In this episode we talk with Jim Vining, a professor of communication and rhetoric, about the state of our current political and religious discourse in the United States.
The bourbon featured in this episode is Maker's Mark Cask Strength.
Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/apastorandaphilosopher)
In this episode we talk with Jim Vining, a professor of communication and rhetoric, about the state of our current political and religious discourse in the United States.
The bourbon featured in this episode is Maker's Mark Cask Strength.
Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/apastorandaphilosopher)
00:12
[Music]
00:14
welcome to
00:14
a pastor and a philosopher walk into a
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bar the podcast where we mix a sometimes
00:19
weird but always delicious cocktail of
00:21
theology
00:22
philosophy and spirituality
00:28
well welcome to another episode of a
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pastor and a philosopher walk into a bar
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we're excited you're here with us
00:35
excited to share this time with you
00:37
whether you're
00:38
in the car cutting your grass trying to
00:40
tune out your kids whatever you're doing
00:42
we're excited to spend
00:43
this next hour together with you
00:46
kyle how are you i'm doing okay randy
00:50
yeah elliot how are you doing sir all
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right well let's get right to it what
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are we drinking tonight kyle
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so i have pulled out for you something a
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little bit more special this is the
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maker's mark cask strength bourbon
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uh i'm scared yeah that means it packs a
01:07
punch
01:08
uh so this was actually a birthday gift
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from my lovely wife
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and it is it is pretty wonderful it's a
01:16
weeded bourbon which means the secondary
01:18
grain after corn
01:20
is wheat which tends to make a bourbon
01:22
sweeter
01:23
which is what i like interesting all
01:25
right it does have a big nose right off
01:27
the bat yes
01:28
this this one will benefit from a little
01:30
bit of water uh
01:31
perhaps after sipping for the first time
01:34
so you can get the full
01:35
full effect i get in the nose i get
01:38
extra like
01:39
hay smell maybe that's from the wheat
01:42
yeah i i won't pretend that my nose is
01:45
that refined
01:47
all i know is that it burns and it's
01:50
like
01:51
delicious caramel candy it's nice and
01:53
strong but the sweet balance is it out
01:55
that burns going down yeah that's good
01:58
though yeah
01:58
it does finish caramelly this is about
02:01
111
02:03
proof i believe okay something like that
02:07
each barrel is a little different now
02:08
when they say cask strength for those of
02:11
you who don't know
02:12
your whiskeys it comes out of the barrel
02:15
and usually the distiller will cut
02:18
the the whiskey to the level that they
02:20
think is perfect
02:21
the level where they think it's not too
02:23
hot you can taste all the notes where
02:25
everything shines and this is not this
02:28
is uncut is what they would call it yeah
02:30
which means you can irritate yourself
02:31
again i would definitely
02:32
by adding however much water you want so
02:34
typically they're cut to around 40
02:37
ish percent uh so this would be
02:40
closer to 60. you know how if you have
02:42
like normal butter but then you get
02:44
butter that's fresh from the dairy like
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that difference between normal butter
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and extraordinary butter is
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present in here it's good yeah i like
02:51
that
02:52
i'm gonna have to cut this though
02:53
because i'll be burping non-stop
02:55
throughout the whole interview no shame
02:57
this one was made to be cut this is fun
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i'd recommend this i like makers anyways
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but this is just a fun variation
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for me this is a big step up from their
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common
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expression nothing against standard
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makers but cast strength is
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where it's at awesome
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well maker's mark cask strength pastor
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and a philosopher walk into a bar
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approved
03:22
[Music]
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well let's get rolling towards our
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interview randy has a personal
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connection with this person so randy why
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don't you
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why don't you tee up who we're talking
03:31
to yes this week is my geek
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my smart person i'm excited to welcome
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dr jim vining
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jim good to see you good to have you
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here great to be here thank you
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jim is a professor at is it governor
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state university
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in illinois a rhetoric professor
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phd and um can you tell us a little bit
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about yourself jim
03:54
well i am a former western new york
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country boy
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a former pastor i moved around all over
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the country
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my young adult years but i've been in
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milwaukee for 13 years now
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i am married been married for 18 years
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i have two teenage kids one dog um
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and like i said i'm a assistant
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professor in illinois
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but don't worry i i still wear a
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brewer's hat when i go to illinois
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just represent you wouldn't be on this
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podcast if you didn't
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jim can you tell us about what your your
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field of expertise and uh your
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what you teach and what you've
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researched sure uh so i
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um i teach communication studies and i
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approach it from
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a rhetorical angle uh so i'm a
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rhetorician now i
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you know first thing um that comes to
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mind for most people when you say
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rhetoric
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is uh something negative like all those
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politicians and their rhetoric
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so rhetoric is it's kind of like a
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haircut
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um you know it could be good or it could
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be bad so i teach rhetoric
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how texts are created uh what makes a
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text persuasive
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that's how i would define it my
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definition of rhetoric would be
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would be really big some people just
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define it as something
