Episode 30 - Prophet or Ass

[transcript automatically generated - cleanup in progress]

[Music] hey friends before we get started this week i do have a couple of announcements to talk about that are relatively exciting first of all we're doing two lost and found events in the very near future one in phoenix arizona and two in los angeles california if you'd like to learn more about those events and tickets are on sale right now you can go to the liturgist.com events and get more information lost and found as a presentation as a live event is similar to our lost and found podcast where we talk about what it's like to lose your faith and how you can start to have some sort of reconstructed faith on the other side of skepticism and that's done via short story vignettes interactive meditation exercises and music all sort of interspersed together it's totally different probably than anything you've ever seen in a live context as you'd expect from a liturgist event of course gunger's involved the brilliance and me too we put that on together so we'd love to see you there in phoenix or los angeles also and this is really exciting if you were never able to get to one of our belong events we're trying to solve the problems we've had with belong namely that tickets are too expensive and there's not enough seats so not everybody can go who wants to be there so this year we're going to be a lot more intentional and try to make sure that everybody at least in the us who'd like to see us in person and be a part of one of our conferences can be now we don't have a specifics to announce yet but i can tell you the four cities will do events and do conferences in in 2016 will be los angeles denver dallas and chicago these events will be a sort of friday evening saturday type event and we'll do a lot of the same material we've done it belong and we're actually looking for churches who'd like to be a part of this so if you'd like to host one of our conferences there'll be absolutely no cost to your church zero we're looking for churches that have a venue that can seat between 500 and 650 people and if you're interested in that if you'd like the liturgist to come to your church in los angeles denver dallas or chicago just go to the liturgist.com slash 2016 event and fill out a form and we'll get in touch with you and talk to you about more details and how that would work again if you have a church that seats between 500 and 650 people and you'd like the liturgists to come to your church at absolutely no cost go to the liturgist.com 2016 event for more information welcome to the liturgist podcast everybody today we have the always popular and always welcome to the religious podcast rachel held evans welcome back rachel well thank you thanks for being so great to be here there's like a petition on the internet to have rachel co-host the show and it just it doesn't happen i would sign it myself uh award warning everybody today uh the podcast might have some choice language on it i might want to not have kids listen if they don't like to hear naughty words right i mean we're talking about prophets or assholes is that what that's what we're talking about we're going full on assholes oh okay asses well i was thinking like isn't it weird like calling somebody an ass versus an asshole is a different thing like an actual it's clearly a different thing yeah i agree but if you're an ass you're just kind of like not very smart right isn't that kind of the implication kind of you know or just kind of a jerk or just somebody just says whatever that's what i think of as an ass okay that's what i think it was an asshole oh a jerk well i assume you can say ass it's it's like paints less of a picture more severe like an ass is just like ah they haven't really thought about things yeah and yet exactly but an asshole there's a lot more um there's a lot more spite involved and a lot more it's deliberate assery specificity of asshole eliminates ambiguity when you call someone ass you could still be plausibly calling them a donkey there's there's this kind of question in the air but as soon as you say asshole like that's a really specific behavioral connotation with obvious allusions to undesirable anatomy wisdom we can go either way how about we i don't care i'll i'll go either way on this conversation well i mean that's that's the question like if one is a prophet is it okay to be a prophet and an ass like is that oh see that's justified no i think that would that oh that that raises an interesting question so maybe to catch everybody up uh it was the last podcast that we did with rachel was it the last one or the one before that that this conversation kind of came up and it was like when do you know if you're being and by prophetic we don't mean like future telling uh tarot cards or anything we we're talking about sort of the biblical tradition of speaking truth to power and speaking sort of on the edge of you know it's it's confrontational this prophetic voice that we're talking about is maybe more of the brugaman sort of truth to power systems and so we're having a conversation and like how do you know when you're like speaking something that's true and that needs to be said and you're saying it out of love and you're like on the side of good and justice and and when are you just being an asshole [Laughter] i i'm so juvenile i laugh every time you say asshole and i know that people will hear it like a little bit of just taboo thrill goes through my body well okay if we're gonna use biblical ideas in prophecy uh perhaps you could start there can you think of biblical prophets who were asses and or assholes or am i going too far this might be well i've been thinking a lot about like how do you distinguish that between when you're just being a jerk and when you're speaking truth and i think a lot of it has to do with whether you agree with the person or not because i mean take jesus if if jesus says what he says but you're not like down with what he says you know like uh he says some harsh things and things that sound crazy you know like you see me you see the father i i am the way the truth to life no one comes to the father but through me um all kinds of stuff that sounds like if you just listen and don't like what he's saying i didn't come to bring peace but a sword brother against brother yeah but because if you like jesus you're like well it's he's speaking prophetically if you don't like jesus you're like well that guy's crazy yeah for me what raised the original question was i was finding that a lot of people and i'm so grateful i have really super supportive encouraging readers who just keep me going when i'm feeling discouraged but a lot of times people would say to me after just like a tweet or a blog post or whatever it is wow you're just really prophetic rachel that was real you're a prophet and i was getting a little uncomfortable with that language for a lot of reasons but mainly because like i feel like i am way too comfortable to be a prophet you know that speaking prophetically consistently often comes at great great cost and i just when i look at my life and my work it has come at some cost sometimes but for the most part i've been pretty richly rewarded for that work and i found a lot of people who are again supportive and encouraging and so it just it brought to my mind that you know just tweeting something uh sort of in a protest of maybe a christian conference that has all white dudes speaking um is i think good work and i think it's important to do that and i think that it holds people accountable and whatnot and i've actually seen that sort of thing make change happen but that action alone does not a profit make i don't think i think it's a more of a a whole lifestyle that costs a lot more than a couple of angry people tweeting back at you does that make sense i guess i wanted to talk about it because i feel like maybe we're starting to overuse that word a little bit it's like we all read brugeman we all have start you know we kind of have been well those of us who are a little behind the times have recently kind of