Episode 415: Compromise & Conviction with Jon Tyson

Hey there, welcome back to the Holypost podcast. This is Phil Vischer. I am here with Christian Taylor. Hey Phil. Hi Christian and Skyjitani. Hey guys. Hi. How is everybody? Anything really interesting happened in the last week or two? I guess it's been two weeks since we recorded. Really interesting? Yeah, really interesting. That's a high bar. I know. Because our audience demands a high level of engagement. I attended and officiated my first COVID wedding. What did that look like? It was my niece, Haley's wedding. Was it like that infant baptism where the priest had a squirt gun full of holy water and was separating the infancy to weigh at a baby? That was fun. It was an outdoor wedding. It was limited to 50 people. There was some social distancing going on. But overall it was very pretty. It was very nice. And I felt they had a lot of people throughout their engagement trying to plan this wedding because of circumstances. It was nice that it was such a lovely day. It was a little humid and I had some drips on my bald head as I stood up there. No. Did you have one of your people blotting your head periodically through the service? If you met one of your staff members, me doing it, yes. I did blot my head. Okay. Christian, something interesting? Yes. I had a thing. Yeah. So far we've been selected for three film festivals. Awesome. We won Best Featuredock at the Central States and Film Best. Wow. Then we were nominated for the Best Original Score for the International Sound and Film Music Best. Wow. And we find out in 15 minutes if we win the Crystal Pine or not. While we're recording, we're going to find out. So you'll celebrate or you'll cry a little bit on Mike? Yes. Exactly. If you see a disappointed look, that will be that. I'm very happy for Jeff Kertnacker. It's just a super exciting thing for him as someone who's never scored a documentary before. Very cool. So that's neat. And then we got a distribution offer last week. Hey. All right. Super fun. With money with a big fat advance attached. Not an advance, but a good amount of the gross receipts with a good company that sells feature docs like ours. All right. Awesome. That's good news. I need another so you can get into a little bit of a bidding war. Oh, no. That's true. Actually, they're just doing North American rights and giving us theatrical educational European. And so. Okay. Awesome. Well, that makes that puts me in the mood for a theme song. What's the news that you like the most? Who's your favorite podcast host? If it's breakfast, get your toast. It's Sky and Phil and the Holy Post. Sky and Phil and the Holy Post. And sometimes Christian. Okay. We're back. We have an update for everybody. We pay the bills around here with Patreon where you can go and subscribe and support us. And you're supposed to get benefits from supporting us at different levels. We've always been terrible at that because we're too busy doing other things to pay attention. But we used, well, I don't know, four or five months ago, we used some of our Patreon income to underwrite part of the salary of a helper. Julie, who's actually listening on the podcast and taking notes, even if we speak as we speak. And Julie has organized us and she's gotten us much more organized and she's rewritten all of the tiers for our Patreon supporters. And we're actually going to start giving you things in exchange for your support. So we have new tiers. If you're a Patreon supporter, you probably got an email about it already. You may have to change tiers like we're starting, we're doing merchandise. Yay. We've always wanted to do this. We're finally doing it. If you are signed up, I think it's the $25 a month tier or higher, you will get a piece of Holypost original exclusive merchandise twice a year, not once. Oh no, not once like other podcasts twice a year. The first one is a t-shirt, a custom t-shirt. 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Not only are you helping us pay Julie, but then Julie is able to make it better so that you get stuff for helping us out. And you also help us pay a little of Jason's time and all the costs of putting up the podcast. Anyway, you know, Sky. Yes, Phil. Last time I checked on Apple, we were one of the top 30 Christian podcasts and we were one of the only ones of the top 30 that wasn't a pastor posting his sermons. So that's kind of cool. That is very cool because when you consider where we started. Yeah, like a couple of years ago, we were at top 150 Christian. There are a lot of religious podcasts, but so many of them are churches. But last time I checked, we were just behind Joyce Meyer and just ahead of Rick Warren. Wow. Yeah. Well, when we launched this thing back in 2012, there were very, very few podcasts period. And almost almost 100% of the Christian podcasts were just sermons that were being uploaded. Yeah. And so since then, there's been this proliferation of Christian podcasts that are not just sermons. A podcast proliferation. Yes. And to know that we are offering one of the stronger products out there is very gratifying. When you say stronger, do you mean more masculine? I mean better. So we're just insulting the other podcast. No, there's lots of, I listen to all kinds of different podcasts out there. Okay. We're a unique mix. Whatever you say. All right. We're going to dive into something interesting. Last week, I retweeted a thread from Anthony Bradley, who is an African American professor at the King's College. And also, let's see here, he's a professor of religion at the King's College. He's a research fellow at the Acton Institute. He's a doctor, Dr. Anthony Bradley. He went on a quite a thread, like a 16 or 20 tweet thread about the basic point was evangelical Christian. The evangelical Christian church is very unlikely to ever deal well with social issues like Black Lives Matter and racism. And here's why. And then he went into a long explanation, which made was a lot to take in. And I retweeted it and a lot of people said, wow, you guys need to talk about that on the podcast and unpack that. That's a lot to take in. So that's what we're going to do. This guy had to get his phone so that he could pull it up. Yeah, I'm looking at it. You're there. Christian, do you have it access? Okay. Okay. So he started out, he was talking about the basic evangelical theology, which he says tends to start with or mission, the idea of evangelical mission, which starts with making disciples. And Matthew 28th, the great commission. And because in the evangelical world, this is, he says, this is framed as the starting point of mission, but it is arbitrary