've never really been an Augustine person until the last probably six, seven, eight years. interacting with his confessions, interacting with some of his other work, I was like, this guy kind of gets it. Because he says this, this really is very beginning of my book. He says, when we ask whether someone is a good person, we're not asking what they believe, we're asking what they love. And what it means by that is you think that the driver of your life is your thoughts. You think the driver of your life is, quote unquote, logic. You think the driver of your life is your education. And Augusta says you're being fooled. The driver of your life is actually what you love, whether you know what you love or not. And as I've gone back to scripture with this, as I've gone to my own life, this is is wrong, true. You know, when we say about our kids, I just want them to be happy. I just want them to be happy. We're actually tapping into this when we say the greatest value and virtue in the world is love. So then, why is it when we turn to the most influential writer in all of history, the Apostle Paul? Jesus was great, but Jesus didn't write his own books. When we go to the most influential writer in all of history, no matter the language, no matter the genre, it's the Apostle Paul. Why, why do we ignore key terms, love, affection, that occur in all of his letters, including Philemon? Why do we ignore that when we talk about Paul's theology? And here's the issue, and this is I think why you invited me on your podcast. This isn't just about seminary studies. This isn't just about nerdy theology. This is about the heart of Christianity itself. Is the heart of Christianity getting souls saved for heaven, springing souls out of hell, or is Christianity really about transforming us back into the true image of God that is found in... loving God, loving neighbor, loving ourselves, loving strangers, and loving enemies, the way God has always created us to do. Man, I love that so much. But, but, Nijay, what about all those wedding times when they read 1 Corinthians 13 at weddings? Doesn't that mean that Paul is all about love? I thought that the... Here's the problem is, yeah, that's good, but we could do better, is what I'd say. We could do better because it's easy to love your family sometimes. It's easy to love the people that you have chosen to love, let's put it that way. But what is it like when you have coworkers that you don't always on the same page with? Or what's it like to have a faithful host and a political host and you're coming from different ends of a political or ideological spectrum? It's hard. It's hard stuff. Like, you know, it's really difficult. I'm on the New Living Translation Translation Committee. There's about 15 to 20 of us. And we all love scripture and we all love our academic work, but we don't agree. ideologically on everything. We don't agree politically on everything. And some of us are on opposite ends of the spectrum. I'm probably on the more progressive end politically, socially, than some of the folks there. And it's tough. And what really keeps us in it is our mutual commitment to the gospel, our mutual commitment to scripture. But what I'd say is what we're seeing right now in the church in America, what we're seeing right now in our country is our values being tested, our true values. And in those most difficult times, economically, stress-wise, anxiety, our true values come out. So I'm gonna do a little bit of an exercise with you that I do with my students, so bear with me. I give a lecture that I love to give called, What Happened to Ned Flanders? So Ned Flanders is a character from The Simpsons. Someone said he was, no, he still is, it's still going. But think about this, I'm a child of the 80s, the greatest generation. And the Simpsons, know, kind of their heyday in the 80s and early 90s. In 1985, let's say, the stereotype, according to the Simpsons, one of most popular shows of all time, the stereotype of the white male American evangelical was Ned Flanders. What does that mean? A little legalistic, a goody goody, but kind. Generous. If you get sick, he's going to bring you soup. If your car gets stuck or flat tire, he's going to pick you up. I mean, this is the way they portray him. And these Simpsons writers, they were smart. They understood evangelicalism, I would say. Sure, they parody, they satire, but they understand it. Every time I watch Simpsons, there's religious elements. think... Someone on the staff is either an evangelical or or ex evangelical because they get it. So fast forward 40 years to the year of our Lord 2025. I get the math right on that one. Maybe not 30 years. And the question is what happened in Ed Flanders. What now would people say the general pop populous. What now would they say is. the stereotype of the white male American evangelical. And I'll tell you this, it's not Ned Flanders. So I don't name names because I don't want to distract people when I say this, but they can usually come up with it. So I say, describe that person for me. They'll say angry, mean spirit on social media, closed minded, insular, meaning they only want to help their own people. They only want to help people with their same values. They only want to care for people that will support their politics. So then the question is, what's happened in Christianity in America since 1985 to change that? So I wrote this book as a wake-up call. What kind of blind spots are we creating when we read scripture? What kind of blind spots are we creating when we go to church to say, actually, if I could cut out parts of the Bible, what would you want to be left? And I'm afraid we've cut out a lot of parts of the Bible and what is left is anger, righteous anger. Righteous anger and outrage is what I feel like is left. So I want to steer the church towards its theological center, towards its ethical center. towards its humane center. And I want to do that by turning them to scripture. I mean, this is not Ne-Jay. I think this is St. Paul. That's really an awesome observation. as you were talking and wondering, how did the Ned Flanders of the 80s, his image stayed consistent, but the broad national image of the Ned Flanders adjacent folks have radically changed. And I think a lot of... I mean, this is just the waters we swim in, at least on the political side, is like, think Christian nationalism has a lot to do with it, to be honest. I want to back up just a little bit, just because obviously our diverse audience, not everybody might be aware of who Paul is. So kind of as the voice, as the non biblical voice, I have to ask the question, much like Josh asked me, like, how many times can Trump run for president? You So I have to ask you, who is Paul