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The NewCity Orlando All of Life Podcast
The All of Life podcast, hosted by Nate Claiborne, provides weekly episodes that help further our mission to call, form, and send disciple-makers. At NewCity, we want to see Orlando flourish by filling it with people who say "Follow me as I follow Jesus in all of life."
The NewCity Orlando All of Life Podcast
Navigating Faith and Politics: A Conversation with Todd Deatherage
In this episode, recorded live at our Following Jesus in Politics Learning Event, Pastor Damein Schitter interviews Todd Deatherage, Executive Director and Co-Founder of The Telos Group. Their mission is to form communities of American peacemakers across lines of difference, and equip them to help reconcile seemingly intractable conflicts at home and abroad. In this interview with Todd, we are hear about his background from a conservative Baptist upbringing in Arkansas to the halls of power on Capitol Hill, encountering a crisis of faith along the way. Todd's story sheds light on how the deluge of information and cultural shifts push many towards an "us versus them" mindset for a semblance of control, and he explores how personal interactions can shatter these simplistic narratives, providing a path to more inclusive perspectives—even in fraught situations like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In our conversation, Todd shares how his conservative Christian background initially shaped his views and political engagements, only to be challenged by the diverse, complex reality of working in Washington, D.C. He reflects on the impact of conservative Christian ideologies on international conflicts and the struggle to reconcile a simplistic theology with the world's intricacies. Emphasizing the teachings of Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount, Todd underscores the need for a theology rooted in peacemaking, advocating for a faith that evolves to meet new challenges and complexities.
Todd also insists on the importance of understanding media's role in shaping perceptions and urges thoughtful voting and civic engagement. From balancing personal frustrations with self-care to navigating the tension between respecting authorities and resisting unjust governance, we uncover how to maintain a consistent Christian witness while advocating for justice and human flourishing.
All right. So the first question that I have for you, Todd, thanks for being here. You're welcome. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah, so glad. In all of your work and reflection, which you've given us a small picture of that story and how you've come to where you are, what do you think is so attractive about binaries, particularly things like us versus them in our current culture and in this political moment? But in general, what do you think is so attractive about people finding themselves feeling safe there?
Speaker 2:You know, the world's complicated and it's fluid. Change is always happening and we're in the middle of some real cultural shifts and other kinds of changes right now. Some economic changes. There's a lot. You know, the world is smaller because of just technology and information and all that, so it can feel really overwhelming and we all try to just live our lives as best we can in the kind of micro way. But there's all these kind of macro things happening around us too that are really complicated, yes, and so it's a lot to sort out.
Speaker 2:So we look for categories, we look for neat and clean ways to figure things out quickly and figure out, kind of, who the good guys are, who the bad guys are, what's right, what's wrong, in a really simple, shorthand way, because we don't often have the time, yeah, to figure out complicated things and to do the work that we would really need to do, and often that can be okay, but it also cannot be okay when we have, like a power and authority in ways and project power into situations where, like it matters to other people.
Speaker 2:We're actually, you know what we believe, what we think. So I think that there's an understandable reason and yet there's a risk. The other thing, I think, though, that helps us to embrace kind of simple binaries, is that we're all looking for a bigger story, a bigger story, a bigger story, some big story that makes sense of the world we live in, especially when there's a lot of things that are upside down and chaotic and turbulent and whatever. We're looking for a bigger, larger story, and what we're seeing right now. We're in a very ideological age where there are ideological explanations for things. There are these big, grand metanarratives that help us make sense of the world in pretty simplistic ways, and we all, again, I think, we have that hunger built into us to want to have a bigger understanding of what makes the world work and what doesn't, and the challenge in that is there's a true story and there's a lot of false stories.
Speaker 2:And so it's easy to embrace and buy into a false story that gives us some sense of we're part of something bigger, we understand something and we know again who's in and who's out and who's up and who's down. But if it's not based on the humanity of everyone and the way God sees the world, then it has the potential to be really problematic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really good. So what I heard you say was that there's a desire to understand what story we're a part of in some bigger way. And because there's so much complexity in the world there's so many things coming at us all the time there's a desire to, maybe out of a sense of control or sanity or safety, to be able to narrow your focus to just a couple of categories, and, of course, we would always be in the right category. More often than not, it's us versus them in our own minds. Right, you didn't say that, I said that part.
Speaker 2:Well, you said all of that way better than I did, and in a more tight way, so that was great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm just working off what you gave me.
Speaker 1:So, when we think about that reality, one of the things that we heard, I think, from the presentation earlier tonight and the stories that you shared and I think, if we really stopped and reflected, we have our own versions of those stories and this is what I mean is that we all experience times when the us versus them narrative breaks down in our own experience, that we meet someone and engage someone and the ways in which we thought about them changes because of our experience with them, and it can be surprising and and I think that in those moments we can tend to think, oh well, that's an exception, that's that's an exception.
