In this episode, we chat with the one and only Brian McLaren. Brian has given his adult life to the Church in many ways and has created space for followers of Christ who feel like they exist on the margins of faith and Christianity. Brian has written many influential and important books, and in this episode we chat about his newest book: Faith After Doubt. This is a beautiful and brilliant book that will give you all sorts of space and permission to let your doubts come into the light and let them mature and grow your faith (even if that sounds really crazy right now). This was a truly delightful conversation that we're excited to share with you.
Brian speaks to a number of different prayers, books, and resources in the episode. Here are all the things that were mentioned during the conversation:
Bishop Nikolai Velimirovic: Prayer Regarding Critics and Enemies
Miguel de Unamuno: San Manuel Bueno, Martir
Mary Doria Russell: The Sparrow
Barbara Kingsolver: The Poisonwood Bible
John Westerhoff: WIll Our Children Have Faith?
The two whiskeys featured in this episode are Snake River Stampede Small Batch and their 100th Anniversary Limited Release from Snake River Stampede Ale and Whiskey.
=====
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!
In this episode, we chat with the one and only Brian McLaren. Brian has given his adult life to the Church in many ways and has created space for followers of Christ who feel like they exist on the margins of faith and Christianity. Brian has written many influential and important books, and in this episode we chat about his newest book: Faith After Doubt. This is a beautiful and brilliant book that will give you all sorts of space and permission to let your doubts come into the light and let them mature and grow your faith (even if that sounds really crazy right now). This was a truly delightful conversation that we're excited to share with you.
Brian speaks to a number of different prayers, books, and resources in the episode. Here are all the things that were mentioned during the conversation:
Bishop Nikolai Velimirovic: Prayer Regarding Critics and Enemies
Miguel de Unamuno: San Manuel Bueno, Martir
Mary Doria Russell: The Sparrow
Barbara Kingsolver: The Poisonwood Bible
John Westerhoff: WIll Our Children Have Faith?
The two whiskeys featured in this episode are Snake River Stampede Small Batch and their 100th Anniversary Limited Release from Snake River Stampede Ale and Whiskey.
=====
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!
[Music]
00:08
i often grieve the losses that have come
00:10
through the stages of faith
00:12
but other times it dawns on me that what
00:14
i have left are the best things
00:15
and even though i'm not always sure if
00:17
i'm miserable or ecstatic i know i'm
00:19
alive
00:20
i know you've already experienced that
00:22
aliveness it may have been for a
00:23
fleeting moment at the birth of a child
00:25
the death of a parent an experience of
00:28
profound sexual intimacy
00:30
a sublime turn in a symphony or poem or
00:32
film
00:33
or an act of self-giving it may have
00:35
come as you looked out the window of a
00:37
train or airplane
00:38
as you walked along a hiking trail when
00:40
you body surfed a curling wave at the
00:42
beach
00:42
or as you held or nursed your newborn
00:44
child you may have hardly even
00:46
acknowledged that little moment because
00:47
it was so
00:48
foreign and odd on the one hand or so
00:50
personal and intimate on the other
00:52
it may have even scared you a little bit
00:54
or embarrassed you
00:55
even made you feel guilty because it
00:57
didn't fit in the small boxes of
00:58
simplicity complexity
01:00
or even perplexity but whenever it came
01:02
and however it felt
01:04
you knew you were alive and you knew
01:06
life was precious holy
01:08
sacred you knew more than you could put
01:10
into words
01:11
you felt in your marrow that every
01:13
single thing was priceless and profound
01:16
and beloved
01:19
welcome to a pastor and a philosopher
01:21
walk into a bar
01:22
the podcast where we mix a sometimes
01:24
weird but always delicious cocktail of
01:27
theology
01:28
philosophy and spirituality
01:34
hi folks on the podcast today we have a
01:36
really special guest that we're excited
01:37
about we're talking with brian mclaren
01:40
who if any of you were evangelicals in
01:42
the 90s as i was i'm sure that name is
01:44
not
01:45
a new one to you brian is a well-known
01:47
author
01:48
within evangelicalism
01:50
post-evangelicalism
01:52
writing a lot about the emerging church
01:54
movement back in the day but now
01:56
about what what faith might look like
01:58
after a period of
02:00
deconstruction so we're talking with
02:01
brian about his recent book just came
02:03
out this january called faith after
02:05
doubt it's a really excellent
02:07
conversation
02:09
it really is yeah i loved it i mean i
02:11
wanted to i
02:12
didn't want the conversation to stop
02:13
he's so lovely so so incredible
02:16
but we also have something fun for the
02:19
tasting today our friends at story hill
02:20
bkc
02:22
in milwaukee have provided us with not
02:24
one but two whiskeys
02:26
i mean come on like that's incredible
02:29
nice so
02:30
we're we're sampling two canadian
02:32
whiskeys they're in the same family
02:33
one's an anniversary little bump
02:35
up we're snap sampling what's called
02:37
snake river stampede
02:39
and if you look up snake river stampede
02:41
on the internet you're going to find
02:42
first and foremost a rodeo
02:44
in idaho and i'm not joking
02:48
but so they they within their their
02:51
business corporate world have a
02:52
distillery and
02:53
this right here what we have is the
02:55
snake river stampede it's their
02:57
whiskey that pays homage to the great
02:58
american cowboy it's a blended whiskey
03:00
the small batch and it's 80 corn
03:04
10 malted barley 10 rye and it's aged
03:06
four years in a bourbon barrel and then
03:09
finished for six months in sherry
03:10
barrels so we're gonna get
03:12
that sherry finish i'm sure but let's
03:14
try this one first
03:16
nice so yeah i get
03:19
strong banana on the nose is that my
03:22
imagination
03:23
i don't i get some banana
03:26
not strong i get some maybe like um
03:28
caramelized banana
03:29
yeah yeah i see what you mean
03:33
yeah actually like desserty you're
03:37
searing some banana and you get a little
03:38
caramelization on them yeah
03:40
we'll call it bananas foster since it
03:41
has that nice sweet shared fish
03:44
okay this is a good canadian whiskey
03:46
truth be told i
03:47
throw shade at canadian whiskey i don't
03:50
respect it as much
03:51
along with irish whiskey there's not as
03:53
much flavor this has something to it
03:56
yeah it's good it's really sweet a lot
03:58
of vanilla for me quite smooth
04:01
it's really nice if it had a little more
04:04
viscosity i would think of this as a
04:06
dessert whiskey
04:07
it's just so sweet it's creamy almost
04:10
pair that with some actual bananas
04:11
foster and that'd be pretty delicious
04:14
yeah yeah it's really nice okay so i
04:16
want to do the compare and contrast well
04:18
that's
04:18
still so next step refresh you guys go
04:20
ahead and sip i'll just talk about it
04:22
they have this
04:22
stinky river stampede has a hundred year
04:24
anniversary
04:26
uh batch that they just put out which is
04:28
exactly what we just tried
04:29
except they age at two additional years
04:31
in former rye barrels
04:33
so we're gonna see what that whiskey
04:35
tastes like this canadian whiskey
04:37
when you add the two years in rye
04:38
barrels which i'm super excited it's
04:40
already darker color yeah
04:42
changed it completely yeah the nose is
04:44
way different the nose is more complex
04:46
more luxurious
04:47
but definitely more woody obviously oh
04:49
oh
04:50
so much better enjoys a lot more i'm
04:53
glad we did it in this order and
04:54
not the other way around oh i almost
04:57
feel like you can taste the sherry even
04:59
more in this one where it's got that
05:01
rich
05:01
fruity thing but the rye barrels just
05:04
brought complexity to it
05:06
that's lovely more oak wow uh
05:08
butterscotch for me like it's kind of
05:09
those the deeper
05:11
brown flavors and i would never if you
05:14
if you gave this to me i would never
05:15
guess in a million years it's a canadian
05:17
whiskey
05:18
it's like sea gram 7 or this which is a
05:21
compliment for a snob like you
05:23
i'm not a snob yet but i am about
05:25
canadian whiskey this is delicious
05:27
yeah the bananas are gone too which is i
05:30
think a
05:30
marked improvement yeah and this is this
05:33
is a fun thing that our friends at story
05:34
hill bkc would say
05:36
do this these both of these bottles are
05:37
right around thirty dollars they're not
05:39
going to break the bank
05:40
bring both of them home and you get to
05:42
do what we just did which is compare and
05:43
contrast maybe even have a blind taste
05:45
test
05:46
see which one you like better there's
05:47
all sorts of fun you can have when you
05:48
do stuff like this
05:49
i feel like some of my favorite moments
05:50
around whiskey are when there's a couple
05:53
bottles out and talking about with
05:54
friends
05:55
absolutely trying to figure out which is
05:56
which it's great absolutely so story
05:58
hill bkc
05:59
it's the place to go for great unique
06:02
finds of liquor
06:03
in milwaukee it's a great place to go
06:05
for dinner and
06:07
you'll you'll just there there's there's
06:10
a thing there's things there there's
06:11
bourbon there that i can't tell you
06:13
about
06:13
but it's there my friend joe told me
06:15
about him and i'm telling you just go to
06:16
star hill bkc if you're in milwaukee and
06:18
if you're not in milwaukee make sure to
06:20
shop local
06:21
and support local because they need it
06:23
[Music]
06:25
well brian mclaren thank you so much for
06:28
being with us and welcome to the podcast
06:30
well i've got to say this is one of the