jumped on the prophetic train and said oh hey you know it's important to speak prophetically and sometimes i just feel like we kind of you overuse it and so we use it for every time that we piss somebody off you know or get that little power trip out of calling somebody out and so i wanna i don't know i kind of wanted to explore and i haven't figured this out what is the difference then between speaking truth power and actually living prophetically and writing and speaking and living prophetically i think there's a difference i'm just trying to figure out what that is man you just messed up my brain i get super super uncomfortable when people say i'm a prophet or speaking prophetically largely because i i don't really know what that actually means i mean i know what different people would say that means but you know to to your point of like comfort i've been so harshly punished for sharing my honest opinion about things that i got to quit my day job that doesn't like that's right that's not that's not at all the model i see depicted anywhere in either the bible or church history for someone who is speaking uncomfortable truth to power exactly that's exactly it yeah i mean people are standing up and applauding me and then afterwards saying you're a prophet and that doesn't seem like how it goes for the prophet fan letters that call you a prophet might not be on the best ground right it ends poorly for them which is one reason why when i'm totally honest about it i'm not sure i want to speak prophetically too often i'm certainly sure i don't want to be a prophet because those stories usually end kind of badly or at least i suppose they don't necessarily end badly because resurrection but it's not a not a life of luxury at all maybe we're maybe those of us today that are just tweeting we're just really just echoing actual prophets you know he's like yeah we're saying yeah there's white guys only at this conference and but like that's been work that's been being done for a long time that we're sort of jumping on the coattails of some of the true prophets that were killed for fighting for racial inequality and whatever you know i mean like i wouldn't even notice things like that unless prophets pointed them out to me it would be complete unconscious bias for me the only reason i notice the only reason i've learned to notice and see the world through those eyes is because actual prophetic people have shown me the reality of things like white supremacy well that's a nice thing to do to echo the nice prophets you know i'm not sorry to echo the prophets i suppose as opposed to the bad ones [Laughter] maybe that's the difference i mean maybe there's a difference between speaking prophetically and being a prophet uh you know speaking prophetically i'll might involve quite a bit of sharing of other people's ideas and kind of being awakened by other people's ideas i mean maybe we're just it's more like you're part of a movement a prophetic movement being a part of that in a big or small way it's different than the burden of leading it yeah which is why maybe speaking prophetically i'm a little more comfortable with than well you're a prophet that's that's a little maybe maybe we're in the language-wise we're sort of in the realm of like saint you want to try to behave like a saint or whatever you see however you think of saint but you can't call it like yes i am a saint you know like i don't know if you can call yourself some of these big words like prophet or saint that's sort of let history show who the real prophets are yeah the real saints are um but you can try to move in the direction of behaving like a saint would or like a pro speaking truth like a prophet would or what you know i don't think you have to call yourself a prophet to still have this question matter like am i moving towards the prophetic right which is like what it comes down to too is is at the practical level this is what i sometimes i think what i find myself doing is i justify being an ass by saying well i'm being prophetic you know what i mean like i justify misrepresenting other people's opinions or jumping to conclusions or reacting with anger which there is a place for holy prophetic anger but like it sometimes i use all of this language and all of these ideas if i'm being honest to justify just being a jerk to people you know what i mean or thinking about people in in dehumanizing ways like well they're just a white dude who doesn't know what he's saying you know what i mean so that's what what's interesting to me is to consider how how do i know when i've made people angry because i've said something that's true and that needs to be said and how do i know when i've made people angry because i've been a jerk to them and i'm justifying it using you know religious language i can't stand to make people angry you're a nine in the enneagram well i mean there is my nineness and rachel's a seventh no i'm a three i have to go i am gonna have to win seven's the enthusiast bro oh i'm sorry i messed up yes three is that you have to win everything like you're the um the achiever the achiever i haven't messed up what are you michael it's eight's the aggressive one isn't it yeah i have a lot of eights that's what i like but it's it's it's and they're not they're not so bad what are you michael the people that actually know the enneagram right now are screaming at their computers we got to do an episode on the enneagram we should we gotta learn it first but yeah no kidding yeah the people out of the loop were like oh my gosh here we go with the stupid enneagram thing but my point is not just about peacemaking my point is like tail ending on what rachel said about righteous anger and everything one i used to be very conflict diverse but that's not actually the reason i don't want to make people angry the whole school of thought behind prophecy sometimes troubles both the experienced marketer and the studier of neuroscience in me and namely that once people are are angry or respond to someone else's anger they are either in a defensive posture or a placating posture but neither case are they receptive to new information so i tend to always engineer difficult truths in a way that it's a neurocognitive payload that will be effective toward whatever group i'm talking to my goal is always to try to help people rewrite the software that's running in their skulls more than to necessarily scream truth from the roof drops i'm always obsessed with the efficacy of my message in driving real behavioral change that's really interesting no because i i just i wonder whether not everybody has the discipline to do that i'm not just trying to flatter you i'm saying you know sometimes i think i get a little impatient and it's just like i want to make the point as quickly as possible and as cl like i like i kind of like to pat myself on the back for being clever you know what i mean like oh i got this snarky awesome tweet that i can send back or i've got this like snarky blog posts that i can write you know and and that has not proven to be the most effective tool for changing people's minds i think it just rallies people back which is not again sort of the role of somebody hoping to speak prophetically i'll be honest like i'll read the old testament and i'll read the prophets like jeremiah and i go okay so he understood some very real truths were relayed to him through revelation or whatever but his communications platform is really ineffective like if if he was my ad agency i'd fire him i love that that was true and they did like the prophets would do these super extreme things and rhetorically obviously i mean you read lamentations and it's just like it's you know it's israel's a whore and i will show her what happens to whores i mean it's like really intense often kind of gendered too which is a whole another conversation you know and kind of hateful and and it does seem like would that have really been persuasive to people but of course that's a different different culture and time then you add on like all the stunts you know like i'm gonna wear a yolk around for a