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like a speech a politician gives i would
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say that is rhetorical text
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but basically my definition is big
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enough that anything a human being
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creates
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communicates something it does something
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so we analyze those because we believe
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those messages make a difference and
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then my my particular area of study
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well it's kind of what what people say
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not to talk about at parties
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so i don't know about you but i grew up
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hearing you don't talk about
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religion or politics when you go to a
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party incidentally i don't get anybody
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to a lot of parties
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but um there is no lack i think we go to
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different materials to research
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i'll invite you to some parties yes yes
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what a what a fascinating time to get
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into rhetoric and teach rhetoric and
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research it when did you when did you
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start your studies when did you start
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your phd course
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it started 2012 around there so
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uh before that i was doing hospital
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ministry for
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14 years and had a lot of great
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experiences
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but also presented me with uh with some
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real questions
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questions of what makes what makes a
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speech
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or a sermon persuasive i mean i'm i'm
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enough of a christian mystic to believe
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in the role of the holy spirit
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and uh that you know it's more than just
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a preacher and a
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and a congregation i believe that god
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plays a role in the mix
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but uh but wondering what else so uh and
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maybe it was i was just a really bad
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preacher i don't know
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but um you know so i'd give sermons on
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like the uh the minor prophets and they
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would have
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a real clear message from the text uh
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things like
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hey care for the poor don't oppress
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people
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and in in the uh the evangelical
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tradition
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expository preaching was a big thing and
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so i'd
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clearly teach from the text or you know
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i try to show those connections from the
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text and i was just
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kind of shocked that if i got into
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something that
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perhaps aligned with a particular
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political party
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that people in the congregation weren't
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connected with
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uh they get furious and i'd get angry
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emails
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and it's like well we say we honor this
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text
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this is what the text says what's
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happening here
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what's the dynamic that we say yes this
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is the authoritative text
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but don't tell me that fascinating well
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we've got quite a few questions for you
07:37
before we
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dive into them we like to ask our guests
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is there anything
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you're drinking that you want to tell us
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about oh
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there is i mentioned that i'm from uh so
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i love milwaukee been here 13 years
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uh enjoy um milwaukee beers particularly
07:54
venture
07:55
uh near my neighborhood but uh i'm
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a western new york boy at heart and uh
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in what my hometown we have a little
08:02
place called southern tier
08:03
brewing company and i am currently
08:06
drinking
08:07
their double milk stout which i treat
08:10
myself to
08:10
on a special occasion and talking to you
08:13
guys is a special occasion
08:15
so nice cheers
08:18
cheers so jim what was it would you say
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that led you
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being a pastor to decide that you want
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to become
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a rhetorician i'm guessing that was a
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momentous decision how did that come
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about
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i yeah i mean it's not the normal path
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for rhetoricians um
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so i wanted to uh i wanted to be a
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pastor from about the time i was 17. 17
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so i went to college studied for that
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also did some some
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divinity school for that after college i
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was in pastoral ministry for about 14
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years
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in seven different places so if you do
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the math
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that tells you a little something about
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how things went
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so in most of those situations there
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were changes in senior level leadership
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that just radically changed everything i
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was doing
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so we were at a spot where we didn't
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want to move again
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so we so i went back to school at 25.
