Charlie Kirk and America's Cross-Cultural Divide

(upbeat music) - Hello everyone, welcome to the Esomacali podcast. I'm your host Esomacali. This week as usual, join on our, I'm not gonna call you co-host right now, but I feel like I've given you associate host. That's kind of like, it's like a raise, but it's not like a fourth thing. - Okay. - Our associate host, Anthony. - I'll take you to what I will take that. - Mike Strailer, and we're blessed on the podcast to have the co-host of True Stable, Christina Edminton. She's also a church elder at Cornelia Church, and she's also a church consultant. So if your church is whack, she can tie it in your church up a little bit. Is that what you do? That's probably not how you ever-- - Well, that's the work of the whole system. - That's what it's been. - But if you wanna do right, there's a way for-- - What if our podcast is whack? Can you help us out on the-- - Can you fix us up a little bit? - First of all, that's the first step is to admit where you are. - Oh look at this. - We made a step forward. - It's already charging us. - Yeah, this is a voice. - That might be why she said, yeah, you need to come and help these people. Okay, man, it's been a rough week. It's been a rough week. - Yeah. - I think everybody knows that even at this point, almost a week later, the most of the country and most of the church are still thinking through and processing the violence that has marked our country over the year, but in particular last week, with school shootings, in particular, the assassination of Charlie Kirk. And so rather than just jumping into the political analysis of this, which is important, things we ought to do, I thought this has been interesting for me because this is the first time that I've gone, that I've experienced one of these things in a long time as a pastor. For a long time, I've been a columnist, I've been a professor, I've been a podcasted, but this is the first time I had to think through how I'm going to address this issue in my congregation as a pastor, a particular people who I know, not as a general statement that goes out into the wider internet. So let me start by asking you guys this question. How would you process this as a pastor or someone who attends a church? And is that any different than some of the stuff that you've done as a public intellectual? So we'll start with you. - Yeah, yeah. - You have an appreach this Sunday, right? So I was already on the calendar to preach this Sunday. So yeah, it was hard to figure out, do I change the sermon, do I tweak the sermon, do I just ignore the topic, our church, it's a pretty purple church. And so I would imagine that a third really liked Charlie Kirk or a third really didn't, and a third had no idea who he was before Wednesday. And I've prayed about it a lot and talked to a lot of friends and pastor friends and I basically went the route of I addressed it but didn't change my whole sermon around it but tried to find an approach that would could unify the congregation during this time that we are called to love our enemies and to see the humanity that when the country is chaotic, Christians are called not to join the chaos but to care for the people in need who are being impacted by it. So I think it went, well, I haven't gotten any complaints yet. - So I thought you said you passed the call to you, you don't know yet. - That's true, right before we started recording my pass to call to you. - So you might, we'll see. - We had to edit this part out. You might be looking for another treasure next week. It was really interesting because for me, I was both thinking I ended up writing two things in the relatively short aftermath of the event. One was an opinion piece that maybe we'll be published somewhere. So I wrote something to like the wider society and then I also wrote a public letter to our congregation, not a pastoral letter to our congregation. And in the pastoral letter, I was very clear that, and this is obviously we're, we still to do everything. We were pretty early into figuring out, we didn't know the motivations, we didn't know anything. And so I kind of returned to these basic core principles about Christians rejecting violence and that Christians being agents of peace but that being an agent of peace or rejecting violence is never separated from truth telling, right? That even the idea of loving your enemy involves loving your enemy enough to want the best for your enemy and for your enemy not to be trapped in false narratives that doesn't liberate anybody. And so for me, I was trying to do that in a congregation. And once again, I was actually asking, and I spoke with some of our staff, actually I was so shit pastoral who I spoke with, that's the person who we really processed it with, is what is the line between my personal opinion and what I need to say to the congregation. When you got to church on Sunday, I had a sermon already, but I felt like since I had done the pastoral letter, I didn't need to preach about it again, but obviously I brought it up in the sermon because it just kind of fit the topic. One of the things that's really interesting is the gospel and the scriptures always are relevant. And so I found places in the sermon where it relevant. And then after that, I gave it an out of the congregation. This is who we are. We prayed for his family, the victim of our political violence. And so those are the things that we did. And I've gotten some emails that I got back from my congregation have been all positive, but obviously they're self-selected, right? So if you're in our congregation, you're going to hear about race and justice from I think it's theological hearing and orthodox perspective. And so we tried to balance, not turning, and we said this, I'll say this, this is one line and not to put my own self in my own sermon, right? (laughing) In my own podcast. One of the things I tried to get at is, like we're