year i'm gonna walk around naked what else did they do i'm going to marry a prostitute my food over poop all year you know where eat locusts and honey there was the stunts are a whole other component to it i mean that's reasonable buzz marketing in all those cases i will say that that would have been on youtube for sure that's micah so there's this thing neurocognitively i thought i didn't have anything to say in science and profit or ask but apparently i do i've studied this in the context of driving social change and why for example movements like black lives matter both are effective and polarizing right that was trying to kind of get to the roots of that because i always figure out if you can figure out what's happening in the brain you can optimize and you can continue to drive even more change and so on the one hand for a group that is in an oppressed state that is kind of under the heel of a power structure uh the angry voice of a very loud prophet like well might be i'd call it old testament prophet is very powerful in creating persistent social identity in the face of a power structure that tries to dismantle it so for those people that voice is incredibly affirming and life-giving and also the intensity of that message is received by the more empathetic or sympathetic ears inside of the power structure so it starts to kind of statistically move the very very very far end of the bell curve in the power structure so that it actually is a necessary role the problem is since it's essential to human cognition that human beings self-identify basically as good people they unconsciously filter any information that undermines their self-identification as a good person so if you're inside a power structure which you probably didn't create you were a part of since birth and someone raises evidence that your way of life oppresses another people group not only is it likely to make you defensive in one case it's actually more likely to put you into a cognitive trance wherein you tune out and forget the whole thing later and so what i'm learning scientifically is there's an essential two-piece action to social change on the one hand you have to have people who loudly and vehemently speak about the specifics of the problem and the way that people are being oppressed or harmed and that's essential but that has to be connected to people who can then take that information translate it into the neurocognitive assumptions of the oppressing group and do so while calling out in some way the basic goodness of that group's identity to kind of de-weaponize the speech or communication so you know i've i've heard it said very reasonably so that it is never the job of any person of color to sit down and explain to a white person why white supremacy structures are so damaging and how they play a part of it and it's not that would be horrible and inhumane but it is the job of people who become aware of those messages who are inside white supremacy to have less high stakes less emotionally intense discussions that describe the problem and increase empathy while saying listen i understand most of these actions are completely unthinking and of course at your basic level you are a good person and without both of those things it's actually impossible to drive social change on large scale it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourself or feeling connected to the people that we love better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through betterhelp you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions betterhelp has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using better health that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over 1 million people taking care of their mental health again it's betterhelp h-e-l-p-com liturgists well that's that's great i love that and i love how that kind of paints the picture of how we all need each other on some level and how we need both the peacemaker mike and the uh sorry where are you again rachel oh i'm a three there's nothing noble about three at all no we don't we need it we need the people but we also we need the people that the prophet is just part of the the whole thing the whole body the whole movement towards right towards the light everybody's gift and everybody's place in pro like i think maybe that's as we talk about how people respond to stress this whole the enneagram idea how people respond to conflict and all that maybe how all of our brains respond differently is great and and it's part of how society can if we didn't have the people that are way on the edge of being bitey and having a little sarcasm and having a little whatever that they're just a little too much for most people we need that little spice in the sauce and you know if you're that person it's unfortunate because you're probably going to get a lot of flack in your pro you might get killed if you're really that person if you're an actual prophet that's going to speak at the total front edge you're going to get killed or something equivalent and it's not going to be good for you but the farther back and that bell curve probably gets safer and safer for you but i don't know it's kind of an interesting way of seeing the whole body has has a place in the prophetic movement yeah i like that you know somebody who comes to mind to me as somebody who i would consider prophetic maybe even a prophet like in this scheme is like bree newsome you know the the woman who climbed the flagpole and took down the confederate flag that has all the elements of like biblical prophet because it's a stunt you know what i mean like definitely there's a there's a sort of stunt and that's not even the right word for it but like a a prophetic action involved it's symbolic that means something that generates buzz that gets attention but it was very deliberate and very focused that was not like an uh split-second decision uh and you know she had a whole community around her that was supporting her helping her knew she was gonna do it and then and and then she paid a real price for it too you know uh so it was like to me that and then her whole life when you follow her work has been consistently about this and she's taken a lot of heat for it to me that's kind of i don't know it's a good example when i think of who looks looks like a biblical prophet today she comes to mind and she's also very very outspoken about her faith as well which i think is is exciting to see but yeah i mean i think we need people like her badly and but i also recognize there's a difference between scaling that flagpole and taking down that confederate flag and going to prison for it and working across all sorts of lines and differences to try and make that mean something more than just a symbol there's a difference between all of that and me getting on twitter and saying i approve of it you see what i mean you know or criticizing somebody who disagreed with it or making a witty point about why she was right and why you know kim davis is wrong that's why i think like words matter and so how we use the word prophecy in prophetic matters because i recognize there's a difference between the price that she's paid and the price that i've paid and the life that she lives and the life that i live and i want to be a part of that movement as much as i can but i also recognize there's a lot of reasons why i have to be careful of equating my work with hers it's interesting uh both of those examples about a month and a half ago i was having a conversation with another white southern male and in that conversation i called brie a prophet and without a moment's hesitation he said she was an ass that's crazy well because he thinks um we were talking about black lives matter and he was saying how that was creating racial division when we'd gotten to a point where we were a post-racial america and that the black lives matter movement undermined the work of dr martin luther king oh no and that was his his genuine interesting fantasy heartfelt perspective now he lives in a southern town of approximately 18 000 people i'm guessing of which