Allen Levi on Theo of Golden

Did you know that August is make a will month? Hi, I'm Corey Whitehead from Christianity Today. Through our partnership with Philanthrop Corp, I received biblically grounded estate planning guidance that helped me better steward what God has entrusted to me. The process was simple, it was on my schedule, and there was no cost for the guidance. Learn more this month at ChristianityToday.com slash make a will. That's ChristianityToday.com slash make a will. And I said, "When I die, I will take this book to Jesus." And I will say, "I need this for you. This is a gift for you." Hello, this is Russell Moore, and this is the Russell Moore Show, brought to you by Christianity Today. Here we look for signposts in a strange time by standing fast to what really matters. Kingdom over culture wars, truth over tribalism, pilgrimage over partisanship, sanity over cynicism, witness over winning, and Christ over everything. Today we have a conversation to do just that. Today's episode is talking to Alan Levi, who is the author of Theo of Golden, and before we get to the interview, let me just tell you this. I was in the middle of this interview, and normally I try to stay in the flow of the conversation, but there was a moment when I stopped and thought to myself, "You know, this might be my favorite interview I've ever done." And I had to sort of get my attention back to go forward with the conversation because I think one of the things you'll find in this is the very reason that this book is, number one, this week on the New York Times bestseller list, number one on Amazon right now. When we recorded it, it was number two, but it's number one now. And it's resonating with people, and I think you're going to find out why, because there's something about Alan that has a kind gravity. And I think one of the things I loved about this interview is it's great for people who've read the book. It's also great for people who haven't read the book, but want to. It's great for people who won't ever read the book, but who want to have a sense of, is it really possible to have strong kindness in a time as mean and cynical as this one? I think you'll see the answers, yes. So, let's go to the conversation. Hope you'll enjoy it. Well, it came to a point where I started hearing constantly about the book, The Old Gold, from all kinds of people out there. And so I picked it up, and everybody was saying, "This will really move you in ways that you haven't been moved in a long time, and they were right." It was not until after I had already read this book that I was sitting right here, Alan, where you are right now, and Andrew Peterson, who this is his place, brought up, have you read Alan's book. And then I remembered, and I said, "Wait a minute. "Is it the same Alan that was here "and we had been here at a pipe night dangerous one time, "and I did not put the two together the whole time I was reading the book." Oh my God. Which actually made it really interesting, because I could read it brand new without any sense of familiarity and then put it together. But what I did before our conversation is I just sort of put out there readers of The Old Gold and what kind of questions do you wish that you could ask the author of this book, and I was amazed by the response. Some of these I've just sort of woven in. Some of them I'm going to ask specifically, but one of them is before we even talk about the book, somebody said, "Is it Theo or Theo?" Or since the main character's Portuguese is it "Tao?" And I got to thinking, "You know, I have just been reading it as Theo, "but I may be completely wrong. "Can you illuminate us?" You are exactly right. And Russell, before I answer the question, thank you for letting me be you. Oh, thank you. I have admired your work for a long, long time, and I will confess the last couple of weeks I have beenched on some of your past talks. And you may be entitled to compensation. No, no, no, no. I am your debtor in a big way, but just the substantial nature of the conversations that you have and the fact that your voice is part of the broader public discourse, it's really a blessing to me, and I'm sure to many others, so thank you. So Theo, Theo or Theo, Theo is the way that I pronounced it, but there is an interesting story. I had finished a very substantial manuscript of the story before going to Portugal in the name of research, just to smell the air, see the landscape, and see if I could bring a little more character to the story. And I took an FU with me, and I said one of our several missions is to authenticate the name Theo. I want to make sure it's a Portuguese name. And so I said, let's just be on the prowl for any signage or something of that source that would say this is a valid name to use about a Portuguese character. So we looked and didn't find anything, but we were at a museum of antiquities in Lisbon, and they had recently had a renovation of the facility, and there was a wall, a large wall, with probably 10,000 names, no exaggeration, of people who had donated to the cause. And so I told my nephew, you start in that corner, I'll start in this corner, let's meet in the middle and let's shake hands, and we're gonna find the names, surely here, and so we met in the middle, and it dawned on me that the Degraff T.H. is not a part of Portuguese. And I was pretty disheartened, because I had fallen in love with the name of Theo for a number of reasons. A few days later, I had another nephew come over to share the experience with us, and we were in Porto in the north of the country, and they got lots of little sidewalk cafes, and we were walking along the Duro River, and I just happened to turn my head at the precise moment that I could see a sign about 20 yards away that said Theo's bar and grill, and it was astonishing to me, so we ate a meal there, and I asked the owners, I said, "What is the history of the name?" And he said, "I can't remember if it was "Third or Fourth Generation Greek," but he said, "We've been here a long time, "and we've had this restaurant for many years." And to me, that was certainly a moment of gladness, but it was also an affirmation to me about the choice of the name, and it just kind of gave me a nudge to keep writing, because like every first-time novelist, I met with extreme bouts of frustration, and there were many times that I thought I'll never finish this book, but that really put some wind in my sight. So the correct pronunciation is Theo. Did Theo have a meaning? I mean, since you had chosen it before you went to Portugal, was there a reason you were drawn to that name? Yeah, a number of reasons. First of all, I just like it. It's lyrical, and I think maybe as a musician, I like words that have some melodiousness to them, and to me the word Theo has that. But maybe more significantly, and this would be the more honest answer, I like the sense of divinity