and has no basis in the Old Testament. So evangelicals are forced to make every issue a gospel issue in order to justify taking action on it. He says the Old Testament should frame the why of mission as much as the New Testament. Okay. Interesting. Sky. Care to respond. Well, I don't think I'm going to disagree with him much if at all in this conversation, because as I read through it, I tell you, one of the things that drives me crazy and I said this at churches over the years when I've gone there and spoken or consulted for, I probably coming out of the 1990s, there was this cliche, you would hear a lot where evangelical churches would say our mission is to make disciples who make disciples who make disciples. Right. I remember that. We said that all the time. In fact, I got caught in a loop saying it over and over again for about three months, like the disciples who make disciples who make disciples. So when I would come in as the outside voice or consultant or whatever, I would interrupt whenever that came up in a conversation. I'd say, okay, well, how do you define a disciple? And then they'd be like, I don't know, we're just, I mean, it's nonsensical to say we're disciples who make us, I mean, it's nonsensical to say we're disciples who make us disciples when you don't have a definition of what a disciple actually is. Yeah, I can see where that would make it difficult to measure your results. Scott, you're just so logical. I know. It's a curse. What can I say? But, but that rhetoric is so common and it leads us down to this ridiculous nonsensical mission. And when then you press people on, well, what's a disciple? They end up giving such an anemic and ridiculous definition that it's, it's basically just, we're here to perpetuate our church. Okay. So trying to get more people to come in and give money and participate in our programs. Right. So why does Christian mission not start with the great commission? Because that's not what Jesus started with. What did he start with? He started with the mission of Israel, which came to fulfill. Oh, okay. So, and, you know, Christopher Wright would be the right theologian, uh-huh, to, to, to, to read about this because he wrote a lot about the, the God of mission in the Old Testament and how that informs then the way he, so there is mission in the Old Testament. Massive. I mean, even when you go back and read the prophetic passages of Isaiah that spoke about the coming Messiah, yeah, it's all embedded with mission. And Isaiah was very excited because once the Messiah came, then he could tell us to go make disciples who make disciples who make disciples and then we start the mission of the church. And another important way to think about this, the, the early chapters of the Gospels that speak about Jesus' life and early history, especially, are constructed in a way that parallels the narrative of Israel. So for example, um, Israel comes out of Egypt from the Exodus. Jesus as a refugee comes out of Egypt and is in a text from Hosea, which was actually about Israel as applied to Jesus. I've called my son out of Egypt back then just kidding. Not that kind of text. And then Israel spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness. Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness being tempted. He passed through the waters of the Jordan before that, right? When he was baptized by John and then he entered the wilderness. Likewise, the Israelites passed through the waters of the sea before they entered the wilderness for 40 years. There's all these parallels between Jesus and the narrative of Israel because his whole mission, his point was to fulfill the purpose that God had for Israel. So if you don't understand the purpose of mission of Israel, you're not going to understand the purpose of mission of Jesus, which means you don't understand our mission of purpose because as he said in John's Gospel, as the Father sent me so I send you. That sounds like a thread in tweet, but just perfect. Yes. Okay. So Anthony Bradley then continues and says, "For evangelicals, their understanding of the gospel begins with Genesis 3, not Genesis 1. As such, the telos, telos, telos, hello, the telos of redemption, which is about the cosmos, not just saving souls is entirely missed. Genesis 3 fits with the Matthew 28 framework, so why should we care about creation?" Okay. Genesis 3, that starts after the fall, correct? Right. That's the story of the fall, about the severing of the relationship between humanity and God. If we start with the severing of the relationship between humanity and God, then the only thing there is to fix is the relationship between humanity and God. There's nothing bigger involved in our mission. Yeah. I heard Andy Krauch do a wonderful talk years ago about this where he talked about the functional Bible that many evangelicals have, begins in Genesis 3 and ends in Revelation 19 with the judgment. And if we frame the gospel that way, he called it a bad news to bad news gospel. Bad news is that we are sinful and fallen and the bad news is there's judgment coming and a lot of people are going to be destroyed. Yeah. And people don't like that message. You see the, what's that? People don't like that message, the bad news, the bad news. No, actually, I think people love that message. That's the message most people in evangelical churches have grown up being formed by. Because they think they're on the good side of all that bad news. But when you frame the Bible from Genesis 1 all the way to the end of Revelation, it's a good news, the good news story. A good creation created by a good God. And then the redemption of that good creation and the unity with God again that you see with the new heaven and your earth. But we don't have that cosmic scope. We have this very gnostic vision of, as he says, just saving souls rather than the redemption of all things. Okay. Okay. I remember growing up and people saying to me, yes, it really doesn't matter what happens here on this earth. This earth is going to burn away. We just have to be concerned about heaven. And that was justification for not being for environmental stuff in my Christian political correct culture. So you're right. I grew up with that idea. Okay. Tweet 3 from Dr. Bradley. Evangelicals believe the a historical myth that just preaching the gospel is enough. Preaching the gospel has zero consequence for all the Christians who initiated and justified the African slave trade created and defended Jim Crow, etc. Only white Christians say this by the way. Comment is preaching the gospel not enough. Well, love is not only a feeling, but it's a command to action. So it