Speaker 1:But, of course, the way that I think about it is still true. And I'm wondering for you, as you, as you've invited people on a journey to consider that there's a different way to see the world than in simple binaries. What are some of the telltale signs or some of the stories consistently, that you see that when a person is experiencing the simple way they viewed the world changing, what can that often feel like to them, as you, as you watch that?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean it's, it's always. It's very disorienting when the you know something we've just kind of always believed or accepted to be a certain way, when, when that's complicated, when there's a story and a person that personifies something we just never imagined yeah, and we don't always know what to do with that. What it provides us is an opportunity. The opportunity is to really examine what we thought was true and what we now are experiencing and try to understand what you know, what the differences and what might, what this might claim on us and call us to do. It's still possible to again to exceptionalize and experience and say, well, that's a, that's just one isolated thing, but I still believe all these things to be true. But it does give us an opportunity to allow our hearts to open up more broadly, because I, you know, I think that's one of the big challenges that we have often faced in helping people understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Speaker 2:It's it's not about just sort of seeing the other. It's it's about expanding your, your, your aperture wider. It's like really trying to capture a wider, more honest set of experiences that then allow you to get to something that's more honest and true about individuals and communities and larger stories and things that you just didn't know before. And so those experiences give us a chance, give us an opportunity, whether we take it or not. What we do with it is still you know, that's up to us. But that gives us an opportunity, and I've seen people beautifully lean into that and really have incredible, incredible transformations, and I and I've seen some people really struggle with knowing what to do about that, because the certainty that felt so, the certainty they had felt really good and safe, and that's not there anymore. Now, what am I going to do that this whole thing doesn't make sense anymore, that I invested a lot in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely so. This, this uh desire for certainty, uh, a commitment to not feeling uncomfortable with the complexity of the world, one of the things that I've I've heard you say before, and you may I may be stealing your thunder for tomorrow, but I've heard you say something like we have to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish or want it to be. That's right, yeah, and so when we experience the world as it is, it's oftentimes a lot messier than we want it to be. Yep, and I know that you're coming to that belief and embracing it and giving your life to it over the past at least 15 years doing this work. It emerges from your own story in many ways, and so, just for some context for listeners here tonight, you shared a little bit, but those who are listening to the podcast, who weren't here, can you tell us how this passion, this commitment, emerges from your own story? Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, this kind of work is generally done out of some personal story, right. I mean, there's a lot of other ways to spend your time that allow you to have more friends and probably more money too, that, uh, than doing this kind of thing. Yeah, I bet, um, but so you do it out of a because you kind of have to, or you do it out of calling a conviction, and so there's there's definitely biography that's attached to this. I would say, for me, growing up, you know, in a more conservative community, kind of a very gently fundamentalist Baptist world in Arkansas, washington DC, to work on Capitol Hill in a very diverse and pluralistic environment in which I really had a very sincere faith but a very thin theology to make sense of the complexity of the world and I didn't know what to do about that, and it really ultimately, by God's grace, led me into kind of a much deeper faith journey and a deeper kind of theological understanding and a bigger and truer story about what God's bigger, truer story really is, and that was really beautiful. But it also really created some tensions in my old way of seeing things, in my fundamentalist certainty about things, right, but that's the world I kind of come out of, and so there's a lot of tension points along the way in my life and journey that are connected to that a lot of tension points along the way in my life and journey that are connected to that. But I would say one of the things that really gripped me about the thing that drew me into what we're doing at TELUS right now was the way that people like me again more conservative Christians of a certain kind had helped to create a reality for Israelis and Palestinians that was actually making their lives harder and making vulnerable people more vulnerable and making it harder to solve the conflict. Because we were attaching our ideologies and views and things to American projections of power, resources, weapons, the whole gamut of things, and we were shaping a reality there in ways that were well-intentioned but were actually again making vulnerable people more vulnerable on all sides, particularly Palestinians, but Israelis too and I felt a real sense of implication.
Speaker 2:I've been to some other places, I've studied other issues in my work at the State Department and in government and I never felt so personally implicated like oh wow, this is being done in my work at the State Department and in government and I never felt so personally implicated like oh wow, this is being done in my name and it's being done in the name of Christianity, and it's a kind of Christianity that I'm familiar with, but it's very different than what I understand Christ's calling to be.
Speaker 2:As I again engage in the Sermon on the Mount and I really try to understand how Jesus calls us to live in the world and how to follow him, and so that sense of implication was the thing that really drew me, but also a sense of possibility, because it was like I knew there were some bad theologies and some that were informing a lot of bad behavior, but I also know there was a beautiful story and there were some good theologies that could be brought to bear, and I kept wrestling with what would it look like to take Jesus seriously, not just here, but there, like in the place where he actually said these things?
Speaker 2:What would it look like to embrace a theology of peacemaking as we thought about what the reality was in the very place where he said those words? Right, and so that notion of there is a better, truer, redeeming story that really needs to be told and that was also a part of what really drew me in is this desire to figure out what that was and help others be on that journey too. Like to be on a journey with people that were trying to figure out what it meant to follow Jesus as a peacemaker in the world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, there's so much that I love about that, but I'll just pick up on one thing, and that is it. Even in the midst of doing the work you were doing at the state department uh, years before that, working in government in Washington DC, going there as Christian, and the thing that drew you to where you are now, even in the place right where people go because they have ideas, they have passion, they want to see change happen, and you were there. You had this opportunity to serve in the ways that I think it sounds like you really desired to. And as you were doing that, there became a dissonance as your faith grew.
Speaker 1:And Esther Meek, who's a philosopher she's a reformed philosopher, she has this little book called On the Little Manual for Knowing I think is the title something like that and she has this little line I'm paraphrasing her that whenever we are at home in a certain position and everything feels comfortable and right, and then we experience reality in a way that no longer lets that be possible, we don't just immediately fall into that new place where everything begins to make sense, but we live in this very uncomfortable time and this very uncomfortable season, in this very uncomfortable time, in this very uncomfortable season and it can be in small ways, like your favorite recipe doesn't work anymore because now you've been diagnosed with celiacs or something like that and you're like I don't know what I'm going to do.