seven or eight thousand are black but it's a rural farming community and he lifted to me as an example of a modern day prophet of course kim davis oh my god well this goes this goes back to the whole thing i said the beginning of like do you agree with the person and that's what makes you delineate profit or ass like the guy that did the the gun thing at liberty university when the paris shield well junior oh yeah that was the president of liberty university yeah says it's not just a guest speaker just like the guy that runs it what he said was awful but it's awful because i disagree with him if he would have been if i would have been on his side i'd have been like he's speaking prophetically speaking uncomfortable truths so that's a great point because that just goes to show too though like the degree to which it's edgy and makes people uncomfortable really depends too on context you know what i mean so it's like you know he's talking to a group of people that's roaring in approval you know in any situation it's hard to see how that's prophetic whereas you know when you're a more marginalized and oppressed person speaking to a powerful group that's see and that's the ultra concern it does change depending on because like this gets to like you know when people like russell moore who i actually like i like russell moore uh but we just don't always agree on things but you know when he's describing evangelical christians as marginalized by the gay and lesbian community you know so it's like well now that you know like he's not gonna get kicked out of his church for his sexuality you know what i mean but that happens to lgbt people all the time so like but he perceives evangelical christians as being called as a marginalized people who he says is called to live prophetically but his notion of what living prophetically means is very different than what my idea of living prophetically means his idea of living prophetically is is fighting against the cultural shift that has led to broader acceptance of lgbt people that's part of his vision for what it means to be prophetic uh as a marginalized quote unquote group and i see it so completely differently i'm like dude you're like a white man with a super powerful position and you know saying that calling yourself marginalized lacks perspective and saying that that it's prophetic to call for the culture to stay exactly as it's been which has been to marginalize lgbt people is off so yeah i mean i guess there is i'm about to sound like fundamentalist christian here but i guess like there is an element of truth is important here too like what is actually just and what is actually good and what is actually oppression and what is actually power matters oh that's tricky though and it's tricky because when you look at even these people that the these examples so far of the people that we're we would classify i would tend to classify as ass um they're still trying to like kim davis all these people are they're trying in their minds they're trying to do something good they're trying to keep people from sin that's going to destroy their lives and keep this country from being destroyed by its own sinful selfish nature or whatever like they're trying to help people on some level yes i'm sure there's fear and bigotry and whatever else dark in the mix but most people that are speaking up the guy that says we just need more guns he's really thinking like that that's gonna help like like that's gonna stop the evil and and good will prevail and people will be able to feel safe yeah and but then i guess then i would say then it matters that he's wrong like the guy who's saying that oh breeze and ass and because she's undermining the work of and they'll okay you know that guy bless his heart like is not sorry that's such a southern way to be like that's just southern code but she is not a prophet but he you know that his unawareness of the reality that things are not equitable in this country and that there's a ton of work to be done for um you know basic racial equality like that is reality that is a fact like there are numbers and data that we can look at to see that that's definitely true and if you listen to the stories and experiences of black people it's it's very clear that there's you know we're we are not living in a post-racial society that he's just wrong so at some point like it does matter like whether you're right or wrong about it changes whether you're speaking prophetically or speaking or false prophet yeah ooh false prophet oh i hate that word use the word man i hate that word podcast we've crossed that was my life for months was just false profit false profit a lot too i almost put it on my business card [Laughter] science mic false profit well that's the th that's why i mean it is a dark thing to because already to be a prophet you're kind of on the the iffy side of humanity anyway you know like you're already sort of like creating tension and violence on some level even if it's not physical violence you're you're stirring the pot in a way that's making people uncomfortable so you're already kind of on an in an edgy place even if you're speaking the absolute truth but if you're if you're doing that with evil that's a bad that's a bad place to be this is another thing that people say to me that it kind of bothers me and i know they mean it well but sometimes people will say well if you're making people mad you must be doing something right uh or if you're offending both sides you must you know if people from both sides have found some reason to be offended you're probably doing something right well or maybe i'm just wrong you know like there's like maybe i'm just deluding myself to thinking that i'm right like it's this notion of you know if i am being persecuted it is that therefore means i am right but it's amazing i feel like how quickly and easy it is to convince oneself of that well they could not possibly be and you hear this sometimes from i will not name names but maybe pastors who are once very powerful and then you know had kind of their comeuppance and things didn't quite you know they were found out you know they would kind of their response is like well i'm just being persecuted because of jesus well no you're being fired because you misspent your congregation's money because you spoke in abusive language about women and lgbt like you know you see i didn't know who we're talking about at first but now i got it it hasn't only happened once i mean you see not the trumpet player but right you see it happen over and over again where someone convinces themselves that the reason they're facing opposition it's because they must be right and only further further entrenches your conviction that you are a prophet uh and you're just simply you know reaping the uh the inevitable tribulations of that high and noble calling it makes it almost impossible for people to see that they might be wrong well let's play a thought experiment in that very vein to help us clarify our thinking here on profit versus ass let's follow sociological trends in the united states another 25 years and let's make a few assumptions one let's assume that the struggle for equality for lgbtq persons continues and that in you know the next political cycle and through the supreme court and congressional action that uh gender identity and sexual orientation become federally protected classes so that trans people lesbians and gay people and bisexual people cannot lose their jobs on the grounds of their gender identity or their sexual orientation let's also assume that favorability rates for lgbtq people continue to rise in american society to the point that the stigma associated with that identity effectively goes away over the next 18 years let us also assume that the raw number of people that self-identify as evangelical christian continues to decline in america that the non-religious bloc continues as explosive growth and you find suddenly that less than five percent of americans are evangelical christians and that they carry very low favorability rates with the american public let's be