preaches the gospel. It's love. If we love if we love people, we preach the gospel to them. No, we actually act in love towards them and the things that we do with our mouth. As we preach the gospel. Not necessarily. It's important to follow the logic of his Twitter thread here because he begins by narrowly defining the gospel as just making disciples, right? The Matthew 28 thing. And then if you believe that merely preaching that gospel is all you have to do, you don't end up dealing with systemic issues in society as he says. So it isn't that I wouldn't flat out say preaching the gospel is. It's insufficient. It's the gospel you're preaching that's insufficient. Oh, that's a twist. Right. So and I think you make a point here. A sufficient gospel starts the story in Genesis 1 and ends it at the end of Revelation. Yeah. I mean, even the most the most a synched chapter about the gospel in the New Testament is 1 Corinthians 15 where Paul lays out the gospel he preached. And in that chapter, he certainly talks about the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. But he goes on to talk about how Jesus as king over all things is putting all enemies under his feet and he is redeeming all things. And he uses the phrase all things, all things, all things continually throughout that chapter, which is about the scope of this good news that it does touch on all things. But if you believe the good news is just the redemption of souls, then you're taking 99.9% of the cosmos and throwing it away. That's the problem. Okay. Back to Dr. Bradley, the local church isn't the answer. Ooh, Ouch. That hurts. Evangelicals believe the myth that decentralized autonomous local churches are sufficient since 80, 33 Christians have worked through centralization and social institutions, perhaps poorly. But the Clapham sect was effective because of Anglicanism. Okay. Clapham sect was the group of Christians in England that helped inspire the abolition of slave trade and a whole host of other things, child labor laws, the treatment of Indians, the British rule, reformation of morals, all sorts of things. And they were Anglican at that point and developed a more of a robust social philosophy to take of what the gospel really meant, I think is what he's trying to say there. So the local church, I have heard people argue to me, you know, if the church isn't doing it or can't do it, it shouldn't be done. But the government should never get involved. You know, it's the church that's supposed to help the poor and the church is supposed to, if anything needs changing, it should be changed by the church, not by all of us collectively through institutions. I've heard that for as long as I was a Republican because you know, you have the, you know, big government is bad. And you know, from there, you also have the idea that people, if they receive help from the government, they become dependent on the government and we empower them to be lazy. Right. All right. I'll jump on ahead. He says evangelicals have no social thought canon. Evangelicals have an empty toolbox when it comes to thinking about society and have no consensus documents or principles to provide a reference point for nuanced ways to frame engaging social issues like Catholics do. Wow. That's totally true. When I probably, in seminary, started to first really explore the idea of Christian social engagement, I couldn't find any meaningful historical books from evangelicals on it. Everything I had to read came from the Roman Catholic tradition. Yeah. It's just not there. Why is that? Why is that? For all the reasons he said, like the central focus of white evangelicalism has been making disciples redeeming souls evangelism narrowly defined, and it's all about escaping a condemned world. So why bother reforming it? It's just there's no history to modern evangelicalism that values that at all. And the only place you see thought about this tends to be in the mission statements of evangelical parachurch organizations that have targeted, you know, so an evangelical ministry about immigration or an evangelical ministry about homelessness has their own theology that they've developed for their website. But it's not a cohesive historical tradition within evangelicalism overall. Well, is that because in the Catholic church you have one Catholic church, but in the evangelical tradition, we have all these denominations, including a whole bunch that are non-denominational. And so there's just total disunity to begin with. Nobody is underneath a central authority. Yes, and no, I think it has more to do with the fact that the Roman Catholic tradition throughout most of Christian history has been hasn't had a separation of church and state. Think about for centuries and centuries, Roman Catholic leaders were also the political leaders of a given place. And as a political leader, you had to deal with things like distribution of food and resources. How do you deal with the poor? How do we deal with the wealthy? How do you deal with armies? How do you deal with all those government things? But they're doing it as an ecclesiastical authority. So they had to come up with a theology for all of those aspects of the world. And you even see that in some Protestant denominations that came out of the reformation, like Lutheranism and Anglicanism as he mentioned, because they were also deeply embedded in running the state, whether Germany or England or whatever, whereas American evangelicalism. They had to figure stuff out. Right. American evangelicalism never had to worry about running a government or running a community. They just had to worry about getting people into the church to receive a gospel. And so we'd be at the time then, relied on the government to do all of that. But now we're saying, well, the government shouldn't do any of that. It should be the churches. That's very confusing. Anyway, we can argue from multiple sides of the same argument at the same time. We want more government when it comes to things we care about and we want no government when it comes to other things that we care about that we want to do ourselves. So we're a little confused. Yeah. American evangelicals, because of the decentralized overemphasis on the local church, read the Bible and think about the church individually. So social issues, issues that aren't of the individual become overwhelming, which leads to inaction. We don't know how to think about it. So we don't do anything about it. We don't have boxes. We don't have a box for it. Many of us really only have one big box, which is evangelism, making disciples to make disciples to make disciples as an individual to individual basis. We