Speaker 1:How am I going to redo that? There's this pain, but, of course, in much larger ways. Whenever this reality where you used to think things fit together in a certain way, then you realize they don't, and the thing that requires your highest allegiance, which is this deepening faith, was the lens by which you started to view everything else, and I love the word you used implicated. There's this reality where, once we know the world in a certain way, once we know, given, who we are, we have to then say what do I do? Yeah, yeah, and I think all of those things are are powerful for everyone in this room as we think about whatever our various callings are as Christians in the world, where we're always going to be faced with difference, we're always going to be faced with with challenge. How do we navigate it, committed first in our allegiance to Jesus and being open to that allegiance, shaking us from the way that we've always seen the world, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's really a part of my story in a very specific way. I mean the way she framed, that definitely tracks with my own experience. The way she framed, that definitely tracks with my own experience. I came to DC in the mid-90s with a Christian faith and a politics that fit together like a hand in a glove. There was no separation. I didn't understand how you could be anything but those two things combined and as I went on a deeper faith journey, it really created a tension and it was a tension that took me several years to sort out and resolve. And I kept feeling the tension. Points like there were. There were claims that my faith was making on me that were inconsistent with my politics, and it didn't ever. It never made me switch parties, it never made me like join the other team. But ultimately I had a moment of clarity, and it was after a few years of wrestling. But I had a moment of clarity and this is after a few years of wrestling. But I had a moment of clarity. I was on a camping trip with my little boys when they were small and they were asleep in a tent and I was just like was so wrestling and I was journaling and it was late in the night and it just this clear thought came to me that it's like if your faith and your politics are in this much tension, which is the most important, if your faith and your politics are in this much tension, which is the most important, and it was so when I kind of came to that like awareness, it was so obvious that I'd been wrestling forever with this idea that they had to fit together. And the reality is that one has to kind of flow the other, and that if my faith and if the kingdom of God is as transcendent as I claim it is, as it's relevant in every point of history and it transcends, then it could never be reduced to a political ideology in one time and place, like it has to be relevant and it has to inform how we think about these things, but it can never get encaptured or encapsulated in a particular historical moment or ideology or political program or national project or anything of those things. And so it just was this kind of liberating thing to say, well, my faith is the thing, that's the central part. And so I can hold this loosely and I can actually not just, I can actually dissent at times and I can actually be a conscience against some of these things, and that was more of the role I began to play. And then that kind of plays itself out.
Speaker 2:I love the line that Martin Luther King Jr had about that the church should never be the master of the state, nor the servant of the state, but the conscience of the state. And I like that idea, as Christians, that we don't need to try to seize power so that we can implement this Christian agenda on a non-Christian population and we don't need to just be subservient to the state and just salute whoever, because we have our parties in power and, whatever they do, we endorse those views and we are cheerleaders for that. We need to be a conscience, and so there are things we support, things we don't support, but we need to bring this voice in to say these things actually won't allow for the flourishing we seek. These things like this is not the way we demonstrate love of neighbor. This is not the way we bring good order into our communities. This is not whatever, but reminding. So sometimes we'll agree and sometimes we won't.
Speaker 2:And ultimately in our system you have to choose a side. You have to pick who you're going to vote for you. Ultimately, in our system, you have to choose a side. You have to pick who you're going to vote for. You have to pick a party. We have two that dominate, and so we have to do that, but we have to hold it in some distance and it took me a long time to get to some clarity around that.
Speaker 2:And then, when you do, you still have to live with this and you're more in this. Like it was easier when I always knew who I was going to vote for and what I was supporting. That was an easy world to live in. And this is like I'm always kind of like okay, but this and this, and I'm having to weigh things and that's like, and I'm busy.
Speaker 1:That's hard to do all the time right.
Speaker 2:But it is the claim that's made on us by the gospel that we have to actually think about these things in more nuanced and complicated ways and allow the center thing to be the center thing and then make our best decision in a world that is broken, but it still has the power of God moving in it too. And how do we do that?
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, absolutely. It just makes me think about the disciples in the gospels as we read. It's over and over they don't get more comfortable as they continue to follow Jesus, that things get more and more complex. Almost they think they have it figured out and then they don't. And then, ultimately, he goes to the cross and we know the deep confusion and chaos that that ensued, until he calls them back and says the word we were talking about later in John 20, he brings peace to them in the upper room and he proclaims shalom over them in peace.
Speaker 2:One of my favorite books of theology and again, I'm not a theologian, but in only the most amateur way, which is probably a really dangerous way but to engage in theology but Fleming Rutledge wrote a book on the crucifixion that's really profound. But she has this line about where the crucifixion wasn't just something that happened to Jesus on the way to the cross, I mean on the way to Easter. Sunday.
Speaker 2:It's the central part of the story and we love Easter Sunday and we love to celebrate Easter Sunday. But in a lot of Protestant traditions we've really tried we've minimized the whole Holy Week and the Good Friday and that whole story and we just we love to get to Easter Sunday, yes, but so much of the Christian life is this journey through the whole process and it's a journey of descent and it takes you sometimes to ever more difficult and challenging places.
Speaker 2:And, as we were saying earlier tonight, you know, a lot of the Christian discipleship journey can feel more like a dark Thursday night in a garden when your friends are asleep and God's not listening. Then that the beauty of you know Easter Sunday morning, and that's just something we have to also wrestle with. But be honest about too. That it is. It's that's not always going to be easy to do what's true and right, but that's that's part of the calling yes, yeah, so I mean earlier we were at lunch.