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okay i wasn't really 25. um
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um but uh i wanted to study how people
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talk about
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religion and politics uh how those
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things intersect how they interact
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and and so some of that was because of
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experience in pastoral ministry there
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were
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good people people who would claim that
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the bible was their authority
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wouldn't um be receptive to certain
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things that the bible clearly talks
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about
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you know so we do we do a bible study
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and i'd say you know hey what'd you get
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out of this text and it would be
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nine times out of ten well you know we
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need i need to pray more
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or i need to read my bible more or i
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need to talk to more people about jesus
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and like i'm all for those things but
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that's not what
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the text says um so i had questions
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about what makes that
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what makes that happen how do people
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view text through certain ways
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and then um why do they reject certain
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things so if
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we say the bible's the authority then
10:15
it seems like we should take what the
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bible says over
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uh say our our cable news source or
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our uh our talk radio shows that we
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listen to
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uh but my experience is that that's
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really tough
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and uh i know a lot of pastors who
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they stay away from certain passages
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because they know the pushback they'll
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get
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and so i wanted to understand that
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better so i
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research those intersections of religion
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and rhetoric and politics so that's
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interesting you
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talk about how people would not see
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just innately not see something that was
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in the text that you're
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you're highlighting that's right there
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and i would
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look at that that reality i've seen that
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reality a million times but i usually
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just blame bias
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i blame ideology and you made that jump
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to
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rhetoric where's that where's that jump
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i'm not seeing that
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that connection yeah uh great question
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well i would say that
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uh i think my understanding of rhetoric
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is those things
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all interact together we i mean you've
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heard people say that we
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we view the world through a certain lens
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they may or may not use that analogy in
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a helpful way
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but we we don't come to a text you know
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clearly objective
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um as much as we would like to