not trying to become the democratic church or the Republican church, and I'm not making the moral equivalency, but I'm talking about a more comprehensive rebellion. And when I really wanted our church to be able to do it, to be able to think sober mindedly and coherently about the issues that were going on today. So that's our churches. What was going on at Cornelian? And you were in Eldena, did your pastor, who's also your husband? (laughing) - Yes, he's both. He's far as informal, he's more spouse. - Yeah, but I'm trying to think about outside of just running this by with his spouse. Did he talk through what he was going to do with the other elders in the congregation? Aren't there play out of Cornelian? - So I think it's important for us to have, we're a Presbyterian church, we're a team led church. And so I think we really try to have a thoughtful, even though diverse, but comprehensive voice to speak to all kinds of things that are happening. So I think his sermon this week and last week, we are concluding a teaching series of basically the rise of David to the kingship. So it's been a lot of conversation about Saul. And ironically the sermon last week, I think it was titled something like, what happens when your enemy falls? And basically it's David's response to Saul's death. And then this week we talked about, basically God's grace over humble beginnings of what God is still doing with the church. So it was hopeful in that sense too. So it was, I think more so by the time he got up to preach for him, I think it was a dress maybe a bit indirectly about what our calling and response is as believers who are going somewhere in Jesus and how we stand out in this society. I did the opening call to worship and I just noted, have he talked to our worship director? He said that he had already had multiple folks come up to him before service started, who were really overwhelmed, who were very anxious, about multiple things that happened last week. So not just related to Charlie Kirk, but just the dominoes that fell around that. And so we knew that we needed to shape our service and to create a space for people to be able to come forward. So we made a very quick decision where I identify some of our leaders who will come up at the end during the vending diction and lead time of prayer and lament with people who wanted to come forward who were feeling pretty dysregulated. And then also we have a congregational prayer time and one of our elders, Dr. Alan Godwin, who's a psychologist and he has a couple of books, one that's going to be coming out soon specifically about really about how we're shaped over time to develop an attraction to these kind of conspiratorial theories and all these pieces and he studies conflict and conflict management. He was, I think, providentially and perfectly situated to lead the congregational prayer and was able to speak about layers of things that happened this past week. And that God sees us. Sorry, you mentioned a little bit before the podcast. So there are some things you think has gotten lost in this course about what happened last week. Can you speak a little bit to that? Sorry to interrupt you. Yeah, no, no worries. So yeah, I mean, I think I believe the number I heard that last week was about, I think it's the 47th school shooting this year. So that also took place. And I think for our congregation here in Nashville, we are still very emotionally connected to what happened at Covenant. I talked to Dr. Catherine Coons, who was the head of schools. I talked to her the day before in the four year of the church. And the next day she was killed in the school that she provided leadership for. And so, and I didn't, I didn't have a close relationship with her, but that stay is out of my mind. And there were people in our congregation who absolutely had a strong connection to her. And so it's before us, the consequences of our lack of response to the precious lives of our children that are in school. And so that, that stands out to me from last week as well. Not to mention the fact that I have a daughter who attends. an HBCU in Virginia and she was one of that was one of the schools that was experienced targeting targeted threats. Yeah. And I believe the estimate is up to 20 different HBCUs in the country experienced that by end of day. So the domino reaction that we saw as well as clearly a public assassination, layers and layers of things that were incredibly disturbing and painful. Yeah, I mean there are so much that you said that I want to touch on. I want to make sure I get to these things in order. The first one is there's a lot of things that are related to the Charlie Kirk incident that kind of gotten lost in it. It is another manifestation of gun violence. That's what this is. It's political assassination of some type. It's related to gun violence. It's in the context of violent events that surrounded it. They were completely unrelated, namely the school shooting. But then there's the aftermath of the threats to historically black colleges and universities. Well, the interesting things about that that that I found particularly disheartening is there isn't any current narrative. We don't know anybody's motivations. But there is it any current narrative that ties the shooting of Charlie Kirk to his statements about race or that this was motivated by the shooter wasn't black. And that's the story with the black colleges and universities. But the fact that when the country is in an emotional state that the people who who who are who receive threats and who feel uncomfortable are historically black institutions, I think that was that was something that revealed the brokenness in context. The idea that historically black colleges and universities, which one wasn't Hampton that shut down for two days? Yeah, Hampton that's where my daughter attends. So I'm and I'm an alum as well. But yeah, that happens shut down for two days. And