Speaker 1:That's part of the calling yes. Yes, I mean earlier. We were at lunch, ben was with us and we were talking about the reality that, in the Beatitudes, blessed are the peacemakers. And we've talked about peacemaking tonight and at New City. I'm sure those who are listening who weren't at New City or aren't at New City they've heard this before. But when we most recently preached to the Beatitudes, we engaged this reality that peacemaking and peacekeeping, as a simple way to say, are different. To be a peacemaker is different, which is why, immediately after what flows from peacemaking is, blessed are the persecuted. And so when we think about this dynamic and we think particularly about our current cultural moment in the United States, political divides.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I found so helpful on the trip was getting distance from our own country and seeing something that was so poignant. It was almost impossible about halfway through the trip not to see how these exact same dynamics that were so clear when I was looking at them as a distantiated person are dynamics that we experience in our own country in various ways. It was almost like the prophet Nathan when he comes to David and tells him the story of this man who was poor and a rich man took his sheep and took his wife, and David is angry and he says how could this be? This is unjust, essentially. And Nathan the prophet stops and he says you're the man.
Speaker 1:And it took that. It took David, looking at a case study in a sense, to understand. And so by you sharing examples from a conflict that we're familiar with but is, but is different, especially for those of us who were there we I had sort of that similar experience. It was almost like a case study, and then I could see our current reality more clearly. So, and when we think about that in the context that we're in right now, are there particular historical moments or movements in America that you believe could offer valuable lessons or even warning for our peacemaking efforts now, in the midst of this political climate?
Speaker 2:That's such a good question, frederick Douglass, the last few years. And Frederick Douglass is this incredible American hero that we're not as familiar with as we should be, because he believed enough in the American promise to claim it in the same way that Martin Luther King did a hundred years later. He wasn't arguing against it, he was saying let's actually make these words mean what you say. They mean, not how they get lived out for people like me. Um, but when you read frederick douglas, he was wrestling with so many of the same issues in the 1850s in particular, that sounded familiar today, including issues like um.
Speaker 2:Is violence an effective tool? Like is? Is that like, if the moral stakes are so high and if the you know, can we use any means necessary to bring liberation to people who are suffering? Right, and that's such a consequential thing. And ultimately, the way we resolved that was a civil war in which, you know, nearly 700,000 Americans died in an effort to free and save people, and that's what it took.
Speaker 2:But, like, there was this, there was this opportunity through the 1850s for us to to deal with this without bloodshed. But it couldn't happen without justice and I think, if you look at that period, we had the most, the worst leadership probably in all of American history at the national level were in that period of the 1850s and people did not understand the times or were not willing to do what was required, yeah, including right up to the Civil War. I mean, the last president before Lincoln, james Buchanan, was absolute feckless in those last days and even at that point Civil War might have been prevented had he acted differently in the last few months he was in office. But the point in all that is that there was this whole moment in time which we really had this brewing, this know, issue that people wanted, some people wanted to resolve, some people didn't, and but you had at the core of it was a deep injustice that people weren't willing to, yeah, to effectively deal with as a way to get out of it. And so there's like lessons of what could have happened that might have averted the war. But one of them is not that you can't ignore real issues of injustice to to avoid that, but one of the other issues is that the use of violence really is limit, has limits, and how much it can actually achieve. That that's good and redemptive too. So we have to be really honest about that. So all of those questions were really more like some of the things he was wrestling with and others in the abolitionist movement and others in politics at that time were wrestling with. The 1850s were like that. They sounded so familiar Now and I'm not saying that to say we're on the cusp of another civil war I'm not saying that like we're about to head there, but I'm saying that we have a history where we've done that before and I'm saying that there are things that you can learn in other contexts or in our own story, outside of the current context, that can help us understand how to navigate things differently and better maybe than we are right now.
Speaker 2:Folks who are involved in in these kind of strident political, you know, voices and movements today are really not appreciating how risky this behavior is, because once these political disagreements slip out the bounds of just rhetoric and turn into actual like violence, that's really hard to get to get back, you know, get that genie back in the bottle. One of our trip programs we've developed is to Northern Ireland and we see what happened there, where you had a Protestant minority that created a theology that said Catholics were inferior and in every way. And so then they create a political program to enforce that inferiority and disenfranchise the Catholic population in Northern Ireland. And these justice issues ultimately led to this time of the troubles where lots of people were killed and there were bombings and all this sort of thing.
Speaker 2:That happened for a number of years and just average and ordinary people who let this kind of disagreement, the failure to resolve the justice issues, but at the same time, just the incendiary rhetoric, no vision for a better future, dehumanizing people, and at some point it starts expressing itself in violent ways. And once that happened they couldn't get it back under control and it took them years and years to finally get a Good Friday agreement that finally brought an end to the violence. Yeah, that finally brought, you know, an end to the violence. And so there's these other stories that we do need to look into, because sometimes we can't see our own situation. We have to get, you know, can't see the water we're swimming in and we have to see it somewhere else, hear someone else's story to understand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so helpful. So you have the distance. That helps, like Northern Ireland is another one you just mentioned. We've been talking about Israel-Palestine, the distance in geography, also the difference in time period, so, to go back, we can get some clarity. We look back to certain time periods and think how did they miss that? And we just we assume maybe we don't, but I do that 20 years from now 30, my grandkids are going to look back on my generation, this generation, and say how did they miss that? And so the key is how do we look back and learn from that?
Speaker 1:And I think one of the key things you said which is so important in the difference between peacekeeping and peacemaking, is that peacemaking is committed, is committed to justice, seeing justice happen for this mutuality that you're talking about.
Speaker 1:And justice sometimes requires the peacemaker to sacrifice for the sake of justice, which ends up making them less comfortable in some instances, and that's a high call from Jesus, but it is the call as we engage it. And so when I think about what would make us want to live that way, it's because we live in a certain story. This is what you talked about. We live in a true story. We live in a larger story of the kingdom of God, and the stories we tell ourselves have a profound impact on the way that we perceive the world. They have a profound impact on the way we live into the world. You think about the story you live in I heard someone say recently is the story you live from. So whatever story you think you're in, that's how you see the world, that's how you live into the world. So, with that being true, I'm wondering how do you think our current media landscape, with its emphasis on conflict and polarization, is influencing peacemaking efforts?
