Episode 4 - Church Unity

so what is christianity it starts with this rabbi jesus spreads to like a few people he's got these followers that hang around him and it starts to spread starts to spread and uh lots of disagreements early on lots of different ways of interpreting jesus and and what he wanted from his followers and and what we should do with that information and then a church develops christianity christendom develops and starts taking some odd turns the oppressed eventually become the oppressors of others and it becomes a power system and then within that power system there is there is is a lot of fighting there's arguments there's uh how do we stay together as one body as a unified body how do we fulfill the prayer that jesus prayed for us in the garden that we would be one as jesus and his father were one and here we are today after great schisms and reformations thousands at a time it's as it is now now we've got tens of thousands of denominations with wildly different views of scripture of god of jesus of the whole thing and we go back to that garden and we say how in the world do we even start in a pluralistic splintered environment like we're in now how can we be one as jesus and his father were one and that's what we're gonna we're gonna jump in today in the liturgist podcast welcome everybody i'm michael gunger i'm lisa pano i'm science mike we're just podcast is a place where we discuss issues through the lenses of faith science and art and today uh little change of plans doing something a little different yeah what happened a news article came out from a certain christian source uh just i don't even know what to say i just hate it it's so lame we're going to talk about church unity because there is none on the internet and i got me thinking about christianity and how christianity could be argued that it's nothing but a call for unity amidst disunity because like michael said you started with a god that was awesome so yeah of course you i liked that i pissed excellence frank and he pisses humility too well that actually does i'd like to introduce a concept called false bravado and sometimes you project maximal confidence to hide maximal insecurity it's quite impressive is that the overbrag what's different about that than the home yeah wait a second the humble brag means like i'm actually proud and pretending not to be false bravado is pretending to be proud when you're actually afraid you're a fraud well you know what there's not a difference on this side of the table so science science i mean we have we have an amazing special guest that we're about to get uh to have a conversation with here and uh rachel held evans who were big fans of but before we get into that part maybe science mike are there any science issues that we should be aware of in discussing uh this sort of thing just to you know set the tone with science all this stems from human brains who would have thought that i'm going neurological to this um when you study religious people by scanning their brains you find that one of the primary things religion does for people is create a sense of identity so this is especially true of anyone who would consider themselves a fundamentalist um fundamentalists tend to have very literal readings of scripture for example or have very very specific and defined beliefs about god and in those cases the thing that provides them the most reassurance is certainty and so the fact that we all agree about exactly who god is and exactly what god is doing in the world actually lowers stress and inoculates people um against a loss of social identity and when we talk about church unity what is so difficult about it and so supercharged is you have all these tribes that are kind of this one larger umbrella tribe of christianity but they have radically different beliefs and most of these groups consider themselves to be the one true christianity and so to remarkably neurologically the way these communities seek unity is by trying to get everyone else to believe with their particular brand of christianity uh if if we thought in retail context it said listen america we can all be together we can be unity we just all need to buy coke none of this pepsi stuff only by coke and that is loved by human brains it's thrilling it's exciting this guaranteed social place and all i have to do is agree on what i believe with everyone else in my community and that's isn't it an interesting thing like who gets to determine uh what it even means what christian means who i've seen so some of the uh questions we're having on on twitter conrad yoder asked put another way what is the core belief practice that truly unifies if we can't agree on then what can we or should we part with it's such a weird thing with so many branches and definitions of christianity now what does it even mean i mean it used to the the big the great schism and like the 11th century parts of the church couldn't agree and so they stopped fellowshipping and went different directions and then it happened again in the reformation and then all of a sudden you know 500 years later and then 500 500 years later after that tens of thousands of times we have these little reformations these people don't have it right so we're gonna take the word to mean this and you know uh and it's such a weird thing like who even gets to define it anymore what it means or what what are the core doctrines and so it's it's so just subjective and it's a weird place to be in history it's a movement where no one agrees what the movement is yeah it's really weird and it's taxonomically frustrating for sociologists and and anthropologists um because deciding what is and is not christianity um is difficult because you have all these edge cases uh you know mormons would say yeah we're part of the church and uh most christians would say no they're not part of the church so if you're a secular sort of uh anthropologist how do you decide what what denotes the line between you know christian and non-christian especially because there's just there is no unified answer uh in across churches i think any one given church would certainly have an answer uh i think any one given denomination would have an answer but when you consider the plurality and of numerous christian denominations i don't i don't think there is a single rallying call other than we all say jesus a lot statistically all right well let's talk to rachel about it