that is embedded in the word, theology, theophany, theotacy, so many words. It is a God word, and I wanted the character to be a reflection of what I think a godly man, full of joy, wholly in the best sense of the word would be. And I don't know that many people make that connection. It's certainly not necessary to understand the character or to engage with him, but to me it's significant. Before we talk about the book, I want to ask a three-part question. Okay. Who are you? What do you love? What have you lost? I am a son of the king, most importantly, but I'm also the biological son of a wonderful man who is 98 years old, still alive and well, the son of a mom who would have been 97 today, and the sibling of a brother now departed and three sisters who I love. Lots of nieces and nephews, great nieces and nephews, made an image of God, striving to bear the image of God well, forgiven for all the times that I don't bear that image well. But happy to be here with Russell Moore this morning. In terms of vocation and the 70, almost 70 years that I've lived, I grew up in Columbus, Georgia, went through the public school system, graduated with an English University of Georgia, went to law school, got a law degree, practiced for 10 years, very full-time, moved to Scotland for a couple of years, got a master's in Scottish fiction at the University of Edinburgh. Came back home to part-time law practice, and I was starting to play music a lot, which I've always loved. And so I made the bold decision to leave law practice the second time to become a full-time singer-songwriter. And my career plan was pretty simple. I thought I will do this for two years. I will go broke, and then I'll go back to my other job. Did the other people at the law firm, do they think you were insane? They thought I was insane, but they also had a sense that there's no way Alan can survive doing this. So we will leave him on the letterhead and make him off council. And I was off council, I think, for 10 years. But my career plan of failure after two years did not pay an out, so I did music for all these 10 years. I did music for all these 10 years. And then in 2011, my brother Gary, I got sick, had a brain cancer, which would take me to the third part of your question. What have I lost? I lost my best friend, my mentor, my hero. But too, I lost any sense, if I had much before that, that all there is to life is in this world and in the 70, 80, 90 years that we have here. But I gained a lot of hope, a lot of love for the thought of heaven and the everlasting life that Christ gives to us. And hopefully, every day, I'm losing a little bit more of the old man and becoming more of the man I should be. And you wrote a book about your brother? I did. It was actually a letter that I wrote to my family. I have a really, really bad memory. It's tough on nothing stays there for long. And after a year, I was already starting to forget things about Gary. And so I thought, I'm going for my own sake and for the sake of my family. I'm going to write something that will remind me. And so I started a letter. It ended up being a rather lengthy letter. And I was going to make maybe 20 copies of it for the family. But Andrew Peterson, my dear friend and yours, who was also a mentor and a hero to me, happened to be at the farm where I lived down in Hamilton, Georgia. He had jammed in the kids. And I think it was laying on maybe on the kitchen table or something. I don't remember how he got his hands on it, but he asked me if he could read it. And I said, sure. And I made lots of apologies for the imperfections of the text, what not. But he brought it up here and read it and called me and said, would you mind if we publish this through the rabbit room? And I was certainly honored. I didn't think that it was, it was probably ready for such a thing, but I didn't want to work on it much more. It had been kind of a grueling emotional experience to write it. But he and Pete took it and have stewarded the project well. I'm very grateful, even for my own sake, that I have a record of Gary's life from my perspective, freshly after his death. And just to make one point Russell that comes out of the book, the year that I spent with Gary, and it was exactly 365 days was without a doubt the best year of my life. It was this odd combination of joy and sadness. There was grief, but there was such a deep sense of purpose every day. I quit traveling. I shut down everything except caring for him. And to live with that clarity for a solid year was such a gift, bittersweet in the true sense of the word. Before I get to the number one question that people ask, and I mean overwhelmingly, number one question. I'm recognizing we have several people who said to me, now wait a minute, I'm in the middle of the year of golden right now, or some people that I've just started it, or some people, I'm going to get it, but haven't read it yet, they're asking, is there going to be spoilers in our conversation? And I said, no, because as your fellow Georgian Flanery O'Connor said, a good novel has to have turns that are unexpected, but believable. Right. And there are several here. So I'm not going to give that away for them. So without the spoilers, how would you describe what this book is about to somebody who's saying, I haven't read it yet, I just heard about it, but don't know if I'll read it. That's really a hard question to answer, just because to me it's about so many things. I mean, I could always just describe it as the story of an old man who made choices that allowed him to engage lovingly with people very different than himself, and who lived with a very deliberate sense of engaging with people for the sake of building community. The description that most people share with me when they're talking about the book is that it is a book about kindness, if they had to choose a word. I would add to that though, the book can be read as that, just a book about kindness, a man who has a really win some generosity and a novel way of making friends and meeting people in a town to which he is a stranger. But I would say in addition to being a book about kindness, I would say more deeply, it is a book about the reason for kindness, and this I think can easily be lost, and lost in a sense that doesn't do much damage to the story, but the old man consistently made reference to heaven. Yes. For him, kindness was not a random act as the Cardiical say, as it is, random acts of kindness. That was not the way he would have viewed it. He would have said there is a connection between the canuses that we do every day and the everlasting life to which we are called. So if someone wants to read it, I'm a Christian. I've been a Christian since I was 22. That would be significant to me, but I wrote this book for an audience that I knew would very likely not be Christian or certainly not all Christians. And I wanted them to be