I think also it revealed, I think, clearly a lack of trust in kind of our current FBI because what was reported is a sense of that these are these are hoax and don't take this seriously, kind of keep it moving. And then the leadership of these institutions had to make a call to say, okay, do we just receive that and keep it moving? Or do we continue to move forward with a sense of caution? And the president of that institution continued the safety protocol. And as a parent, I was glad that he continued that safety protocol. But it definitely in talking to my daughter and others who were impacted. You know, the semester has just started. And kids are coming back as every college student, you know, of all backgrounds with a sense of excitement and opportunity and connecting. And they have so much on their plate. And then to have this very real act of psychological terrorism. And just the way that it just knocks the the hopefulness and the zeal and the joy of a of a of a college student just out of the room. And so we to disappoint it, frustrated, scared, said lots of emotions from a parent standpoint. For what we could not protect our children from. And we send our kids to HBCUs for a variety of reasons. But certainly one of them is because we want them to be able to learn in a space where they're not constantly having their sense of identity threatened or challenged. And yet this is what came to their experience. And I think if there's one thing that marks everybody's response to what's happening right now, or at least a significant portion of the country's response is fear. It's the idea that the assassination of Charlie Kirk leads us to this idea what's next. Because it doesn't feel like we're in this place where I trust the institutions and mechanisms of government and society. And at least this base level of shared identity and hopes and dreams to be something that that brings us together in times of trauma. I think that in times of conflict now, we're using these conflicts to pull each other further and further apart. And it doesn't seem to be enough people who are stepping into the gap to say maybe we could do something better and be a little bit different. I mean, I think the lack of trust is so evident right now, both in terms of, you know, I've seen we have the early reports of what was written on the bullets and things like that. And I've seen people on either side essentially say, well, you can't trust that. The FBI is just going to put whatever they want on those bullets. And you're seeing the lack of trust in the president that Trump considers continues to put all of the blame on the far left and is not willing to actually ratchet down the temperature. You see the lack of trust among our elected officials who reports are coming out how terrified all of them are. Of the rise of this political violence. And yet the people who are actually in charge of the country could actually help to bring down the temperature still aren't doing so because they want to continue to score points on their side. So this might seem to be unrelated, but there is this article that we were talking about that we wanted to discuss on the podcast. And it actually deals with recent college graduates and not just recent college graduates, but other people who are struggling with friendship. There's been a lot of coverage of the loneliness epidemic. And one of the things they often say, what do you do when you're struggling with loneliness? Well, you need to get off the internet and you need to go outside, touch grass, make relationships. And one of the things that the person spoke about is that making friendships is risky because friends often sin, right? There is no friendship that doesn't involve some kind of conflict because who you're friends with, your friends are the person. And a person is going to disappoint you. And the idea that sometimes the riskiness of relationships leads people to feel like I'm not sure that's this thing that I want to engage in. And the reason I thought that was it has nothing to do with any of the politics that's going on right now. But it made me think about how difficult it is to have friendships in a moment like this. You know, I'm African-American, obviously. And when you go into majority culture context and something like the Charlie Kirk assassination happens, what it does is it opens up this sometimes huge chasm between like the two sides that feels like almost unbridgeable. And what I mean by that, it's not whether or not we think that political violence is bad. Everybody will agree there. It's not the fact that we lament that someone who was a husband and a father now there's a grieving widow and children have to grow up without their parents. Well, I wanted their parents. It's the kind of African-Americans don't treat racial insensitivity as a small matter. Now, I've seen most of I've read most of the arguments around some of the statements that Charlie Kirk made. And if you understand each one of them in context, there's at least a plausible explanation that some people try to put forward. I'm not convinced about those plausible explanations. But that's not the issue though. The issue is that kind of racial insensitivity is for African-Americans a real essential issue because they get to our humanity. And the other thing, and this other part I'll be honest about, I had not consumed any of his Christian content. I had never heard of it. And I was surprised to see how often he was actually talking to people about Jesus. Apparently, I never saw that stuff. And so what you tend to have is this idea, okay, look at the things that he did about Jesus. And for that reason, let's get rid of the things that he said they were unsavory. But for me, it's precisely that those unsavory comments that make me feel uncomfortable in those spaces. And that's where that friendship can often tatter because I feel completely misunderstood. And so, yes, it