charitable and give them a 10 point advantage over what atheists enjoy today and assume that 4 in 10 americans believe that evangelicals are good people or that they would vote for an evangelical president at that point there is no power structure associated with evangelicalism and the clout of society is fully behind lgbtq persons so how would you argue against dr russell moore jr that when he speaks out against that behavior he is not speaking truth to power and i'm incredibly proud of that thought experience that was that was that's where they're at in their heads already i think i think so i'm saying let's take it out of their heads and make it a sociopolitical reality because that is frankly with social trends where it is going i don't know yeah i mean i think you're probably yeah probably mostly right i mean i always hate drawing too much of a dichotomy between lgbt people and evangelicalism because most of my gay friends are evangelicals or at least came out of that tradition so yeah plus no that's a bless their hearts and a damn that's a lot to deal with kind of a way um not a they're bad people i dropped the label evangelical like a bad habit just i tried to hang on to it for so long man i don't know why i'm just because i guess i feel like the people a lot of the people i care a lot about in my life like my parents identify very proudly as evangelical and so like there's that that was hard for me to to drop it because i felt like it was dropping my heritage in a lot of ways and my family in some ways like it's sometimes it's hard to drop it without communicating to people that i don't know that somehow you don't i'm not part of you anymore yeah exactly that was really hard for me but it's everybody's different but anyway so you know yeah i guess that's why in the thought experiment like the idea of evangelicals being as widely despised as atheists are presently bothers me actually like i don't want it to come to that i kind of still in that place where i'm hopeful that evangelicalism can evolve and change and it won't mean what it means now in 20 years but that's a kind of a side that's a total oh that's another podcast right there what is evangelical and do we care anymore yeah maybe we just i kind of stopped caring a little bit but i care enough to not want them to be a marginalized group does that make sense but that's your thought experience not what we want it's what but we might expect i mean i can do that whole podcast right now what is evangelicalism a system of christian denominations wherein proselytization and conversion is a primary impetus for holiness and b do we care not really i'm just kidding sorry i have tons of yeah there's more to evangelicals spreading the rule spreading the word is really important yeah conversion um high esteem for scripture which i mean i know it gets distorted and and often screwed up in that culture and uh but i'm sorry i feel like you guys are just dodging my thought experiments i love this love experiment okay let me wait i don't know what's the what's the what's the point what are we supposed to say i'm saying imagine in 25 years evangelicals really are a powerless despised that's what i assume they're going to be right right so rachel's saying hopefully not hopefully we don't know i'm saying it's just a thought experiment i'm saying hopefully if that were the case right how do we tell how would you tell a person who spoke out against marriage equality in that circumstance that they are not speaking truth to power well because it's not truth right they're speaking to power but in their minds they're speaking that's what i'm saying the whole thing depending on if you think this person is right that's how you would assume are they speaking truth to power do you think what they're saying is truth yeah totally just because it's a minority view doesn't make it truth so they're speaking ah but that's troubling because if we table flip that and apply it to our own arguments for marriage equality suddenly we're dismantling our own case yes oh i know that's what you there well you're dismantling okay well hold on rachel i want to hear that she doesn't think so it doesn't work both ways okay you can say well just because something's a minority view doesn't make it truth but like i don't argue for lgbt equality simply because it's a minority view do you see what i mean i do yeah so it's sort of like okay let's do something else like flat earthers i mean they're out there and i'm sure they feel like when they set their blogs up that they are speaking truth to power or you know or even climate change deniers and you know there's folks who hold minority views who convince themselves they're speaking truth to power but the problem is like what they're saying isn't true you know so just the fact that they're in the minority and maybe in some cases even oppressed in some ways or or maybe another example would be white you know people who are part of like white supremacist groups like the kkk like they're pretty despised generally speaking in our society and well for good reason and they may feel like they're speaking truth to power when they say that you know we got to fight for white rights and you know we need to keep the races separate but you know they're wrong and just we you know have the general consensus is that they are wrong so as discerning when someone is prophetic how do we decide that people who say we've got to change the way we handle carbon emissions because of you know climate change is a profit or all persons have a right to marry a person they're choosing that those are true how are we basing those claims versus someone who's in a white supremacist group or someone who's a flat earther why are we deciding entirely subjective is it entirely subjective it depends on your what you believe is true i mean that's what what is going to end up being the ultimate truth of the universe capital t uh that's what we're all fighting about i mean maybe it's maybe there is a white video game programmer of the universe that really just wants the white race to dominate everybody you know like god for i hope that's not the case but what is that what is the ultimate truth if if that is the ultimate truth i want to fight against that ultimate truth you don't want to fight i want to fight for what i perceive to be love and just and right but what side am i on all the time that's i don't know how that's anything but subjective i assume that i assume that the universe is not like that i assume that inclusion and love and unity and um and justice as i perceive justice to be that those that's the direction of the universe that yeah justice is the best that's that's the way the universe has been i i would love to assume that about reality um because i think my i think it makes the world a better place to live in i think that's i don't want to live in a world that's not bent towards goodness on some level that doesn't value love and equality and all these things um and personal freedom and but i don't know how you get i don't know how you can hold up an objective universal standard to show anybody else that they're wrong i mean that's what the evangelicals can hold up the bible and say that to us and say that we're wrong in our assumptions because there is that objective universal thing it says here it is it's written you can't have gay marriage so that's the unit so i don't know you know that's what i'm saying it's all it's a tough tough case to make objective i think for something to be prophetic i think it has to be true and i think that though but not everything that's true is prophetic maybe because i don't know i'm just saying what's coming into my head right now but you've got me drawing venn diagrams right because what makes a particular truth prophetic seems to be when it is not yet fully realized when it is to be when it's when you're on that the sort of the front edge of a change or um or and in that case it's typically a minority position so it's just like i just don't think you should we should confuse like minority positions with prophetic truth it's got to