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.
=====
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Cheers!
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.
=====
Want to support us?
The best way is to subscribe to our Patreon. Annual memberships are available for a 10% discount.
If you'd rather make a one-time donation, you can contribute through our PayPal.
Other important info:
Cheers!
00:12
[Music]
00:14
welcome to
00:14
a pastor and a philosopher walk into a
00:16
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
00:31
pastor and a philosopher walk into a bar
00:33
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
00:53
right well let's get right to it what
00:54
are we drinking tonight kyle
00:56
so i have pulled out for you something a
00:58
little bit more special this is the
00:59
maker's mark cask strength bourbon
01:03
uh i'm scared yeah that means it packs a
01:07
punch
01:08
uh so this was actually a birthday gift
01:10
from my lovely wife
01:13
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
02:46
that difference between normal butter
02:47
and extraordinary butter is
02:49
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
03:00
i'd recommend this i like makers anyways
03:02
but this is just a fun variation
03:04
for me this is a big step up from their
03:06
common
03:07
expression nothing against standard
03:08
makers but cast strength is
03:11
where it's at awesome
03:14
well maker's mark cask strength pastor
03:18
and a philosopher walk into a bar
03:20
approved
03:22
[Music]
03:24
well let's get rolling towards our
03:26
interview randy has a personal
03:27
connection with this person so randy why
03:29
don't you
03:30
why don't you tee up who we're talking
03:31
to yes this week is my geek
03:34
my smart person i'm excited to welcome
03:37
dr jim vining
03:38
jim good to see you good to have you
03:40
here great to be here thank you
03:42
jim is a professor at is it governor
03:44
state university
03:46
in illinois a rhetoric professor
03:49
phd and um can you tell us a little bit
03:51
about yourself jim
03:54
well i am a former western new york
03:57
country boy
03:58
a former pastor i moved around all over
04:02
the country
04:02
my young adult years but i've been in
04:04
milwaukee for 13 years now
04:07
i am married been married for 18 years
04:10
i have two teenage kids one dog um
04:14
and like i said i'm a assistant
04:15
professor in illinois
04:17
but don't worry i i still wear a
04:20
brewer's hat when i go to illinois
04:21
just represent you wouldn't be on this
04:24
podcast if you didn't
04:27
jim can you tell us about what your your
04:28
field of expertise and uh your
04:30
what you teach and what you've
04:32
researched sure uh so i
04:34
um i teach communication studies and i
04:37
approach it from
04:38
a rhetorical angle uh so i'm a
04:40
rhetorician now i
04:42
you know first thing um that comes to
04:45
mind for most people when you say
04:46
rhetoric
04:47
is uh something negative like all those
04:50
politicians and their rhetoric
04:52
so rhetoric is it's kind of like a
04:54
haircut
04:55
um you know it could be good or it could
04:56
be bad so i teach rhetoric
04:59
how texts are created uh what makes a
05:02
text persuasive
05:04
that's how i would define it my
05:06
definition of rhetoric would be
05:08
would be really big some people just
05:10
define it as something
05:12
like a speech a politician gives i would
05:14
say that is rhetorical text
05:16
but basically my definition is big
05:18
enough that anything a human being
05:19
creates
05:20
communicates something it does something
05:22
so we analyze those because we believe
05:26
those messages make a difference and
05:28
then my my particular area of study
05:31
well it's kind of what what people say
05:33
not to talk about at parties
05:35
so i don't know about you but i grew up
05:37
hearing you don't talk about
05:38
religion or politics when you go to a
05:40
party incidentally i don't get anybody
05:42
to a lot of parties
05:43
but um there is no lack i think we go to
05:46
different materials to research
05:50
i'll invite you to some parties yes yes
05:53
what a what a fascinating time to get
05:55
into rhetoric and teach rhetoric and
05:58
research it when did you when did you
06:00
start your studies when did you start
06:01
your phd course
06:02
it started 2012 around there so
06:06
uh before that i was doing hospital
06:08
ministry for
06:09
14 years and had a lot of great
06:11
experiences
06:12
but also presented me with uh with some
06:15
real questions
06:16
questions of what makes what makes a
06:20
speech
06:20
or a sermon persuasive i mean i'm i'm
06:23
enough of a christian mystic to believe
06:25
in the role of the holy spirit
06:26
and uh that you know it's more than just
06:29
a preacher and a
06:31
and a congregation i believe that god
06:33
plays a role in the mix
06:34
but uh but wondering what else so uh and
06:37
maybe it was i was just a really bad
06:38
preacher i don't know
06:39
but um you know so i'd give sermons on
06:43
like the uh the minor prophets and they
06:46
would have
06:46
a real clear message from the text uh
06:49
things like
06:50
hey care for the poor don't oppress
06:53
people
06:54
and in in the uh the evangelical
06:56
tradition
06:57
expository preaching was a big thing and
07:00
so i'd
07:01
clearly teach from the text or you know
07:04
i try to show those connections from the
07:05
text and i was just
07:06
kind of shocked that if i got into
07:09
something that
07:10
perhaps aligned with a particular
07:12
political party
07:13
that people in the congregation weren't
07:16
connected with
07:17
uh they get furious and i'd get angry
07:20
emails
07:21
and it's like well we say we honor this
07:24
text
07:25
this is what the text says what's
07:27
happening here
07:28
what's the dynamic that we say yes this
07:31
is the authoritative text
07:33