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welcome rachel held evans to the program we've uh we're about to record a different episode on race and amina brown who's been part of some of these liturgist offerings so far um was gonna be a part of that podcast and she was actually in the middle of a move and it was really crazy and we're like should we just like postpone this this topic and and let you move and she was like that would be amazing so uh she got off and all of a sudden you know what we were all talking about anyway was this article that charisma news posted uh that we'll get into in a second but our dear friend uh and previous liturgist contributor rachel held evans was tweeting about it and we sent out a tweet and we were all on skype and recording within like 90 seconds somehow it's a miracle folks so basically none of us have a life on sunday night exactly i got somebody tell us about what's going on yeah well what here's what i saw uh i saw a tweet from rachel mentioning uh you michael and charisma news which is a topic i literally could not be more tired of um and then i noticed wait no it's actually about genocide what no what why would chrismanews write about genocide they don't strike me as like a social justice publication and then i click the link and in this article which is entitled you know why i'm an islamophobe i think that's the actual title basically the author lays out why discrimination against muslims is justified and in this article and i really wish i was making this up a few things are advocated one would be sterilizing muslims another thing would be deporting them all now in fact the acronym was damned deport all muslims now and the final point was violence now i uh i clicked on the comments thread on this article expecting moral outrage and that's not what i found there's a the articles got coming up on 8 000 shares and quite a few comments in support of the author um against violence and oppression and discrimination against people just because of their religion the author asserts that anyone who's a true muslim is an extremist and therefore the sorts of radical actions advocated in the piece are justified and i don't get angry very often especially not about things on the internet i mean it's the internet but this is a piece that literally made my face flush red and made me angry as i read it it also made me feel pretty good about having been slammed by this publication um to be honest with you um because but as i sort of contemplated on that these are people who profess to follow the same god and the same jesus that i do and i've heard some people you know from the conservative side assert that you know people like me are a different religion than they are and i've always resisted that idea but for the first time in my life speaking very vulnerably in this moment i have to wonder if they're right so in this episode of the liturgist podcast we're talking about church unity and what that means in the light of true true true diversity in what we believe and how we approach this story i mean rachel do you want what what's what's going on in your head right now how did you see this article what what are your thoughts oh well i mean i honestly i wish i was more surprised maybe it's partly my location in east tennessee uh we had a mosque uh go up in murfreesboro not long ago murfreesboro tennessee is just down the road from my area which is chattanooga and those folks experienced just quite a bit of vandalism threats lots of editorials that were very violent about and very you know islamophobic and so on i've heard this sort of rhetoric from uh christian friends and from uh folks from this area so it honestly it wasn't that big of a surprise to me though it's it's upsetting and discouraging every every time i see it and i was a little surprised to see something that violent particularly you know talking about sterilization and forced deportations and uh you know stocking up on your guns and it took it to quite a new level i was a little surprised to see that in a relatively mainline or you know mainstream christian publication but i wish i was more surprised but i'm not i think there's beneath all this the reality is is you know islamophobia is a serious problem that we do have in this country among many of our fellow christians and so these views though troubling and very upsetting i don't think they're as marginal and as obscure as some people would like to think that they are i've seen this manifested many times before wow yeah that's crazy i'm like where's my jaw well the other day i i got into a bit of a discussion with a friend that i went to college with and we were talking about something on facebook and he he started writing about how christians in the middle ages were more quote unquote prepared to deal with the muslim threat and then made some allusions to the popes who supported the crusades and had some you know he had some praise for those particular popes and had some good things to say and i was like yeah i don't really think that's he was being critical of pope francis for reaching out to muslims so we kind of got into a little bit of debate over and ended it with him saying essentially anyone who's a friend of muslims is not a friend of mine and he unfriended me right away so sometimes it's quite fresh but what maybe you all need to come down to tennessee where this yeah listen i am in the bible belt what i don't even understand holy cow that's that's honestly hard for me to believe i mean i know that there are strong prejudices against the muslim group in our country but i would ne i literally i wish you could have heard me reading this i i was blown away like i was like this is not rational thought to me like yeah rational doesn't usually factor into the year i'll be talking to dan and i'm just like but it's not rational about any number of things that i have issues with and he's like rage you really need to quit being disappointed when folks don't pay and yet i am well as the brain science guy um i'll be honest i'm not surprised when people aren't rational that's totally true but what i mean is culturally people are driven by social identity and what stuns me is that there's still enough people of this particular mindset and in the church that people can feel safe using terms like sterilization forced deportation and violence it stuns me it grieves me it shocks me um the more i think about it i'm not coming to more of a peace about it no this is i mean it's the same stuff that drove the crusades right i mean it's the same it's the sa it's the ugliest thing that religion can be this is why atheists think religion is bad this is it this is the test case this is where richard dawkins this is where daniel did it this is where their ammo comes from is when religious people say and do and support things like this this is an like almost a a rhetorical version of isis where they're not actually doing violence but they are certainly condoning and encouraging it yeah yeah it's one of the reasons why sometimes i wonder if religion