able to engage with the story and love the old man and be drawn to his virtue as well. So if someone wants to read it just as a story about kindness, they can do that. But if someone wants to think a little more seriously about why we do kindness, then I think the old provides an answer to that. I think that if we're all on its kindness can very easily become an act of fraud if we're at the center of it, and the old man was certainly not there. But it's a book about incarnation. It's a book about growing old well. It's a book about what it means when that kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven. So many things, but at the end of the day, it's about a man who loves people and loves God and does both well. And this man, elderly man, comes into golden, the name of the Georgia town from a really varied life that we find about, I've got later in the book, but sees paintings on the wall, our drawings on the wall, and is then getting those portraits to the people to whom they belong. And I understand there was a moment like that for you where you actually saw a coffee shop like that. Is that right? That's true. It's a coffee shop that I'm very familiar with. It's in Columbus, a little place called Fountain City Coffee. They make great coffee, but I love to go to the shop to look at the portraits. They're all done by a very good friend of mine, with whom I've collaborated in the past on a children's book and some other projects. But I was looking at the portraits one day, waiting for my order to be prepared, and I know a lot of the people in the frames. And the portraits are very, very reasonably priced, if not on the low side. And I thought, why don't these people, or someone who loves these people, buy these portraits, they're all for sale? And I thought, wouldn't it be fun and interesting to buy all of them and just start presenting them to their rifle owners? So I bought four of them and took them home with me, but immediately the seed corn for the story was planted. And I think maybe as a songwriter Russell, I've gone through life for the last 30 years, every day looking for something to write a song about. And so it's not unusual for some whimsical idea to cross my mind, but that one felt a little more substantial and it felt like much more than a song. I took the four pictures home, I set them on the floor against the wall and started to look at them, and then I started writing scenes. I didn't have a story in mind, but I started writing scenes of what it would be like if I were to take that portrait and give it to that person. And these four people I did not know. And after writing the four scenes I realized, there might really be a story here. There's another novel that I want to write. It's been in my mind for decades. And I thought, well, this might just be a good experiment to see if I have the muscle, the stamina, the discipline to write a piece of long fiction. So I thought, well, I'll write this and just retire it. And then one of these days I'm going to write a real novel about that thing I really want to write about. But as the story started coming together, I mean, it felt like a real story. And when I finished it, I still did nine and ten to do anything with it. I said it aside and some friends rescued it from the dustbin. And you were writing this during COVID? Yeah. Largely. I started I think in 2019. I don't recall the exact time. But I would write for a week and take a month off. I'd write for a day and take six months off. It was just that kind of thing. I gave up numerous times. I thought I don't have the muscle or the stamina or the discipline to do it. But when COVID finally hit and we were all, you know, required to be alone a lot, maybe more than we would like to again. I found that it's the time to write the book. Interestingly, because one could argue that the story was written during the period of COVID. There is no reference to that in the book because I didn't want to pigeonhole the book to a particular time frame. You know what one person noticed that's absent in the book or phones. Yeah. Very intentionally. To me, the takeaway of COVID is that we were not designed to relate to one another virtually. And that's why the word incarnation is so important. You might remember there's a scene in the book where Mrs. Giddly suggested to Theo, why go through all of this trouble? Just by all of them at one time, let's have a gala. You can get it over with. And she was a product of a culture that marketplace that says be efficient. And incarnation doesn't always work that way, especially if we want to meet people one at a time. And so the COVID season for me, it really challenged the idea that we can sit at screens and engage in a really deeply human sense of the word. And so this probably couldn't be proven, but I am more and more of the mindset that the kingdom of God works best when we are close enough to touch the people that we want to love in the name of Christ. I know that we can still love people from afar and we can love people we will never meet or see. But there is something about the fact to me that Jesus came to the world when he did pre printing press pre technology pre industrial revolution, all of those things. He could have come any time, but that definite choice to come at that time when communication was what it was, is meant to teach us something. And so the absence of phones in the story was very deliberate. There were two scenes where there were phones, as I recall, and they were both when Pierce glistened, who's a pretty nasty character. Lovable, maybe in some sense, but nasty at the same time. But he pulled out his phone twice, and in a way that was really obnoxious, offensive, disruptive, and uncad. And that's not to say that phones are like that all the time. But in my own life, I find myself holding mine way too much and maybe being way too dependent on it. And that was AI starts ramping up. I think we all have to ask ourselves, how can we use these tools usefully? And in a way that does not harm us or our relationships. The question that's been asked most, which I'll ask you, but I'll also give a theory. Okay. As to what I think is behind it. Great. Number one question is, is Theo based on a real person? And here's why I think that question is being asked. I think people are saying they're either hoping that there is somebody like Theo out there, or they're afraid that there's not. I mean, I think about in the book, one of the things that starts happening really early when Theo's contacted people about giving them these portraits is there's this initial sense of what's really going on here. Is this dangerous? Yeah. Which makes perfect sense. If I get a letter in the mail that says, hey, come meet me at the promenade, I would think somebody's trying to defraud me or kill me or what have you. Right. So I think there's this sense of people asking, is that really