is hard to make friendships even in a Christian context. But when there is this kind of huge empathy divide, or even the things that we value divide, it makes friendship even more complicated. Have you ever experienced anything like that, Christina? Sure. Did I say it well? Did I leave something now? I mean, no, I feel like, I feel like you said the things that are very generously. So I might add with a positive, very positive assumptions in regard to others, right? It's really charitable. Yeah, I mean, I think it's just me putting on like my social science hat. So I am grieved by racism and a high tolerance for racism amongst white American Christians. But I also understand the history. And I understand the present data. And it is, I want it to be different, but that doesn't, but I'm not shocked. I'm saddened, but I'm not shocked when I see people communicate things that are consistent with the the theological lineage and with the present social science research about religious beliefs and views of democracy, the views of race. So it's sad to see, I mean, I have done to Facebook last week, which you know, I don't recommend. And anyway, every six months or once a year, sometimes I just, I will post the same thing. I mean, yeah. And I have the post where I basically say something like, our heroes reveal us. So sometimes we think that our enemies reveal who we are, but I would say our heroes, like the people that we feel like are who we long to be like or aspire to be are also diagnostic. They say something about us, right? And most of the people read that. And I think they read that through the lens of, yeah, like I've been thinking about these folks who like this, this, this, this political leader or this political figure that I don't like. And so their response is kind of reflected that. I think they assumed that that was my context. But then there was someone who, who chimed in, and a hero, no, my, I didn't say anyone's name, but he chimed in on my post and said, he said, the sentence I think was like, "Torley Kirk is my hero, like that's his first sentence. And I like jump back when I read it, not because he would say that, like as I looked at who the person was, I was thinking, well, yeah, this fits like, all the things I just said, so it's from a social science standpoint. But I also thought, like he said that on this post with these people who are feeling some kind of way, and I'm one of them, emotionally right now, and he wanted to declare in a paragraph that was written, all the reasons why this person was a sound, thoughtful, Christian, and why we should be honoring his life, his words, not his human dignity, 'cause that's not confusing to me. That's not a hard call for me to say that human dignity is value because I actually think it's important to be congruently and consistently pro-dignity in pro life. And so that means valuing human dignity. Not everybody's words, but they're intrinsic dignity that God has given them life. And so that's not a confusing thing, and that actually fits really nicely into black theology as well. So it's not a gap, it's not a chasm for me. But I ended up realizing in that moment, recognizing how important it was for him, he felt like to declare himself, and also, he shocked me, 'cause I was like, wow, this guy follows me. And I was like, I must get on your nerves all the time. - Yeah, all the time. - And so let me help you with that. Let me remove you from that distress. I don't wanna distress you. I certainly don't wanna make you upset. And so I think sometimes I find myself unfollowing in some cases blocking, deleting, not just because I can't tolerate you, but also I'm like, I don't wanna further distress you. And I don't think this is going to lead to anything that is going to be healthy or virtuous. - Let me make sure I'm clear about what I was trying to say. 'Cause I feel like you might have missed an, not missed understanding, I wasn't sufficiently clear. I sat down and listening to people, tried to explain away each one of those statements that you can kind of find. - And the statements that tried to hurt me about? - It made around race and around this human dignity and violence. I've listened to, and people will, and they will argue you to death. - Yes. - And I realized, oh, we have a different operating definition of what qualifies as racism. And for some people, unless you say the sentence, I believe that all African Americans are intellectually, culturally, morally, inferior, biologically than other people. And they say it, not that they were its imply it or suggest it, not that there can be a pattern over time, not that you can have hidden biases. It needs to say, I am pro-clan. And if they don't reach that bar, then people are not gonna consider racists, and they're gonna call it, they're gonna say, it's like, harsh rhetoric or something. And I said, you know what? I listened, I took the time. Maybe this is like emotional punishment, but I felt like if I want to come on a podcast, I need to actually take the time to listen to these arguments. And I was like, no, I'm not stupid. I can understand the implications of people's ideas. And I can say, okay, then if that is the case, and if that is the prerequisite for community, if I need to adopt that perspective on reality, it's gonna be your friend, then we just can't have a relationship. And so it doesn't mean that I just make me and you a friend. It doesn't mean that I can't say that you can have cross-cultural friendship. I'm saying that when a cross-cultural friendship becomes the cost of your intellectual honesty or your humanity, then we can do it. And one of the things that is fearful, that I think that impacts, I can't talk about people. I can't talk about black people, black man. That's what I am. I don't know where we're at else experience. I am hesitant to be vulnerable to somebody, because I just don't wanna hear those kinds of talking points