is good for the world to be honest you know you're listing out atheists and folks but this is the sort of thing that makes me think oh my goodness i'm just so tired of the whole thing you know can any good come of this but at the same time i will say i've been encouraged to see a variety of christian folks from quite a few different traditions speak up against the article uh one example is russell moore you know southern baptist guy very prominent in the southern baptist world i wouldn't necessarily expect to have strong words against this you know which shows some of my prejudice there but he spoke out against it and i've seen you know pentecostal people speak up against it since it's you know kind of a charismatic publication so on the other hand we do see we see all that support in the comment section but we also have are seeing some pushback from a variety of christians and not just sort of your typical progressive type christians but also conservative christians so i guess i found that somewhat encouraging in the midst of what is a discouraging day i grew up in the sbc um and and was a baptist my whole life and um and that's why i was shocked by the peace because i feel like i have a heart for and i know conservative christians very well and despite a lifetime i mean the full lifetime immersed in that culture i never heard concepts like sterilization being thrown around um so how how big a subculture do you guys think this is what does it look like sociologically and demographically where is the the bomb bomb bomb iran church of america yeah i always thought this was like this the stuff i've been seeing um the last month just with some of the people that have been responding to me about stuff about all the you know all that i i have been so shocked i mean i think they're just loud but there's i uh before this month i really kind of thought that a lot of this like extreme borderline violent conservative fundamentalism um was far more limited like you know like westboro baptist church and a few like a few cultish groups in the country or something but man it's uh there seems to be a lot of comments if it's only a few people i mean what do you think rachel are they all they do they all live in your town or something [Laughter] larger percentage than live in your town but um yeah yeah i mean it's i also you also see it sort of popularized uh to a degree with uh for instance the duck dynasty thing uh and that reality show you know the the article actually quotes that recent interview that phil robertson gave with the with fox news where he says basically convert muslims or kill them uh and that's you know duck dynasty has become really popular among conservative evangelicals and this isn't the first time they've gotten in trouble for saying things that are deeply offensive to uh black people for instance um to gay and lesbian people for example and you know but that this evangelical culture can't seem to sort of let go of this love affair they have with the duck dynasty crew which represents sort of like this americanized version of christianity that is that departs in my opinion from the real gospel in a lot of ways so but it's beca it's making it more mainstream i think and and you know they even got it they have a duck dynasty bible that they're putting out which is makes me a little crazy but um yeah so i think it's in some ways it's been popularized by uh folks like the the duck dynasty crew that have been saying these sort of things for a while now um but yeah i mean i guess it's i think also the internet people are more likely to to share these sort of views on the internet where they can be anonymous and they're more likely to exaggerate those kind of views when they're anonymous so i don't know how pervasive it is but i think it might be more pervasive than people suspect because i have friends and um people in my community who i know believe this and who it's very difficult to have a conversation with them about it because it's so clouded by fear it's just i think we sometimes underestimate how irrational and how hateful and how lost we can be when we succumb to fear so i guess the direction that we thought would be an interesting one to take this conversation um because you know just talking about how foolish and backwards and evil a thought and an article and a viewpoint like that is we're probably going to be preaching to the choir for most people that listen to the liturgist podcast um i think we've got a significant number of people who listen because they hate us i mean i think they're there but don't you think most i gotta think that most people you say should we kill all the muslims like all the muslims should we kill them i'm gonna i gotta hope there's there's a part of my heart that will die if i can't hope that most people are gonna say that's ridiculous um yeah like you they're let's take this people group and let's make it so they can never have a baby they can never hold their own baby yeah the argument was that's not even going to be effective enough we got to kill them or we can't that won't be practical so we just got a way to just war so so anyway what's hard for some for me is i mean i just wrote this article that's trying to like put to bed all the genesis stuff that people that we've been talking about um for the last few weeks and it's basically an appeal for church unity and it's appeal for like listen guys what we agree on is so much more important than these little things like how we interpret genesis but i don't know that what we agree on is more important than uh we shouldn't kill all the muslims you know like if if if we're sharing the same language and the same jesus if we say the end result that we're all going for is jesus but one jesus wants to kill all the muslims how like my whole thing and i think a lot of what we've been about as the liturgist period has been guys we're on the same team let's put aside our differences but what makes one christian on the same team as another what is the end goal because for me this is what i was writing about in this piece uh you know to say jesus i think that's a good answer but i think you could at that point also say which jesus you know i think that's what a lot of people have been asking me because i've been trying to say you know i love jesus i i still am wanting to follow jesus with this and be saying but what jesus if you're if you're denying genesis what jesus are you talking about and i think you could say that from all sides if we just say jesus as like a word um which is an you know an english word like what are we what what what is that it's a word so what is the jesus that we're all going after and to me like we should at least have some sort of idea of is this the