there? And I think behind that is a lot of disappointments that have happened in virtually everybody's life, along with, I may think about David Foster Wallace talked about 20 years ago that there's an irony that is self-protective because if I already know you're a fraud, I'm not going to be disappointed, but that ultimately that self-protectiveness smothers you. If there's not sincerity, we have that and then you have a series of kind of the best products of popular culture over the past several years, breaking bad, for instance, that really gives a dark view of human nature, which is perceived to be true. Yeah. The Maryland Robinson said one time, cynicism feels more honest right now to people and that that's a lie. But I think there are a lot of people that's what they're wanting to know, is, are you seeing something in human nature? Have you seen it somewhere that really exists? It's not just aspirational. The answer is yes. And that is a really, really penetrating question. Maybe for everyone to answer, not just me. What is our view of human nature? There's a men's group that I meet with every Thursday. We've met for 25 or so years. Wonderful group of guys. And one Thursday morning we asked the question, which is the true statement? People are basically bad and they sometimes do good, or people are basically good and they sometimes do bad. And I don't know that we reached a consensus, but that is a roundabout way of maybe asking the same question that some of the readers are asking. There was a line of poetry and I can't call the name of the writer, but he says, we are messed up mixtures of glory and grime. And I think that's the truth of the matter. And I think that that's the biblical way of looking at ourselves, that we are still, no matter how broken we still are the image bearers of God. The old man in the book was able to see that I think admirably in everyone that he met. But we are horribly broken creatures, sometimes willfully, sometimes unintentionally, but just because it's the way we are. But yes, I have met lots of people and this is no stretch who may be not be fully theosque, but they are genuinely canned, gracious, good people. And they tend to be on the simple side. Tolstoy wrote a book once called The Confession. It's the story of his coming to Christ. And he was a member of the literati he had made it to the top of the heap. And he was totally disillusioned with life as were all of the other members of the literati at the time. And he says, the thing that brought him to Christ into the kingdom was the peasants that he spent time around. And I think that he saw their equality of life that sometimes education removes us from or elevates us above. My dad's a forester. I grew up with a lot of blue collar people around me, but they were virtuous men and women. And I think that from them, maybe I have held onto this idea both before and after I came to Christ that there is goodness in the world. But there's a lot of bad too that comes with us. The one person though, and I did not start the book with him in mind that I think formed the character of Theoph me as my brother. And I think I became maybe a wear late in the writing process that I had pretty much channeled him into the novel. He was 55 when he died. But I'm not sure that he couldn't have taught Thea what thing or two about how to be kind. Well, my brother Gary was dyslexic, soft of the earth, plain speaking, but he was all that. And so to the readers who doubted that there are saints like that still in the world, I would say just keep your eyes open. They're out there. There's that story. Forgive me, I can't recall which prophet was Elijah or Elijah who was downhearted about the fact that he was the only one who died. Elijah? Yeah. And the Lord opens his eyes and says, is that right? There were angels in one story. I met you, Elijah and the young man up and there it chariots the fire. And then there's another story where the Lord says, I've got 8,000 of you in the land. And I think sometimes that just because the world is so dark and because the bad news gets out so quickly and usually with such volume that we get blind to the fact that there is still the beauty of God all around us in people. We maybe have to dig a little deeper to find it and work harder to believe it. When I was writing the book, every now and then I would pull up and say, okay, is this credible? Is this character credible? Could this encounter be credible? Could this story be credible? And there were some parts in the story where maybe it was a stretch, but I was satisfied. Every scene that I wrote in the book, this could happen. There could be a man that goes into a coffee shop and starts buying portraits one at a time and doing this. And if there's not, then maybe I'll start doing it myself and we'll make it a reality. Well, you know, one of the things that I was struck by in reading it is that you have this really stark picture of kindness and grace, but you don't have sentimentality. And I think that's what I kind of expected when people first said, oh, you really need to read the, I've got, for even you that you had written. You really read the golden as I thought, well, maybe this will be, you know, to go back to Flannery O'Connor, but what she said when people would say, well, you need to write edifying books. And she said, you know, if I wrote the kind of books, you're talking about it to be a book club. But would I actually read the book? Oh, no, no, no, no. There's judgment here. There's that eye of God that has seen some really horrific things. There's some acts of violence. But it feels like to me to go back to Flannery O'Connor, that what you're doing there is what she talked about when she said, violence shows and darkness, shows what is dispensable and indispensable in a person's character. And it seems to me that that's exactly what's happening here, that there's a sense of mortality that strips away some of the dispensable stuff. Am I reading that? So our friend Andrew, I heard, I listened to a talk of his recently where he talks that good art is always rooted in truth. And of course, that can be understood and explained and employed in lots of different ways. But I wanted the book to be a reflection of life as most readers know it. There's a lot of death in this book. Yeah. I've had a couple of folks who have have said, "It sure is a sweet story." And I said, "Really?" I said, "So, Lamisha's mama dies, William dies, Basil's sister dies, Tony kills a little boy." Yeah. There's a lot of bad stuff in this book. Yeah. But it does not drown out the power of kindness and goodness in the world. And I wanted there to be very similar to between the text and life as we know it in Nashville or Columbus or Atlanta or LA or wherever we happen to be. And so, you know, I hope it's not sentimental. And at the end of the book, I very late in the writing process, I added a