06:32
best names of a podcast of any other one
06:35
so happy to be with you guys perfect
06:38
thank you so much such a gift to have
06:39
you
06:40
um brian for the four listeners that we
06:42
have that don't know who you are
06:44
can you just fill in a little bit about
06:45
your story sure
06:47
well uh i i grew up in
06:50
upstate new york lived most of my life
06:51
in maryland i've lived in florida the
06:54
last 12 years
06:55
i started my career as a college english
06:57
teacher and so i
06:59
in fact i had kind of a minor in
07:00
philosophy i loved philosophy
07:03
and um i ended up becoming a pastor
07:06
helped
07:06
start a church co-led that church for 24
07:10
years and then
07:11
during that time i started writing books
07:13
and for the last i don't know how many
07:14
years gosh
07:16
14 15 years i've worked as a writer and
07:19
speaker and then i've got a bunch of
07:21
causes that i
07:22
can be involved with too one of the fun
07:26
things that
07:27
most people know is you're i mean i was
07:29
going to do a facebook post to say
07:31
today to say i'm going to give you a
07:33
guess of the this guy that we're having
07:35
on as an interview tonight is probably
07:36
one of the top two biggest lightning
07:38
rods in the christian movement in the
07:39
last 15 years
07:40
and i bet everybody would have been able
07:42
to guess it was either you or rob bell
07:44
i want to know how that feels to be that
07:46
lightning rod and i mean your
07:48
your book that we're going to talk about
07:50
today faith after doubt
07:51
is so gracious and generous and just
07:53
beautiful
07:54
and there's so lit there's no
07:57
vindictiveness in you there's no
07:59
bitterness in
08:00
in there it really is a beautiful thing
08:02
how did you get to that place brian
08:05
well you i don't know how if i'm if i'm
08:08
uh fooling everybody to think i don't
08:10
have my bad days but
08:12
um i'll tell you uh two things uh that
08:16
that helped me uh one was
08:19
one of my mentors when i i don't know my
08:22
second or third book had come out
08:23
and he pulled me aside and handed me
08:26
this prayer
08:27
that was written down on you know i
08:28
don't know if you remember old-fashioned
08:30
ditto paper but anyhow it was a
08:32
really old piece of paper and it was
08:36
a prayer by a serbian orthodox bishop
08:39
called a prayer for my enemies if
08:40
anybody's interested if you go to my
08:42
website which is brian mclaren.net and
08:44
you just put in
08:45
prayer for enemies in the search it'll
08:48
come right up it's just this beautiful
08:49
prayer
08:50
and he handed it to me he said i have a
08:51
feeling you're going to need this
08:54
and uh for many years it sat on my desk
08:56
and i would read it and reread it to the
08:58
point where
08:58
it i've almost memorized it but uh
09:01
anyhow that was a huge help to me
09:03
because
09:04
it really it just took me to a place i
09:07
certainly
09:08
wasn't going on my own it would be much
09:10
easier now
09:11
if i were getting the criticism that i
09:13
was getting when i was in my 30s
09:15
and early 40s you know it's just i
09:18
wasn't at a place i think where i
09:19
i was able to handle it so that prayer
09:22
helped me
09:22
a whole lot but then the other thing
09:24
that helped me is i would always get
09:26
these
09:26
uh sort of backhanded compliments
09:30
like one time an editor and i might as
09:32
well just say he was an
09:34
editor of christianity today which is a
09:36
magazine a lot of people would know
09:37
[Music]
09:38
he pulled me aside and he said uh
09:41
we we met in a hallway at some
09:43
conference and he said ah mclaren
09:46
yeah read a couple your books i really
09:48
don't agree with them
09:49
really really don't approve of what
09:50
you're doing really don't like it
09:52
and he said but i got to say my kids
09:55
are far away from the christian faith
09:57
and if they ever come back
09:59
it won't be to my kind of christianity
10:01
it'll be to yours
10:02
and so there were things like that you
10:03
know that you would just realize
10:06
yeah people are doing the best they can
10:07
and so i'll try to do the best i can
10:11
well we're going to be talking about
10:13
brian's book that i don't know when you
10:15
released it brian was that late 2020
10:17
that came out in january uh january yeah
10:20
it's called faith after doubt and i must
10:22
say
10:22
it is a beautiful book i mean it's just
10:25
really incredible
10:26
struck me as just there's been a couple
10:29
of
10:29
important books i would put under that
10:31
important category
10:33
recently that have come out and this is
10:34
one of them it's it's given
10:37
it gave me as a pastor so much
10:39
understanding to the people that i
10:40
pastor
10:41
who struggle with doubt and have walked
10:43
through faith crises and
10:44
there's so many people in the church
10:47
right now who have either left the
10:48
church
10:49
or feel like they're on the cusp of it
10:51
because they can't swallow
10:52
what they've been told they've been told
10:54
they have to swallow with when it comes
10:55
to beliefs and faith and all of that
10:58
in this book is a must read for anyone
11:00
who's walking with somebody
11:02
in faith crisis or struggles with doubt
11:05
themselves which is so many of us so
11:07
i just want to jump right in brian you
11:10
you speak to
11:11
this phenomenon of clergy struggling
11:14
with doubt
11:15
and pastors in the pulpit even
11:18
struggling with doubt struggling with
11:19
faith crises struggling with
11:21
having questions and being in this this
11:23
land that you call perplexity even
11:25
and they're not able they don't feel
11:28
freedom to to share that with their
11:29
congregation because they know that if
11:31
they did they get fired
11:32
and they have to pay off this debt that
11:33
they just that they just accrued in
11:35
seminary
11:35
and so they're between this rock and a
11:37
hard place where they can't where they
11:39
can't be their genuine selves
11:40
and that sounds like a slow death to me
11:42
oh yeah and i
11:43
i uh empathize so much with joel the the
11:47
woman who you highlight in chapter six
11:48
so much
11:49
can you speak to this reality where
11:51
there are church leaders pastors who
11:53
feel like they can't be themselves who
11:54
feel like they can't bring
11:56
the truest part of who they are and what
11:57
they believe and what they're living out
11:59
and then these gatekeepers who make it
12:01
so it's almost impossible for them to
12:03
come out
12:04
as having doubt or struggling with their
12:06
faith yeah it's funny
12:08
you bring that up uh just i think it was
12:10
yesterday or the day before
12:12
i got an email from a denominational
12:14
leader
12:15
who just read the book and he said to me
12:18
uh boy it was such a powerful paragraph
12:21
in this email he says
12:24
so many of the pastors under my care
12:27
are going through faith crises right now
12:30
many of them
12:31
are are feeling that they don't want to
12:33
spend the rest of their lives
12:35
working in churches especially white
12:37
evangelical churches he said
12:40
um and then and then you know that was
12:43
very moving and then he said and the
12:45
same is true of me
12:47
so what a lot of people don't realize is
12:49
that
12:50
there are a whole lot of clergy who look
12:52
at what
12:53
the the word christian means in
12:56
america today uh and and there's an
12:59
evangelical version of this there's a
13:01
catholic version
13:02
because i'm hearing from catholic
13:03
priests and you know a lot of catholic
13:06
leaders as well
13:07
uh who are having similar struggles and
13:09
they just feel something's gone
13:11
terribly wrong uh and so
13:15
they're and and they they have ideas and
13:18
they've read books and they have dreams
13:20
about change
13:21
but if they were to say them to their
13:23
congregation there would probably be 25
13:25
percent who'd be so happy and relieved
13:27
and thrilled
13:28
and there'd be another 25 percent who
13:31
would be ready to
13:32
fire them and uh and all the rest you
13:34
know so so yeah it's
13:35
it's really tough my uh if i were to say
13:39
the typical clergy biography
13:42
that based on my experience in the
13:44
united states
13:45
so many of the people who become pastors
13:47
become pastors
13:49
not because they love church but because
13:51
they love the youth group
13:52
or they love the summer camp or they
13:54
love the mission trip
13:55
and youth group summer camp mission trip
13:58
are what were spiritually
14:00
for formative for them and they decided
14:02
to go to seminary
14:04
and and many of them had a faith crisis
14:06
in seminary because
14:07
very often in seminary you're exposed to
14:09
scholarship that folks don't hear in the
14:11
pew
14:12
and suddenly they have to grapple with
14:14
new levels of complexity
14:16
and um but by the time they finish
14:18
seminary most
14:19
i'll just tell you most younger people i
14:22
meet
14:22
have nothing but good to say about their
14:24
seminary experience maybe the debt is a
14:26
problem
14:27
but in terms of the chance to just have
14:30
deep and open and open-minded and
14:33
open-hearted and far-ranging
14:35
uh conversations about the bible and
14:37
theology
14:38
and faith you know people love that when
14:40
they have that chance
14:41
and then they come back they get
14:43
assigned to their first church
14:45
and they find out that a whole lot of
14:46
the people might listen to them
14:49
one hour on every uh every sunday but
14:52
monday through saturday they're
14:53
listening to fox news or
14:55
until recently they were listening to
14:57
rush limbaugh or
14:58
sean hannity or tucker carlson or
15:00
whoever it is and these people are
15:02
having such a formative influence on
15:04
them
15:05
that if the pastor says anything out of
15:07
line
15:08
with these uh in some ways you might
15:11
call them the
15:12
covert clergy of their lives uh
15:15