jesus that said that everything hangs on the commandments love god with all your heart your soul your mind your strength and love your neighbor as yourself and everything hangs on that and that's the jesus when i say if we agree on that jesus we're all we're all going for the same thing it doesn't matter about what i think about genesis what you you know our disagreements about women in ministry as annoying as that kind of stuff can be and as interesting as the conversation can be but at the end of the day let's find a way to to reconcile our differences because we're going for the same thing where does that lie is there a line there how how can we be on the same team are we on the same team is there t can we beep not on a team at all is that even possible you know one thing that i've i've noticed when people are trying to kind of like size me up to see what team i'm on or to see if i'm really orthodox to see if i'm in the club or i should be out they always ask me about what i believe rarely do they ask about the fruit in my life you know do i exhibit love joy peace patience kindness goodness gentleness self-control wait did i leave one out i always leave one out anyway faithfulness that's the one i don't know what that means but um but you know people always ask about sort of what we believe our opinions on things when really you know when we look at how jesus taught us to identify one another it's by how we love one another how we love other people how we love our enemies and by the fruit in our life and we know what the fruit of the spirit is so i i guess for me it's not so much whose team are we on i don't know that we can ever figure that out based simply on intellectual assent to a set of propositional truths i think we judge that and determine that based on the fruit in our lives but it amazes me i'm never really people often send me this litany of questions to try and determine where i am um you know what group i'm in and it rarely has it never has anything to do with the fruit in my life then really i hope that that's what people are judging me by and that's how i i don't know that's how i kind of see this particular situation i want to like stand up and be like yes

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it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using better help 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 better help e h-e-l-p-com slash liturgists it's so weird to me how we separate belief into this thing where that's where grace doesn't apply to people that believe differently than us but don't you think that's because we i feel like at least since i've grown up i've always heard like from the pulpit it's not it doesn't matter how many good deeds you do it's not about the deeds it's about the belief i mean i feel like that's so drilled into us well these are outgrowths of particular developments in human psychology so in the earliest bits of human civilization and human awareness our belonging to a tribe our membership was based on just that belonging were we blood relatives were we geographic participants in a particular culture if so we belonged and then you sort of had this forward movement which frankly the emergence of judaism was a significant part of that started to take uh you know physical belonging and move that into a belonging based on belief if you believe these things then you are part of the tribe uh obviously christianity is a very very popular example of that that that that development in human awareness it doesn't matter if we grew up in the same tribe it doesn't actually matter if we share the same language as long as we share the same beliefs and what you're seeing now both in the church but as a larger social context is that uh it's moving into behavior the things you do determine your belonging in the tribe so when we start we see this this this language among younger christians but also among uh unbelievers and non-religious folk that uh the things you do determine whether you're part of the tribe or not are you are are you philanthropic are you charitable are you tolerant all these sorts of things and it becomes a a behavior-based fence so to me a really interesting thing is you have christianity this this movement an incredibly ideologically diverse movement of people who claim there's something special about jesus christ there's a divinity even to this person where you have some people who are still thinking of christianity in the context of belief other people who are moving towards belonging and you have different criteria for understanding what makes you enter out and it fuels this debate about sort of doctrine versus deeds or you know fruit versus belief this this back and forth and you know part of me wants to say they're both oversimplifications but but at the other hand i kind of find myself in the deeds camp i would rather call someone my brother i'll give you an example my church recently attended a ramadan feast to break the fast of ramadan not only were christians present but jews were present along with uh muslims from turkey and it was an incredible experience and and those muslims were phenomenal hosts and even though all this conflict was happening um with hamas and with gaza and with israel they still decided to host that dinner at a jewish temple and so that they displayed this incredible desire for peace not only did they host a dinner they then invited my pastor a female clergy to turkey they paid for her to go to turkey to tour sacred sites and meet with secular and religious leaders in turkey in the context of islam and so when i look at the fruit and here's where all the tweets come in angry but when i look at the fruit those muslims seem more like my brothers than someone who would pin an article about killing those same people and yeah i mean i'm like the problem the hard thing about saying even deeds based though is like how do you not become just another camp then that is applying your own values and ideals and morals and then if you don't specifically meet exactly like my standards you're out and how does how does how do we on that other side not just become another subtly violent group that eventually somebody in our group now says you know what we should kill all those people that want to kill all the muslims and how you know how does it not just perpetuate into another word the more enlightened haters but at the same time to still have some sort of value judgment because there's like uh to just say well you know it's just i guess everybody's got their own thing and you don't get anything done nothing gets better nothing gets healed no reconciliation happens if it's just but i guess if your standard is love that that's a pretty safe standard i feel like on some