that I've heard my entire life, and I'm not persuaded. And then I don't wanna hear the syllabus or the two to three black people that you want me to read so that I can possibly get it. And that's what I mean when I say this entire thing every now and maybe I found this entire conversation that kind of unfolded racially to be something a little bit tiresome, like the chasm that often exists between African-American Christian, like the way we prioritize certain things, dignity, race. Yes, we want you to believe in the Bible. Yes, we want you to preach the gospel. Yes, but there's a lot of other things on that list that you have to pass before you get to admirable for us. It is not about, yeah. - It's not about, yeah. - What you say? - It's designed to be that way. The gas lighting is for the purpose of the emotional exhaustion. And so I would say this, I do think that there is a well propagandized ignorance. And there are people who work very hard to take words into dilute them of their meaning so that we can maintain a perpetual white supremacist innocence. So I think that's a real dynamic that happens in our world. With that being said, as a black woman, any friend that I have who is not a part of that group or even if they are in that group, if they don't understand what racism is and I already know that we are probably not able to have a safe friendship for me. So whether that is coigness or whether that is ignorance as a result of the propaganda, it actually either reason, they have different nuances to it, but ultimately my sense of emotional safety, vulnerability, the things that you just communicated is on the line. So I actually think it's more so strategy though, and that may not seem particularly charitable for someone who's listening, but at this point, I feel like I've got good grills to say that. I think it's strategy to divert us from actually the accountability that is needed for us to move in a direction that is actually resisting racism in our world and in our hearts. When you act like you don't, it doesn't have a definition or the definition is up for grabs or interpretation or you poke holes in it, then we never land the plane and actually start to work on solutions and accountability for the consequences of racial bias and racism. And so, and I think that is the purpose of the strategy so that we never actually do the work of dismantling the wickedness. - I may be, and this is funny 'cause every now and then, people get frustrated. It's funny 'cause even after you block somebody, the people attack you, anyway, stuff happens. I am just in my life beyond the place where I have, is this or is this not racist arguments? I'm just like, you going piece to love myself? (laughing) I'm gonna say that, when I say that, I mean, when I say going piece, I was like, I literally cannot do this 'cause that's to me. And so, sometimes I feel like that act of self-protection can be once again weaponized against you because you say, well, you don't want to have the conversation. And I want to say, we have like a couple hundred years of the conversation. - Yeah. - Just because you just arrived here, there, and it's not about giving people a syllabus. It's about like a basic understanding of how society works. Now, I'll just say this, and maybe this is once again, not charitable, but it's at least honest. I wonder sometimes, and I don't blame everything on social media, but it's the algorithms. I promise you, I never heard once, the only thing that came to my algorithms was the political content. Like, I didn't know that he actually did argue with people about Christianity. So I'm thinking, is it possible? Is it possible? Probably unlikely that you only ever saw that content. And you didn't see my algorithm 'cause my algorithms showed me a different person. I mean, I think that is the tension that a lot of, that we are living in right now. I've talked to family members and friends, and there is like this camp of people who really did not like Charlie Kirk, because they are familiar with all of the harmful things he said about race and people of color. And then there are people who love Charlie Kirk, or who weren't familiar with Kirk before Wednesday. And now their algorithm is getting filled with Kirk communicating the gospel. And so it's like this is a tension we're in of, like how do you approach someone as complicated as Charlie Kirk was, and who died in such a tragic and awful way, an approaching and good faith, and seeing the nuance and the complexity, while also not forgetting that, yes, he said racist things and harmful things. Maybe I'll put it this way, maybe these incidents can never do the work we need them to do. And we keep doing this as a country, and maybe we'll never stop doing it. We use a particular incident, a particular incident to be paradigmatic, to save what we think furthest our narrative. And so if we feel like Christianity is under attack, then this murder is an example of Christianity being under attack. If we feel like the issue in America's racial injustice flourishing, then the church is the whitewashing of that legacy is the manifestation of that. And so sometimes what I'm saying to you is the truth of what is happening in America exists outside of the particular instance that led to one crazy person shooting Charlie Kirk. And so I think that what we're always trying to do is we're trying to build our cases of looking at reality. And I think that if you take a step back and say, at least this piece of evidence, I think, is probative, right? Something that had nothing to do with historically black colleges and universities. A person is murdered. And somebody sees that, numerous somebody sees that, I said to say the payback for that event is to tear out your whole groups of black people. And I think that at least shows you something about the way at least a portion of our country thinks about us. In that feeling of anxiety, that