simply don't know what to do with social issues. Evangelicalism is the exact opposite of how the black church historically addresses creation, which explains why the traditional black church created during slavery initiated the civil rights movement. And white evangelicalism either resisted it or disengaged. A little disturbing, but true. And that also leads into Jamar Tisbe's book, The Color of Compromise about the complicity of the white church in America with racism. Evangelicalism is theologically heterodox, meaning non-orthodox and essentially undefineable in 2020. You're not going to get agreed upon concerns about creation issues from a heterodox theology. This is why denominations historically have been among the most effective at leveraging social change. Unpack that sky. I think what he's saying here is there is no unified evangelical belief system. You can say here's what Anglicans believe or here's what Lutherans believe or here's what Roman Catholics believe, but you can't really say here's what evangelicals believe. Because it's so decentralized and without that shared common orthodoxy, they don't rally together and put their weight behind anything that can bring systemic social change. Right. Since Jim Crow, evangelicals merged social thinking to political ideology, conflating ideological threats with religious threats. In 2020, evangelicals are having anxiety attacks about critical theory, et cetera, because they have no social thought canon. We don't have a compartment for things like critical theory, which includes critical race theory. What is critical theory? I'm sorry. I don't know. That's impossible to explain in less than a half an hour. But can't you sum up? I think it's impossible to sum up. It's just it's a critique of no, I can't even can you summarize what critical theory is? Sky, jatani. Oh, it's hard to summarize, but I exactly. But it has a lot to do with understanding social power structures. So a lot of people associate critical theory with Marxism where it takes different classes, economic classes of people and pits them against each other because of power structures, but that has proliferated the things beyond just economic classes. So if you don't have a theology that can intersect with social constructs, then you have no way of engaging or or teaking it really. And that's what he's saying, evangelicals don't they don't have we have a theology of society, culture and community. Because the Black Lives Matter organization rejects the existence of the triune God and the federalism that launched America, evangelicals do not know how to affirm real racial racial tensions in America because they reject the ideology that they associate with the group that is trying to address racial tensions. And the evangelicals rejected Martin Luther King because he was considered communist. And again, we didn't have a robust social philosophy of our own. All we knew was communism bad. And we've heard that these marching African Americans are communists. So therefore marching for civil rights is bad. Right. Would you say that's well, yeah. And we got to remember the core one of the core tenants of communism was economic equality that everyone should do the same. Right. And so here come these African Americans saying we want equality, we want to be the same. And it's easy to label them communists and communists are atheists and atheism is bad. And it's anti-Christian and then it all just becomes an unnew wants to throw the baby out of the bathwater kind of thing. Yeah. So he summarizes by saying so many people are wasting their energy and lives trying to get evangelicalism in quotes to care about this or that social issue. He says, here this from me, it may never happen. Read church history. The framework won't allow it. The gospel isn't a social principle. Therefore, if the only thing we care about is the gospel and we don't think it has social implications, we just can't fit caring about social issues in with what we've grown up with. So he then comes up with three implications. He says, implication number one, evangelicals will confuse intramural debates about what real evangelicalism is with actual progress. Conference's website, etc. will launch missiles and demonized Christians while mutually using, oh, clever, the Scotsman fallacy to do so. Oh, goodness. I don't know what that is. Scotsman fallacy is when you say, you don't evangelicals don't believe this. Here's an evangelical who believes this. Well, that's not a real evangelical. So you prove that your group all holds the same belief or behavior by simply saying, well, that person who seems to be in our group, but it doesn't hold that belief or behavior. He's not a real Democrat. He's not a real Republican. And it was saying no good Scotsman would do that. And say, well, there's one who's doing it. Well, he's not a good Scotsman. So it doesn't count. Anyway, that's the Scotsman fallacy. Got it. Thank you. So he is wasting time lashing out at evangelicals as Trump supporters, which has no zero, which has zero bearing on reality. So all the real evangelicals are like, huh, not me. So we're wasting time defining who the real evangelicals are, who cares? Are we, that's a good question, Sky? Are we wasting time trying to define? I don't know. We're spending a lot of time trying to define evangelicals, except though when we do a podcast and says, what's the difference between an evangelical and a fundamentalist? Are we doing exactly that? So who could we do it? Yeah. I mean, one of the things, if you dig a layer deeper than what he's saying here is the category of evangelical is sort of a self-fulfilling one. Because of its theology, it's pretty much going to be limited to white Americans. Because if you have no theology of social change, then you probably are a person who more or less wants the society to remain as it is. And the people who want society to remain as it is are those who basically have a pretty good gig going in society, which are upper middle class, middle class and upper middle class white people. So you, by definition of your theology, are not going to attract minorities, people of color or the poor, who are looking for change in society when you offer them no vision of that change. you. you then become this homogenous collection of white Protestant people who are against social change. That's essentially the Republican Party today and it's essentially American evangelicalism. Yeah. So back to the Scotsman fallacy. If you're a progressive and you say all progressives believe in abortion rights and you say, well, here's one. Here's a person who's pretty progressive and they're actually