level but there's just this idea that i want to be for me personally i see myself um connected to the the isis guy and the guy that's getting beheaded as a human being i'm part of the same story i'm part of the same stardust i'm part of the same power systems on some level like i'm influenced in a different way and i'm part of the whole thing and we're all in this together humankind and so there's part of me that wants all tribes i want to try to transcend all tribes if possible but how do you move forward how do you how do you move towards the things that jesus calls us to move towards peace and love and reconciliation without some you know and maybe this is the time when you call like you see jesus at times not just speaking in with butterflies and rainbows but saying you are whitewashed tombs and you are using the law for destruction and your sons of hell and you see that kind of thing from jesus occasionally and to know when to do that is hard because that's the same thing that a lot of most of the people on this phone call have had things those words spoken to us um and when it's just a subjective judgment you know i don't i disagree with you so you're a son of hell it's just it's hard i mean my retirement plan is now a jar with the word false prophet on it and i just put a dollar in it every time i hear that word guys i'm not on your level yet i need to say something just totally outrageous just so i can be in your group you're a woman so it'll happen sooner than me [Laughter] easier for you instead just wait [Laughter] i wish it wasn't true okay one of our readers did this really well okay gwen jorgensen asked what is the most christ-like way of speaking the truth in love especially in social media confrontation question mark i kind of suck at that so i'm scared to answer i mean it's hard right like i don't know i think i don't know because i really struggle with this and i have book i find myself growing more patient with other people when i feel like i've been unfairly treated online and i'm a little more reluctant to sort of kind of go after people specifically i just try to remember that the person behind the little avatar little picture on the screen is like an actual human being going through things that i might not even be aware of and i try i try my best before you know before engaging people to think of them that way and i think it's really important i don't think i think it's okay and we shouldn't discourage people from disagreeing with one another if somebody issues a public statement like the one that we're talking about today you know there's nothing unchrist-like about standing up and saying hey this is unjust this is wrong and calling it out and drawing attention to what's wrong with it i just think it's important that you're accurate uh that you're honest and that you represent what the person has said accurately and that you're kind as much as you can be in the critique so i kind of have that that as my mantra sort of you know be accurate quote people correctly be honest and be kind and you can still i think offer correction and offer you know disagreement i think it's important too it really bugs me when people say oh no what will the world say when they see us disagreeing with one another and then they use that as justification for never ever publicly disagreeing with other christians and you know i already heard that today when i had some things to say about this charisma article it was like oh no we can't have the world see us disagreeing and i kind of feel like well what will the world think if it doesn't see us disagreeing on this if this sort of stuff goes completely unchecked the same is true when we have you know abused sexual abuse scandals going down in churches you know this information is public this is happening to not draw attention to that to not condemn it and to not say hey we need to put things in place so that churches can prevent this from happening you know that that is just as bad a testimony if not worse to the so-called watching world that silence to me is more problematic than speaking up at that point so how do you think of of unity rachel like how do you see unity happening with such a diverse and fragmented church that has such passionate disagreement about so many issues so many issues that's resulted in tens of thousands of denominations literally you know i guess i struggle with it and i'm not sure but i i think we have to be careful of confusing like unity with uniformity and thinking that uh reconciliation happens when we're all on the same page when we all think the same way theologically when all of us have the same culture the same background which is just not gonna happen i mean this is this has been a problem in the church from like day one you can't throw together a bunch of slaves and masters men and women jews and gentiles and then just be like oh hey everything's gonna go really great and there's gonna be no conflict i guess i think we need to get rid of the idea that being unified means not having conflict uh you know we're a family so we're gonna fight like a family from time to time and like a family it's like you kind of have each other's backs at the same time even though you'll just go at it when it's just the family so i don't know i guess maybe getting over this notion that we have to be uniform in our beliefs and in our culture and in our worship and all those things before we can have unity around the person of jesus christ it gets complicated like the fact that the author of this article claims to be a follower of jesus you know that that complicates things but i guess i would still i would hear at the end of the day i would break the bread of communion with that guy in a heartbeat and because i don't know there's something about coming to the table it's such an equalizer in my mind um that i don't know that at the end of the day we're all sort of in need of that grace that doesn't mean we don't call out terrible abuse and behavior it doesn't mean we don't condemn it as unchrist-like it doesn't mean we don't say this is wrong and i stand against this and i'm going to persistently stand against this but i don't know it seems like you can do that and still hold intention the reality well this is the person who claims to be a follower of jesus so um i'm not going to i don't know is that not any people put like scare quotes around is there anybody that you won't go to the table with no there's not whoa i know that sounds crazy but i don't know but i've been i've been going to an anglican church some in that like the eucharist solves everything mode which i'm sure will pass you know when i was an evangelical it was that the bible solved everything now the table solves everything but [Laughter] uh