you know the the pastor is in trouble
15:19
brian i uh i just this afternoon read a
15:22
short story or novella
15:24
that i wonder if you've read it was by
15:26
miguel de una muno who is
15:29
cited in one of your epigraphs in the
15:30
book and randomly total coincidence a
15:33
friend of mine who is an
15:34
atheistic philosopher had recommended a
15:37
short story of his to me and i just got
15:39
around to reading
15:40
it today uh and it's called saint manuel
15:42
the good martyr i
15:43
know i have not read that what read this
15:45
story well i just read one of his novels
15:47
one of innomuno's uh novels a year or
15:49
two ago now what's the name of it anyway
15:51
go ahead i haven't read that that uh
15:53
maybe maybe there's a theme that runs
15:55
through his work i don't know this is
15:56
all i've read by
15:57
but it's about a a saintly priest and a
16:00
small village
16:00
in spain who
16:04
is legit saying by all accounts and and
16:06
devotes his life to the poor and serving
16:08
the people in his village and refuses a
16:10
call to a successful career
16:12
but you find out spoilers that
16:16
that he's been deep in doubt and
16:17
probably just straightforward atheism
16:19
his whole life but he's a martyr
16:23
in the sense of the title because he
16:25
conceals his doubt from
16:27
the people that he serves and presents
16:29
to them a picture
16:30
of what you would call simplicity that
16:33
gives them joy because at the end of the
16:34
day he doesn't think anything else other
16:36
than their happiness matters anyway
16:38
uh and so the fact that death is the end
16:40
of existence
16:42
if he told them they wouldn't understand
16:44
it it wouldn't matter and they wouldn't
16:45
believe him anyway
16:46
so so he he serves them with a false
16:49
confidence
16:50
and that's the sense in which he's a
16:51
martyr and i literally just read that
16:53
this afternoon
16:54
right after finishing your book and it
16:55
was just such a weird juxtaposition that
16:57
i had to mention it
16:58
oh my goodness oh my goodness well
17:00
you're bringing to mind knowing that you
17:01
like fiction
17:03
there are just so many really powerful
17:05
stories like this you know you think i
17:07
don't know if
17:08
you like science fiction but the sparrow
17:10
which is a
17:11
science fiction with a theological twist
17:14
has a similar kind of theme a guy goes
17:16
to be a missionary to another
17:18
planet and uh and has and
17:21
i won't go into the details but you know
17:23
he comes back a broken man
17:25
and uh oh my goodness so much great
17:27
literature poison wood bible
17:29
uh incredible uh yeah
17:32
so much literature dealing with this
17:34
issue of
17:35
of the secret dimensions of doubt of
17:38
course you don't have to go to
17:40
fiction you think of mother teresa when
17:42
some of her journals were
17:44
were uh were published and you find that
17:48
and you know i i don't know what to make
17:50
of the the the story from unamuno there
17:52
but
17:53
you think of mother mother teresa and
17:56
you think
17:57
i it doesn't make me think less of her
17:59
it makes me see even
18:01
something more beautiful in her that she
18:03
continued to love
18:04
and serve and it wasn't because
18:07
she had this you know overflowing faith
18:10
it was
18:10
it was or let's say this way she didn't
18:13
have overflowing feelings of faith
18:15
[Music]
18:19
we've already used a couple of terms
18:20
that are key and central in this book
18:22
faith after doubt
18:23
um you present these stages of faith
18:26
and doubt as the portal could you just
18:28
for listeners who haven't read your book
18:30
brian can you just
18:31
walk us through those four stages
18:32
quickly sure and i always like to say
18:34
anybody who hears about a stage theory
18:37
and feels suspicious
18:38
i share your suspicion staged and i
18:40
appreciated that so
18:42
much in the book oh my goodness just
18:44
after yeah stage theories can be abused
18:46
terribly
18:46
but on the other hand they're super
18:48
helpful the the analogy i
18:50
always think of is when uh many many
18:52
years ago when my wife and i
18:54
had our first child uh and you know we
18:57
met with this
18:58
uh nurse and she talked to us about the
19:00
first trimester of pregnancy
19:02
in the second trimester and the third
19:04
trimester and what to expect and then
19:05
when it came close to delivery
19:07
we went to childbirth classes and they
19:09
talked about the different stages
19:11
and it sure helps when you're going
19:12
through something for the first time
19:14
uh to have somebody tell you here's what
19:16
to expect so that to me is what's
19:17
helpful about
19:18
stages but what i did is i took i i
19:22
just became fascinated with this 30 or
19:23
40 years ago and started
19:25
reading stage theory and over the years
19:27
i've accumulated probably a dozen
19:29
different
19:30
theorists who i i've been especially
19:32
interested in
19:33
um and i tried to synthesize them
19:35
integrating with my own experience as a
19:37
person of faith and then as a pastor so
19:39
four simple stages easy to remember
19:42
simplicity is the stage of dualism
19:45
everything is a simple us them friend
19:48
enemy good
19:49
evil safe dangerous and a lot of people
19:52
that's the faith that they have
19:54
for their whole lives and in fact a lot
19:56
of people including clergy think that's
19:58
what religion is for
19:59
to keep everybody simple in terms of
20:02
their morality and their theology
20:04
but a lot of people through travel
20:08
or reading or education or suffering get
20:10
plunged out of simplicity
20:12
and the easy answers don't work anymore
20:15
and they find themselves in complexity
20:17
and i call that the stage of pragmatism
20:19
because when those
20:20
easy answers don't work you try to make
20:22
your life work and you try to figure out
20:24
your own ways of coping
20:26
with a complex world that doesn't fit in
20:28
those simple categories you
20:30
were raised with as a child and a lot of
20:32
people stay in complexity
20:34
their whole lives i think the mega the
20:35
the mega church phenomenon
20:37
in many ways is is complexity it's it's
20:40
a
20:40
sort of self-help usually you know and
20:43
uh
20:44
not so dogmatic but very uh
20:47
inspirational and uplifting
20:49
um and then a lot of people that works
20:52
and then other people
20:53
for one reason or another that falls
20:55
apart and my contention is that
20:57
um when you in each of these stages when
21:00
you begin
21:01
to not just doubt specific elements of
21:03
the stage
21:04
but you doubt the way that stage works
21:07
that's what thrusts you into a new stage
21:10
and the third stage would be perplexity
21:12
and that's when
21:13
everything is in doubt and where in some
21:15
ways you reverse
21:16
everything from your first two stages
21:19
you become
21:19
suspicious of those authority figures
21:21
who told you all the easy answers and
21:24
and in fact you become maybe even
21:26
cynical and skeptical about uh what
21:28
you've been taught because you just see
21:29
that it's
21:30
that life isn't that simple and that
21:32
often those people who told you they
21:34
were moral were
21:35
actually doing immoral things and and
21:37
harming people so
21:39
perplexity is super important and a lot
21:41
of folks hit it in graduate school and a
21:44
lot of folks
21:44
hit it in midlife and a lot of folks
21:46
don't hit it until later in life
21:49
and a lot of folks never had it but and
21:51
many stay there and then the fourth
21:52
stage that i think
21:54
and one of the reasons i wrote this book
21:56
is because i i have a
21:58
special place in my heart for people in
22:00
stage three they think that's all there
22:01
is
22:02
and i want to help them see actually i
22:03
think there's something even beyond
22:05
stage three
22:06
and i call that harmony so simplicity
22:08
complexity perplexity
22:10
and harmony is where we try to integrate
22:11
the strengths from the earlier stages
22:13
but also become honest about the
22:16
weaknesses
22:17
yeah yeah so in
22:20
in chapter eight you speak of
22:23
this reality that you had and that i've
22:26
seen so many of my friends who've
22:27
walked through faith crisis or been
22:29
crippled by doubt and that is that
22:31
they were hoping to find this silver
22:33
bullet that just
22:35
comes out of nowhere saying god if
22:37
you're real you're gonna have to speak
22:38
to me you're to have to do something
22:39
crazy
22:40
supernatural and i come from even a
22:41
little bit of a charismatic background
22:43
which lends itself to that to saying
22:45
well if god's real he's going to show up
22:47
and that i i don't
22:50
i've never been a fan of that yes and
22:52
you speak to that reality can you can
22:54
you just speak to that what that feels
22:55
like and then what's a better way maybe
22:57
what's so interesting you for you being
22:59
from a charismatic background
23:00
i was from a very non-charismatic
23:02
background and then i got the full
23:04
treatment and i
23:05
you know but there was this period of
23:07
time where everybody was telling me i
23:09
needed to be baptized in the holy spirit
23:11
and speak in tongues and
23:13
um i kept praying to speak in tongues
23:15
and i it just
23:16
didn't happen for the longest time and
23:18
and i remember thinking
23:19
if i could just experience that i would
23:22
know forever
23:24
that god is real and the holy spirit is
23:26
real and that the bible is true and
23:28
and for other people it's if this
23:30
miracle would happen if this healing
23:31
would happen
23:32
and um and you know what sometimes they
23:34
happen uh but here's the thing
23:37
life goes on and the next miracle might
23:40
not happen
23:41
and for me i remember when i finally had
23:44
some of these
23:44
spiritual experiences i was told that i
23:46
should have i remember thinking
23:48
but this could all be psychological in
23:51
other words
23:51