pro-life and you say, well, he's not a real progressive. That's not a real progressive. And you do the same thing on the other side and you say, all Republicans support Donald Trump and say, well, here's a Republican who doesn't, well, that's a Republican in name only. That's a rhino, not a real Republican. That's the Scotsman fallacy. Where you say, we all do this every one of us and then when someone points out that someone who's not doing it, you say, they're not really, they're not really us. And we are doing that constantly today. Okay, implication three, many younger evangelicals whose church traditions have fundamentalism as grandparents. That's an interesting turn of the phrase. Does your church tradition have fundamentalism as a grandparent? Mind us, are on fools errands and don't even know it. Conferences and social media won't make evangelicalism any different. Cards don't fly by yelling at them to become airplanes. I like that. His urge, I don't know. Our church is doing stuff. We're trying to change. We're trying to make a difference. There certainly the churches can change and you know, even becoming a little more liturgical and respecting tradition or, you know, considering social philosophy from other Christian traditions since we don't have any of our own. We can change. I can fly a little bit even though I'm a car. If I go off the right ramp, like the general reason. His Scotsman fallacy thing, again, though, Phil. I think what he's saying is if you are truly evangelical as he's defined it, yeah, then you're not going to have that stuff happening. But like when I think about our church and some of the changes that have happened over the years, my hunch is most of those changes have come from absorbing theological traditions that were not evangelical. But if we do them long enough, now the are they art traditions? Yeah, but then we're not evangelical anymore. Well says who? No, that's a Scotsman fallacy thing. I think his core message is important. I think his core message is important, which is the bones, the skeleton of American evangelicalism is not constructed to deal with social issues. It's just not in its DNA. Yeah. And it's not because, it's not because white evangelicals are in just have, you know, none of conferences are not doing enough teaching on these issues. They haven't been given a theological framework that will allow it to occur. So he wraps it up by saying lastly, as an alternative for those who have a confession, Lutheran's Presbyterians, etc, are in the process of doing something different using 400 plus years of consensus thinking to start framing the boundaries of caring for creation for others, for everything, for the whole cosmos. When you have a tradition, you don't need to waste time justifying new secular categories like anti-racism, intersectionality, critical theory, etc. That was just don't even have to worry about those because there's so many people I did. Do you know I did a race video? I did a, yeah, I did a race video and a lot of people have told me why they have to not like it because it's smacks of than one of these terms. It's smacks of critical race theory or it's smacks of intersectionality because we don't have a framework to think about the social issues of systemic racism in our own theology. So we're bar, we're bumping into secular terms like critical theory and then we're hearing that those, oh, I think that's Marxist so I have to reject it. So if you're concerned about systemic racism or historic systems of oppression, I have to reject you. Sorry, I just, I just have to reject you because I watched a YouTube video that told me I did and that's as deep as we can go as I got a YouTube video and it's telling me that I can't care about your issue. Sorry. Well, and I think the other thing to into that vacuum of there not being a theology of caring about social issues from our churches is we then turn to the political ideology that does address that. So that, that, you know, that's and then that becomes Christianized. So I think it's impossible to dissect that thinking about race issues and social injustice and what you're saying and separating it out from our faith because we have put those two together so much. Right. And we're going to talk a little more about that next time actually. So he wraps it up by saying until evangelicals have a building block system like Catholics expect nothing to change anytime soon. This is step one. And and he posted an article from one of the Catholic journals that just does a real quick overview of 10 principles of Catholic social teaching because if you're saying, I don't even know what you're talking about. I don't even know building blocks for thinking about social issues. What does that look like? What are what do Catholic Legos look like? Well, let me tell you, he lists 10 principles of Catholic social teaching from this journal article. Number one principle, the principle of human dignity. Every human being is created in the image of God and redeemed by Jesus Christ and therefore is invaluable and worthy of respect as a member of the human family. Okay. Would we agree with that? Yes. Okay. Now, number two, the principle of respect for human life. Every person from the moment of conception to natural death has inherent dignity and a right to life consistent with that dignity. Okay. Would most evangelicals agree with that? Yeah. They may not think deeply about it, I would say. They get really stuck on the, you know, baby part. But you hear, you know, that's I don't hear anything bad about that. Okay. Number three, the principle of association. Oh, no, wait, what is that? Our tradition proclaims, and this is a Catholic perspective speaking, proclaims that the person is not only sacred, but also social. How we organize our society in economics and politics in law and policy directly affects human dignity and the capacity of individuals to grow in community. Oh, that's not something we talk about a lot in evangelical circles. But I certainly don't disagree with it. Okay. The principle of participation, this is number four, we believe people have a right and a duty to participate in society, seeking together the common good and well-being of all, especially the poor and vulnerable. Okay. We have a right and a duty to participate in society, not just to run off into the woods and build a little cabin and save me and my Bible. That's all I need. Okay. Interesting. Challenging. But yeah, I don't think I'm opposed to that. Number five, the principle of preferential protection for the poor and vulnerable. Oh, preferential. Oh, in a society marked by deepening divisions between rich and