and why do we care about him? Yeah, I mean, you know, everybody is at least heard of Paul, but he's this person in the New Testament who was an enemy of Jesus and the people of Jesus. He grew up in the Greco-Roman world of the first century, the Roman Empire, Jewish descent, and he went and studied with the great rabbis in Jerusalem. And he was a Pharisee, we learned, which was a particularly passionate group of Jewish men. who wanted all Jews to follow the law with the Old Testament law with great precision. And some Pharisees, some Jews took it to the point of violence, where they would actually round up, arrest, have beaten any Jews who didn't follow that way or who were harming the reputation or the religion of Israel. And then famously on the road to Damascus, this man's Saul slash Paul Receives that bolt from the blue that vision of the Lord Jesus Christ and Jesus says and I'm paraphrasing here. Dude, what are you doing? He says why are you persecuting me? Why are you doing this? You're going yeah, dude, dude. Yeah, that's the knee J knee J living translation He's like bro as my kids send me bro. What are you brah, Skippy bro. Yeah, and and and and Paul's has to go through a whole conversion of his imagination and understanding of who God is. He knows the scriptures, but he didn't interpret them rightly, and we don't blame him. We blame all of us who are stupid and not able to see the things of God unless God reveals it to us. And God changes his direction, changes his path, puts him on a path of peace, an apostle to proclaim the good news of God, the love of God, the grace of God. And he constantly says in his letters, I'm not deserving. I'm the least, I'm the worst of sinners, but God in His grace has made me an apostle and a champion and a proclaimer of Jesus Christ. And so Paul became a champion for the gospel, a champion for Jesus. And this isn't procualism, this isn't go to church, this is everything. This is everything in your life needs to be transformed by the Holy Spirit through the living, reigning presence of the crucified and risen Christ. So that's Paul and he wrote these letters. And what's amazing about these letters is what he really wants from people. What he really wants from people is lives that are changed, that are renewed in the image of God. Humans were created to be a very particular thing, reflecting the image of God. And I was recently presenting at a conference on the crisis of Christian immaturity in our age. Mmm. And they asked me to present on the Apostle Paul and they said, what was Paul's metric for maturity? And I spent time translating and reading through Paul's letters over and over again. And I'll tell you what. If Paul could do an audit of any church or any Christian group and he was looking for the most obvious or prominent signs of maturity, it would be service, self-sacrifice, and love. especially loving people that is hard for you to love. And what would it look like in our churches if we actually sat every single person that calls himself a Christian or aspires to be a Christian, if we sat them down and we said, this is the target. And they say, what about, we don't want to enable bad behavior. Okay, okay, fine, we'll work on that. But this is still the target. what about, you know, how are we going to let this run away? Okay, yeah, we'll work on that. But this is the target. Is service. self-sacrifice and generous love. That's what Paul is about. Most people miss it. Most people miss it because the theologians, when I present this to my students, they're like, this should be obvious. Why have we missed it? Because theologians have narrowed our vision to certain doctrines like justification by faith. I think justification is true, but I think it's, I think a lot of the stuff we talk about are mechanics. They're mechanics of salvation. They're helpful to know, but They're not actually the heart of the thing. And if we miss the heart of the thing, we miss the whole thing. Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense to me. know, like so in your book, right, you're you're challenging several things. You there's a challenge to some trends of reducing love to just sentimentality, moral duty, mischaracterizing Paul as brilliant, like we kind of talked about, but but distant, emotionally cold. kind of distant and the neglect of even the emotional life of Jesus and theological reflection and thinking about that, like, why is love, what is it about love that's so misunderstood? Like, why is love such a misunderstood thing biblically? And how does centering this on the affections that Paul brings out, almost like love is this organizing principle, not this That's right. amongst several things or virtues. So what is it about love that we're getting wrong? Because I think a lot of people would say, yeah, I mean, Jesus is about love, but also, you know, at the same time they say, but yeah, none of this woke stuff. And then they, you know, wanna kick everyone out of the country. Sorry. But what, so what is love? What's going on with the affections? What have we missed? What is love? Baby, don't hurt me. Richard Hayes in the 1990s wrote an important book, New Testament Scholar, called The Moral Vision of the New Testament. And he chose intentionally not to make love the center of that moral vision. I think he's wrong, but here's his explanation. He says, because love is broadly debased in modern culture and a cover for all manner of vapid self-indulgence. And I think what he means by that is we often think of love in this really squishy category of things I like. And it could be truffle infused french fries, right? It could be like Brooklyn Nine-Nine TV show. It could be all kinds of stuff that we like. Like I like bowling or I like pickleball. And it can be this sort of very... Evanescent, here today, gone tomorrow, like I like this now, now I don't like this, and sort of this, it's this really, it can be this really slippery category. Right? So there's a lot of breadth in how we talk about the language of love. So we know superficial love. You know, I have a middle schooler. So superficial love is often like, this is my best friend. But the next week, this is my best friend. And the next week, this is my best friend. And then I hate that person like, dad, you're way out of touch. That was yesterday. Today, I hate that person. Now I like this person. Like that's often the way we see love. But we also know a deeper form of love when you're caring for an aged parent who has dementia. or Alzheimer's. When you're caring for your kids through their rebellious stage. You know, we know what that looks like. We know that depth of love. We know what love looks like when a friend drives five hours to come see you