but don't tell me that fascinating well
07:36
we've got quite a few questions for you
07:37
before we
07:38
dive into them we like to ask our guests
07:40
is there anything
07:41
you're drinking that you want to tell us
07:43
about oh
07:45
there is i mentioned that i'm from uh so
07:48
i love milwaukee been here 13 years
07:50
uh enjoy um milwaukee beers particularly
07:54
venture
07:55
uh near my neighborhood but uh i'm
07:58
a western new york boy at heart and uh
08:00
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
08:21
that led you
08:22
being a pastor to decide that you want
08:24
to become
08:25
a rhetorician i'm guessing that was a
08:27
momentous decision how did that come
08:29
about
08:30
i yeah i mean it's not the normal path
08:33
for rhetoricians um
08:34
so i wanted to uh i wanted to be a
08:37
pastor from about the time i was 17. 17
08:39
so i went to college studied for that
08:41
also did some some
08:43
divinity school for that after college i
08:45
was in pastoral ministry for about 14
08:47
years
08:48
in seven different places so if you do
08:51
the math
08:52
that tells you a little something about
08:54
how things went
08:56
so in most of those situations there
08:58
were changes in senior level leadership
09:00
that just radically changed everything i
09:03
was doing
09:04
so we were at a spot where we didn't
09:06
want to move again
09:08
so we so i went back to school at 25.
09:11
okay i wasn't really 25. um
09:15
um but uh i wanted to study how people
09:18
talk about
09:18
religion and politics uh how those
09:21
things intersect how they interact
09:23
and and so some of that was because of
09:27
experience in pastoral ministry there
09:30
were
09:30
good people people who would claim that
09:33
the bible was their authority
09:35
wouldn't um be receptive to certain
09:37
things that the bible clearly talks
09:39
about
09:40
you know so we do we do a bible study
09:43
and i'd say you know hey what'd you get
09:45
out of this text and it would be
09:47
nine times out of ten well you know we
09:49
need i need to pray more
09:50
or i need to read my bible more or i
09:52
need to talk to more people about jesus
09:54
and like i'm all for those things but
09:57
that's not what
09:58
the text says um so i had questions
10:01
about what makes that
10:02
what makes that happen how do people
10:05
view text through certain ways
10:07
and then um why do they reject certain
10:10
things so if
10:11
we say the bible's the authority then
10:15
it seems like we should take what the
10:17
bible says over
10:19
uh say our our cable news source or
10:22
our uh our talk radio shows that we
10:24
listen to
10:25
uh but my experience is that that's
10:28
really tough
10:29
and uh i know a lot of pastors who
10:34
they stay away from certain passages
10:36
because they know the pushback they'll
10:38
get
10:40
and so i wanted to understand that
10:41
better so i
10:43
research those intersections of religion
10:46
and rhetoric and politics so that's
10:48
interesting you
10:50
talk about how people would not see
10:53
just innately not see something that was
10:56
in the text that you're
10:57
you're highlighting that's right there
10:59
and i would
11:00
look at that that reality i've seen that
11:02
reality a million times but i usually
11:04
just blame bias
11:05
i blame ideology and you made that jump
11:08
to
11:09
rhetoric where's that where's that jump
11:12
i'm not seeing that
11:14
that connection yeah uh great question
11:17
well i would say that
11:18
uh i think my understanding of rhetoric
11:20
is those things
11:22
all interact together we i mean you've
11:24
heard people say that we
11:26
we view the world through a certain lens
11:29
they may or may not use that analogy in
11:32
a helpful way
11:33
but we we don't come to a text you know
11:36
clearly objective
11:37
um as much as we would like to
11:40
as much as some uh perhaps some
11:43
inductive bible study
11:45
uh methods claim that they can lead you
11:47
to
11:48
but that is i think a text is more rich
11:51
and nuanced than that
11:52
and in the human being engaging with
11:55
that text
11:56
is also uh more complicated some people
11:59
will take that
12:00
they'll they hear those um
12:03
really ambitious truth claims of you can
12:05
objectively know all these things
12:08
sorry i had a pastor uh a pastor boss
12:11
once
12:12
who said that nuance was the enemy
12:16
he wasn't joking it's like
12:19
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
12:41
i think even
12:42
even those claims there's philosophical
12:45
ideologies that are behind that so when
12:48
people
12:49
people make a claim that oh i'm just the
12:52
bible says so i believe it and i'm going
12:53
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
12:58
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
13:08
and so they just go the other end of the
13:09
spectrum that well just
13:11
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
13:26
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
13:36
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
14:12
faith tradition that being said i think
14:16
big picture how rhetoric functions
14:19
is very similar whether it's inside a
14:22
religious community or what we call
14:24
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
14:41
rhetoric
14:42
how we communicate and connect with one
14:44
another i don't think
14:46
it's somehow more spiritual
14:49
when we say religious words as opposed
14:51
to what we consider
14:54
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
15:26
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
20:49
friends before we continue we want to
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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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31:44
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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]