poor, our tradition recalls the story of the last judgment. The least of these, the least of these. And I'm actually going through this right now in our daily devotional with God's daily devotion. Oh, very cool. Instructs us to put the needs of the poor and vulnerable first. Okay. Well, that's certainly a framework that makes me a little uncomfortable, though. Isn't everyone supposed to take care of themselves? Isn't that what preferential? Okay. Number six, the principle of solidarity. Oh, Catholic social teachings proclaims that we are our brothers and sisters, keepers wherever they live. We are one human family. Learning from practice, the virtue of solidarity means learning that loving our neighbor has global dimensions in an interdependent world. Okay. That's number six. The principle of solidarity. I think that's compatible with typical evangelical theology. It almost sounds communist. I don't know. Well, I like the last line of that. The principle of solidarity functions as a moral category that leads to choices that will promote and protect the common good. Yeah. Maybe they think with others, but think that is a little communist. Going back to Christian's point earlier, I think there are a lot of conservative evangelicals who would agree with a lot of this stuff. They what they would simply say is it's not for the government to do any of that. This is what church should be doing, but not the government. But it's that's a bifurcation of the human community that's artificial. In other words, to say that when I go into church, I'm responsible for these things, but when I go into the voting booth, I'm not. Or when I go to church, I'm responsible for my neighbor, but when I go to the public school, I'm not. That's very artificial to say that God cares about certain categories of my involvement in the world, but not ours. But I also think they'll say that yes, I agree with all of these things as an individual. And they may say, I don't think it's the government's responsibility. I think it's the churches, but then I think I or any. Sorry, Christian, go ahead. I was just going to say, but I think they then take themselves out of that. Like that is the church's responsibility not necessarily mine like you're saying. But the irony I'm going to point out is that people who say that are also probably very patriotic and believe strongly in the American revolution and the Declaration of Independence. And that revolution and the Declaration of Independence is all predicated on the belief that a government was failing in its responsibility to show individuals the dignity they deserve, right? No taxation without representation. So the establishment of the United States as an independent country was all to create a government that protects the rights of individuals, including to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So when we simply send up as Christians and say, hey, when you vote, you should vote in a way that secures life, liberty and happiness for your neighbor, then they go, no, no, no, that's the church's job. It's not the government's job, right? Which is it's just kind of silly, right? Okay. Number seven, the principle of stewardship. The Catholic tradition insists that we show our respect for the creator by our stewardship of creation. All right. Number eight, the principle of subsidiarity. That's a fun one. This is really a dense one too. This principle deals chiefly with the responsibilities and limits of government and the essential roles of voluntary associations. The principle of subsidiarity puts a proper limit on government by insisting that no higher level of organization should perform any function that can be handled efficiently and effectively at a lower level of organization by human persons who individuals or in groups are closer to the problems and closer to the ground. In other words, don't do it at the federal level. If you can do it at the state level, don't do it at the state level. If you can do it at the city level, don't do it at the city level. If you can do it at a family level or a church level. So if you can do it, if you can solve a problem as a family, solve it. If it's too big for that, solve it as a city. If it's too big for that, solve it as a state. If it's too big for that, solve it as a nation, which is a very traditional conservative view of government. Yes. I don't think any evangelicals would ever problem with that. Number nine, the principle of human equality. Equality of all persons comes from their essential dignity while differences in talents are a part of God's plans. Social and cultural discrimination and fundamental rights are not compatible with God's design. Okay, don't discriminate against people. And finally, the principle of the common good, the common good is understood as the social conditions that allow people to reach their full human potential and to realize their human dignity. So we want to work toward social conditions that allow people to reach their full human potential and dignity. Okay, I never heard any of those things discussed in the evangelical churches of my upbringing. Those are, I've heard the first one or two, right? Maybe the first people are created in God's image and worthy of dignity. Yeah, maybe. But it really only started coming up when we start talking about abortion, you know, in around 1980. It's like, what? What about their children too? I think we have to be fair to say we have heard. We were all created in God's image. But then I kind of think it stopped there. Yeah. Yeah. What was there a political application of that? Was it so therefore we need to go out and do we need to be concerned for this group of people or this group of people or we need to treat people differently in our workplace, in our homes, in our cities. We didn't do a whole lot of that. Well, I was told we needed to give money to the poor or there were certain things that we needed to do. But it was, it was more like, okay, let's go help these people that are have less than we do. And we can do that by serving and cleaning up their neighborhoods. Right? And then driving home. Yeah. And it's interesting when you take that first point of the 10 and you separate it from the others, it's how you end up with doctrines like separate but equal. Right? Where you can, you can theologically affirm that African-Americans are created in the image of God and are equal to whites. But you don't have to integrate them into your part of the community or your schools or your privileges. Because well, they're equal. Yeah, sure, but we can be separate and equal. Whereas the later points of those 10 get into full participation and solidarity