because they know you're going through a hard time and they just want to spend the three or four hours they could spend. They could spare to be with you, but they wanted to be present with you. Or it's that text. that you get sent. You know, I have a friend, I was going through hard time, he would text me every day, praying for you, love you, what can I do for you? Like, we know what that is. And what the gospel, what the Bible offers is the fact that sin has caused us to be broken in these areas and lose this. I'm gonna do it a lot with emotion theory, which is built into my book. And emotion theory says we often misunderstand emotions. We think of emotions as getting in the way of our living. You know, don't be mad, don't be sad. Like how many greeting cards are like, just cheer up. Right. And so we often think our emotions are holding us back from being happy and successful. And modern emotion theory says, no, that's actually 100 % not true. Emotions aren't the enemy. Now, do our emotions get out of control? Yes. Right? shouldn't, like violence is not the answer when you're, you know, arguing with somebody. So we all know what it's like for our emotions to take control. But generally speaking, our emotions are who we are. And if you don't believe me, how many times does the Bible talk about joy as an end game of our being? How many times does Philippians talk about rejoice? How many times did the Psalms talk about having joy in the Lord? These aren't things that we sweep under the covers, under the carpet, sweep away to say, Josh, we often view love as cold, sheer duty. know, have you ever heard someone say like, I don't like you, but gosh darn it, I'm gonna love you. And what emotion theory would say, and actually what Augustine would say is, that's only gonna last for a short time. If our heart's not in something, there's only actually so much you can do. So here's how I explain it. So I'm going to make it really, really simple. And I get this from Augustine. I get this from modern emotion theory. Imagine your soul has invisible tentacles and those tentacles are prone to wrap around things tightly. And that is emotionally and that is structurally to our being what we would call love. And so if those things are wrapped around insecurity of ourselves, we're going to go way off track. If they're wrapped around a person that is bad for us, our lives are going to go off track. If they're wrapped around a spouse that's really good for us, that's so healthy, right? If it's wrapped around our kids, that's so healthy. And so so much of our being, so much of what scripture is trying to do is make sure that we're wrapping those tentacles around the right things in the right ways. And so when people say, love isn't the answer, and empathy and all that stuff, let's not cut off the tentacles. Once you cut off those tentacles, you're no longer a human. What you want to do is say, we've got to make sure we're wrapping those tentacles around the right things in the right ways. And first and foremost has to be wrapped around God. First and foremost. I don't mean to make light of the serious thing that you just said, but I've been playing a lot of Baldur's Gate. And when you're saying tentacles, it totally, it's purpose, like it brought it in. for those that haven't played that will make zero sense to you. zero cents to me, but yeah. Balder Dash, but Balder's gate I don't know. Yeah, but I want to stay in the vein of love, but I also want to maybe talk about some of the other emotional aspects of our Christian faith that has been in the news lately, so one of which is like empathy. In my mind, it seems like empathy is tied to love or is like a child of love in some regards. I'd love for you to just kind of talk about that. And then maybe we can talk a little bit more broadly about sort the national conversation of what people think empathy is really all about. Yeah, the whole concept of empathy is this idea that as a human, I have an innate ability to put myself in someone else's shoes. So, you know, I don't know if you guys know any sympathetic criers, but I'm a sympathetic crier. You my daughter is sympathetic crier. And so I have trouble differentiating myself. I have trouble with self-differentiation. And so, you know, I don't, my wife's a therapist and she's amazing at it and she does a really good job making sure she doesn't bring all the stuff home. And I just, every day I think to myself, I would be so bad at that job because I would just be a mess at the end of the day. But we all have this innate capacity to feel what someone else is feeling, even if we're not experiencing the exact same experience they're experiencing. That's what we call empathy. And everybody on earth knows the value of that. However, The cultural conversations we're in now, and this isn't new to the world, are trying to position this as a bad thing. And I think the idea behind that is when it comes to truth and justice, we kind of have to be cold-hearted. You know, just like justice has a blindfold, we have to be blinded so we can't let empathy affect our decision-making. But I've been doing some research on this and I posted a sub-stack on this a couple days ago. And an interesting case study in history is actually when the Emperor Nero, so I am one of those people that think about the Roman Empire every day, but Emperor Nero for job reasons. Emperor Nero, young man coming to power, he was well known for his vindictiveness, his bloodlust, all of that, his vengefulness. And one of the popular philosophers and statesmen of the time, Seneca, I'm trying to think who he would be. He would be like a Jordan Peterson. Is that horrible to say? He would be like a Jordan Peterson today. He wrote a kind of public essay to Nero called On Clemency or On Mercy. And he basically said, oh great emperor, for the sake of justice, you need to follow the rule of law and punish people. But for the sake of humanity, you need to learn how to show mercy and compassion. All rulers need to show how, you need to show that. And what I gained from that and what I think is true in scripture as well is mercy or empathy and justice or judgment are not opposites. They actually belong together. And justice ensures fairness, but mercy preserves our humanity. And so all the stuff about empathy, I think about the incarnation, think about the inherent risk that Jesus is, I have to believe Jesus took a risk when he came to earth as a human and that some angels were nudging him saying, you might get corrupted by those people down there. And instead of Jesus saying, no, I'm the son of God, that'll never happen, I think he said, it's worth the risk. The reason I say that is the temptation narrative is in three gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, and Jesus is genuinely tired at the end. I don't think that was smoke and mirrors. I think it really took it out of him. I think everything that he was offered by the devil was a genuine temptation. What makes him our Lord and Savior is that he overcame. Now, of course, he has some godness in him that we don't have, but I think it had to be a genuine possibility of corruption and that he overcame. So what he proves to us is, empathy made holy in Christ can be the greatest superpower in the world. Hmm. Can it be corrupted? It can be corrupted. If my son, my beloved son said, dad, I had a really hard day. He's 16. Can I have some liquor just to get through the night? And I say, I feel really bad for you. And every now and then I have a nip, so I'm going to give this to you. Of course that's toxic. Of course that's unhealthy. Of course we would never condone anyone doing that. But the opposite is unhealthy too. Malice. Vengeance, hatred, they're toxic as well. So what I say in my essay is, we don't get rid of the surgical knife just because it can be misused. I wanna give you one case study and then we'll chat more about the politics if you want. I can't believe the Holocaust is almost 100 years ago. mean, it is, it's crazy to think we're getting to that time period where... we're starting to think about this as a century. And there was a German pastor named Martin Niemöller and he originally supported Hitler. He wanted a strong Germany. And then as he saw one group after another being persecuted, he changed his mind and became a supporter of the resistance and all of that. And he came up with that famous poem that's been circulated. First they came for the communists and I said nothing. because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the socialist and then they came for the trade unionists and then they came for the Jews and I said nothing and then they came for me and there was no one to support me and defend me because no one was left. And Ney Muller had said when they came for the communists he thought Who cares about the communists? And then one of the tipping points was actually that the German government wanted to stop supporting people with severe illness. They called them the incurable. And the rationale was in an economically depressed time, it's too much of a burden on the state. Does any of this sound familiar? To say there are a group of people that we can dehumanize. because they are a burden on the state. And when I think about empathy, it's the ability to say, what if that was me? What if that falsely deported person? was my spouse, my father. I mean, that, to me, for Elon Musk or anyone else to say empathy is the greatest threat to civilization is the inverse of the Christian message. Man, I think that's a really powerful statement and I have a lot of sympathy for that. am very concerned with a lot of things that are happening right now. I'm trying to kind of figure it out the best as I can. But I'm thinking about, I just want to think about Paul again as a character and then connect it to this. Because you have Paul who is a nationalist in the sense of, in the sense of I think he would want a strong Jewish nation and presence and yes, and all of that. You he certainly used his Roman citizenship. He certainly had that and used it, but he was for sure, somewhat at the least, right, what we see from Axis is that he was a persecutor of the church. And so he was so concerned about purity, religious purity. He was so concerned about keeping things like in a way and I would say genuinely to please God that he's doing what he knew to do and yet became violent, nationalistic. There's a fervor there, right? And pursued this agenda that he felt like God. And again, I know I'm going back, you know, projecting back, but it seems like Pursued an agenda you felt like God had essentially ordained and blessed. Right, we gotta get rid of this group of people that's creating issues so that Jews can be united and so that we can eventually hopefully get freedom from Rome. All right, so maybe get back to the Maccabees and people can go look at the Maccabees. What an amazing story. They can go look at that, right? Maybe get back to that, this time of freedom that the Jews had, the taste of it for a little while. But when I'm thinking about how he changed, right, he went from this place of, and he would have said he loved God, I'm sure, right? He loved his neighbors, you know, as he defined it in the Old Testament, loved them well. He was a devout person. And yet then God did something in his heart. He had his massive transformation. And now he's going to Gentiles. And this was revolutionary, this love for outsiders. Yeah, yeah. for outsiders. And I would love for you to, here we go with that love word again, but it would be awesome if you were to kind of take that and help us contextualize Paul and put him right here today, right? Like thinking about the stuff that I kind of just mentioned, like you can, you know, bring any correction that you'd see or nuance that you would want to bring out there from what I said. I would love that. But how, how... What's going on with Paul and how is he challenging our missional posture today and where the church is at in terms of loving the outsider in our culture? Yeah, you you're asking questions I haven't thought a whole lot about before, which is great. I think it's powerful that God chose a Jewish person to be apostle to Gentiles. To me, it would make sense to choose a Gentile to be apostle to Gentiles. But for God to choose a Jewish person says something about welcoming outsiders inside, right? It forces him to go outside of the bounds of his kind of nationhood. in order to be compassionate, sympathetic. And what was interesting about Paul is that he called Gentiles brothers and sisters in Christ the same way he called fellow Jews. Now, he felt a special affinity for ethnic Jews. He says that from time to time in Romans and Colossians and other places, know, his kins people, like he gets that. Just like I am, you know, Indian heritage, I have special connection to that heritage. But that sense that We will not draw a line. We will not proclaim Israel first. As people in Christ is powerful, and even Galatians 3.28, in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile. And we might say insider or outsider. Slaver-free, male and female. He's not saying those categories are erased experientially. He's saying we will not recognize those things in terms of important status or access to the church, to salvation, to spiritual goods, however you define those. And so any sense of such and such first. And actually, I know we're dipping into politics, I keep looking at Will here