those things that were supposed to prove
23:53
something i found
23:55
they didn't necessarily prove anything
23:57
and and so
23:58
uh what i'd recommend for people is
24:02
i understand how appealing it is to have
24:05
a kind of hail mary pass
24:06
uh of some one silver bullet that's
24:09
gonna solve all of your problems
24:10
and if you want to try that obviously
24:14
be my guest but i have a feeling that
24:17
after the second time or the third time
24:19
or the fourth time
24:20
that that disappoints you you're going
24:22
to have to say
24:23
you know what maybe the answer to this
24:25
isn't a shortcut maybe
24:27
and in fact maybe this isn't a problem
24:29
i'm supposed to solve
24:31
maybe this is one of the experiences of
24:33
life that is actually supposed to deepen
24:35
and expand my faith
24:36
oh man
24:39
sheesh we could be done right there but
24:42
we're not going to be
24:45
in chapter 10 brian you speak of the
24:46
great need for forward leaning
24:48
and i'm quoting you here forward leaning
24:50
faith communities
24:51
that nourish the values and narratives
24:53
of a new kind of faith faith after and
24:55
with doubt as you say so many times
24:58
can you just put put some put a picture
25:01
in and flesh that out a little bit what
25:03
does that commun
25:05
what do those faith communities
25:06
potentially look like that you dream of
25:08
that you see as
25:09
desperately needed right now yes well
25:11
you know there's a sentence that i don't
25:13
think i
25:14
ever wrote in the book i i wish i
25:17
could go back and stick it in and it
25:19
would be this
25:20
that doubt is not the enemy of faith
25:23
doubt is the enemy of authoritarianism
25:26
and i think part of what's going on in
25:28
the world and one of the reasons we have
25:30
such
25:30
crazy stuff going on in the christian
25:33
world and not just the christian world
25:34
there's
25:35
bad stuff happening in judaism and bad
25:37
stuff happening in islam and bad stuff
25:39
happening in
25:40
buddhism uh and uh and there's pretty
25:43
bad stuff happening in atheism too in
25:44
other words
25:46
we've got an authoritarianism problem
25:48
that is
25:49
sprouting up all over i think i've
25:51
written some about this if people are
25:53
interested
25:53
i have a little ebook that i've written
25:55
called the second pandemic that's about
25:57
authoritarianism but
25:59
one of our problems is that our religion
26:02
has been an authoritarian religion
26:05
and obviously there are many wonderful
26:07
leaders who are not authoritarian but
26:10
it's just sort of in the it's in the
26:13
water you know it's in the
26:15
it's in the bloodstream of our religion
26:18
and so when i think of a stage four
26:21
faith community the first thing i think
26:22
about is a community that
26:24
doesn't run on authoritarianism that
26:26
doesn't mean there's no authority and it
26:27
doesn't mean there's no leadership
26:29
but it means it's the kind of leadership
26:30
that jesus tried to model
26:32
when he for example when he said i no
26:35
longer call you
26:36
servants but friends to me that was
26:38
jesus saying
26:40
you know i don't want an authoritarian
26:41
relationship with you guys that's not
26:43
what i want
26:44
i want you to do greater things than
26:46
i've done he even dares to say that
26:49
so there's a different kind of
26:50
leadership and and part of the
26:52
one of the tools of authoritarianism is
26:55
that we
26:56
make people say that they agree with
26:58
certain statements
27:00
whether they even understand them or
27:02
whether they agree with them and it's a
27:03
way for
27:04
for and the reason many authority
27:06
figures do this
27:07
is because their authority figures did
27:09
it to them and we could go back
27:10
generation after generation it becomes
27:12
kind of a
27:13
a cultural habit it's very interesting
27:16
you don't find jesus doing that
27:18
sort of thing he he comes up to people
27:20
and says follow me and they don't have
27:22
to they can walk away
27:23
but he invites them to follow and if
27:25
they follow he leads them on an
27:26
adventure and he tells them stories and
27:29
and he learned he helps them learn how
27:33
to live
27:34
which is different than just telling
27:36
them what to believe
27:37
and and he models it he doesn't just he
27:40
doesn't write any books you know
27:43
thank god he he lived a life and and
27:45
modeled that life
27:46
and and that to me is what a stage four
27:48
faith community would be about
27:49
it would it would say uh we're trying to
27:52
be a community that is
27:53
seeking to learn a way of life and and
27:56
as a christian faith community
27:58
we're inspired by jesus and and that is
28:01
the kind of life
28:02
uh we're seeking to live and you know
28:04
the the the beautiful thing is
28:06
uh i mean this is happening it it's
28:08
always been happening
28:10
but but we're in a bad patch right now
28:12
where
28:13
a whole lot of authoritarian christian
28:16
leaders have gained a whole lot of power
28:18
and uh and that's why i think we're
28:20
we're at this period
28:22
it's causing a lot of people to doubt
28:24
and they don't want that kind of they
28:26
don't
28:26
it just doesn't smell like jesus and so
28:28
they want something different
28:30
yep i'm a parent brian i have four kids
28:32
my oldest is 13
28:34
about to be 14. and for the last 14
28:36
years my wife and i have been talking
28:38
about and trying to figure out
28:39
how do we raise our kids in a way that
28:41
gives them a faith
28:42
foundation while giving them a
28:45
foundation of faith that they don't have
28:46
to deconstruct when they hit 17 or
28:48
19 or whatever you know how do we how do
28:50
we give them containers
28:52
to hold faith in a healthy and spacious
28:54
way and you have a chapter
28:56
in chapter 13 that's all about creating
28:59
spiritualities of harmony for the rising
29:00
generation which i think is just
29:02
if your parents this book is worth just
29:04
chapter 13 to go out and get it because
29:06
it's
29:07
so beautiful and i was reminded last
29:09
sunday i'm driving
29:10
with my whole family to my in-laws and
29:13
my kids start talking about demons and
29:14
angels
29:15
and my son who's 12 said what's a demon
29:19
i said well you know there's angels like
29:21
that visited mary and joseph
29:22
and they're being spiritual beings that
29:25
assist god and then there's the bible
29:26
says there's demons
29:28
and they assist you know the enemy and
29:30
satan and i can see their eyes crossing
29:31
a little bit and i said well basically
29:33
we're not sure if they're real actual
29:36
beings
29:36
or if they're just metaphors and
29:38
pictures for something that that is just
29:40
evil in the world
29:41
and my almost 14 year old daughter sat
29:43
there for a second no one
29:44
else said anything she said i kind of
29:46
think it's that metaphor one
29:48
i kind of think it's a picture for for
29:49
the evil that happens in the world and
29:51
it's just an easy way for
29:52
us to understand it and i sat there and
29:54
wonder
29:55
yes of thinking like my 13 year old
29:59
has a grid for metaphor and myth in the
30:01
bible
30:02
in ways that maybe she might not have to
30:03
deconstruct right away
30:05
and it was just so thankful to god in
30:07
that moment you
30:09
you create this spacious place for
30:11
parents to give some tips for parents to
30:14
raise their kids in a healthier form of
30:16
spirituality can you just
30:17
go through give us an outline sure sure
30:20
well first what a beautiful story
30:22
and i and and i'm so happy for your
30:24
daughter
30:25
i'm so happy that she has a father and a
30:27
pastor and a church
30:29
where that sort of thing can be said and
30:31
what's so beautiful
30:33
is you you were bringing her out of
30:36
stage one
30:37
into stage two because you didn't tell
30:39
her what the right answer was in fact
30:41
you gave her two good options
30:43
that's something a stage one leader can
30:45
never do they can only give you a right
30:47
option and a wrong option
30:48
but you gave her good options
30:50
permissible acceptable options
30:52
and then you invited her to think about
30:54
it for herself so just
30:56
that's so that's so beautiful but the
30:58
first thing i'd say is
30:59
you know there's a whole group of books
31:01
and authors that were really big when i
31:03
was young
31:04
raising children and the first thing i'd
31:06
say is please don't read any of those
31:08
books
31:09
because what they really were doing was
31:12
teaching authoritarian parenting
31:14
yeah and it was pure they were they were
31:17
raising children
31:19
to to be stage one um their whole lives
31:22
and
31:22
and and so much harm has been done so
31:25
what i'd recommend is get some new books
31:27
and and
31:27
i'll tell you there's a book i'd highly
31:29
recommend it's by a couple named jeffrey
31:31
and amy
31:32
ulrich they'd be great people to have on
31:34
your podcast uh they wrote a book called
31:36
the six needs of every child and
31:38
jeffrey is a brilliant psychologist and
31:41
it's just a wonderful book
31:42
and and so the first thing i'd say is be
31:45
sure
31:46
you don't you don't let yourself be
31:50
inducted into a kind of parenting that
31:53
won't be helpful
31:54
and and i'm sad to say that a lot of
31:56
religious books
31:57
will you know i don't think we'll take
31:59
you in a good direction
32:01
but um the the big thing here's what i'd
32:04
say is
32:05
if if if this idea of stages makes sense
32:09
the way i see it i don't see it like you
32:11
know you're going
32:12
from the 10 to 20 yard line of stage 1
32:14
and the 20 to 40 yard line of stage two
32:17
i see it more like rings on a tree stage
32:19
one is like the center ring on a tree
32:21
and then another bigger ring grows
32:23
and builds on those capacities and then
32:25
another ring builds on those capacities
32:27
and then i think stage four becomes the
32:30
new simplicity and then we sort of keep
32:32