be true and but in order for it to be prophetic i think that sort of the nature of prophetic is that it's cutting edge or it's it's you know seeing the future but not in a um soothsayer word sort of a way but in a um a sense of being so grounded in truth that it's seeing what has yet to be fully realized but seeing it so clearly uh that to me is somebody who's a prophet is somebody who can see truth more sharply and clearly than the rest of us and so it's often a minority position so but but being a minority position doesn't mean you're right or that it's true it's got to be true and it's got to be cutting edge so then prophecy is the is a subset of the set which is the intersection of true and unrealized justice yeah oh i like that true and unrealized justice that's that's nice well we figured it out i don't think you can have too much confidence in yourself being on that plane you have to have a little bit of humility because it's your view of truth is a subjective one yeah that's where i totally agree and that's where i think we tend to overuse it uh is in when we tend to justify all of our actions and all of our beliefs as prophetic that's where that's where i was realizing in my own life i could be a bit obtuse and why i think it's important to use the word a little bit more sparingly and a little more reverently because i think it's really like it's really important that we have profits in our midst and i think we do have prophets in our midst and i think people do write and speak prophetically um but i don't think it's happening as often as we maybe think it is and i'm very reluctant to say that it's happening in my life especially when i'm as comfortable as i am and yeah that's what i think that's kind of what i was hoping we talked we would talk about and what we have making that distinction but what about i mean how it comes down to me and how i behave and how i tweet and whatever i don't know i don't think most people care i don't care very much about the idea of what is prophetic or am i being prophetic i don't think about that very much and i don't care all that much because it's just a concept right it's a biblical concept kind of an obscure concept that not many people think about i would assume but when it comes down to my daily life of another trump comment i have something snarky i would like to say to make fun of him and everybody that likes what he said should i tweet that or not you know i mean it's like that's kind of it comes down to like am i is that an ass thing to say or is that funny or will that actually challenge somebody that those are the sort of like practical decisions that often myself get paralyzed with and don't know what to say how to say it what am i trying to accomplish i think mike's pretty good at that because like he said he's focused on behavioral change i'm a little bit too cynical sometimes about people aren't going to change anything but i think you're uncovering something um and that you know if you look at the biblical model of prophets very often they were reluctant they were shown a truth and they didn't want to say it they didn't want to deal with the consequences of sharing that insight and i know i experienced that um and and it's less of an issue in my public life and what my writing or speaking or things like that uh although sometimes you know i i don't i just don't want the fallout of speaking for one particular type of justice that day i'm just tired but when i encounter those moments in my life that i've kind of woken up to the the unthinking universal uh sexism in our society the unthinking racism the absolute prevalence of people who don't believe that uh people of all orientations and genders are worthy of legal protection sometimes i feel the call to say something to to a person in a small group or or one-on-one setting when they say something racist when they say something sexist when they call someone a fag i i don't want to even though i believe it so deeply i don't want to share that truth don't you think that's fairly universal though don't you think kim davis doesn't want to refuse no see i think sometimes we get a little high out of it and see i think that's a great like that's such a great example because like on twitter or facebook or you know even the blog and the book i don't really have a hard time calling that stuff out but in relationships like one-on-one like friends like you're at a dinner party and somebody says something like i get really scared and this is why this is something i really admire about dan dan handles the situations he really does he handles them so beautifully he is not one of those guys he's on twitter all the time calling people out but like if we're in a group of people and somebody says something that you know is just clearly problematic he he'll be like you know what not when i'm around we're not going to talk about gay people like that and it's awkward it's so awkward for exactly three seconds you know what i mean and it's it's funny to me that i'm so scared of those situations and i don't like to speak up in those situations but like online when there's a degree of anonymity and there's a and there's a degree of distance these are not people who i'm super invested in their lives like i get um i'm much more brave and i think that there's something to be said again this is where i think there's a difference between you know just writing something starkey on twitter and living a life deeply committed to justice is like people who live lives where they're very deeply committed to justice often feel that alienation and that um struggle in the context of their real life day-to-day community with people that they care about like friends and family and that is a much higher cost than losing a few twitter followers you know what i mean so that's another one of those things where it's like when i try to convince myself that what i'm doing is prophetic i mean i think about the fact that losing a few twitter followers because i support you know one thing is not it's not really that much of a cost but people who speak up when it costs them something and when there's a lot more at stake and when they're genuinely vulnerable now that to me is that that signals that what they're doing is truly speaking truth to power and at a cost can you guys think of any practical tips sort of rules that maybe you think of in your own mind for yourself in in trying to know am i moving down the right path if i'm moving towards confrontation if i'm moving towards stirring the pot am i going in the right direction am i going the right way because there's times in my life that i know that i've i've spoken the truth and it's really been the right thing to do i really believe that still and there's other times that i've spoken what i perceived to be the truth and it may have been the truth but there was something else in the mix my own ego was in the mix my own insecurities were in the mix there was something there was some fear in the mix and it really wasn't the right thing to do you know i mean and i've you know i can think of a time there's this kid that um i used to mentor and this is not even you wouldn't call it prophetic but it's still kind of the idea of like speaking what you perceive as truth that's uncomfortable truth and it wasn't speaking to power but it's just speaking to somebody and it's like uh he he was really he was into music and you know i would try to help him out i'd take him in the studio sometimes and we would do a little track together or something or play guitar for him for a little performance that is an open mic or something like that i was always trying to help him out with that but then it got to the point where he really kind of thought that his musical abilities and career were sort of beyond where they were and they weren't very realistic and he was thinking about not going to college because he was just going to do music and and i was supposed to be like technically his mentor in his life and i'm like okay this is a time i have the there's a part of me that loves this guy that i want to just say