though. This is good. This is a great place to do it, Nejay. Yeah, when JD Vance talked about these orders of love, order of Morris, he's talking about how the Catholic Church has accepted or condoned or even commanded this sense of like concentric circles of importance. So like you have God and then let's say family and then let's say nation. I didn't read it all because I think it's garbage. But so you have these concentric circles, right? And guess what? The Pope rebuked JD Vance. There's no, there's no, if I were JD Vance, the one person I wouldn't want to correct me was the Pope. And the Pope said scripture leans on compassion to all, leans on love for all. You can look up the Pope's response to Vance. But this whole idea that God has ordained circles of love, that your most loves are going to... That goes against the grain of the parable of the Good Samaritan. I guess this is back to what you're talking about, Josh. The parable of the Good Samaritan, it's hard for us to read this as a first-time reader because we're familiar with the story, many of us. But if you were a first-time listener to Jesus' parable, you didn't know as a Samaritan until the end of the story. And pick today any hated group of people to be the punchline of that story. Whether they're Canadians, I love my Canadians, but we villainized unfortunately Canadians. Whether they're Canadians or whoever, like pick whoever you think are the baddies in the world. And Jesus made that person the punchline. What he's doing is he's saying every person in every nation on earth is capable of good. He didn't say the Christian Samaritan. He didn't say the Jesus Disciples Samaritan. He just said the Samaritan. And we say the Good Samaritan. It's actually the Merciful or Compassionate Samaritan. His term isn't there, good. It's actually when he has the conversation with guy, says, which one showed mercy? And so this is about redeeming our common humanity. And so I think that's what Paul learned from Jesus, from the Jesus tradition, reminded him from the Old Testament that we need to embrace this sense of common humanity. We can be, I could be proudly Ohioan. I could be proudly Oregonian. That's not a problem. What's a problem is if I say, I'm going to save this person that's drowning because they're from Oregon. and not this person because they're from Washington. That's where Jesus would say, by God's power, you will say both. Yeah, you know, I just wrote a sub stack recently about church-state separation and I was pretty vulnerable because I mentioned on the front end about how my knowledge about church-state separation has grown. I mean, I guess you have a podcast, talked to really smart people over the past five years, like you learn a few things, right? But I can recognize that my... my maturity level on whether or not church-state separation was good or bad was pretty immature, like before we started doing this. And I say all that because there was a section that I wrote where I said, for a while I was against church-state separation, but when somebody would mention, you know, what do I think about Martin Luther King using... know, biblical imagery or metaphors to fight for social justice, I would be like, I don't really know, you know, and like my whole argument would just be blown apart. And what I hear you say, which I agree with, like, I think as Christians, we should, you know, portray Jesus in its most accurate light. But also, like a lot of the other areas that we look at is like other people using the Bible to kind of push agendas that that they believe in, know, good, bad or indifferent. But in my opinion, a lot of it's probably bad. So, like, how do you how do you kind of reconcile, you know, like when it's OK to to, you know, express our biblical views and kind of the political arena and like when we shouldn't? Yeah, that's tough. you may know Cory Booker did this. He used the Bible quite a bit in his big filibuster speech. Raphael Warnock did this. Sorry, what was it? It was just a floor speech. He wasn't fighting a bill or anything. Yeah he was. Yeah they call it a filibuster because it's similar to previous ones. But yeah he wasn't stopping legislation. Yeah. You could see I don't know all the political terms. But but Raphael Warnock did it at the Democratic Convention. He has credentials. So I like that. I'm just giving my opinion. So I'm taking off my you know clergy. I'm not clergy but I'm taking off my clergy hat. And I'm just giving my opinion. I don't mind it because of the history of America being kind of interwoven with, you know, biblical imagery and that sort of thing. I don't mind it. I think that the danger is when you use the language of scripture without the values and heart of scripture. So you can pull out a verse to justify warfare. or violence, or the death penalty, or retribution, you all that kind of stuff. A bill on abortion or whatever. To me, number one, it depends on, I'm just giving my opinion here again, you can argue with me, but who's saying it? I think it matters who's saying it. Do I believe them? Do I believe that they believe it? Do they know anything about the Bible? And what is the possible... moral and practical outcomes of how they're using the Bible. So, for example, Reagan, you know, I use this as a case study in my hermeneutics class, which is about biblical interpretation. Reagan talked about how he could see the Book of Revelation coming into being in sort of the nuclear proliferation sorts of things going on in his era. And, you know, the question is, is that a valid? I don't know. I don't think there was a negative outcome from that. Bill Clinton, during one of the great tragedies, can't remember if it was a school shooting or what, he said, we see through a glass dimly. And that's, know, quote from 1 Corinthians. Again, it's kind of a cultural borrowing of biblical language, but if you're gonna use it to justify illegal activity, if you're gonna use it to justify harming a particular group of people in the United States, I mean, God help you, because you're... A millstone may form around your neck and you may fall into the deep sea. So what I would say to a politician is have a theologian or at least a group of pastors on on speed dial and run it by them before you use it in a speech and if there's this sort of this person's pulling in the same direction, know, Bernie Sanders, I have mixed feelings about Bernie. I like a lot of his policies. I think what he will do very, very shrewdly is find commonalities of values with Jews and Christians to pull in the direction of his policies. And sometimes I think he gets it wrong, but where his heart's at in terms of generosity and equality is right. So I kind of don't mind. What I'd like there to