scene where Theo talks about sadness. And he describes himself, "I think something like a veteran of sadness." He talks about having lived a long life. And there's no way that we dodge the bullet of sadness if we live life honestly. And in a time where we try to curate our images through social media and whatnot to be happy all the time or on top of the world all the time, I think that there is a yearning among many of us to be given permission to own our sadness. And when I wrote that scene, I was hoping that people might say, Yes, I feel that too. And I think some of the strongest responses are also that I've gotten from readers or have been people who will write a letter and say, "I have been through this awful experience recently." And thank you for acknowledging that we can have joy and sadness in this life. They have to coexist because they're both out there. Hey, we're going to take a quick break. Stick around for the rest of the conversation. A neuroscientist holds a human brain in her hands and says, "I don't know what death is, but I know this isn't just equipment." A physicist discovers that the universe is balanced on a knife's edge. Change one number, any number, and none of this exists. A man goes seven weeks without a phone and his memory jumps from the 50th percentile to the 99th. These aren't thought experiments. They're real stories, real science, real people sitting with questions that don't have easy answers. Wonderology is a podcast about science, faith, and the search for awe. You can find wonderology wherever you get your podcasts, or at wonderologyshow.com. So, let's get curious. [Music] My compadre Beth Moore teaches a Bible. She has a question for you. Okay, thank you. Which is, was there anything as you were writing this book that surprised you? A turn that happened where you looked back and said, "I really, at least in my conscious mind, didn't see that coming." Beth, that happened frequently. And the proof of that would probably be the fact that while I was writing, I cried so often. I'm not an easy cryer, but I'm not ashamed to cry. And I was listening to, well, I usually had soft soundtrack music playing while I was writing. And there were many times that the music and the scene just converged perfectly in some cinematic way. And I cried buckets while I was writing the story. Because the scenes just started happening, I had no idea where the pen was going to take me honestly. I know I was writing the words, and I know that I was conjuring up the images in my mind. But, almost start to finish. And again, I didn't start with a narrative arc. I didn't have an outline. I didn't have a plan. I didn't have characters. I literally just started writing after I had written those introductory scenes as an experiment. And the story just, every chapter, really, they were not planned. And I think every time I cried, it was part sadness, always gratitude, and just the sheer surprise by joy that we get sometimes in the creative process. Makes me think of that beacuneur line when you find unbidden tears. It's telling you something about where you need to go. Yeah. Yeah. Always listen to our tears. Ryan. Yeah. The artist, Mako Fujimura, wrote in and said that he was so stunned to find his art mentioned here. And he said, since then, so many people have come up and have said, I read this in The Old Golden and said, how did you encounter my paintings? Yeah. Now, I'm hoping that what you're, because you just say Fujimura. I hope you're going to say, well, that's Frank Fujimura who is in Cleveland. Oh, I love his work. But I said, when I read this, I thought, you know, any book that has cameo appearances both by Mako Fujimura and George Jones is my kind of. There you go. Oh, yes. Those are the polar extremes. Maybe not. Maybe they're not the polar extremes. I bet those two guys would love each other. I think they would. Yeah. The Fujimura work has just been on my radar for a long time. I encountered it for the first time at a passion conference years ago. Someone who had, I think purchased some canvases for his business out in Texas. And I were talking about art that we like. And I immediately fell in love with it. I've got the large, I think is a crossway Bible. It has a lot of the Fujimura work in it. And I love it. I'm not even sure what to call it other than grand, holy, beautiful, and glorious. But I did want to give a nod to artists who I really love. And he's one of them. So thank you for the question. Thank you more importantly for the work. And then also I've read essays and some bits of prose about his approach to art. Yeah. And just the way that it can be used in ministries, especially his sort of art that's abstract or it's not realism by any stretch. But there is something just about the tonalities of what he does. And just the freedom, just just the richness of the way he uses color. And then the golden touch that he uses in so much of his work, the literal gilding. Yeah. I really, really love it. So thanks for the question. We are honored. Emmy says, you know, that reading this book actually improved her character. She said it played such a role in character formation by giving her sort of an imaginative construction of where to go. And there were some people who said similar things. And some of them said that the primary way that happened was bringing an awareness of attentiveness and the lack of attentiveness that the way that Theo is able to be, it seems completely present with those people every time. Do you think that that's possible for literature to actually play a role in sanctification character for us? Absolutely. I was reading this morning in Mark four, where Jesus tells the story of the mustard seed. And right after that, it says that Jesus did not say anything to his disciples without using parables. He told them parables to the extent that they could understand them. He understood their limitations. He was attentive to his audience. But it says that when he got along with them, he would explain everything that he had taught them. He used literature. Yeah. I had a friend of mine. He said, I don't read things that aren't true. And I said, well, do you just skip over Matthew 13 when you read your Bible? And so many other passages where Jesus says the kingdom of God is like. Yeah. He's just painting word pictures for us. I do think that art in many different forms can do a lot to develop our character and our sense of attentiveness. I'm sure that I would credit much, if not all, of what little character development I have achieved in life to things that I have read and then try to put into practice. I would say to Amy though, first of all, thanks for the question. But also maybe the book didn't so much form your character as just bring to your mind a reminder that we all are capable of virtuous lives. And I think sometimes we hear so much bad news now, so much that underscores the broken