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as much as some uh perhaps some
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inductive bible study
11:45
uh methods claim that they can lead you
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to
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but that is i think a text is more rich
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and nuanced than that
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and in the human being engaging with
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that text
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is also uh more complicated some people
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will take that
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they'll they hear those um
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really ambitious truth claims of you can
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objectively know all these things
12:08
sorry i had a pastor uh a pastor boss
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once
12:12
who said that nuance was the enemy
12:16
he wasn't joking it's like
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no no no no i mean you get fired
12:22
um if you lean into nuance and mystery
12:25
i'm like you we're dealing with human
12:27
beings and we're dealing with
12:29
like the eternal um
12:32
so anyway anyhow um and people wonder
12:36
why evangelicalism is becoming
12:37
irrelevant
12:38
it's yeah i mean it's and i think for so
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i think even
12:42
even those claims there's philosophical
12:45
ideologies that are behind that so when
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people
12:49
people make a claim that oh i'm just the
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bible says so i believe it and i'm going
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to do it
12:54
you know it's kind of like when people
12:55
say i like a politician who just tells
12:56
it like it is well
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well you know what do you it's not that
13:01
simple and so some people hear that
13:04
that those kind of simplistic truth
13:06
claims aren't true
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and so they just go the other end of the
13:09
spectrum that well just
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then we can't know any truth and they
13:13
kind of become like yeah
13:15
you know some kind of nihilist or uh you
13:17
know some kind of radical
13:20
relativist and i don't think that's the
13:22
answer either
13:23
i think that there's a lot of nuance and
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texture and flavor
13:27
in text and in in in truth and our
13:30
understanding of truth
13:32
but but i think we can make some
13:33
judgments about you know validity
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and um and you know what's a better
13:38
reading of a text
13:39
and what is a real stretch in a text so
13:42
i
13:42
you're kind of touching on this a little
13:44
bit already but let's make it a little
13:46
more concrete if we can
13:47
so what trends would you say that you've
13:49
seen
13:50
with how rhetoric works inside the
13:52
church versus outside the church
13:54
are there marked differences in how how
13:56
rhetoric works yeah
13:58
certainly i would hope that some of the
14:01
content
14:02
some of uh the the framework for
14:05
understanding things
14:06
is going to look different in a
14:08
community that
14:09
is shaped by a particular uh
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faith tradition that being said i think
14:16
big picture how rhetoric functions
14:19
is very similar whether it's inside a
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religious community or what we call
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a secular community and i don't mean
14:27
that
14:28
in a way that is meant to um diminish
14:31
religious rhetoric or to make it less
14:34
spiritual
14:35
i'd say quite the contrary for me it
14:38
would be more of
14:38
pointing to the spirituality of all
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rhetoric
14:42
how we communicate and connect with one
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another i don't think
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it's somehow more spiritual
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when we say religious words as opposed
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to what we consider
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non-religious and some of that is some
14:56
of that's the way i understand
14:57
rhetoric and some of that is the way i
15:01
like where i'm at theologically
15:04
everything's god's if it exists it's
15:07
it's
15:08
it's i mean again this is theological
15:11
but uh
15:12
for me that it certainly matters that's
15:14
a part of my understanding of rhetoric
15:16
there's not the sacred secular divide
15:18
that it's
15:19
that's a fairly modern european
15:21
construct
15:22
sacred and secular so i um that's one of
15:25
the things that
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i do it in my work is i push back for
15:28
some of that divide
15:29
[Music]
15:30
so tell me tell me this then if if it's
15:33
uh
15:34
if there's that much commonality between
15:35
them and the sacred secular divide is
15:36
something you want to push against
15:38
then maybe you can explain this
15:39
phenomenon that i've noticed why
15:42