repeating that process but
32:34
what that means is that when you're
32:36
teaching your eight-year-old
32:38
you don't want to say anything to your
32:40
eight-year-old that you'll have to
32:41
unteach your eight-year-old when
32:43
she's 16 and you don't want to teach
32:46
your 16 year old
32:47
anything that you'd have to un-teach her
32:49
when she's 32
32:51
and so you always work at the early
32:53
stages with the later stages in mind and
32:56
and that i i think i think that will
33:00
it it will help you be honest and then
33:02
the only maybe the one other thing i'd
33:03
say
33:04
there's a great uh theologian of
33:06
christian education named john
33:07
westerhoff he wrote a book back in the
33:09
1970s called
33:10
will our children have faith and
33:14
john made a startling diagnosis
33:17
he felt that that people were losing
33:20
their faith
33:21
because of sunday school now and what he
33:24
meant by this was when you put all first
33:27
graders together and you teach them
33:30
in in age-appropriate ways and then you
33:32
put all second graders together and so
33:33
on
33:34
the one thing that children never have
33:36
is the chance to hear
33:38
older children and adults talk a lot
33:41
about their own faith
33:42
honestly and he's he believed that
33:46
storytelling
33:47
is at the core of the building of a
33:49
healthy faith honest storytelling
33:52
and so you imagine i can imagine
33:56
your 13 year old daughter in 20 years
33:59
saying i remember
34:00
a ride in the car with my dad where he
34:03
said
34:04
some people think it's this way some
34:05
people think it's that way and it was
34:07
the first time i felt i had permission
34:09
to think for myself you know and and
34:13
you hear someone say yeah you know i
34:16
i uh you you know imagine hearing a
34:18
person who's
34:20
my age or older and they say yeah i
34:23
i my faith was going fine and then my
34:26
spouse died
34:27
and for a few years i didn't even
34:29
believe there was a god anymore
34:31
and for a kid to hear that they think oh
34:34
these sort of things happen
34:36
that's that's not that's not something
34:38
to be ashamed of it's not something you
34:39
have to pretend but that's
34:41
to me that creates an environment of
34:42
safety
34:44
so good so switching gears a little bit
34:48
here
34:48
so when i think of the kind of
34:50
authoritarianism you were talking about
34:52
earlier
34:52
we've had lots of previous episodes
34:54
about our our feelings about
34:56
american christianity and evangelicalism
34:58
and whatnot so our listeners know what
34:59
we think about that but
35:01
on my journey through your stages if i
35:03
can flatter myself that i've
35:05
that i'm at least approaching stage four
35:07
one thing i've been very tempted to
35:09
from time to time is to just give up on
35:12
the whole thing
35:13
and try to form some kind of secularized
35:15
alternative community
35:17
something like the mennonites but
35:18
without all the hokies
35:21
and uh and and just abandon the church
35:24
structure all together and kind of try
35:26
to start from scratch and i think
35:27
there's a lot of people in my generation
35:28
that are
35:29
that would be gung-ho about something
35:30
like that but it seems like in your book
35:32
you think that's a bad idea
35:34
and you seem to at one point uh suggest
35:37
that
35:38
stage four faith ought not to do that
35:40
and and one of the reasons you give is
35:42
just so practical and i want to hear
35:44
your thoughts on it
35:45
and it is if we did that we'd be giving
35:47
up all the real estate
35:49
that the church has gained and i think
35:52
you mean that metaphorically and
35:53
literally so can you explain what you
35:56
said sure
35:57
well first i don't think i'd say that i
35:59
think it's a bad idea i
36:00
i'd say that that we that we need people
36:04
to do a lot of different things
36:06
and i frankly think there are some
36:08
people in some places
36:09
who do need to leave because they're
36:11
because the place where they are is
36:13
doing
36:13
them damage and it's doing their
36:15
children damage and
36:16
and it's just not healthy to stay uh
36:19
i don't want to violate anybody's
36:21
privacy but i was just on a call
36:24
the other night with 60 members of a
36:27
religious community that is highly
36:30
highly authoritarian
36:32
and they were telling me that if they
36:35
were to
36:36
question if if their spiritual leaders
36:39
were to find out they
36:40
were reading this book and all 60 of
36:41
them were 55 or whatever it was
36:43
were reading the book if their leaders
36:46
found it they were reading this book
36:47
they would be kicked out of their church
36:50
and their children they go to church
36:52
based school their children would be
36:53
kicked out of the school
36:55
they might have to leave town to find a
36:58
job because they'd be blackballed
37:00
so you just you know so i i would never
37:02
say to anybody that
37:04
i would never say that everybody needs
37:05
to do the same thing because i think
37:08
you know there are really toxic
37:09
religious communities out there that
37:11
people should just
37:12
you know get as far away from as fast as
37:14
they can
37:15
um but you know the other thing that
37:17
came to mind kyle when you said that
37:19
like you know maybe just create like a
37:22
secular community that focuses on what
37:24
really matters
37:25
i could imagine people saying that's
37:27
what jesus was doing and i could very
37:29
much imagine people say that's what paul
37:30
was doing
37:31
i as you know i quote uh paul quite a
37:34
bit in this
37:35
last part of the book uh and when paul
37:38
says
37:39
neither circumcision nor uncircumcision
37:41
means
37:42
anything at all the only thing that
37:44
matters is faith expressing itself in
37:45
love
37:46
i can just imagine a whole lot of people
37:48
saying he is
37:49
a liberal he is a heretic because the
37:52
bible says that circumcision matters
37:55
and he's saying it doesn't really matter
37:57
and so you think if you put aside
37:59
something like that
38:01
you can just see how people would have
38:02
said yeah they've just given up
38:04
they're going creating another
38:05
environment where
38:07
you know tax collectors and prostitutes
38:10
are welcome to the table
38:12
you know what kind of a table is that so
38:15
i i would say actually that doing the
38:18
kind of thing you just described
38:20
i would consider that's part of the work
38:22
but
38:23
to get to your actual question i do
38:25
think that there are
38:26
parts of the christian faith community
38:30
and parts of the christian tradition
38:32
that are certainly redeemable and
38:34
salvageable
38:35
and we shouldn't give up quite yet
38:38
on on everything uh so i i hope that
38:41
does that feel free to
38:43
push back if that doesn't answer your
38:44
question or not well it seemed like you
38:46
were also
38:47
hinting that and maybe i'm reading into
38:50
this
38:51
because i don't know maybe maybe this is
38:52
my own subversiveness reading
38:54
reading that into your book but it
38:55
seemed like maybe you were
38:57
gesturing towards somehow using the
39:00
structures that have been built for
39:01
other purposes
39:02
well look let's face it um most of our
39:05
christian denominations in america that
39:08
have been around
39:09
for over 150 years were built on slavery
39:12
i mean the wealth that built those
39:14
churches came from people who either had
39:16
slaves in the south
39:18
or were running you know cotton
39:21
manufacturing businesses in the north
39:23
that was using the slave labor of the
39:25
south
39:26
to pick the cotton so everything in our
39:29
faith
39:29
is deeply deeply polluted i mean
39:33
there's no purity we're we're way beyond
39:35
innocence
39:37
um almost all of our churches are on
39:39
maybe all of them or on stolen land so
39:41
you know
39:42
we we have that reality to face
39:46
but in the spirit of being subversive
39:48
kyle
39:49
i would say two things first if we
39:53
give up all of the tradition
39:56
to the most regressive
40:00
and reactionary and hateful
40:03
and fearful people that
40:06
puts an awful lot of power in their
40:08
hands and i'm not
40:10
sure that's a good idea just practically
40:12
to just
40:13
you know walk away that easily but
40:16
second
40:16
there really are treasures and and the
40:18
fact is everything
40:20
including myself is is
40:24
tainted and and polluted and corrupted
40:26
so
40:27
we're always talking about redeeming
40:29
corruptive corrupted things you know
40:31
uh making uh as michael gunger's old
40:34
song
40:35
said making beautiful things out of
40:37
sometimes out of pretty trashy things
40:42
so next question is kind of heavy you
40:44
ready for it okay
40:46
so do you have any genuine
40:49
hope that you could say the church but i
40:52
really want to ask about humanity in
40:54
general
40:55
actually will transcend to what you call
40:57
a stage four
40:59
uh and if so what do you think the most
41:01
likely path is and the answer cannot be
41:03
doubt
41:03
yeah yeah well
41:07
um look uh some days i'm more optimistic
41:10
than others
41:11
um but i'll tell you
41:14
my three biggest the three
41:18
things that make me least hopeful
41:22
first is the climate i mean we have
41:25
made trillions of dollars by exploiting
41:27
the climate
41:29
and there are trillions more dollars to
41:30
be made by sucking fossil fuels out and
41:33
pumping them into the atmosphere
41:35
and the power the love of money it seems
41:38
to me
41:39
is really running the world and and
41:42
and of course money is a form of power
41:45
so
41:45
it's the love of money and the love of
41:46
power together and i'm just not sure
41:49
we're going
41:50
i mean already it's too late to avoid
41:53
catastrophic
41:54
effects of climate change but at least
41:56
all the science says that like
41:58
if if everyone remembers what it was
41:59
like a little over a year ago
42:01
when they said 40 000 people could die