be is balance, because if what you're using the text for is retribution, if what you use the text for is discrimination, Are you also quoting from the Sura on the Mount? Are you also quoting from, yeah, the teachings of Jesus that are, a lot of them are about love and generosity and that sort of thing. What I don't want people is to use the Bible disrespectfully. If an unbeliever, if a Muslim, non-Christian, used the Bible respectfully, I think that's great. You guys may know that Dietrich Bonhoeffer had reached out during his time in the 1930s to Mahatma Gandhi and said, hey Gandhi, I know that you like the Sermon on the Mount. It's inspired you in your pursuit of nonviolent resistance. And Bonhoeffer said, can I come and study the Sermon on the Mount with you? And Gandhi said yes. And by the time the information got back to Bonhoeffer, the war had gotten to a place where he couldn't leave. So actually didn't do it. But the question is, would I go study the Sermon on the Mount with Mahatma Gandhi? I would. I would do that for sure. Would I take everything he says as gospel truth? No. But would I do it? I would 100 % do it. Yeah, this is, so this leads me to an interesting kind of tension that I've been feeling inside. And I've had this conversation at several times. Most recently, we have a guys group that meets on Wednesday night, sorry, Monday nights with my church, River City Underground. Will actually attends that when he can. And we were talking about the idea of the idea of like evangelism, but really like witness is I think probably the word I would go to in the sense of like, what is the witness and what should be the witness of the church within a culture, you know, and we kind of went in the love ideas at the center of this because, know, one of the things that, you know, Will and I have talked about Will will say something like, well, I'm just going to love people and they're going to feel that love. They're going to experience that love. And that love has affected people. by the way, I'm not saying like Will says this, like that's bad or wrong. I completely agree with them. That's like this sense of like you love, like let your love be the thing that moves forward. And if you aren't going to be loving, then you probably should talk about Jesus because then you're to put a really bad name. Yeah. Jesus, because you're going to be like a jerk. And then you're going to talk about how people need to know Jesus. And then they're going to be like, why would I need to know that doesn't seem like Jesus has made you that great of a person. And so like, why would then I want anything to do with Jesus? So it's almost like you need the witness on one hand, but you can't you should not have the witness without the love. You should not have the truth. get maybe the truth without the love, right? speaking grace and truth, truth and love, things like that. And this witness that we have, I don't know how much you were able to think about this in writing the book, but what is kind of that place of love in creating the kind of witness that truly brings, like truly brings, don't know, revival is word that came to mind. It's not necessarily the word I'm looking for, but really represents Christ, know, because it's the thing that I've been struggling with the way I learned evangelism, the way I learned to show the love of God was by preaching the gospel, which was essentially saying, you're a sinner, you're going to hell, Jesus loves you. He came and He died for you. So I mean, the love is in there, but it's like, it's not really, it's much more about these words. It's much more about this message than it is about, but it sounds like this message isn't. It's not just words and what you're saying, right? Actually, that's a very small part of it is the words. Where does love, do you understand the question? Does it make sense? Okay, go ahead. So, you know, this is actually a big debate in the early church, or sorry, in scholarship about the early church. And the scholarship really says, did the first Christians who weren't apostles or weren't pastors, did they evangelize? So did Joe Schmo at the church in Philippi go door-to-door with the four Greek spiritual laws in Greek and tell people, you know, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. there's a lot of scholars that says there's no evidence that everyday Christians evangelized partly because they didn't know systematic theology. It was kind of being built around them, partly because they were an extreme minority. I had some friends who were missionaries in Oman and the Middle East, and you would be in serious trouble if you evangelized people. So they really could just minister to foreigners who were living abroad there. They weren't allowed to. they weren't really ministering to people of Oman. And there's been some responses to that, and one of the main responses by Michael Gorman is number one, how could you not share the most important thing in your life with other people, co-workers, that sort of thing? But number two, I think maybe more importantly at that time, is you would invite them into your church community. to see what was going on there. If you were not fully educated in the things of Jesus, you were believable, but you didn't have the knowledge and the confidence to, you would naturally invite them to your house church and you'd say, hey, come sit in, we're gonna have a meal. And we get the sense, so 1 Corinthians talks about, Paul talks about these people, he calls them idiotes. We get the word idiot from it, that's not what it means. It means someone who's on their own, meaning they're not. directly connected to the community. They're visitors. And he says, he calls them unbelievers, but he calls them idiotas, meaning they are inside outsiders. And he doesn't consider them Christians, but he does consider them welcome. And we get this sense that they're coming back week after week. And so here's the challenge, Josh. In an era, I think it may have been different 50 years ago in United States or 60 years ago, but an era that we're living in now, Christianity has such a bad reputation. I live in one of the most unchurched, even anti-Christian places in the United States, Portland, Oregon. And if I poll my neighbors, nine out of 10 are gonna say only negative things about evangelicalism. They might like the Pope. He's hard not to like. They might like, you know, a particular, you know, author here and there, but broadly speaking, no. So I think a key conviction we need to have and I'm I don't use the word evangelical but I'm part of the evangelical tradition so it's my weird family we gotta get we gotta get things right we gotta turn the ship around so I think we're gonna have trouble