why is it and correct me if you've not
15:45
noticed this or if you have
15:46
better evidence it seems to me though
15:49
that conservative
15:50
american christians particularly
15:53
evangelical ones but conservative ones
15:55
in general
15:56
have a really hard time being understood
15:59
and a very hard time being compelling
16:02
outside of their own spheres despite
16:04
their best efforts
16:05
so a great example of this would be
16:07
evangelical cinema
16:08
right so you have film franchises like
16:11
god's not dead parts
16:12
one two and eight or whatever and
16:15
yeah they're they're just punch lines i
16:17
literally watched that video and live
16:19
tweeted it for all of my
16:21
liberal christian friends uh i hate
16:24
watched
16:25
okay and it was fun it was great fun
16:28
but it was clearly not the intention of
16:30
the producers of that film
16:32
to be great fun for a bunch of atheists
16:34
and liberal christians so why is it that
16:36
they have such a hard time
16:38
being taken seriously outside of their
16:40
own context
16:42
so i think there's a couple different
16:43
things a rhetoric is kind of built
16:45
together with the community of people
16:47
but also um the other things we bring in
16:50
as well as like the tradition that comes
16:52
that we're coming out of
16:54
or i should i shouldn't say the
16:55
tradition the traditions
16:57
um so it's not purely a religious
17:00
thing it's not purely coming straight
17:02
from the bible because that's
17:04
not really a thing right i mean there's
17:06
we're we're complex and it
17:08
say it all belongs to god maybe not in
17:10
the way the bible is the word of god but
17:13
um you know we're all impacted by
17:14
culture so even the idea to have a movie
17:17
certainly that's a
17:18
cultural thing but we're shaped by
17:21
our uh by our logics the the way we
17:25
understand the world
17:26
and so a religious community like any
17:29
community
17:29
elements of the way they understand the
17:31
world is going to be unique to them
17:34
so so if you go to a new church that's
17:36
maybe from a different
17:38
uh tradition than yours people will talk
17:41
and every once in a while i hear this
17:42
what are they talking about at my state
17:43
university i have people say hey what's
17:45
your burden
17:46
what's the burden that i can that i can
17:48
bear for you my brother
17:50
you're like wow bbb um you know and
17:52
that's a sweet thing and i'm not making
17:54
light of it
17:55
but but that's just there's a yes you
17:57
are it's okay
18:00
no but it's it's a way of talking and
18:03
when people hear they're like i don't
18:04
care what you're talking about that's so
18:06
foreign so we form our own ways of
18:08
talking in our groups and you can see
18:09
this in different
18:10
um in some activist communities uh they
18:14
they're so enmeshed with what they're
18:16
doing that they develop their own ways
18:18
of talking it's kind of insider talk
18:19
that that's part of the issue there's
18:21
insider talk
18:23
uh for this conservative uh religious
18:26
community which isn't just their local
18:28
church
18:29
i mean there is probably even larger
18:31
influence
18:32
of for-profit or i guess maybe sometimes
18:34
it's non-profit but
18:36
they make a big profit christian media
18:38
that
18:39
they have just like just like any media
18:42
they have their
18:43
there's playlists and their songs and
18:44
the speakers that come on
18:46
and there's the bookstores so
18:49
it may not even their ideology may not
18:51
even really reflect the religious
18:53
tradition of the church they're from
18:55
it's more of this hey here is
18:58
mcmainstream or mcconservative
19:01
evangelical culture and if you're not a
19:04
part of that you don't know the insider
19:05
talk
19:05
so then my other my other part of the
19:08
answer so that's maybe my um
19:10
hey we all have those problems i think
19:13
what makes it particularly difficult
19:16
for many conservative evangelicals and
19:18
certainly for fundamentalists
19:20
is part of their ideology that they
19:23
understand the world through
19:24
is this culture war narrative and even
19:28
more so it's it's us versus them
19:30
and so a conversation isn't particularly
19:34
a conversation to connect with another
19:36
human being
19:38
which i think if we step back and think
19:40
about that theologically
19:42
communication is connecting with a human
19:43
being is this
19:45
sacred thing but if you view if you're
19:48
through a culture war standpoint it's
19:50
it's a battle and it's me versus them
19:54
and i'm going in more recently as
19:57
as uh it's gone beyond culture war two
19:59
like victimization
20:01
mentality it's you know i'm gonna defend
20:04
myself
20:04
from these bad people who are attacking
20:06
me and take away the things that are
20:08
sacred to me
20:10
then then for some others like a less
20:12
angsty version of that
20:14
is my main purpose here is to
20:17
change the entire way they think about
20:19
the world
20:21
and again i i'm all for people thinking
20:23
about the world in a more jesus-like way
20:26
but i think that approaching a
20:27
conversation with another human being
20:30
trying to sell them something like that
20:33
being the primary goal not to connect
20:35
with them as another human being created
20:36
the image of god
20:37
i think that changed the dynamic of of
20:40
the uh
20:41
of the relationship
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21:25
so speaking of insider lingo jim you
21:27
made me think as you were talking about
21:29
how
21:31
groups on the extremes in particular
21:33