42:04
in this pandemic
42:05
and some estimates rage up to 250 000
42:08
and people said oh it'll never be that
42:10
bad and now it's over 500 000 right
42:12
and and that same kind of scientific
42:15
analysis tells us
42:16
that the sea levels are going to rise
42:18
and and it's just a question is it going
42:20
to be one meter or three meters or five
42:22
meters and
42:23
and any of those scenarios are really
42:26
really bad and so that's the first one
42:27
and then the second one
42:28
is wealth inequality we have this tiny
42:31
segment of people
42:33
who are getting richer and richer at an
42:35
unimaginable rate
42:36
and again money is one thing but you
42:38
think of the power that gives them
42:41
and then all the rest of the people have
42:43
uh you know just a little
42:45
uh portion of what's left over so it's a
42:48
super big problem and that means that
42:50
the powerful people keep running things
42:52
and they're running them into the ground
42:53
and they're fools and they're
42:56
and they're selfish and they're blind
42:58
and then the third one
42:59
the third problem is weapons that uh we
43:02
just keep making more weapons and we
43:03
think we're going to be safer with more
43:05
weapons but when you have those first
43:06
two problems
43:08
uh destabilizing world the environment
43:10
and economic inequality and then you
43:12
have weapons
43:12
we're in a lot of trouble so that's so
43:15
what i would say is
43:17
i don't know how this is going to turn
43:19
out i and i have my doubts that we human
43:22
beings
43:23
are going to be able to change quick
43:25
enough to avoid some
43:26
pretty rough times but what that does to
43:29
me is it doesn't make me give up in fact
43:31
it makes me
43:32
feel if i were to give up i would be so
43:34
disgusted with myself i
43:36
i i you know the worse this looks to me
43:39
the more
43:40
dedicated i am to try to raise my voice
43:42
and do what i can to
43:44
provide an alternative and and that's
43:47
what i think is the right thing to do
43:49
uh for for for everyone who can i mean
43:52
if people are overwhelmed by despair i
43:55
certainly don't criticize them i
43:56
understand but for those of us who
43:58
can keep uh keep up the struggle that's
44:02
what i think we should do
44:03
whether or not there are hopeful signs
44:05
and look i know
44:07
you know uh people want to be optimistic
44:10
and hopeful and i'm all for that
44:12
but um i i'm also suspicious of hope
44:16
i'm suspicious of it yeah
44:19
so what does the lived experience of
44:21
faith look like when you're convinced by
44:23
the sorts of things that you just
44:25
rattled off there
44:26
that there's that there's only a fool's
44:28
hope or that
44:30
that you just can't bring yourself to
44:31
believe that things are actually going
44:33
to achieve
44:34
the kind of promised land final ending
44:37
where we all want what
44:38
what does an experience of faith feel
44:40
like at that point well you know there's
44:41
a i guess she identifies as a buddhist
44:43
an environmental brilliant human being
44:46
named joanna macy
44:48
and i i think she speaks the truth she
44:50
says if anybody tells you that
44:52
everything is going to be okay
44:53
they're lying they don't know and if
44:56
anybody tells you that there's no hope
44:58
and that everything's going down the
44:59
toilet
45:01
don't believe them they have no way of
45:02
knowing that and
45:04
and so i think what that says to us is i
45:06
don't think we act
45:07
based on what the odds are i think we
45:11
act
45:11
based on what is the best and right
45:13
thing that we can do
45:15
and to me that maybe is a deeper kind of
45:17
hope than a hope
45:18
based on uh you know to
45:21
quote uh hunger games that the odds are
45:23
ever in our favor
45:25
and to me maybe that's what faith is at
45:27
its deepest i love that phrase it's in
45:29
the new testament in romans 4.
45:31
it says in hope against hope abraham
45:34
believed
45:35
and i that phrase in hope against hope
45:38
like all hope was gone but he decided to
45:40
hope anyway
45:41
uh that to me is when we get down to
45:43
what faith
45:44
maybe really is that we say i'm going to
45:47
do the right thing
45:48
because not because i think it's going
45:50
to work or it's going to pay off
45:52
i think that's who i want to be the kind
45:54
of person who does that
45:56
so let me can i ask my follow-up
45:59
question then brian
46:00
yeah and introduce a little bit of you
46:02
know hope into the
46:03
the situation i you know you you
46:07
described this
46:07
conversation of marching with this your
46:09
friend named hannah yes
46:11
and she is this remarkable person who
46:14
has given herself to being an advocate
46:17
for the earth
46:17
and for all sorts of things and she said
46:19
i don't think it's going to actually do
46:20
anything
46:21
but i just love it too dang much to give
46:23
up which is just to this beautiful
46:24
picture
46:25
but at the same time i'm a couple of
46:27
things one is i'm an
46:28
i consider myself an unabashed
46:30
progressive christian yes which means i
46:32
believe that
46:32
like things are getting progressively
46:34
better there's something out there that
46:35
we
46:36
we need to move towards yes rather than
46:38
going back
46:39
and also i live in light of the kingdom
46:41
of god a new creation that i think was
46:43
this inaugurated eschatology in the
46:46
resurrection
46:47
yes that we're moving towards and i
46:49
think
46:50
you could even look historically and say
46:52
there's less war than there's ever been
46:53
right now
46:54
it's better for women than it's ever
46:56
been now it's better for
46:57
marginalized communities than it's ever
46:59
been now even though it's terrible
47:00
in in many ways right yes but i i i
47:03
still live with this
47:04
eschatological hope that we are headed
47:06
towards something somewhere good where
47:08
jesus says i'm making all things new
47:10
yes how do you square that with the
47:12
despair in the
47:13
you know i've got these three things and
47:15
then also new creation
47:17
yes well first i'm so glad you raised
47:19
that because
47:20
i i 100 agree with you everything you
47:23
said is
47:24
true um by almost every indicator
47:28
you know we really are making progress i
47:30
think we're in a really dangerous moment
47:32
right now
47:33
you know progress that we've made on
47:34
race could be just swept away
47:36
and you know in one election
47:39
and so we um you know things are always
47:43
fragile with us human beings
47:45
uh it's it's uh i think about my friends
47:48
who
47:48
are recovering from alcoholism or some
47:50
other form of addiction
47:52
and you know you meet them and they say
47:54
yeah you know i'm six months sober
47:56
i'm six years sober i'm 26 years sober
47:59
but they in saying it that way they're
48:01
always remembering
48:02
i could go out on a bender tonight and i
48:04
could be in trouble again
48:06
tomorrow so it's this sense that you
48:08
know we human beings are
48:10
are are uh
48:13
we're prone to to wander as the old hymn
48:16
says
48:17
so here's the way that it that feels
48:20
honest to me
48:21
it's not to say i'm going to
48:25
have my realized eschatology and my
48:27
eschatological hope
48:29
so that that removes my sense of danger
48:32
and
48:33
warning and i'm not going to choose one
48:36
over the other but i'm not going to
48:38
choose
48:38
my danger and warning and make that
48:40
erase my hope
48:42
i'm going to hold both and i'm going to
48:44
live with that tension now that's
48:45
something that a stage one
48:47
in stage one we can't do we have to say
48:49
it's either hope or despair
48:51
because we're in that dualistic stage
48:53
starting in stage two we
48:54
we start to see oh it might be necessary
48:56
to hold
48:57
both of those and i think probably in
48:59
stage three we're probably lean more
49:01
toward despair right
49:03
but maybe in stage four we learn how to
49:05
hold them both together
49:06
that's good um and i also think there's
49:09
another dimension of this that happens
49:10
as
49:11
as we mature partly getting older partly
49:14
maybe getting wiser
49:15
is we also start to learn that my
49:17
circumstance
49:18
is very localized it's localized in time
49:23
and it's localized in space
49:25
so that for example while the great
49:27
awakenings were going on that
49:29
christians that white christians love to
49:31
celebrate
49:32
you know those days when people were
49:34
going to methodist revivals or
49:36
pentecostal revivals and people were
49:38
being slain in the spirit and
49:39
raising their hands and feeling the
49:41
presence of the holy ghost
49:42
there were other people being whipped
49:44
and across town there was a child being
49:46
molested and
49:47
so those things exist simultaneously and
49:50
and i think we have to try to
49:54
hold the agony of both of them together
49:56
yeah it's really good
49:58
sounds like harmony yeah and and it it's
50:01
and it sounds like the bible too you
50:02
know the the bible has
50:04
both the the bible has in fact it's what
50:07
the prophets do
50:08
they hold out warning and they hold out
50:10
hope
50:11
and they don't back off on the warning
50:13
and they don't back up on the hope they
50:15
hold them
50:16
both out and and constantly face us with
50:19
with both i love it yeah
50:22
speaking of the character hannah in your
50:24
book that randy mentioned earlier
50:26
um so in describing what might be left
50:29
after
50:30
even hope is gone certainly after
50:32
certainty is gone but even after
50:34
hope is gone there's a really beautiful
50:36
and i found it kind of moving
50:38
section or paragraph towards the end of
50:40
your book would it be okay if i read a
50:41
portion of your book
50:43
to get more thoughts on it uh so in
50:45
describing what might be left after that
50:47
you just call it aliveness
50:48
and i really love that so so here's what
50:50
you say this is page 190.