part of us that we forget that we are image bearers of God and we are capable noble deeds in the world. Not ostentatious deeds necessarily. And to me, I think there's a frustration and I've gotten a lot of mail to suggest that this is probably true. A lot of us listen to the news. We read things. We know that there are so many bad things going on in the world and we ask the question, what can I do? Yeah. I can't go to many applicants. And it has harkened to my thinking, Russell, and you will love to hear this name. Wendelberry. Oh, man. You and I love Wendelberry. Yes. If it weren't for C.S. Lewis and Wendelberry and the Bible, I just don't know what I would be. But Wendelberry wrote a wonderful essay once called Think Little. Yeah. And he says that typically when we have a big problem, especially the American way of dealing with it is a big solution, which he says usually perpetuates the problem and enlarges some administrative body that does nothing to fix it. And so he encourages us think little. In other words, don't save the planet. That's too big. But save your quarter acre lot. Sort of thing. And I think what Theo does as a story and he is a character is he reminds us if you will sit on a bench with another image bearer of Christ or God and say, tell me your story and what happened to you then glorious things can happen. And in order to do that, we have to be still. We have to be humble. We have to be silent. About the same time that Theo came out, David Brooks, but came out. How to know a person. You did a wonderful, wonderful conversation with him. And I love David Brooks. I don't know him, but I love his work. And in one of the early chapters, he's talking about the art of conversation. And he says the perfect place to practice this is on a park bench. And I thought, well, that's exactly where the action of Theo takes place. But there is a teniveness there. See us Lewis says that love is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity. And I assume by that he means that the things that we love, the truth, the people, the beauty, that's what brings unity. It brings congruity to our lives, a cohesiveness. But he says it is maintained by the will. It is deliberately strengthened by habit. And it is reinforced by the grace that we ask and receive from God. And when I look at Theo in light of that definition, his strategy it for lack of a better term. or his practice of meeting with people one at a time, that was maintained by the will. It was in his calendar. He thought about it. It would not be a stretch to say that he prayed about it. He thought about those people very much long in advance. It was deliberately strengthened by habit. The first time he did it, he was a nervous wreck. At 86, he was an old man that felt like he was getting ready to go to junior senior prom. He was so nervous about meeting Monet. But as he did it more and more, he kind of eased up and realized this is the beautiful holy thing I get to do. Then it was reinforced by the grace that I'm sure he asked and received from God. Lord, let this encounter with this person be a good thing. I think that when I go to lunch, sometimes for people is usually in a hurry. But if I am attentive to what that moment is, the engagement of two image bears of God, eating a meal at a particular moment in time, I would probably slow down. I would probably pray, and I would say, Lord, will you please make me grateful for this exquisite opportunity that I've got to sit with Russell Moore in Nashville, Tennessee and talk to a great mind who loves you and loves the same things that I love deeply. I mean, what could be more precious than that? And I think that the story tries to underscore that and to remind people that we don't have to do grandios things, little nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love. And that will move the kingdom forward. Some people will say when they read this, I'm surprised at how explicit the Christianity is and what their references heaven, that amazing Luke 24 sermon, St. James, those things. And some people will say, I really like the way that he came at it sideways and there's not explicit Christianity there, which is interesting that those both those viewpoints can be there. I'm wondering, young life had a lot of influence on your life. How do you know when it's the right time to sort of talk explicitly? I mean, even in the book Theo is being asked about heaven at one point, and he doesn't go directly at it. And it's not because he's afraid of it. It's because that wasn't the right setting context for something that holy. How do you know when to come in directly and when to come in sideways when you're talking about things as deep and spiritual as faith? Yeah. There's a third camp among readers who say you did not go far enough. Oh, is that right? And I think that if they understood what I think my specific calling is as a creative person, they might be maybe a little more forgiving. When I left law practice to do music full time, I knew that I did not want my principal audience to be the church. I came to Christ at 22. I was raised in the church because my parents made me be raised in the church. But I remembered, you know, even at that young age, what it was like to have somebody try to force a belief system on me that was either frightening to me or so opaque that I just couldn't grasp it. So when I left law practice, one of the first things that I did Russell was write a mission statement for what I thought God would have me do as a singer songwriter. And the very short version of the mission statement that I wrote was use songs and stories to provoke Godward thought. There's a fuller mission statement in that, but that is kind of the cornerstone. So it meant that I would write songs that I could sing to a corporate gathering. If I did a gig where somebody said, Hey, we know you're a person of faith, but we don't want any mention of that. I could gladly say, I'm so honored you would let me sing to your group today. And I would do it. And so as a writer now, that mission statement still holds true from me. I remember what it was like to be outside and how frightening and how difficult. And especially now with so many main things that are done in the name of Christ, how little I wanted to be a part of it. And I love people. I've got so many people in my life who don't share my faith in Christ. And I want to engage them, not with me, but with him. And so it's a fine line to answer your question. How do I know the true answers? I don't. I don't know that I get it right. I don't know that I got it right this time. But I have been very encouraged by responses from people who've written who are not followers of Christ. And they acknowledge we know you're a Christian. But thank you for the way you handled that part of your life and that part of your story. That is some affirmation. I still live with a healthy bit