evangelizing we still should we're gonna have trouble evangelizing till we figure things out so Paul says in Galatians 6 let us do good to all especially to those in the household of faith why does he say especially he's especially because the church is meant to be what Tom Wright calls a working model of new creation. The problem is we're not working. The model's not working. We're a broken model of new creation. Yeah, King said, King said 11 o'clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in the United States. And he was talking about his time. I don't know if that was true in the 80s and 90s, but I feel like it's becoming true again. I've talked to my friends, this gets kind of crazy, I've talked to my friends. I could never imagine until this year the possibility that we may have a new civil rights era. Think about what happened in the civil rights era and how we're like, oh, that's all done. That, oh, you know, oh, that's all done. Stephen Colbert once said to Cornell West on his show, now that racism is no longer a problem, what do do with your time? He was joking, he was joking. But I kind of had that mentality of, oh, all this stuff is a thing of the past. But it is even present and perhaps even more so in the church. And it's not just race, it's political hatred, it's economic hatred, and the division, and it's fueled by social media. So what I would say, going back to evangelism conversation, is we can still create tracks. I don't think it's gonna do a whole lot until we renew our witness, repent. I think we need repentance. throughout the church in United States, sins of commission, but even with people like me, probably more likely sins of omission, that I didn't do enough or didn't do enough at the right time. I think there needs to be, when you're talking about revival, I think it's going to begin with repentance, repentance of the church. How many times have we looked back to a generation or two ago and said, those people were crazy. They didn't wear seat belts, they drank alcohol while they drove. What are people going to say about us 50 years from now? They're going to say, how could they have done that? How could they have been so divided economically? How could they have resorted to violence against each other so easily? So what I would say is the first step in a longer, wider spread strategy of evangelism is make the good news good again. Make it good so that people will say, That does sound like good news. Or what we're hearing right now is, want Jesus, but I don't want the church. Jesus is good for me, but the church is bad for me. And you know what? I sympathize with that. I still want them to go to church. I want them to find a safe church. But right now, the narrative I'm hearing around in my area is Jesus may be good news, but the church is bad news. The church hurts people. The church chews people up and spits them out. And And that's my problem. I'm a part of the problem. That's your problem. And that's something we need to solve. And to me, we have to do a deep look at ourselves and say, have I loved God with my whole heart? And have I loved my neighbor, whoever they are? And that whoever they are is the part that we can't get right right now. Have I loved my neighbor with my whole heart? That's pretty deep. I had a question, but instead of asking, I'm just going to make a quick comment in regards to you saying that you're part of the problem. And my comment is, Faithful Politics does have a merch store that has a shirt that is written in Mario letters that says, it's a me. I'm the problem. That's I need that shirt. I need that shirt. OK. I'm going go on after look at that. I do think I do think what we're seeing in social media is is is a failure to be able to look in the mirror. And this is why. OK. So this is self advertising. AJ Swaboda and I are coming out with a book called Slow Theology. It's coming out in September and It's basically how can we turn the deconstruction movement into a movement towards deeper discipleship and actually turn us to follow Jesus more passionately. And a big part of that is getting away from the toxicity of the reactionaryism on social media. and going back to slow, steady practices of just building our life on a solid rock, of Jesus, of the gospel, of love, of goodness. And so we're going need to make some huge changes in the church. Like I want to say to every pastor in the United States, take a five-year break from social media and just spend more time with your people. And maybe there are one or two people who are called to be public-facing pundits. I can think of those people and they'll be good at it. But for the vast majority of pastors, whatever time, and it's going to be a lot that you take off of social media, I mean, it's going to spend more time just being with people, praying for people, showing up for people in your neighborhood. I really feel like this social media thing is a massive crisis for the church. And we say, look at all the good that I'm doing. and I'm thinking one step forward, two steps back is what's happening. I don't think technology is the enemy, but this social media thing is run out of control. I yeah, I felt some serious conviction when you just said that, DJ. I I pray for my people. Like, great. But I pray, but I've just thinking like, you know, do, like social media is funny because you do feel like it's like this false sense of accomplishment. I don't know false, but. today? Yeah, I don't know what it is. I don't know if false is the right word, but it's this sense, I've accomplished this. But then the question is what exactly have I accomplished? And sometimes like, I don't know. I got a bunch of likes. I know this though. When I post something about Donald Trump, that gets way more, way more traction than when I post anything about Jesus or the Bible. And those are all from people, Christians, many Christians. And again, it's not an indictment as much as it is just kind of a curiosity like, man, what is going on? Like we just, we're so emotional about it. We're so tied into it that we don't care what people post about Jesus unless it's really, really offensive, I guess. But it's like to us, but it's like, we are so... hide wrapped around the axle about everything political in the church. And it's been tough, man. I hear what you're saying. You're hitting the nail on the head. You're really getting into something there that I think is crucial. This is my last question, and then I'll just ask some practical things for people to follow you. What are you really hoping that the book accomplishes in terms of how it impacts the behavior lives of the people that read it and the people that interact with it's Yeah, to me it's really, really simple and it's