with the poor and things like that, which then necessitates integration. And that's where a lot of to care less about human flourishing and humans reaching their full potential. If we can turn them into disciples who make disciples, then we're done with them. Right. That's their point. The whole purpose of human existence is to make disciples. Yeah. In other words, to further the church, which is not a biblical idea. All right. If you want to follow Dr. Anthony Bradley, he's on Twitter. Just looked for Anthony Bradley, King's College on Twitter and he's actually posting some really interesting stuff. Skyd, we have a guest. We do. We have a guest. It is John Tyson. That's fantastic. So go to our Patreon page. If you're a supporter, you may want to change your tier so you can get something cool. If you're not a supporter, you want to get something cool. So go to the Patreon page Patreon slash Holypost. And yes, we're supposed to let people know that the Holypost now has an Instagram. Oh, yeah, we're on Instagram now. We're on Instagram. Holypost on Instagram. At Holy Post, I don't know. Is that an Instagram handle? I don't even know. Well, that is. So that's how the thing is at our handle. I'm checking right now. Oh, at Holypost podcast. At Holypost podcast says Julie. Thanks, Julie. At Holypost podcast. So go check us out. Follow us on Instagram. We'll be posting lots of quotes from the show and who knows what else? Sky will be doing funny things with his pets just for your entertainment, right? Sky. Right. And I want to remind everybody to like keep sharing the podcast, keep posting reviews on iTunes because we are going to take down who are we right behind? Joyce Meyer. Joyce Meyer. She's the next that we have to we're coming for you. Joyce, we're coming. We beat Rick Warren. Now we're coming after Joyce Meyer. Yes, I assume that it changes quite frequently. So if you go there right now, it may be completely different tonight. I don't know. We're all the way back down to 700. Who knows? Anyway, thanks for listening. Thanks for help us out. And we'll talk to you next week. Hi, everybody. I remember being a kid in Sunday school, being told the story of the man who built his house on the rock and the man who built his house on the sand. You know how the story goes. It's based on a parable of Jesus from Matthew chapter 7. The man who built his house on the rock when the storm came, his house stood firm and the man who built his house on the sand while his house fell. The story was often used to differentiate Christians from non-Christians. Those who put their faith in Jesus, we were told, had built their house on the rock and it will stand the storms of life. And the man who built his house on the sand, while he's the fool who doesn't put his faith in Jesus. That's how the parable has popularly been taught. Unfortunately, it's a complete misinterpretation of what Jesus meant. I know that might come as a surprise, but it shouldn't if you're a subscriber to With God daily. Right now, we're going through a series on Jesus parables and the profound things that he teaches through these stories about himself, about God, and about his kingdom. And a lot of these things are often misunderstood and popular consumeristic Christianity. If you want to get beyond the surface of things, if you want to look more deeply at Scripture and a deeper, more profound engagement with your faith, I encourage you to sign up for With God daily. My daily devotional comes out five days a week via email or you can get it on a mobile app. I also do an audio version so if you prefer to listen rather than read, you can do that as well. Each devotional includes links to passages of Scripture and an historic prayer of the church to guide your own communion with God. With God daily is available to anyone who makes a donation of any amount to support my ministry. You can sign up right now at WithGodDaily.com or by downloading the With God daily app to your iPhone or mobile device. With God daily is the daily devotional for people who hate daily devotional. My guest today is a good friend and just one of my absolute favorite people. John Tyson is a pastor and church planter who's in Manhattan and he's originally from Australia as will become evident when you hear his voice. John and I have known each other for years and I've just deeply appreciated the way he brings sensitivity to the culture and deep awareness of the environment to which he's called the minister combined with a deep spirituality, a deep sense of dependency upon Christ and his spirit and all that we are to do in the world. And he has a new book out which is about exactly that. It's called Beautiful Resistance, the joy of conviction in a culture of compromise. Obviously we live at a time when people are very stirred up whether about the virus or injustice in the legal system and in policing and racism and a lot of Christians are activated and want to see things change. And through this book, John sort of calls us to not only engage the world for change but to do it in a profoundly Christian way, not just the world's way. That's why he calls it Beautiful Resistance rather than just angry resistance. In our conversation, we're going to get into what that means and the role, particularly of disciplines like prayer and fasting and how they relate to the Christian way of engaging the world. John and I also talk about his own family's experience with the COVID-19 virus, being in Manhattan, which was the early epicenter of this pandemic, at least in the United States. John, his wife and his kids all came down with COVID and if you don't know anybody who has directly been impacted by the virus, you're going to definitely want to hear John's a story of what they face and what his community face. 