of fear that maybe there is some cowardice in me. I hope there's not. But I do want to, as the scripture commands us to gently answer those who don't share my viewpoint about life. I'm glad that people who don't share that perspective are as forgiving as I hope I will be when I hear opinions different than my own or beliefs different than my own. I have a another theory. There's what it is. We always tend to overreact to the last bad thing in the church. So for instance, for a long time, there was this pressure to really serve Christ. You have to be in full-time Christian service. Everything then became, you don't have to be in full-time Christian service to serve Christ. So there never was even any comment made. You may be God's calling you to be a missionary or to be a, and I think that for a long time, there's been this emphasis to say, life in Christ is not just about heaven. It's about right now, which of course is true. But when that's all that said, you start to lose it. It seems to me that one of the things that this book is doing is recovering a sense of heaven and the back flow of that into the life now, but that doesn't try to diminish it and say, "We're not concerned about this right now." It's actually, Theo, it seems to me, is in this state of mortality really focused on heaven and kind of indirectly then is carrying out this life of kind. Am I reading that right? Yeah, perfectly. And you will be very familiar. I'm sure with the writing of C.S. Lewis, where he says that in his "Bend throughout history," the case that the ones who were most interested in heaven did most good for the world. Think of things like hospice and red gloss and mother Theresa and millerid fuller. So many people who were heavenly-minded people, but they left a huge footprint in the world because they really did believe that the kingdom of God in some vague, dim form could be a reality in this world. There is a passage in the story that says, Theo's story, that says, "His playfulness was deadly serious. So when he would engage with people to present them their portrait and tell them what he saw of them in the lands on the paper, it was more than just flattery. It was more than just a nice sentimental moment. He really wanted to connect that person sitting next to him, to the God who made them and loves them, with a love deep enough to send his son for us. So the idea that heaven and earth are entirely separate, I think, would have been anathema to that character. To me, as anathema to the gospel, and it certainly is anathema to me. I mean, the fact that I lost my brother, but could still grieve with the hope that this is not the end of the story. There's a blessed truth to be able to go through life with." I'll end with the second most often. This is going by way too fast. It is for me to be honest, but the second most asked question, I hesitate to ask because in some way it feels like putting pressure on you. But really, there's kind of two parts to it. There are some people who we mentioned Wendell Berry, people who are saying, "Is this the beginning? Is Golden going to be like Port William, a place where we get to sort of inhabit book by book with these different places?" And other people, more often, saying, "Will Theo of Golden be a movie?" One person even saying Anthony Hopkins needs to be Theo. But I think behind that is another question. That is one of the things that you talk about so much, you represent, is virtue or kindness without audience. Left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing in about the ordinary. I was really moved by when you're talking at one point about the janitor. It wasn't just that you had this full picture of somebody, but it's that when you're describing him at the end, he got a promotion to a higher level of janitor. And there was a, I don't even know how to describe it, but a kind of realization of success, not just a dignity, but of actual success in a way that people don't tend to think of it. I wonder if I'm sure that you did not expect this book to reach this many people so that people would be talking about, where's the next one? In a way, I mean one person said, Is there Ellen of Golden? Is that coming in? Or there'll be a movie about it. Does that make you uncomfortable? Does it feel like it jeopardizes in some way what you're describing? Or is it instead something that you can say, because again, my theory. My theory is that you are truly hold this so lightly that it kind of amuses you that this has gone so far, but you're not living for it. I hope not. I hope not. And I really hope not. Everything about this book has been a total surprise. When I finished it, I put it aside, patted myself on the back and did say, "Okay, you've got the muscle to do this, and one day you will write a novel." And I've got five friends that I meet with every year for a long weekend. One of them is probably known to a number of listeners, Bebo Norma. I've known Bebo since he was a little boy. And they knew that I was working on a story. When we get together for a long weekend, we just kind of give the year in review. And so they asked me what is up with the story you were writing, and I said, "I did it. I'm done." And so the question was, "What are you going to do with it?" And I said, "Nothing, I guess." Maybe at some point I would have resurrected it and done something with it, but I had no plans to, but they asked if they could read it. So I said, "Yeah, you can read it." They read it. And they strongly encouraged me to do something with it. I trust their judgment much more than my own. I'm very self-critical. And so I worked on it a bit more and then hired my niece. I knew I'm too old, and there was no Asian in the world would bat an eye at me. So I said, "Let's see if we can sell publishing. If we sell 100 copies, if we sell a thousand, I'll be over the moon." So we put it out there and it started as a trickle and just kind of kept selling and people were very kind. Book clubs picked it up. The attention that has come with it is, I mean, it's gratifying. I mean, really, I'm very, very grateful. I'm very honored. It's a lot of fun. I get giddy about it at times. But I've never liked being in front of people or being the center of attention. And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I don't know where the root of that comes from. But so you chose to be an attorney and a musician. And saying, right, it's insane. It is insane. I don't know what God has in mind for me. But I will say overwhelmingly the sense that I have about it is gratitude. I'm really, really thankful that if this burns bright for just a very short time, but changes a person's mind about how they view life in the world and what could be better than that. I think that anyone who writes, especially if they want to serve people through their writing, I know there's that old Faulkner argument that art is kind of a god