Speaker 2:Well, one thing we can agree on probably across all lines of difference in America is that everybody hates the media. So that's an easy kind of thing to say, yeah, it's their fault. But there's a huge problem right, and one of the things I think we have to be honest about is that there is a profit-making model that exists in cable news in particular. That exists in cable news in particular. The whole way they actually make money is by keeping us inflamed, exercised and divided. That is the model, and they make a lot of money doing that, like one of the very prominent anchors no, he actually wasn't that prominent because I'd actually never heard of him but he is an anchor on one of the cable news networks and he sold his house in Washington a year or so ago and the price tag was like it was some astronomical thing like $20 million. This guy just reads the news on a cable news program, but he has a $20 million house. And my point is there are people that are making a lot of money by keeping us angry, inflamed and divided. Yeah, and that has been going on for a generation now. So that's been going at least since the 90s. So that's when you really started to get this kind of cable news approach. That was like the crossfire thing on cnn where and so there's no. It was never an attempt to like can we find agreement. It was like can I destroy, you know, can I destroy my political opponent in front of tv? Can I throw them the you know the most incendiary barbs and say the you know the the harshest things? And it was really mild and tame back then compared to what's, compared to what's said now.
Speaker 2:And then, this democratization through um, through social media, that allows us to live in these silos of like we only get through again. Or social media companies make money off creating algorithms that feed us what we already think to be true, and we only get those sources, and then there's no journalistic standard that's upheld in terms of if something's fact-checked or right or you know there's. So all of that's out the window and so. So there's a lot of ways to blame the media itself, journalists and all that, but I'd say this the way in which we have both like cable media and social media that have built into their models, the way they make money, is to keep us angry at each other and divided, and that's that's a huge part of the problem, yeah, and that is really hard to fix, but it really. It calls on each of us to know that we're being manipulated and not allow ourselves to live that way and not like, understand that these people are doing this. They may believe this, they may not, it doesn't matter, but they are doing this, they're trying to enrage me right now.
Speaker 2:What do I do and how do I actually learn to listen to different stories outside my stream and outside my channel, things I don't agree with, so I can at least see how my neighbors are seeing this and why they're angry and like, why they're feel the way they do? Yeah, and so what we really have to do and we'll talk about this maybe tomorrow, tomorrow but one of the things we do in peacemaking is talking about cultivating curiosity to combat condemnation. It is so easy just to condemn the people that don't, don't follow our media, you know like, they don't live in our algorithms, and these people are insane and they're dangerous and they're just whatever, and it's easy to condemn them. But could we be curious for a minute to understand why they got there? What is their story? How did another person, made of the image of God, loved of God as much as I am, get to such a different place on something that seems so important to me. How'd they get there?
Speaker 2:Being curious about that, yeah, and and doing it in the context of not just like media, but also, really it's more important to do it in the context of honest relationships, yeah, people you know, people in your family, people in your workplace, in your community and your church that you have these, just that you're on different sides of something like leaning into those conversations in a curious way. That's a big like. So we can't fix the whole thing, but we can work on our piece of it and we can start to not submit ourselves to that project and try to rewire how we engage information and news and our neighbors in a way that's more again, more based on curiosity, and not allow ourselves to get so exercised and alarmed by everything we hear. Not that there aren't bad news stories that should alarm us, but again, there is a whole way in which people make money off of this, off of us.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, so important. What was that documentary a few years ago? The Social Something, social Dilemma? Yeah, so it's so interesting To your point. A few years ago I don't know what year that would have been, maybe three, four it seems like a pandemic, so who knows how many years ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true, it's like a time warp, but I remember there being this, this sense of of heightened awareness of what you're saying, that oh, wow, Uh, my attention is a commodity, and the way that I'm being commoditized if that's the right way, I think that's right commodified. Thank you, I knew that didn't sound right. This is why we're doing this live, so that you guys can correct me. Is that to keep my eyeballs on this reality? And the way to do that is to shock me. The way to do that is to inflame the basis parts of me and to keep doing that.
Speaker 1:And yet the reality is is what we said earlier, is that we don't have a ton of time and so we want to be informed. We're not sure where to go, and these things can be in tension with one another, but I think that's why what we're going to talk about tomorrow is so important, these practices that shape us into certain types of people. To be curious, to engage, is really important. All right, so I'm going to ask one more question, so get ready for you guys to prep a question for Todd. But, Todd, I'm wondering, if you were to teach a course on the formation of you, what people, books, experiences et cetera would be on the syllabus.
Speaker 2:What people books experiences, et cetera, would be on the syllabus. I don't love that question because a course on me is really uncomfortable, but I love the question of what it makes me think about. So I would say you would probably start with my dad. My dad passed away about two and a half years ago and as I was writing the eulogy that I gave at his funeral, it really just struck me in such a clear way. We had a really good relationship and we talked almost every day for the last several years of his life. But we were very different people in a lot of ways too. But I realized how much his way of living in the world shaped mine, how much his way of living in the world shaped mine. I mean what he did with his life, the job he had and the place he lived and all that. You know he was born and died in the same small town, you know, and was an amazing man, family guy, neighbor, guy at his church, all that. But he just always created this invitational way of living. So when you came to, you know, to my parents' house, you know you were just. Everybody was welcomed in and they were just welcomed in as they were and they didn't make a big fuss out of you. But there was no, there was no judgment. They were just like this is a welcome space, you're, you're welcome here. And there were just so many ways I realized that his way of generously thinking about others, generously living in the world, you know, would just they're so shaping of who I am. So to know me you would have to really know my dad, I'd say so that I would put him very high on the list. Others who shaped my life, oh my gosh, there have been so many, but I was thinking more of people than even you know, books and movies and things like that.