fundamentalists of
21:35
of sorts maybe you could say have these
21:38
words that they say that mean something
21:40
to them
21:40
yeah and then all of a sudden it a
21:42
switch happens and it becomes
21:43
almost like a a dog whistle for the
21:45
other side where if you hear
21:47
a word or phrase you know you should be
21:49
suspicious about this person so yes
21:51
conservative christians have that where
21:53
you talk about the authority of the word
21:55
of god or
21:56
original sin or even talk about human
21:59
sexuality in certain ways the
22:01
marriage being between one man and a man
22:03
and a woman and instantly
22:05
the other crowd tunes them out right or
22:07
on the other side you have words like
22:09
stay woke
22:10
or words like white privilege phrases um
22:13
where
22:14
then a person on the other side hears
22:15
that instantly
22:17
i can be in conversation use that word
22:19
white privilege or that phrase white
22:20
privilege
22:21
and somebody on the other side will
22:23
instantly be suspicious of me
22:26
it tells me are those buzzwords are they
22:28
useful actually or do we need to figure
22:30
out a way to create
22:32
rhetorically new ways of engaging so
22:34
that we don't
22:35
trip each other's triggers all the time
22:36
or is that just impossible
22:38
yeah great question so i don't think
22:39
it's i don't think it's impossible
22:41
i think some of what needs to happen is
22:44
reassessing what is our goal in this
22:47
communication act
22:48
if it's to stake out my ground for the
22:50
fight then
22:51
i don't think that heart is going to or
22:54
that you know kind of that logic of the
22:56
world
22:57
is going to is going to want to change
22:59
the way they talk
23:00
because for them that way they talk is
23:02
more than just the word
23:04
it's the thing behind the word and the
23:06
thing behind the thing
23:08
behind the thing is really their
23:09
identity so could it be that in
23:11
our politically charged world that we
23:13
find ourselves in
23:15
if pastors when they're preaching we're
23:17
a little bit more thoughtful about the
23:18
words they're using or if we
23:19
as we're in dialogue and i know that one
23:22
my sister
23:23
is a conservative republican and i know
23:25
that my
23:26
uncle sitting over on the other side of
23:27
the table at thanksgiving is a
23:29
blue-collar
23:30
die-hard democrat and i'm somewhere
23:34
in in that spectrum could it be that in
23:36
order for
23:37
us to have a actually constructive
23:40
conversation over thanksgiving without
23:41
regurgitating our meals
23:43
we actually need to think about the
23:44
words and the phrases that we use
23:46
and possibly a more loving way of of
23:49
acting would be
23:50
a more christ-like way of acting would
23:51
be to just set aside words that are just
23:53
really familiar and normal for me
23:55
so that i don't trigger that or is that
23:57
kind of just is living in a way like
23:59
that just kind of
24:01
false fake what are your thoughts on
24:03
that i mean i have tons of people like
24:05
this right good friends and
24:06
and family who are in very different
24:09
spots
24:09
uh politically and even and even uh even
24:13
theologically yeah some of it is knowing
24:14
when to have the conversation
24:16
another um helpful thing that i found is
24:18
you know for all the for all the values
24:20
talk
24:21
and how kind of one side has tried to
24:23
claim that they're
24:24
the values people the reality is we all
24:26
have values
24:28
uh we all you know every year it drives
24:30
me crazy when there's the values voter
24:32
summit and i'm like no man we all vote
24:34
our values
24:34
now we may not be honest about our
24:36
values but we all
24:38
we all we all vote them we all act on
24:39
them we share
24:41
most values maybe not all but we we
24:44
share most values now we might
24:46
define them differently again because
24:48
terms are
24:49
i mean there's some ambiguity in terms i
24:51
don't think they're no i think terms
24:53
have meaning they're not meaningless but
24:54
there's ambiguity in exactly what they
24:56
mean
24:56
so like freedom it can mean like we all
24:59
would say we value freedom
25:01
but it means something a little
25:02
different to different people
25:05
and there's value hierarchies
25:08
so so in in the uh
25:12
in the arguments about uh the safer home
25:15
orders
25:16
you know it's not like it's not like the
25:18
people who think we need to
25:20
have a strict federal guideline or state
25:23
guideline even about um state safer home
25:26
orders and what we should you know
25:28
putting restrictions on us it's not that
25:30
those people don't value freedom
25:31
they they value freedom it's just that
25:34
in this particular instance
25:36
public health you know they because of
25:38
the public health risk that trumps
25:43
[Laughter]
25:46
um the freedom for them at the time and
25:48
at the same time it's not like
25:50
people who are you know out saying
25:51
freedom freedom it's not like i mean the
25:54
vast majority of them you know that they
25:56
would not
25:57
you know they stop at red lights right i
25:59
mean they they're willing
26:01
to have some of their freedoms infringed
26:03
upon for safety
26:05
we have the same values uh we may define
26:07
them differently
26:09
and we clearly we we have them at
26:12
different um
26:13
points in the hierarchy but uh
26:16
we can you know that gives us some hope
26:19
like we can find some common ground
26:21
and i say that being helpful i don't
26:23
mean as like
26:24
a money-back guarantee thing right not
26:26
like a particularly not like a method