something I didn't think about before I wrote the book really, although I've been on this track for a while. It's really this question, when I was going back to that, I mentioned before the crisis of Christian maturity in our age. How do you know whether you're on the good path with Jesus? How do you actually know that? And what we often do is we do checklists. Am I reading my Bible? Am I praying? Guess what? so were the right churches. They were doing those things. And I'm not saying they're all evil, but some of them were. So just reading the Bible and praying is not enough. I mean, that's just like I can exercise for 10 minutes a day and still not lose weight, right? So how do we know that we're on the good path with Jesus? How do we actually know that? I want everyone listening to this, reading my book to ask themselves that question. And what would scripture say about that? And we didn't get a chance to talk about the Old Testament, but what is the ultimate heart of the Bible and Jewish Christian religion? Deuteronomy 6, love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your might. And Jesus adds, also from the Old Testament for Leuticus, love your neighbor as yourself. So, you know, when you look in the mirror every day, you know, at the end of day, physically or spiritually. You know, what you're not supposed to be asking is, how many likes did get on social media? How many emails did I get from parishioners saying my sermon was so good? How many people came to my political rally? What you should be asking is, did I grow in love for God, love for myself, love for neighbor, love for stranger, love for friend, and love for enemy? And the ultimate, the ultimate, the very summit of the Christian life is true love for enemy. None of us can do that. I feel like that is the possible, impossible command of the Bible. None of us can do it. But for me, like, like I have certain people, one of my, one of my best friends, we text back and forth, he'll joke around about how long my enemy list is in terms of people who've hurt me. and we'll say, let's write a book on this. Let's have so and so write. I'm like, nope, not them, not them. And he's like, your list keeps growing. And what does it look like to pray for those people and say, I want God to bless them with sun and rain, just like Matthew 5 says. I want God to give them the best spouse, the best job. And there's something in us that doesn't like that. We don't want our enemies to succeed or to thrive. And where I've landed on that, Josh is... The goodness is not in God blessing those people. The goodness is in us praying for that. Like I don't, you know, so I'll give you a funny, funny story and then we can, we can wrap up. When my kids were really, really little, I don't remember, I think it's my oldest, maybe really little, four or five years old. And we were praying and she said, can we pray for Satan? I want to pray that he becomes a Christian. And I said, I said, sweetie, you can't do that. Like that's not. And she's like, why not? And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, why not? And yeah, the Bible says that's never going to happen, but God actually delights in that prayer. Isn't that crazy? God delights in that prayer. Like, God delights when we say, God bless my enemies. I pray for those who persecute me. Bless them. And so what I really want to come out, I mean, if I had the dream of dreams, it's that we start a revolution. Our job is to love and we leave the outcome to God. what about, what about? Aren't we spoiling the wicked? What about, what about? Aren't we... We love. We pull the person out of the burning building. We rescue the person out of the pit and we leave the results to God. To me that is, and of course we have to preach Jesus. Of course we have to let people know there's consequences to their decisions. But from a place of love, from a place of restoring them. So what I would love is I light a match and it starts a revolution and we make the gospel good news again. I really like that, dude. We're on a campaign to make the gospel good news again. And I think that's so good. That's my heart. I share that. And I appreciate your work in that regard, NeJae. And you've always inspired me with your work, and it's been really enlightening for me. And I appreciate you coming on to talk with us a little bit again about this. Where can people... Obviously they can get the book on Amazon. It's always a weird question. But I guess what I'm really trying to get at is is there a place you would like them to go to? And is there some way for them to get involved beyond reading the book? Or is it just, hey, go pick it up? What's out there for people when it comes to this? yeah, you know, I think there are skeptics out there who are kind of like, I'm not sure, apprehensive. I'd say read Augustine's Confessions. And I'm not a reformed person, I'm not Catholic. I come as just a fan of love. And the thing is learning to be an integrated person, our emotions are who we are. We aren't just our mind against our emotions, we're the whole package. And then I'd say if you want to follow my work, I have a sub stack called Engaging Scripture where I talk about the Bible, theology. and everything related to the gospel. And then I mentioned Slow Theology the Book. It's based on our podcast Slow Theology, Following Jesus, Simple Faith in Jesus in Chaotic Times. And the whole goal of our podcast is to help people on the rocky, topsy-turvy life that we have in this world, that Jesus is still the answer. Slow Theology the Podcast. So check out the podcast, check out the sub stack. We'll put links to the book, The Affections of Jesus Christ, and how to, yeah, all the other things that you mentioned. So thanks again for coming on the show, Ne-J. Always a pleasure to talk to both you, Josh and Will. Same, same. So to our friends, thank you for joining us. go ahead, Will, you're going to say something, All right. I was affirming somebody. Yes, yes. And before I say this though, you reminded me in Brooklyn Nine-Nine when he said, when Terry, he said, Terry loves love. Do you remember that? When he talks about... Anyway, you got to watch it. If you watch the show, it'll make sense. So anyway, guys, thank you for jumping in and spending some time with us. Make sure you like, subscribe to all the things that hack this algorithm. Share this with somebody. We try to get great content out for you guys so that you can be inspired, you can be challenged, grow, change, and share this. We put a lot of effort into this because we love you and we love God. And we want to make this available for people. We appreciate you guys. And until next time, keep your conversations not right or left, but up. Thanks, guys.