but no i don't know that there's anyone i would refuse to go to the table with i mean i think you just have to be careful about like i mean i i understand too that there are some churches that for safety purposes if there's an abusive person they might need to work out ways to keep those people keep people from being further victimized i get that and that's that's a reality a lot of pastors have to deal with but i just mean i guess symbolically i think that that that cup and that bread is is not meant for the worthy it's meant for the hungry so if you're hungry come and the fact of the matter is i'm as hungry as the guy who wrote that article um and maybe that would be a first step for us to making peace i don't know but that might be a little idealistic well so on the one hand i like agree and my my my soul sort of sings like an excitement over that because you know someone reading charisma news and they read that um i think the bible was written by people would say well he's not a christian at all right and so then i have this tendency to read this article about sterilizing muslims and say well he's not a christian at all and then when you say things like we all come to the table i get really excited i say yeah that's how we fix it but what if deport all muslims now formed a militia and started kidnapping and killing muslim women would you still go to the table with them then and not just rachel anybody on the call like does that is that kingdom work i don't know i mean i guess i would i i know that sounds nuts but just like i don't know i mean it's a hypothetical so that's always a little difficult to deal with but when jesus says to love our enemies i mean it has to also mean enemies who identify themselves as christians but are doing horrific things i don't i mean i guess coming to the table to me has never been an endorsement of the person next to me or an endorsement of myself or our worthiness or our goodness or anything like that coming to the tables just you know eating and drinking you know the cup of salvation and the bread of heaven and you know experiencing the presence of christ together but i don't i feel like i can draw lines and say this is wrong and this is right when it comes to ideas uh when it comes to what people are doing and actions and and behaviors and all that sort of thing but i can't really draw when it comes to to people i can't put somebody in that category of holy evil versus holy good knowing that good and evil is just coursing through my veins and that i have the same capacity for evil as the next guy so well i think i can condemn people's words as evil and wrong and unchrist-like i can condemn their actions as evil and wrong and unchrist-like i don't know that i can write a person out and say well that's it like you've crossed some sort of invisible line and now you're not a beloved child of god i don't know but it's tricky it's you know it's really tricky i don't know is it is it tricky maybe maybe that's the whole thing i don't mike what would would you eat what do you think you go to the table with those people you said uh well so you gotta remember uh i'm a christian again but there's still an atheist running around in my head um and i still hang out with a significant number of atheists and humanists and free thinkers and those friends of mine look at a situation like this and say hey mike i really love you and you're a good person but you enable all those people because you do things like talk about radical forgiveness and it's they don't deserve forgiveness and so i find myself torn between the part of my heart that uh wants to drop the nets and follow and the part of me that um evaluates the world based on evidence suffering and consent anytime people start advocating violence oh man do i really want to stand far far away from that so i don't know i feel like i may have just learned something because something specific rachel just said um i'm still processing but coming to the table doesn't imply endorsement and maybe that when we talk about church unity that's really what we're talking about we're not actually saying you know hey i stand for what you stand for merely i am broken in the way that you are broken yeah i mean i think that's kind of what it is honestly and and i will say you know you can forgiveness is really for the benefit of the person who's been harmed you know you can forgive somebody and still keep distance from them still condemn their actions still you know keep a safe distance and try to keep them from hurting other people abusing other people killing other people when you can forgive somebody without um sort of accepting their behavior accepting their their words as true so you know forgiveness that it doesn't necessarily even mean reconciliation sometimes sometimes we don't get the reconciliation we long for but i think you know forgiveness doesn't mean an endorsement of the person or an acceptance of what they're doing uh it just it's more for the benefit of oneself and for you know really that the people who are being hurt and then that means you have to kind of do it on your own time you can't tell other people women they ought to forgive somebody that's pretty important not to do but yeah i don't know though like i say this stuff and but like when it comes down to kneeling in front of the table next to somebody like the guy who wrote the article or other folks who with whom i've disagreed that that can be that's no easy task you know but we do have that one thing in common that that hunger that need that brokenness and which i think the table in the presence of christ fulfills

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if there's any weird divide that i feel in kind of the modern christendom world that i'd i'm really not that interested in us in this like kind of beliefism and that's the part of the church i was about for a long time like the if we were honest with ourselves the real thing we were doing was trying to get people to come to the front at church to convert their language you know like i'm now a born-again christian because i've prayed these prayers and i'm not saying belief's not important i think it is and it's not even deeds on the other side of that to me it's not belief versus deeds to me those things are together to me it's love it how it has to come down to love by this all men will know your love for one another and i i was in texas a lot recently uh driving through the entire state of texas and um i heard this christian radio program come on and at first i was this this preacher i was like kind of with him and he was saying you know belief is not just an ascent a mental ascent and i was like yeah cool on christian radio that's great you know and then he