empower him and go for your dreams you know to but there's the other part of love that knows i know enough about the music industry and about where he's at musically to know he's not anywhere close to being able to not need a college degree to be able to just make a good living with music he's not anywhere close to that happening um so i had to like speak the truth and love to him and it was a very very painful conversation of you're not you don't have what it takes to do that i'm sorry like that's a horrible conversation so uncomfortable and i tried to say it as loving as possible but i know i had nothing to gain my ego had nothing to gain from having that conversation a truthful conversation with him um that was uncomfortable and that created some tension and um but i i after having the conversation i believe i did the right thing i believe you know like really tried to push him towards to get love music do music but don't don't count on that too much you need to go to college too like you need so there's times this is an example but i can when i see when i think of where i was at and trying to move towards confrontation in that moment move towards speaking something that was uncomfortable um i was moving towards love i was moving away from ego it wasn't i wasn't i wasn't moving towards fear i think sometimes when you're speaking snarky things or speaking against powers that be that you perceive um there's a fear element like that's what i would imagine when you know the lee university guy saying we all need guns i got to imagine there's a lot of fear in some of that statement you know and that sentiment that prophetic safe there's a lot of fear in your prophetic statement um you know the gays are going to be taking over the world or whatever and and so you gotta you gotta fight for justice and you to speak prophetically that there's a fear element in that you're just afraid of your own status in society and your own ego you know like if there so i think fear is a red flag for me ego is a red flag for me like i might not be uh this might not be the right direction of confrontation this might not be a prophetic thing at all that is such a great insight i think that's really really true like you said these little red flags that should go off when it's not really about speaking prophetically like and another like i like like when you're with talking with your mentee uh you know there should be it seems like a a bit of sadness like um a yeah a sadness and a a bit of a reluctance like like what mike was saying before too to say the thing because you just truly genuinely love the people to whom you're saying it like that i know what i've veered off course when i'm getting a little high out of it you know like getting like a little ego trip feeling like oh look at my snark it's amazing and you know like oh you know giggling over in my witty comment which i suppose there's a little bit of a place for that but but when i'm taking delight in it that's a red flag for me too it seems like the people who have spoken most powerfully through the ages uh and most prophetically have also carried a big weight uh and and they you know like jesus was a man of many sorrows and um there's a there's a heaviness and a sadness not always and i think there's a place for a sort of comical critique and joyful critique as well but i think for the real prophets there there's there's a bit of a heaviness to it because they're telling speaking an uncomfortable truth to people they genuinely love so if i don't really have a concern for my fellow beings if it's just about scoring points i i don't know how how sort of prophetic it is i distill everything into systems just literally everything so as someone who uh hates conflict and has learned that conflict can be healthy and sometimes difficult things need to be said i actually created a four question matrix that i use to test difficult things before i say them oh really i'm not even kidding i'm totally serious internet please i'll do i'm just gonna say it right now because i pretty much have it memorized the first one is am i speaking honestly but without hostility so if there's any hostile component i've got to deal with that emotional venom before i can communicate the honest portion the second is am i speaking out for someone or against someone if i'm speaking out against someone that's a big red flag what do i get out of this thing that i'm going to say if i'm going to gain a lot by saying something that's very difficult i need to deeply examine my motives and possibly re-articulate this in a way that i won't gain from it in any significant way be that materially or emotionally and finally how much of this is driven by social identity so if i take words or labels that i apply to myself and this statement is very typical of one of my self-asscribed labels it's probably not one of my more reasonably irrationally justified positions and i may need to examine the issue more deeply before speaking at all dude that is brilliant that is so helpful yeah i'm like writing it down right now if i had had that years ago i think it would have avoided a lot of my apologies i've had to write on the blog over the years seriously that was so helpful yeah it really is but i i mean i made it up the how did you phrase it am i speaking for people or against people that's good because sometimes you're speaking against something in order to speak for people you know what i mean like or speak up for people like oh this you know this panel on black lives matter includes no black people that's a problem you know in some in some way you're speaking like up against somebody but but at the heart of it is you're speaking up for you know and sometimes i have a hard time with that like oh but all of that was really helpful let's um let's can you put that on in like a a blog post too so it's ready we'll put it in the show notes for this episode on the liturgist.com podcast that's super helpful mike it always bugs me when we get to the end and it's like oh mike had this figure out from the beginning and michael and i are just like oh yeah yeah that sounds good he's like got a like a rubric for it or some kind of spreadsheet so michael and i talk about it for like it's a matrix not a rubric get there you and i we get there but we don't realize he already has a spreadsheet saying everything that we just said he actually forecasted that we would lead him to that question super annoying mike super annoying i mean i guess that there's some prophetic element to that uh you just do a little predictive branching on conversations just in case and and just eliminating them as we go okay we're not in conversation 4b anymore i better pull this over from 6d that is closer to the truth one other thing i would just add briefly it just came to my mind and i didn't get the chance to say it is i also feel like i'm i'm on the right track when i'm learning and other people are my teachers that it's not just me coming out knowing everything so i feel like i'm part of a prophetic movement typically when i'm not actually leading it like going to the gay christian network event that was a huge shift for me in a lot of ways because i realized like in some ways i was trying to be a leader for lgbt equality and whatnot and i was like oh my gosh these folks totally have this under control like they don't really need me you know i kind of i look to them to leadership uh so that's a shift and then also we've talked a lot about like social issues and justice um but one thing i try to keep in mind is like prophets who have um challenged me a lot are people who speak about our culture's obsession with you know materialism and the way that we just sort of consume and consume and consume and consume other people and products and to the detriment of our planet and to our well-being that's something i'm much more complicit in i think it's easy for me to say like well the real prophets are the people speaking up for lgbt equality and you know black lives matter and stuff that i'm genuinely like generally in agreement with and can get on board with but