unto itself and you don't let anything get in the way of your art. I think that the kinder way to use art is as a servant. And at many, many times while I was writing this book and thousands of times when I was writing songs, I really would ask for myself consciously, deliberately, can, will this serve the people that hear it? And I think not to do that is to serve the art and the God who gives it to us and it deserves our own talents. So the fact that the Ohus made a splash is great. Will it become a movie? I don't know. I don't understand the movie world at all. I'm a little intimidated by it. There are very few movies that I ever liked more than the books that they were based on, you know? And if I can serve the world of books, that's the world that I want to serve. If movies makes that more possible, then maybe a movie will happen one day. We might have to cast you in that movie, Russell. Maybe Tony the bookseller. Somebody said, he was not a Christian, but he was present at a talk that you gave. And maybe, I don't know if this was the right characterization, but what this person took from it is that you talked about, I see this book as something that I've done for Jesus. And he was actually moved by that, even though not a Christian. I think the reason for it is because it gave him a window into sort of transcendent meaning, even if he didn't completely get it. But he read you right. He did. Yeah. He did very much. When Aaron and my niece and I started working on this, she being the business manager, asked the very reasonable question, how will we define success? And I think what she wanted was some numerical metrics. How much money? How many units? How will I know that I have served the project and served you well as your employee? And I told her, I said, Aaron, I don't need any money. We don't have to sell any books. I have, we have already succeeded. And she, understandably, a bit curious, asked for explanation. And I said, when I die, I will take this book to Jesus. And I will say, I'm here for you. This is a gift for you. And I think that if I can say that about other aspects of my life, if any of us can, then we will have been successful in the true essence of the word. When I left law practice to go into music, a good friend of mine who knew that I would be making my living in front of audiences that I had to please. She gave me the sage bit of advice. She said, always remember, at the end of the day, the thing that matters most is the applause of the nail scarred hands. And I think that if we can live with that hope and keep that as our north star, then our art, our work, our families, our place in the community will be pretty well guarded. I don't normally do this. I don't think I've ever done it before. I am just thinking about a lot of these people that I've heard from her reading this book, who are combating cynicism and unkindness and suspicion or artificiality and all those things. I wonder if we could close for that listener for you to pray for him or her. Sure. I'd love to. That would be great. Can I thank you before I do that? Sure. Thank you for letting me be here today. Thank you. I'm no more comfortable here than I am anywhere else with a microphone in front of me, but you've made this a real pleasure. And thank you for what you do. I know you have taken some hits over the years. You have battled cynicism. You have spoken truthfully to the church and to the world. And the world needs rustle more so keep up the good work. Thank you. Lord Jesus, thank you that you call us to lives of hope. Lord, you know far better than we do how broken it is, how far removed from your original intent it has become. Lord, just how we have desecrated the garden and the beauty that you entrusted to us. And Lord, we can look at that and be so overwhelmed. Lord, we can be so tempted to give up hope to abandon the love that you have called us to live out day to day. But I pray Father that you would continue to give us stories, good conversations, deep friendships, intimacy, beauty, laughter, music, creation, seasons, to remind us Lord that you are alive, that your image dwells in us, and that there is every reason in this world for hope as long as Christ lives. I thank you Lord that as we enter into a spring time and Lord as we approach that great celebration of when Jesus gave Himself up for us, Lord, turn our hearts to Him and let us seed Lord at the cross how broken we are, yes, but how great your love for us is. And I thank you Lord for people who have picked up and read this little story of an old man from Portugal. I pray Lord most of all that it is a blessing to you. I pray that it honors you, but I pray to Lord that it would provoke God with thought and in climb hearts to seek after you with heart, soul, mind and strength. I'm reminded Lord of what one great writer said there are two categories of people in the world, those who serve God with all of their hearts because they know Him. And those who seek God with all of their hearts because they know Him not. I pray Father that if there is such a seeker who holds the book of the oath and reads that story, I pray Lord that that story would draw them closer to their destination of finding you. Thank you Lord for letting us share this time together. We pray that it has been a joy to you. Thank you for being here with us in Jesus' name. Amen. The book is the O of Golden. It has transformed a lot of lives, including mine. I'll leave by thanks for being here today. Thank you. Thanks for listening. If this episode meant something to you, share it with a friend and leave a review of the show wherever you listen. It helps others mind the show. Until next time remember the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not, the darkness will not, the darkness cannot overcome it. This is Russell Moore, onward. The Russell Moore show is a production of Christianity today. It's produced by Leslie Thompson. Clarissa Mole is the executive producer and the associate producer is Mackenzie Hill. This episode was mixed and mastered by Kevin Morris with video production by Sam Cedar. Eric Petrick and Mike Cosmer are the executive producers of CT Media Podcasts and Matt Stevens is senior producer. Thank you to John Gara for allowing us to use his song Citizens As Our Theme. ♪ Power has several prizes ♪ ♪ Handcuffs can come in all sizes ♪ ♪ Love has a million disguises ♪ ♪ But winning is simply not one ♪ There's a question that you've carried for a while now. About faith, about science, about whether they can both be true at the same time. Wonderology's a podcast that takes that question seriously. Not to settle it. But to explore it. And not just as ideas. But as stories, true stories from real people. Wonderology is a show about science, faith, and the search for awe. You can find Wonderology wherever it is that you get your podcasts. For at wonderologyshow.com. Let's get curious.