every single African-American I talked to had, the anxiety that rose from, we know the implications of this. [MUSIC] Did you know diversity is woven into the tapestry of scripture? From Genesis to Revelation, God reveals his love and compassion for all people. Written by Esama Kali, God's colorful Kingdom storybook Bible celebrates God's story of grace and redemption by revealing his intentional design for a multi-ethnic, multicultural church that cares for the vulnerable. With vivid illustrations, sweeping scenes and fresh perspectives, this one of a kind storybook Bible invites children to see the beauty of God's diverse family in powerful, inspiring ways. Featuring stories from both the old and new testaments, God's colorful Kingdom storybook Bible is perfect for families of all backgrounds eager to explore God's heart for diversity, justice, and compassion. God's colorful Kingdom storybook Bible is available online or at your favorite local bookstore. Order your copy today. [MUSIC] I don't know if we want to keep going on that. Maybe we should switch over to Mike's corner for a second and you can have us something a little bit less. Yeah, a little bit less weighty. I think even at times like this. A little less traumatic. Yes. We need some distractions. So, ESA, how familiar your professor at a college, right? Your students do evaluations at the end of every semester every year. They do. They do. Yes. Okay. Do I look at them? I try. I won't say more. Yes, I do look. I am aware that I am evaluated at the end of every semester and I do see and try to process the things that they say about me. Why do you pose at the bus? Well, so the Atlantic wrote an article about how teacher evaluations broke the university. Oh. With the subhead line, we give them all A's and they give us all five. Oh, yeah, five's are big. Five's are big. And it's this idea that more and more weight is being put on these student evaluations. Yeah. The career prospects of a teacher of a professor is determined by getting good evaluations, which means that the professors are motivated and incentivize to them make their class easy or fun or there's this quote in the article that said that an extensive body of research shows no correlation between how students do on objective learning assessments and how they score their professors. And then other studies. That's kind of wow. Isn't that crazy? So, there's no link between how much they learn and how they score their professors. So, in other words, you could score a professor of one and you learned a whole lot. Yes. Or you could score a professor of five and then learn anything. There's no correlation. No correlation. In fact, studies have found that among other things, students score male professors higher than female ones. Automatically. They rate attractive teachers more highly. And they reward instructors who bring in cookies. I didn't know about the cookies thing. I need to tighten my cookie game. So, I did after reading this, we'll get into the conversation. I did. I looked you up. Oh, great. My professor. I've never been to that website. Would you would you like to guess what your what your scores? I don't I don't want to know. Oh, man. I'm terrified. No, what is my what is my score? Wait, wait, what's the what's the scale? It's out of five. Okay, out of five. Oh, my goodness. I'm afraid. What is it? 4.9. Oh, wow. That means I'm too easy. Well, I'm just gonna say, but it does have level difficulty. Oh, 2.4. Oh, you might be a little too easy on your students. Maybe you can amp up the difficulty, but then bring in cookies and then we'll be wash. I'm too easy. Oh, man, that hurts my heart. Okay. So, how are we going to get out of this? You saw, like, I'm fascinated to hear what you have to say. So, grade inflation is a thing that Harvard, especially almost all students are getting A's there now. And it's like no longer, are we prioritizing good education? We're prioritizing getting good reviews and scores. So, what are we going to do? Well, the funny thing is the idea behind student assessing teachers is sound, right? There's, you know, historically, you got promoted in the academy by publishing books, books and academic articles. And so, if you publish a lot of books and academic articles, you could be getting the 10-year become a social profession and the full professor. But you can be super ineffective as a teacher while publishing tons of books. Those aren't the same skills that the ability to communicate and the ability to write are not the same. And so, the idea that we should have students assess us seem pretty fair. But obviously, a student has no idea objectively speaking what makes, sorry, a student might be motivated to prioritize different things in the educational process. And so, I think that what it has done is it's broken the relationship between the student and the professor, but it's not just student evaluation. I'm going to be completely honest. As a professor now, I often wonder, and students were asking me not the undergrads, the graduates, can I record your class? I'm like, no, don't record my class. Because you can take a 30-second clip out of an entire lecture, decontextualize it, and the next thing you know is viral on this running all over the internet. And so, I would say I always like to be heard in context. And like the, and it's not about indoctrination, it's not about secrets. It's about what the give and take of a classroom is. A student can say something that was very inappropriate. And you're trying to pass to that student back from misinterpreteness while giving another, while also ministers and students who are impacted. So, there's a lot that goes on in the classroom that I think the kind of inherent relational capital that you need to have real education. Because what makes education really transformative, if the students can be challenged in a place of trust. And I think that the value of the process