50:53
i often grieve the losses that have come
50:55
through the stages of faith
50:56
but other times it dawns on me that what
50:58
i have left are the best things
51:00
and even though i'm not always sure if
51:01
i'm miserable or ecstatic i know i'm
51:03
alive
51:04
i know you've already experienced that
51:06
aliveness it may
51:08
have been for a fleeting moment at the
51:09
birth of a child the death of a parent
51:12
an experience of profound sexual
51:13
intimacy a sublime turn in a symphony or
51:16
poem or film
51:18
or an act of self-giving it may have
51:20
come as you looked out the window of a
51:22
train or airplane
51:23
as you walked along a hiking trail when
51:25
you body surfed a curling wave at the
51:26
beach
51:27
or as you held or nursed your newborn
51:29
child you may have hardly even
51:31
acknowledged that little moment because
51:32
it was so foreign and odd on the one
51:34
hand
51:35
are so personal and intimate on the
51:36
other it may have even scared you a
51:38
little bit
51:39
or embarrassed you even made you feel
51:41
guilty because it didn't fit in the
51:42
small boxes of simplicity complexity
51:45
or even perplexity but whenever it came
51:47
and however it felt
51:48
you knew you were alive and you knew
51:50
life was precious holy
51:52
sacred you knew more than you could put
51:55
into words
51:56
you felt in your marrow that every
51:58
single thing was priceless and profound
52:00
and beloved that's beautiful
52:04
first of all it reminds me a bit of
52:06
something c.s lewis said i think it was
52:08
in
52:08
the problem of pain about a secret
52:10
thread that runs through all our
52:12
experience
52:13
that to him spoke of joy in heaven
52:16
but that you can't really communicate to
52:18
someone else you just call it being
52:19
alive
52:21
what do you have in mind there and how
52:22
does it relate to faith can you say well
52:24
i gotta tell you as you read that i
52:26
i feel a little bit emotional because um
52:29
we're we're having this conversation on
52:31
a thursday night and on sunday afternoon
52:33
i saw the woman her name isn't you know
52:36
she has i changed people's names but
52:39
who's kind of the basis of that story
52:42
i live just down the road from a town
52:45
called immokalee which is kind of the
52:46
center of
52:47
migrant farm worker uh life in uh east
52:51
of the mississippi and
52:52
so the farmworkers start down here in
52:54
the winter they pick tomatoes and
52:56
uh then they move up with the crops uh
52:59
and by
53:00
october they'll be picking apples up in
53:02
michigan and then they'll come back down
53:04
to
53:04
florida here and they have a rough life
53:07
and they're
53:07
treated terribly and the food industry
53:10
is such a
53:11
mess and so i've been involved with the
53:13
immokalee community and
53:14
it's one of the it's a beautiful
53:16
blessing in my life
53:18
but one of the farm workers a few right
53:19
after george floyd shortly after george
53:21
floyd was
53:23
killed by a police officer putting his
53:25
knee on his neck for about eight minutes
53:27
a man an immokalee was killed he was
53:29
having a mental uh
53:31
breakdown in fact it was religious
53:34
related he told his 12 year old son
53:36
that he was seeing angels and demons uh
53:39
interestingly based on our
53:40
that story earlier and uh he was having
53:43
a mental breakdown
53:44
and so in the middle of the night he
53:47
left the house and he had a shovel and
53:49
i guess he was banging the shovel on
53:51
someone's house and
53:52
obviously she the woman inside was
53:54
scared she called the police the police
53:56
came
53:56
in 13 seconds they shot him they
54:00
from the time they got out of their car
54:01
until he was dead
54:03
dying in the street 13 seconds
54:06
so it's one of these tragic stories of
54:08
of a police officer making a mistake and
54:10
then the sheriff's office
54:12
said everything's fine there's
54:15
you know there's no need for any change
54:17
he he acted according to plan
54:20
and so what happened is the people the
54:23
farm workers in this community said
54:25
we're gonna have a vigil
54:27
for for this fellow and so
54:30
i i was there and i saw her across
54:32
across the crowd and it's just
54:34
as you were reading that paragraph i
54:36
just thought of how we felt at that
54:38
vigil and i i was asked to get up and
54:40
say something as a former clergy person
54:44
and so all i said is i said to the 200
54:47
people around and of course
54:48
probably 20 of us spoke english and 80
54:52
spoke spanish so everything i said was
54:53
translated but i said
54:55
could we just stop and could everyone
54:57
look around at the faces of the other
54:58
people here
55:00
and do you realize that all of us are
55:02
here because of love
55:04
um because we love this man who was
55:06
killed
55:07
and because we love this town and
55:10
because we love
55:11
life and we don't want our children to
55:13
have happened to them
55:14
what happened to this man and and we
55:16
love the police and we want them to
55:18
learn how to do better and
55:20
and we just looked around the the the uh
55:23
we're out on a street corner and i think
55:25
we just felt that love and in that
55:27
moment here's the thing
55:29
you could stay home and and read about
55:32
you know read about this dear man being
55:35
killed by the police and you could be
55:37
angry and you could be cynical and you
55:39
could be
55:40
ticked off and and all the rest but i
55:42
can guarantee
55:43
if you showed up on that street corner
55:46
you would have felt love and you would
55:48
have felt that aliveness and you would
55:49
have felt like
55:51
you know god might not seem real when
55:54
you're sitting at home
55:55
reading about this or singing on tv but
55:58
when you're here with 200 people who
56:00
care
56:01
there is something real there and that's
56:03
yeah
56:04
so as you read that that's that's so
56:07
so relevant to what just happened the
56:09
other day
56:11
well brian got one more one more
56:13
question that i'd love to hear you
56:15
in your pastoral really wonderful way
56:18
air out for our listeners a little bit
56:20
but there's this thread that weaves
56:21
through the book
56:22
that i love where you just keep on
56:24
hitting this this this drum that is
56:27
the only thing that matters is faith
56:29
expressing itself in love
56:31
and you talk about how in the first two
56:33
stages maybe you have your christianity
56:35
or your religion is a set of beliefs
56:38
but that the goal is to move that to a
56:41
faith journey and you say basically
56:44
quoting the apostle paul in
56:45
the book of galatians that the only
56:47
thing that matters is faith expressing
56:48
itself in love
56:50
can you just give us your however many
56:52
minutes you want to take
56:54
just just get riff on that a little bit
56:57
well first of all if if paul had not
57:00
said that
57:00
and i was the one who said it that if i
57:02
were to say
57:04
neither circumcision nor uncircumcision
57:06
and then i might say
57:07
neither adult baptism nor infant baptism
57:10
in fact
57:11
neither baptism or non-baptism it
57:13
doesn't mean anything
57:15
in fact creeds in fact church buildings
57:18
in fact
57:18
clergy in fact the bible whether you
57:21
take the eucharist or not whether you
57:22
believe the bible's an errand or a bunch
57:24
of myths
57:25
it doesn't mean anything at all if i
57:28
were to say that
57:29
a whole lot of people would be really
57:31
really ticked off at me
57:34
but the fact is that is what paul said
57:37
he took
57:38
the boundary marker of his religious
57:40
community which was
57:41
circumcision and remember there's no
57:43
place in the bible
57:45
in the in the hebrew scriptures where
57:46
god said listen i'm giving you this
57:48
thing for
57:48
called circumcision i just want you to
57:50
observe it for about 800 years then it
57:52
won't be important after after that or
57:54
or 1200 or 2000 or however many years it
57:57
was like
57:57
this is the way it is forever and then
58:00
paul comes along and says that's not
58:01
that it's not
58:02
it's not that in fact it's not important
58:04
at all what really matters is faith
58:06
expressing itself in love and
58:08
and then once you see that and then you
58:10
go back and you read the gospels you
58:12
realize that's what jesus was saying and
58:14
uh you know when he says in the sermon
58:17
on the mount
58:17
i have not come to abolish the law uh
58:22