Speaker 2:And there's a woman in Israel named Robbie Damlin who is a force of nature. She's a real bulldozer in life, jewish-israeli woman whose son was killed by a Palestinian sniper, and we'll talk more about her experience tomorrow. But her way of seeing and engaging the world is so shaped me. I often think how would Robbie respond to this moment? Because she's the one who, when the when Israeli military officers came to tell her that her son had been killed by a Palestinian sniper, the first thing she said was you may not kill anybody in the name of my child. Just came out of her because of who she is and how she had formed herself and I think that way of living in the world has really struck me, and who she is and the power of her spirit and her humor and all those things. She's been a very shaping force for me, I'd say.
Speaker 2:I think, more recently, just some of the reading. Like I talked about spending a lot of time in Frederick Douglass, but reading Frederick Douglass, the life of people like Fannie Lou Hamer and Medgar Evers, people in our own American story whose stories aren't often told enough but are such American heroes but such global heroes, such amazing human beings. But Fannie Lou Hamer was such a devoutly Christian woman. You know, sharecropper's daughter from Mississippi, who was brutally beaten to the point of near death during the civil rights movement, had so many horrible things that happened to her as a result of her activism. And yet, you know, someone asked her about how she could. Didn't she hate these segregationists and these people who abused her? And she said how could I ever hate someone and hope to see God's face? And there was just this deep, deep faith, but wisdom born of that faith about how to live in the world that, in spite of everything else, just emanated out of her. So people like that really have inspired me and I mean I could go on.
Speaker 2:But that's been one of the great beauties of this work I've gotten to do for the last many years is just being able to meet some of the most incredible people I've could ever.
Speaker 2:You know. Just I mean it's been a privilege just to get to know these people and not to just to kind of get to know them in a meeting one time, but really to become friends and get to know them more deeply. Some of the people that you meet, that you've met in Israel, palestine, some of the people we meet here in the United States, people I've met in other parts of the world, have really shaped, have shaped how I think about um things and about about god's love for everyone, I mean, and the like. You know, um, no one has a full um, a full claim on all that's true and right. Um and god's movement happens in all sorts of places and cultures and national projects and all that and just to see the sort of global humanity get a little window into the spirit of God moving, the image of God shining out of people's lives in different parts of the world is really a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. Thank you for sharing that. All right, I'll open it up A couple questions. Yeah, I love that. Thank you for sharing that. Alright, I'll open it up A couple questions.
Speaker 5:Yeah, jd, so when I observe the context and tone of people online in various formats or I talk to strangers or voters in person. A theme I've noticed recently is that it feels like more people feel immensely frustrated with what they see in our political spaces or in our country as a whole, or just in our local communities, and that frustration has led to a level of isolationism, escapism or even just outright resentment. So what do you believe it looks like to engage with that especially?
Speaker 2:when?
Speaker 1:hmm, yeah let me try to recap just quickly. So the question essentially was um, in jd's experience, as he's seen other people engage in these realities there's increased frustration, and that increased frustration has produced various responses, most of them not positive. So isolationism, what were the other two that you said? Escapism, yeah, and just and just resentment. So, insofar as that's our experience, which I think we all have, these experiences um, how do we engage that? And then the twist at the end was uh, how do we engage that in others? And then what about if we find that in ourselves?
Speaker 2:yeah, well, you know there's, there's. It's important to remember that when people are expressing a lot of resentment, frustration, frustration, anger or demands for something to be made right that's not right, or when all these anxieties that we're hearing, usually there's another story behind it, and so, especially in the context of our relationships, if we can find a way to let people be heard, to give space for people to really explain what's going on, to ask the kinds of questions that allow them to really say what's underneath all of these, you know, these sort of negative emotions that we're hearing, it does create space for us to figure out if there's something we can do about it. What happens often is that a lot of people who are either, you know, again, again fearful of what's happening in the world or concerned about the injustice that they are experiencing or their communities experiencing, what happens is they get shut down, they get like, like people tell them it's not appropriate, like they sort of feel that there's this kind of elite voice that says you it's not appropriate for you to be saying these things, for you to be feeling these ways, you're and and there's no space for trying to figure out what are the what's, what's actually underneath all this and is there something that actually could be done about it? Because there are extremist ideologies out there and people who hold them and they can be hard to persuade, but a lot of people who get drawn into these extremist positions and ideologies don't actually have that. They just that's the. That's the place where they can feel understood and heard.
Speaker 2:But if you create a space for people to actually to be understood and heard, you can create a possibility for people to not go that way, and that's what I was saying earlier. Even in the is Israel-Palestine context. You don't defeat a bad idea with violence or force, but you don't defeat it by just telling people to shut up either. You defeat it with a better idea and you give people a space to gravitate toward. But sometimes you actually have to listen to what their anxieties and fears are. What is the injustice that you're seeing or experiencing? Can we address that? What is this cultural shift that's happening that you're all that's making you fearful? Can we like is there a space for us to talk about what that is and understand? Maybe like, is there something that could be done about that or is it something you know? So at least giving people a place to be heard and understood is better than just trying to silence people. Um, is that? Is that getting more to your question, or are you?
Speaker 5:were you asking something a little different, I would say the only second piece of that is that's what we observe in those around us. But then what would we recognize that within ourselves?