was talking to this missionary that said you know if we would just call god allah to the to the muslim people we would probably win a lot more people to jesus because it's hard to the language thing like and he said he went on this whole rant about that's not god's name god has a name and his name is like is god's name spoken with a texas accent too like it's arabic that's god in arabic [Laughter] that is the name for god jesus often used this article says allah parentheses satan right that really annoyed me oh so i think when we look at the message of jesus when we say when he would say like the people that are on his side when people ask them like straight up the most pointed questions what do i need to do to inherit eternal life or how do i you know what's the greatest commandment it was like you need to take care of kids and prisoners and strangers and give people water and that's when the sheep from the goats it was you were with me when i was in prison and you were with me when i needed something to eat and that's the people that are doing my work and that's the people that are if you want to use the word christians the people that are doing the work of jesus people that are following jesus and i don't there's some level i mean again belief i the beliefs came the people that followed jesus came up with these creeds and came up with this language for a reason i do think it's important and it's beautiful but if we use that language to kill muslims or to sterilize muslims we have completely lost the jesus that i believe those chur the church came up with these words for and i want to be on the people's side that are doing the work of jesus um and i don't think that's just a side i think that's a direction in history and a direction in reality and a calling towards a reality and that's the christ that i want to follow [Music] so i think you just worked it all out for me like the whole thing now makes sense to me after that um so let me put it in redneck ease as a southerner uh and i'll call this a tale of two uncles right i have one uncle who is a southern baptist preacher right he's a good guy he's actually frankly a lot better human being than i am uh he's very active in community service he agrees with me on probably nothing theologically but he's still my uncle and if something's going on at a church and he's talking or he's sharing i'm going to go and i'm going to listen because we're family and i'm going to enjoy it i have another uncle who's not with us anymore who was larger than life and kind of crazy and uh he used to capture wild animals and release them in weddings so he'd catch like a possum or a raccoon and he'd release him into a wedding right down the center aisle and then he would let his coon dogs in after them and so you would have this like cacophony uh that was very funny but also very very destructive to these ceremonies right and like if he was still around i would be totally comfortable saying hey man you should really never release wild animals in a wedding but that's the money quote from the entire you are still my uncle you're still my uncle you're still my family so this guy who has driven me to rage with this sterilized muslim article i get to say i disagree with him but i don't get to say that he's not in my family yeah i mean that's kind of how i see it too um as tough as that is but i feel really humbled i'm not sure i can keep podcasting i might have to go pray for a while well one thing i think when people hear because you know when jesus was asked questions he typically did not answer them in a really straightforward way usually he told stories um asked another question that was kind of like the way he engaged people but when people asked him a pretty important and direct question he's asked you know what is the most important element of what is biblical is basically the question the person asks and jesus says love the lord with all your heart soul mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself all the law and all the prophets hang on those commands and that's a pretty direct response and a pretty straightforward response that what is biblical well it's love what makes people christians well it's love this is the the thing that that makes it all make sense and i think the problem is a lot of people when they hear us say that oh well it's all about love they have in their mind this like wishy-washy everybody's fine we're standing in a circle singing kumbaya notion of what that what we mean by that but like when we look at what jesus meant by it all comes down to love it it ends with him on a cross well it ends with him coming out of the grave but part of that is hanging from a cross looking at the people who put him there and saying father forgive them for they know not what they do i mean there's nothing mushy or sentimental or or easy about that so when you say well it all comes down to love that i believe that too and and i think it's just sometimes when people hear that they have a different notion of what we mean by love but what we mean by love is jesus christ the the greatest example that as christians we sort of have of love so and people yeah they don't they i hear this a lot like yes you have to have love but you also have to have truth and you have to speak the truth in love and that assumes that the ultimate truth is not love right doesn't it what's like assumes a dichotomy between those teeth yeah yeah yeah when it's just like love is the ultimate truth really i mean it's it's when we say god is love when we say perfect love casts out all fear when they say you know you will know they are christians by their love and and you know all the law and all the prophet prophets hang on the command to love one another i mean it it's it's there's nothing you know easy or cheap or floofy that i made that word up floofy about it it's hard it's a hard road to choose well would they explain that like will they jesus explain that with the follow-up question well who's my neighbor yeah and he tells the good samaritan which i have heard remarked if that was told today it would be the good muslim or the good atheist yeah so who is my neighbor well it's it's these muslims that that this guy's talking about love is the to me the most ferocious to me love is what makes sense of jesus's most violent language you know like when he talks about hell when he talks about um gnashing of teeth though to me that is it's not a well yes there's love and there's that like if that guy that wrote that article worked up the the you know intestinal fortitude and the idiocy yeah to do what he actually believes should be done and he tries to kill muslims and tries to sterilize them or whatever i don't think the loving thing from the rest of us should be like well you know just love him just send him a nice note that says bless you brother the loving thing is to go and stop him you know like if it takes physically you know putting him in jail but whatever it is love would dictate this can't happen that's so love is there's nothing fluffy to use rachel's new word about love it is the it is the direction towards good anything that moves us towards good in a real way to me is the essence of love