that broke some of that doubt. Christina, now you have, you went through the college recruiting process, and I know you've done some teaching stuff. What is your take on student evaluations? So, so I would say this. I think students absolutely need a place to share what they think about the classroom experience. At the same time, I think we should be, we should be honest and clear that the teaching of a subject, so it's not just just a skill set of teaching, that's one thing. But they are a particular disciplines associated with how you teach a stated subject as well. Your average student doesn't know all those pieces. So, to put them in a position to be a value-tive, I think, is problematic. Now, what they can communicate is, they can speak to how clear the instruction was, did the syllabus, and the information was it provided in a clear and timely way? Was the professor accessible? And did they provide the office hours? Were they able to handle maybe controversial content in the classroom in ways that were respectful? I didn't feel small or picked on or mistreated. We actually do need to know that. I mean, I was an administrator in higher education for some time. That's good information for us to know, and students need a safe place to communicate those things back. But I do think, I think it's, I think we have to be really wise about what we're actually asking them to evaluate about the learning in classroom experience. And again, I think it can create a temptation. It could create a temptation for instructors to start to cater, not until the best practices of the discipline, or to the needs of the students learning capacity, but to what those results might be on that assessment. And I think that would be tempting to do, especially a professor who doesn't have tenure. I'm really aware of a black woman educator, the ways in which as soon as I show up in the classroom, I haven't taught yet. So I'm well aware of the research around that and the way that women and people of color, but black women put those two things together, the way that we are evaluated and the dynamics that take place in the classroom. And so that is an unfair burden. And so not only do we have to have the skill set to teach our discipline well and to build kind of healthy, teachable relationships with our students and to create a place that is vulnerable, but also transformative. We also are mindful of the way that we are seen in the classroom, no matter how high our skill level is at the educator. Have you seen the studies? And I know this is true. So somebody can Google this if you listen to the podcast. They did this stuff about online education and where the TA, who you didn't see, if the TA was given a female name versus a male name, they would evaluate it differently. Same person. It was like, you can't see who's behind. I'm Suzy Johnson and I'm Bob Johnson. And Suzy was often given more critical commentary about their ability. And that's with no verbal interaction, just looking at how they graded their content. And so I imagine that if you look at that data, we wouldn't see a difference between the male student or the female student evaluating the female name. Yeah, I don't have that content. I don't have that level of detail, but you can look it up and see those studies. Now, if I'm allowed to do a Jesus, can I just, can I just, can I, can I, can I, can I pray to the church? Yep. I think that, I mean, also a podcast, Duke too, here it goes. I think this kind of quid pro quo, you give me what I want to hear. And then I respond back with listeners like on the podcast or members in the church, where it is true. I know one of the things, I'm a church plan. So we're new. One of the things I tried to prepare our congregation for over and over again is I'm going to have to say stuff that you don't like. And if I never say anything that you don't like, then I'm not pastoring you. That means I figured out which we can kind of figure out. You can have a blue church, you can have a red church. And you can know exactly what to say to that church. For example, our church, we begin with like, we care about justice. That's like not a, that's not a controversial issue, but I say it's something about structural injustice. No one's gonna leave my church. And so for me to be prophetic, I'm talking about holiness. When I say, yeah, I'm glad that you care about this other stuff, but holiness is still all right. That's actually where I can feel, I'm not saying my congregation is actually mad about it, but I feel as someone who's preparing the sermon, I feel like that's the more prophetic edge of our congregation. And so I think that this idea that we know what our people want, we can simply deliver that to them. That's true in the church, it's true in podcast content, it's true in politicians. Like right now, if you are a politician, you know exactly what to say to rally your base. And you know exactly what your base does at one here. And so I think that that what we're seeing between a student and teacher is paradigmatic of a larger scale lack of leadership. And who, the people who are forming, who are to the people who they both have some responsibility to leave any care for. Yeah. I mean, if you agree with 100% of all the media you consume, you're not learning anything at all. I'm always reminded of a, I once heard N.T. right, you know N.T. right? I've heard of them. Yeah. I heard him speak at Chapel at Wheaton once and he said, he's like, I just know despite all of my studies, all of my academics, all of my research, 20% of my theology is wrong. Yeah. And so that means as you explain it, I have to go into spaces willing to have my mind change, willing to hear from people I disagree with, willing to have my own assumptions challenged because I never know which 20% might be wrong. Christina, where do you find it? Am I not asking you to put your business in the street? Don't worry, I'm capable of