Speaker 2:yeah, as individuals or in the church as a distinct community, but specifically as yeah, yeah, so when we are feeling like the resentments and the anger, is that what you're saying?
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's a natural tendency. And you can't always be on your game and you can't always be. You have to. I mean, jesus went out into the wilderness at times and said I'm out of here, I'm going to do a little retreat, right, we can't always be in the game and on the game, so we have moments where we do have to check out and take care of ourselves and reconnect.
Speaker 2:At the same time, we have to lean in to these things too, because if we really believe the things we talked about tonight, that my flourishing is connected to my neighbors, then I have to actually lean in to relationships. I had to get proximate to people who are hurting. I have to listen to my neighbors and understand. And you know, again, there's all these things I have to do because we're all bound up together and so I can't fully just isolate, check out. I can, but that's not a healthy thing for but that's not a healthy thing for me, but it's not a healthy thing for my community either. So that's how we stay trapped in these places. When we don't engage, when we don't reach across lines, when we don't build relationships, we don't listen to people, we don't create spaces where people can be heard and understood, all those sorts of things.
Speaker 1:Great, thank you.
Speaker 4:Yeah, John Knox was quoted as saying defiance of the times is obedience to God, something echoed in Acts 5 of the message of God around the covenant, but also in Romans we're told that the governing authorities are put in place by God. So how do we best live into the tension that God is sovereign without becoming too passive or apathetic? But also be responsible. Christians without taking on too much of that responsibility.
Speaker 2:I heard him ask you that question, Damien.
Speaker 1:I checked out. I'm not sure what he asked. I think you should take a first crack at it.
Speaker 2:I think it's a question that has perplexed Christians for a long time, especially in the modern era, in the post-Reformation era of John Knox and forward, where we're often more able to have a voice in our societies. How do we do those two things right? And I don't think there's an easy answer to it, and I think there have been, I know there have been many books written on it, many people who've thought deeply about this. I would just say, yes, we have to. You know we have to. We're called to respect governing authorities and we're called to understand that God is a God of order, and so there's a way that that makes sense for us. And we're also, in this very sounding, seemingly contradictory way, you know, called to also resist and to follow God's. You know what God demands of us and not what some ruler or government or state demands of us, and that is really hard to sort out, and it can be so abused in both directions, because there are a lot of people who want to demand. We all have to support and pray for the president if it's the president that they voted for and supported, and they don't seem to have that same. You know that text doesn't apply when it's not their president, when it's the president that they supported. That kind of thing happens all the time. Right, we have to figure out how to be consistent across these, you know, across the political divides, for this that's first of all, that's just a part of the integrity of our Christian witness is like at least being consistent across the spectrum, no matter who's in power.
Speaker 2:But it does remind us if you read, I think, going back to the Old Testament scriptures and looking at what God was most upset about was when those who had power were not using it on behalf of people who were vulnerable and so demanding that people, that we take care of the widow and the orphan and that we, you know the vulnerable and the poor really have God's heart right. And if you, you know, if you read Jesus's words in the Nazareth synagogue, where he's quoting from Isaiah about what he came to do, and if you read the Magnificat of Mary, this was a revolutionary thing, that this was going to be good news of liberation for the poor and the vulnerable. And so when we have governments that are not doing that, then we have an obligation to speak into that. If we are feeling like our privileges are being, you know, diminished. That like if we're concerned about ourselves and our position, what the government is doing in that way. That's where I think we really have to be careful, because I think that's what we often sound like.
Speaker 2:We care about our religious freedom and our rights, and that's why I'm not saying I don't care about religious freedom, but we don't often. We're not known for caring about violations of those things for other people, right, and we seem to be very concerned about ourselves. And so I think if we can shift our focus to the again, to people who are vulnerable, people who are marginalized or oppressed or you know that's, and the government's not doing what it should to protect the vulnerable, that's where we have this prophetic calling to be a prophetic voice to say this we should be the conscience of the state, and that could even lead us to be defying the state when the state is exercising its authority against the vulnerable people in that kind of way. Again, really imperfect, and and again my.
Speaker 2:My biggest challenge is that the church has almost rarely figured out how to hold these things in tension in a good way. It's got to be possible, because it's in the Bible, so it's got to be possible, but I think we've really not done well with political power, or how to think about political power in general, and certainly in how to hold these things, these two passages that you mentioned, for instance, in tension. Now fix that. No, do better than me.
Speaker 1:No, I mean, I think that that's is a really great answer. I think that when you think about all the passages, there are really like three things. The first thing is, it's clear we're to submit, and you this is Romans, the first, peter as well we're to submit to the governing authorities because they're ministers of God. The word minister is the same word as deacon, it's a servant, it's a minister, and so we are to submit. And you think about the normative posture of exiles, which is what Peter calls us, is that of submission. And what's amazing is both Peter and Paul and Jesus when we talk about submit, or you look at Daniel in the Old Testament or other examples, it's not like they were in power and things were going well. Whenever they said this, they cast this vision that God is sovereign to your point, that God is in control, while they are being oppressed. I mean, that is the right word. They are the oppressed people and yet this is the response, which is amazing. But then, as Todd said, there's also this dynamic where we see resistance. So you submit, but then you hold this tension of resistance and resistance.
Speaker 1:The church, especially in the reformed tradition, has talked about reformation, not revolution, and so there's this idea where we lean in as the conscience, we speak to what the Bible clearly speaks to, which is justice, the widow and the orphan, public morality, human flourishing, things that are summed up in the law, like the Ten Commandments, for example. These are things that when we go against these things, we're going against the grain of the universe, and so we have to resist that for the love of our neighbor, because this is reality. But there's a difference between reformation and revolution, and those are two different things. And then the final thing is I think we so, if we submit, but we also resist, but we also persist. And if you're wondering, like, how does he have this, it's because I just preached this sermon in the politics series. But the last one is we have to persist in public.