26:28
for winning either helpful in the sense
26:30
of building
26:31
a space for community man yeah yeah yeah
26:34
when you look at jesus the person of
26:36
jesus tell me about
26:38
the rhetoric that um you find out of the
26:40
person of jesus in the gospels
26:43
so one another one of the things one of
26:44
my uh philosophies of rhetoric
26:47
comes comes straight from jesus like out
26:49
of
26:50
out of the heart come become a person's
26:52
words
26:53
and what so when i talked when i talk
26:55
about like we all communi we all see the
26:57
word through a
26:58
lens or we we understand the world and
27:01
we speak through
27:02
a particular logical framework or
27:06
narrative framework that's how we
27:07
understand things that's
27:09
that's another way of saying what jesus
27:12
said there
27:13
um that our words our words aren't just
27:16
accidents
27:17
so so one of the rules in my house years
27:20
ago when i first started studying
27:21
rhetoric was i didn't let my kids say
27:23
well i'm just saying he's like oh no no
27:26
no you're not
27:27
just saying because your words
27:30
come from someplace and your words have
27:32
an impact
27:33
they're not neutral so even if i reject
27:36
a person's words
27:37
i'm still interacting with those words
27:39
i'm still engaging with those words
27:42
so i think jesus has all kinds of wisdom
27:45
uh in that in that one statement you
27:48
know some of the the text
27:49
where he you know if he was if he was a
27:52
contemporary uh social science
27:55
communication scholar he'd say here's
27:57
how you clearly communicate your message
27:59
and sometimes like jesus is not trying
28:02
to clearly communicate his message
28:04
uh it seems like he's stirring the
28:06
waters up and really making people think
28:09
and not making it easy to understand
28:12
what he's saying
28:13
that stuff that fascinates me i was
28:15
listening to another podcast
28:17
a day or two ago where a myth writer
28:20
was being interviewed and myth is a
28:23
scary word to a lot of christians
28:24
to to the idea that their some of these
28:27
ancient bible stories could be
28:29
myth mythical is very very scary to a
28:33
large amount of people but this
28:34
myth this modern myth writer in the uk
28:37
said
28:37
the reason that he wrote about certain
28:39
experiences through mythology
28:42
is because there are some experiences
28:43
that are so deep and rich
28:45
the facts actually don't tell the story
28:48
and so he results
28:49
he resorts to myth and not resorts it
28:52
actually is the best
28:53
choice of communication and so that's
28:55
fascinating to me that god
28:57
this unknowable god he comes to us and
29:00
the rhetoric he uses
29:01
is myth actually that's his choice way
29:04
of explaining this
29:05
kingdom that he's trying to get us to
29:07
understand that says something right
29:10
oh man that is uh yeah that's that's
29:13
profound
29:14
but in in certain traditions you say
29:16
that well this is the myth or this is
29:17
the story about
29:19
as opposed to arguing that this
29:21
factually happened this exact way
29:23
and i'm not saying like a myth may have
29:25
happened you know that story may have
29:27
happened that exact way but that's not
29:28
the thing to fight about the thing to
29:30
fight about is inside me
29:32
that i would be transformed by the
29:34
truths
29:35
there not to try to give
29:38
evidence that demands a verdict jim
29:41
we've
29:42
spoken a lot about rhetoric in the the
29:45
state of rhetoric in our culture and
29:47
to me there's not a whole lot that's
29:49
more broken in our culture than the
29:50
state of
29:51
than our rhetorical state i don't know
29:53
if i'm speaking rhetorically correctly
29:56
i agree our public discourse our public
29:59
rhetoric is
30:00
i mean we're in trouble it's a mess yeah
30:03
so
30:04
so that being the reality that we find
30:06
ourselves in can rhetoric
30:08
help save us what in what ways can
30:12
rhetoric help us dig out of the hole we
30:15
found ourselves in
30:16
i'd really encourage people to really
30:18
listen to their own words
30:19
what are you tweeting about what are you
30:21
posting on facebook about what are you
30:24
talking to your friends about and your
30:27
your family about
30:28
what are the words coming out of your
30:29
mouth because like jesus said
30:31
out of your heart flow the words of your
30:33
mouth and so one of the ways that
30:35
i look at it from a rhetorical
30:37
standpoint is like what is the story
30:40
that's driving my words my words aren't
30:42
accidents they come from a certain story
30:45
and so good one of the real challenges
30:48
is how does this line up with
30:51
how i understand the gospel of jesus
30:54
christ
30:55
and and i don't mean do i throw jesus in
30:58
there every once in a while
30:59
or do i throw some christian cliche
31:02
words
31:03
like is is the motion of the story
31:06
does it line up with the motion of jesus
31:08
story well
31:10
can you imagine the difference on social
31:12
media in our world especially in the
31:14
church
31:14
if we just ask the question is the story
31:17
that i'm telling
31:19
with my twitter account with my facebook
31:21
page
31:22
is a story that i'm telling mirrored at
31:24
all
31:25
by the story that jesus told well dr jim
31:28
vining thank you for joining us
31:30
thank you guys really appreciate it
31:31
thanks jim
31:39
thanks for listening we hope you enjoyed
31:41
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31:51
till next time this has been a pastor
31:54
and a philosopher
31:54
walk into a bar
32:03
[Music]