saying no. No, no, I'm gonna ask you, are there places where you feel like a little bit like that kind of tension where you feel like I'm pushing this way, even though my audience might want to hear something different, in True's Table or even as a writer, are there places where you feel like I'm going against the consensus of my core audience. Well, I mean, you know, we, so I work within spaces over, I guess, over the last decade, my spaces that are Christian, not the non-Christian spaces that I might serve in, that are kind of all over the map in terms of liberal progressive to incredibly conservative, for lack of better terms. Yeah. Very real differences on how people see the authority of scripture, what it means to follow Jesus, how we engage each other, our calling, and what we owe to each other. That's all over the place. I am a, you know, the Bible is inspired, literal resurrection. Yeah. The God. Oh, we have the tomb. How early was it, then? Early. I won't be able to. But, but, but, so I know what, I know what street I live on. And I actually know folks that it means just saying that, they're like, what, you know, like, is there that, that progressive? And that, but I would also say that we're called to follow the way of Jesus, not just use his name and violation of the Third Commandment, which means that it actually matters how we treat people, socially, politically, economically. And then there's another camp that would be, I think, pretty irritated by that, because there's both everybody wants kind of full autonomy, right? And to make a God in their own image, who sounds a lot like them. And so ultimately, we're off, we're often attracted to a God who sounds like ourselves, and which is why we get so uncomfortable when that voice is different, but it needs to be different, because we are not God, you know? So, but yeah, I mean, to your point, I think speaking to both holiness, righteousness, and justice, two different sides of the same coin, is controversial, I think, today, and between that kind of spectrum that I just described. So, in both of those are required, if God be God, God can call us into accountability over our thoughts, our body, our mind, what we owe our neighbors, what we owe our enemies, if God be God. And so, I think when you hold to that type of doctrinal belief and conviction, yeah, you know, what are you when everyone speaks well of you? Somebody's gonna be upset with that. - It is ever hard for you. And this is, I talked to a couple of my friends who are kind of living through this present moment, where there's a cost to that, right? I mean, I think that if you were moved 20% one way or the other, your audience will be bigger. And do you ever feel like because of this narrow path that I'm trying to walk, like you feel it financially, and I know we don't do things for platform-wise, but do you ever, like is that ever a struggle for you to kind of see people who are just oriented themselves to a certain audience and for that reason, they get more attention? Is that ever difficult for you emotionally, spiritually? Or are you in a place at this point where you don't care and you and your family are gonna be all right? - Okay, well, I mean, well, by God's grace, right? That the Lord is keeping us in. But I think, I do I think I would be rewarded, at least on a human level, if I moved in one way or the other. I know I would be. - Yeah. - Which is why I try to be as clear as possible in how I use my voice because at the end of the day, I'm gonna be held accountable for how I use my voice. And I think because I think of what we are dealing with right now is incredibly temporary, doesn't mean it's not painful, doesn't mean it's not frustrating, doesn't mean, it doesn't mean it's not costly, it is absolutely temporary. And so that helps, I think guide me, the temporiness of what is happening in this moment and trying to stay as much integrity as possible. And clearly, I mean, I feel confident that there are things that I'm getting wrong. I don't know what they are. I don't choose to be wrong. (laughing) I don't choose to be wrong. But, and I try to put the emphasis where I feel the most biblical credence and doctrinal credence. So I speak the volume of my voice metaphorically isn't associated with the level of confidence I have as rooted in doctrine. So I'm gonna speak in a whisper on things that I'm like, this is what I think, but I don't know. But when we're talking about the character of a holy God, you're gonna see me speak in a more flat-footed way, in a clear way. - Tentos down. - Because I have confidence in that, yeah. - Yeah. He didn't know what Tentos down meant. (laughing) - I mean, I could figure it out. - Yes, yes. - Well, you know. I wanna say thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It has been a joy to have you. I've been listening and learning from you for years and I'm just happy that people who don't already know who you are, working to find some of your stuff. They can subscribe to Truth Table. - Yeah. - Listen to the podcast. I know you're working on the book. Where's your status of the book? - Today's book comes out in 2026. They're welcome to, so free order is what makes leaders wise. And I gotta tell you, we really need to understand what wisdom is right now in our world. And so I invite them to a free order if they would like. - Pre-order it. Pre-order it. And when the book comes out, we have you come back and tell us a little bit more about it. Thank you so much. - Thank you so much. - Thanks for staying on the podcast. Mike was happy to have you as always. We'll talk to you all next week. The Isama-Cali podcast and production of Holypost Media produced by Mike Stalo, Stray Lo, if you know, now you know, edited by Seth Gorbett, like a Corvette music by Rob Nore. Make sure to follow the show wherever you get your podcasts and leave your reviews so more people can find it. See you next time. I'm out.