Speaker 1:Holiness. God calls us to live public lives, to live our righteousness for the love of our neighbor, and so this is going to shape the way that we actually live into the world. It's gonna shape the way we communicate with our neighbors, it's going to shape the way we treat our enemies, and there's a public reality to holiness. It's not a private faith. It's personal, of course, but it's not a private faith. It makes claims. Our faith makes claims on the way in which we are to live as citizens and human beings, and so that's the. That's what I would say. I think it's very basically what you said, but that's how I'd sum it up better. All right, so what? Last question? I think country.
Speaker 3:I'm just kidding, okay, just want to make sure I'm tracking active in politics and cast a vote, or is there biblical merit to don't like, either not vote? And is there biblical merit to vote for the lesser of?
Speaker 2:three people? Yeah, that is a great question and I, I think you summed it up well, I don't. I, you know there's uh, there's definitely some passion for both candidates. Now there wasn't any really for Biden, he stepped aside. I think there's a, there's some energy, but I'd say many Americans, if not most, are where what you're describing, you know this is neither of these candidates, is the candidate they would like to get excited about, like to vote for, and so do we have an obligation to to vote.
Speaker 2:In that context, I think voting is a, it's a, it's a right and a responsibility, and so we all have to kind of weigh our own conscience on that. So I, I, I can't be. I can't just sort of prescriptively say everybody has to do a certain thing. Um, on that issue, I think you have to wrestle with your own conscience. If you're really feeling like you can't, in good conscience, vote, but I, I do think we have to get to a place where we have to realize we do have a responsibility to vote as citizens. Uh, we have the right to do it. We have responsibility to do it because this is part of the way that we care for our neighbors and we help to care for the common good, the polity as you will.
Speaker 2:I know you guys, you've preached on all this too, and we have to remember that neither of these candidates, these two or any other two, are going to be fully, in every way, the Messiah right, and that's I mean. We have a Messiah, we don't need one to lead us in politics, and so we we have to remember that they're both of them. Whoever they are, these two and any others are going to have. They're all going to be made the image of god and they're all going to be sons of adam and daughters of eve, so they're all going to be able to reflect some of god's image in the world. But they're all going to be able to do some self-interest to things and they're all going to have political programs that are a mixed bag of things too, and we have to weigh all that and we have to decide.
Speaker 2:You know how to make our choice. Do we make a choice just on a set of policy positions, issues? Is character and integrity a defining thing that we have to decide? But we have to make, I think, a decision based on the fact that we live in a fallen world and we're not, and we have fallen. People just they're just like we are, in different ways, so we have to appreciate that and that should give us an ability mostly to vote. Some people still aren't able to do that, but I think we should be able to go ahead and choose and even if we're saying it's the lesser of two evils, we still have to figure out a way, I think, to exercise that.
Speaker 2:And I think that you know the challenge of not voting is it extends into lots of different communities, whether but it is kind of a privilege sometimes to not vote because you think it doesn't matter, because it probably doesn't matter, like either candidate can be elected and I'm probably going to be fine, maybe one will make my taxes go up and I'll pay a little more money or whatever. But but there are people for whom the choice can be really stark, like because policy, because they're vulnerable and the policies or person of a particular candidate might make them even more vulnerable, and so it is like sometimes we love our neighbor by casting a vote that even works against our self-interest. Let me give you an example. I have a friend in DC whose son is a professor in the University of California system, so super educated, you know teaches in an amazing school. You know university system in the United States, and so he's. You know he in an amazing school. You know university system in the United States, and so he's. You know he's he. He's doing all right and his way of voting is this.
Speaker 2:And it's not everybody's way to do it, but I really thought this was intriguing. He said that when the election comes around, he decides in my network of people I'm in relationship with, who is the most vulnerable person I know right now, like who's, and it often is a black woman and he'll say who are you voting for? And that's who he gives his vote to. So he, he stewards his vote, gives it to someone else, even if it's against his interest, even if the candidate she is supporting is someone who's going to raise his taxes or whatever. That's who he votes for. So, because that's the way he stewards his responsibility, you know, as a citizen and as a voter. So I just thought that was a very interesting way to think about it, because it's not going to cost him much either way, he's going to be all right. So he gives it to somebody else. But I think it's like holding it like that.
Speaker 2:And the other thing I would say is that we spend a lot of time in Selma, alabama. We have some partners there I'm part of one of our trip programs goes there all the time and this is where the voting rights march happened in 1965, where black people had not been allowed to vote for all of American history, basically for a little window after the Civil War, and then that got shut down. And so another hundred years after enslavement, without voting rights, and we meet with some people who were in that voting rights march. They're still alive and for them this was like people died for this and it's really important that it be maintained and that people vote.
Speaker 2:And they're challenged by the fact that even people in their own community sometimes don't exercise the right and this is like something that people paid a really high price for and we really need to take seriously and we need to. And it can be frustrating because think well, I voted nobody and nothing changes whatever. But but that mentality is part of what keeps us kind of trapped too. And if we were more willing to be thoughtful and exercise our right to vote, even remembering that nobody is going to bring everything that we want. Nobody's the perfect candidate they shouldn't be. If they are, then we need to check ourselves. If we've fully identified with somebody and we're 100% for them, then we have literally probably made somebody a messianic figure and that's where we've really slipped into a whole nother place. When we're going to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's helpful. Thank you, todd. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, yeah, it's been great.