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that's our movement we're the love you're ending these people um that's it that's what we're that's what we're called to do and it's crazy it seems insane and it seems impossible but we are the people who are called to love our enemies and i don't you know last week i don't know that i would have i would have called you know charisma news my enemy but i i'd call myself an enemy of someone who says sterilize people or deport them or use violence against him that's that's an enemy of an idea yeah well maybe the christian thing is to say that yeah it's not that whole like um we were not against flesh and blood that is it what a what a powerful idea that there are these powers and principalities they're like the systems and powers that charisma news is operating out of and perspectives and beliefs and the things that whatever the powers whatever the strings are that are allowing people that i believe have goodness in them and have some degree of light in them i don't i i don't know that i ever believe anybody can be fully evil that there's something still of the image of god and then there's something still beautiful in them

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and our war as those who love our enemies is not against the romans that do the crucifying it might be against um [Music] the systems and powers that allow the roman and that force and and invite the actual romans to do what they're doing but there's something about separating the flesh and blood from the enemies that i think is pretty christian and pretty beautiful where's the art in that art okay all right so okay here's where only there's not much to say art i don't think that i can think of um outside of i think good art always has influence beyond a single tribe and always and always stretches and pushes that individual tribe towards something that's not just safe within the four walls of that tribe the friction that rachel talked about that is can even be a healthy thing i think it's in that space that art has a responsibility and a potential to to speak between the lines and the way that art can be ambiguous just has this it affords artists this amazing opportunity to speak to people outside of your tribe exactly because your art is more ambiguous it's not so clear like people can hear what they want from it and so people from different tribes can look at the same piece of art and we've seen this in our music i think that's part of the controversy that's been happening with some of the stuff i said about genesis is people that thought i was in a one really specific tribe because of some of our lyrics um how it was interpreted were were mad that i interpreted them differently or that somebody else interpreted them differently when i when i started talking in prose on podcasts and such things well i mean if you think about it i i have noodled about this quite a lot and you make beautiful things out of the dust is really deeply affirming to a young earth creationist an old earth creationist a theistic evolutionist the whole gamut hears that line and they are all taken somewhere special and that is both unifying but also has this tendency for us to project our own ownership and identity onto the art that we can enjoy [Music] yeah so i i think unity needs some sort of difference like rachel alluded to without difference unity is just uniformity and that's not a that's not unity uniformity is not very powerful for accomplishing amazing things i mean what great organization has i mean you know apple wasn't not everybody is steve jobs at apple they you need people vastly different than steve jobs was at apple to make apple what it was every anything that's ever done anything great um needs diversity of some kind within it and um any faith that becomes just this monochrome uniform uh it's like automatons um it's gonna be extremely limited in what it can do so i think artists we can learn from and explore the fringes and and hear from the other and and let unity come from that tension and i think we can we can i think we need to learn how to be okay with some tension within christianity within faith and and learning how to deal with the other i love that as an artist i've been able to play in extremely conservative circles and very liberal circles at the same time and it's helped me as an artist and it's informed our art and it's um i think that artists can have a good role here i love that like matt marr is an instance of he's a catholic guy um that's a worship leader that's kind of well respected in the protestant world and he gets played on christian radio which is an extremely protestant world and he goes into a lot of protestant churches and that's something that i don't think would have happened 10 even fit like 15 years ago 10 years ago i i don't know i think that's kind of a cool development i mean i remember as a when i was in high school most of the evangelical people that i knew didn't wouldn't consider catholics in the same faith you know um a lot don't still but a lot do now which is kind of amazing um and that that uh that a catholic guy can have mainstream evangelical success i think it's kind of cool uh so artists we have a unique ability to kind of swim through different waters of difference and if we can use that to push us all towards unity somehow i think we have a good role in that because a lot of speakers and authors are have to be so specific that they'll easily get pigeonholed into camps but artists we have a we have a an ability to swim in the waters and and invite this fish to come visit this fish and uh you know i think we should for me that's something that i've always wanted to to try to do and find ways of doing and it's a big even part of the reason we started the liturgists to be able to have differences of opinion and different people from different perspectives thanks for listening to the literature's podcast today if you'd like to join us on twitter we would love to have you a part of our conversation you can also go to the liturgists.com podcast to leave us comments we'd love to hear from you if you'd like to subscribe to our podcast go ahead and go on itunes and we're under the villages thanks so much i'm lucifena i'm michael gunger i'm science mike [Music]