and the prophets but to fulfill it what
58:25
could he mean well he's saying look i'm
58:26
not throwing them away
58:28
they took you as far as they can i want
58:30
to take you to the next stage if we
58:31
could say it that way
58:33
and when i think of it that way and i
58:35
look over the whole bible and
58:37
you know i was a preacher like like you
58:39
so i i
58:40
spent an awful lot of my life in the
58:42
bible and you know i would preach
58:44
two or three times a week and i'd be
58:46
leading bible studies and i was writing
58:48
books
58:49
man i'm a bible guy right and here's
58:51
what i can tell you
58:52
early in the bible we have law
58:56
and law is what really matters in fact
58:59
before law you know what we have
59:01
we have patriarchs and patriarchs
59:04
they they have the patriarchs with no
59:06
law we might say that's sort of an
59:08
authoritarian
59:09
system a patriarchal system then they
59:12
get law
59:13
and law is a big step forward but you
59:16
know what law
59:16
isn't enough and and you know the hebrew
59:19
scriptures say the law comes from god
59:21
it's a gift from god
59:22
but it wasn't the last gift and then a
59:24
new gift comes and you've got the wisdom
59:26
literature you've got
59:27
proverbs that says here's all these
59:29
other things these aren't exactly laws
59:31
but they'll help you
59:32
to get through life and and then you get
59:35
to the prophets
59:37
and the prophets have the nerve to say
59:39
that god doesn't really even care about
59:41
all those
59:42
laws that what god cares about is doing
59:45
justice and loving kindness and walking
59:47
humbly with god
59:48
i mean what an incredible thing so you
59:51
start with patriarchs and then you go to
59:52
law and then you go to wisdom and then
59:54
you go to justice
59:56
and then jesus comes along and says the
59:57
greatest command is love
59:59
so it seems to me if we look at it this
60:01
way
60:02
that the entire process is supposed to
60:05
lead us to love
60:06
but because of the way we read the bible
60:09
and because of our
60:11
love affair with authoritarianism we
60:14
have done a great job
60:15
of stopping at authority figures or
60:18
stopping at law
60:19
or stopping even at wisdom or stopping
60:23
at justice
60:24
although not enough of us even get as
60:25
far as justice and it seems to me if we
60:27
go
60:28
all the way to love we'll get law
60:31
and we'll get authority the right kind
60:33
of authority and the right kind of law
60:35
and the right kind of wisdom and the
60:36
right kind of justice because in the
60:38
context of love
60:39
it just yeah it all fits together in
60:41
fact it's something else paul wrote
60:43
he said um over all of the qualities
60:46
that you seek for in life
60:47
he says put on love which holds
60:51
everything together in perfect harmony
60:54
and that i is really one of the places
60:57
where that word harmony came for for me
61:00
love is what brings everything together
61:01
in perfect harmony
61:03
so good the book is faith after doubt
61:06
why your beliefs stopped working and
61:08
what to do about it by brian mclaren you
61:10
can find it everywhere you find books
61:11
brian i'm wondering if you could finish
61:14
our time
61:15
i know people are listening who are
61:17
struggling with doubt and
61:18
feeling inadequate maybe even feeling
61:20
like they gotta hide
61:21
they're they're just experiencing the
61:23
whole thing i have doubts
61:24
we all have doubts could you just we
61:27
don't do this all the time but i i would
61:29
love for you to just speak a blessing
61:30
over us in our doubt
61:32
in in our faith journey is that okay i'd
61:34
be be honored to do that
61:37
the first thing i want to say is if
61:40
you're a parent
61:42
i want you to ask yourself if you would
61:44
ever want your children to be afraid to
61:47
tell you the truth
61:48
[Music]
61:49
if you'd ever want your children to
61:50
think that if they tell you the truth
61:53
you're going to torture them or beat
61:56
them
61:56
or hate them imagine if your child is
62:00
terrified
62:02
and he's afraid to tell you he's
62:04
terrified
62:05
and so he tries to pretend he's brave
62:08
but it's killing him inside
62:10
and would you like your child to have to
62:12
suffer with that
62:13
and i i know that every one of us who's
62:17
a parent
62:17
we wouldn't want our children to suffer
62:19
we we love our children too much we
62:22
we would want the truth from them we
62:24
want them to feel free they could
62:25
confide
62:26
anything to us and i suppose the
62:29
blessing i would wish
62:30
on everyone is that
62:34
you would have the courage and the guts
62:37
and the anger and the fury
62:40
to believe that anyone who tells you
62:44
that god will beat you up for being
62:47
honest that those
62:48
that those people are wrong and that you
62:50
have the courage to believe that god is
62:52
at least
62:52
as kind a person as you are
62:56
and i would hope
62:59
that you wouldn't just believe that
63:01
about god but that you would be willing
63:03
to at least surrender
63:04
some part of your own brain to agree
63:08
with god in that
63:09
so that some part of you would stop
63:12
condemning you
63:13
for being honest there's that beautiful
63:16
psalm
63:17
where david finally admits that he's
63:19
been lying about some
63:21
wrong terrible wrongs that he's done and
63:23
then he says
63:25
um you don't even desire all those
63:28
offerings that you know we were that
63:30
moses told us we had to make
63:32
it's one of those places where there's
63:33
actually an argument in the bible
63:35
you don't really what you desire is
63:37
truth in the innermost being
63:40
and so the thing i would say want to
63:43
blessing to everyone would be may you
63:47
seek truth in your innermost being amen
63:51
i i would say like this whoever god is
63:54
whatever god is
63:55
i think god would rather you say i don't
63:59
think i believe in you
64:01
than to say i don't believe in you but
64:04
i'm going to pretend i do
64:07
and that honesty gives us something to
64:09
work with and
64:11
truth in the innermost being is is
64:13
something to aspire to and
64:15
and i think what we find is when we
64:17
bring out
64:18
the the deep secret the thing we're
64:20
afraid of
64:22
we we actually find that that the fear
64:26
leaves that thing for us and
64:29
and we find peace and we find grace and
64:31
we find acceptance so that would be my
64:34
prayer and my blessing for people and
64:37
and maybe i'd say one other thing
64:39
there is a perverse part of our brains
64:41
that likes to beat ourselves up
64:44
and that perverse part of us looks for
64:47
people who will beat us up
64:49
but there's another part of us that
64:51
wants to be a friend to ourselves and
64:54
and that part of us looks for people who
64:58
treat us and see us with grace and and
65:01
i'd like to ask people to dare to
65:03
believe that that
65:05
is the part that's within each of us
65:07
that is
65:08
the best reflection of what we mean when
65:10
we say the word god
65:13
beautiful brian mclaren your gift to us
65:16
your gifts to this world thank you so
65:17
much for joining us
65:19
well can i say thanks for the podcast
65:22
thanks for the good work you're doing
65:23
you know it
65:24
i'll just say one place where people
65:27
are safe to think about their doubts is
65:30
while they're in their car
65:31
driving along listening to a podcast
65:33
like this and people like you are
65:35
creating space for open discussion so
65:37
god bless you keep up the great work
65:39
[Music]
65:44
thanks for spending this time with us we
65:46
really hope that you're enjoying these
65:47
conversations as much as we are
65:49
and if you are help us get the word out
65:52
before you close your podcast app leave
65:53
a rating or a review
65:55
that helps new listeners find us maybe
65:57
for the first time
65:58
if you'd like to share the episode you
65:59
just heard with a friend or a family
66:01
member
66:01
you can find those links on our social
66:02
media pages you can also find us over on
66:05
patreon
66:05
at patreon.com a pastor and a
66:08
philosopher
66:08
thanks again for listening until next
66:10
time this has been a pastor and a
66:12
philosopher
66:13
walk into a bar
66:21
you said um you said single batch do you
66:24
want to say small
66:24
sorry should i go over that whole thing
66:27
just just make it so it's small small
66:30
barrel
66:31
make sure you say it right
66:32
[Laughter]