people speaking up against materialism that cuts into my actual daily habits a lot more i just didn't you know we for obvious reasons tend to think of sort of social justice issues as being about black lives matter and lgbt equality which they are but there's also the component i think i'm more complicit in some of some other big systemic injustices that we don't we didn't get to talk about yeah i think it's quite beautiful that it appears that there is no limit on justice that justice is some kind of infinite value because humanity can always move further towards justice and we never arrive and i don't actually see that as a dark thing i see that as a beautiful thing so we can always even as more and more people attain equality and attain justice there there's always more there's always farther we can go there's always more to life there's always so let's suppose we're in some kind of amazing utopia where oh my gosh all people were truly and genuinely treated with equality what about the rest of the life on the planet and what about the planet systems themselves you see i mean there's always an opportunity for us to do better and i think that's why we're creatures so intrinsically oriented and organized around story and arc because the arc of this universe the arc of creation seems to be unending which means we can always move further toward it okay so one of the things we didn't talk about that would be cool to talk about maybe is art and it's one thing that i grieve as an artist a little bit in how art tends to get made today art i think in mainstream culture has kind of fallen to become entertainment and distraction and party music or whatever it all has a place and in religious circles music often to me especially church music becomes propaganda not necessarily harmful propaganda always but it's sim i mean i grew up as a worship leader and my job was to put music to the preacher's message i mean that's like whatever the the preacher says and believes about the bible this is true like my job is to sort of reflect that musically and get people to experience that musically it's the worship leader and i think that's a lot of people's job as church music leaders and not that there's anything that's really inherently wrong with the whole thing like that but when all church music becomes propaganda for an already settled message and christian music becomes a way of like inculcating people with a message that is the same message that the power structures are preaching sort of supporting it emotionally rather than sometimes also being a prophetic act in itself because art has a prophetic power that i to me that's when i look at the old testament prophets why they did that crazy shit it's performance art on some level i mean there's an art to art speaks in ways that prose can't um we're just talking and saying something that's true a piece of art can can have more prophetic power i think a great film great you know whatever it is so i just i hope more musicians i know there's a lot of people that are interested in the arts that listen to this program and i i'm sure i've encouraged it before but i hope that there's more because there's a stream of art that has existed and even look at the music in the 60s you look at the woodstock uh people that were playing woodstock and how the music that they were making was speaking and informing culture and speaking against powers that were oppressing and against violence and this whole movement that was happening musically i don't see a whole lot of that today with with a lot of the popular art and a lot of the music that's being made within the church without outside the church whatever uh it a lot of it just seems kind of people trying to make a living which is fair enough and understandable but man i just think there's so much room occasionally i'll come across a piece of art that is so profoundly prophetic and speaks so much truth with so little words it just profoundly moves me and i think can profoundly move the culture i think just more of us need to learn not only how to make it but learn how to appreciate that in art i i think sometimes we actually because so much of our popular art is made for other reasons sometimes we actually clamp down on people that try to even start start moving that direction i mean i really know very little christian music that heads this direction at all in fact one of my friends i don't want to give away too many details i don't know who listens to the podcast i don't get anybody in trouble but was wanting to you know wrote a song that was sort of touching just touching on the racial inequality issue and it was in a worship song kind of sort of a worship song and the powers that be like shut it down and said ah we don't want to be talking about that in a worship in our worship setting and it's like what what do you mean like what what else should you be talking about in your worship setting that's more important that you have this finally a little but it gets quashed like the tiniest little sliver of maybe what art should be um and and and people tend to quash it and say stop your place and i get told this all the time or use two more people i guess have kind of given up on me maybe but saying like just shut up just sing just sing the nice things about god you know like um don't say what you think about all this stuff like what what do you think my art is like this is me saying it in the strongest way possible with music attached to it so i don't know i i just i think that the arts could use some some growth in our current culture as it relates to the prophetic oh my gosh i cannot affirm and clap that enough like yes yes that's all i have to add i bet you didn't have it i bet you didn't have that on your spreadsheet that truth bomb just right you didn't notice the total silence sometimes when you don't hit the database at all my entire line of reasoning is pre-compiled it's ridiculous so when mike gets really quiet we're like score he's re re-analyzing he's like man back out to the neocortex this is going to be a really really inefficient use of oxygen for the next 18 to 25 seconds oh man totally changing my neuro metabolism man i will say on that subject uh after belong london amina turned me on to uh kendrick lamar yes i did a lot of record purchasing and i actually bought to pimp a butterfly not only on itunes but i went ahead and bought it on the google play store even though i don't have an android device and the amazon mp3 store just because i wanted the you know what i mean it's already a massive success but i figured like i wanted the suits in their chambers to look at a spreadsheet and go whoa this works yes because those guys will follow any trend that dollars follow yep so that's yeah that's a good word to consumers as well if you believe in that purchase yeah purchase prophetic things go see prophetic films in the theater you know share it with your friends like because there's so many people that are actively trying to quash things that are actually prophetic and and edgy in in speaking truth to power uh there's people actively trying to quash that stuff so if you believe in it actively try to not quash it actually try to share it that's a good word i'll buy more stuff if you insist well we look forward to hearing your thoughts on profit or ass or profit or asshole and you can do so by visiting the liturgist.com podcast you can go to the comments section we'd love to see what you had to say there of course you can see us on our facebook page at facebook.com slash the liturgists or on twitter at the liturgists kind of a weird thing we're doing as well uh we have a little slack group now uh if you haven't heard of slack no big deal but if you go look through our twitter feed you can actually ask for an invite and michael and i hang out there and talk about weird things with about 500 other people it's been a blast so far now we thank you for listening and again we'd love to hear your thoughts it's a pretty boring show if it's just us i'm science mike i'm michael gunger i'm rachel held evans thanks for listening everybody