'Cause I think it'll help bring it home for some of you who feel like this is just a distant thing or a media concoction. So I'm grateful to have him back on the show. Here is my conversation with John Tyson. John Tyson, welcome back to the Holy Post. - What's up, Mike? Thank you so much for having me back on. Always good to be here. - Yeah, the last time you and I were actually physically together was in March. In Arkansas, we were both speaking at a conference at a large church in Little Rock. We had a great conversation, but there were these kind of rumors in the air about the coronavirus. - Yes. - And that was right before the whole country shut down. You went back to Manhattan. I went back to Chicago and then I heard shortly after that, you were diagnosed with COVID. - That is correct. My whole family got COVID. - Yeah, your whole family. Now, my hunch is there's listeners to this podcast, all over the country and even around the world. Many of them are probably in places that have not been massively affected yet, at least by the virus, maybe secondary effects of the virus, economic and social and things, but not the virus itself. Can you just share what your experience was as a resident of Manhattan, where you and your whole family got this virus and just what happened? - Yeah, well, I tell you, it was so crazy. That conference that we spoke at, I loved that. And there was a few people where there was very light jokes, like, oh, better not shake hands or hug because of COVID and it was all, it did it felt very, very distant. And almost like you didn't take it seriously, just something somewhere else. We came back within a week when you that we weren't going to do live services, we had to pivot to everything online. So we did that last great service where the whole team came in and we did it. So we streamed it live that Sunday morning and I think it was at that filming that almost everybody who was at that filming got COVID. And so it was very, very early on, right at the start. And I'm telling you, so we filmed on Sunday, I felt fine on Monday. On Tuesday, we went out for dinner and I felt really tired and then I woke up at two o'clock in the morning and I felt like I had been not just hit by a truck, but was being dragged underneath it. And I actually thought, I'm dying. Like I thought something is fundamentally vitally wrong with my being. - What were your symptoms? - My entire body ate. I had trouble breathing. It's very hard to articulate, but just right here getting breath through. And just like the most shocking headache and I thought, I have COVID. And then I almost slept about 48 hours or so, just out. And then when I got up, I was like, okay, I don't think I'm gonna die. I'm just really sick. And then it probably took day 10, it started to turn around where it was like, okay, I can see some, I mean, it was a dark mental hole. I mean, I thought, you know, I'm thinking about, I'm not gonna walk my door down the aisle. I mean, it was like genuinely dark headspace. Just an overwhelming physical experience. And then I started getting better than both my kids got COVID and then my wife got it. And my wife probably got it four times as bad as me. She was in bed for a month, solid. - Did you ever, did any of you go to the emergency room go to the hospital during any of this? - No, no, no, because it's, I cannot articulate the level of traumatic psychotic fear in New York. I don't, I mean, I don't like saying that movie's defined reality more than reality, but it felt like one of those contagion, the level of fear and physical contact. So, no, and, you know, they're saying a lot of the people over 80% of people that got invented as died. And so everyone was looking at ventilators like a life-saving device rather than a death sentence. My wife was like, I'm not getting put on one of those things. And remember back then, you couldn't be in the hospital with anybody, nobody could sit with you. It was a bunch of sad people, interbated, basically slowly dying. And she just said, I would rather die at home. So, it was scary. And when she did go back, so probably six weeks later, she went to the hospital and she went to it, she went to an emergency, sorry, she went to like an outpatient place. They sent her to the hospital. She went, she went to a place to get testing. And they literally treated her, like I could only describe, and I don't want to make light of this in any way, but how somebody was with AIDS was treated when they didn't understand the disease in the 80s. I mean, they literally screamed at her, get out of this office right now. They came up with aerosol and was spraying lysol on everything she'd touched. And it was super traumatic to her. So it was heavy, man. And then after about, she ended up getting bilateral pneumonia and they thought she had blood clots in her lungs. I mean, it was like, it was rough, man. I don't know if I've met your wife, but just so, for people who don't know you guys, you are in your 40s? - Yeah, I'm 43, she was 41. - Okay, you, I'm assuming no underlying medical conditions. So you're healthy, middle-aged people. And you know, cause early on, the things we were hearing as well, it's really only old people have to worry about this. Or only people who are immune, compromise, have to worry about this, but this was pretty serious. And all three of your kids who are about my kids ages got it as well. How did their experience differ from yours? - I mean, you know, so I have a son and a daughter. My son basically said I had a headache and slept for 16 hours, woke up and felt good. And my daughter said she felt sick for about two days, you know, slept in and then she was totally fine. So almost nothing. And yeah, you know, like weeks later, my wife is still in bed, deathly ill, cannot move with me basically force feeding her fluids. - So, right, since you are currently talking to people all over the country, again, who may feel very distant from the reality of this virus, what would you say to them? What advice would you give them? - Wear a mask, take this seriously. I mean, so look, man, the amount of people I know who had someone die, I had a friend die, a friend my age who I invested in heavily. And I got so frustrated when people were like, this is just a government, government conspiracy. It's not real. I'm like, I can't move. I'm trapped in my bed. I feel like I'm dying. You know, so the whole, it's not real thing was very frustrating. And I'm telling you, to see, so for the last six years, I've lived two blocks from time square. One of the most densely populated places on planet earth. I mean, just crowds everywhere to see it. Empty. One person, like to watch a city die in slow motion and be on life support was one of the most heart breaking things. And so it wasn't like a joke and it wasn't funny. It was just like the trauma of our lifetime, the great cultural and personal trauma of our lifetime. So seeing so many people lose their jobs, man. I mean, New York right now has the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. You know, over 18% unemployment right now in New York City. So this is like devastated one of the great cities on earth. And it's so much pain and heartache. - And sadly, we're not over it. - Well, thank you for that little excursion into your COVID experience. I think people needed to hear that from someone other than a talking head on cable news. Hopefully has more credibility. What I really want to talk about is your new book, which is called Beautiful Resistance, The Joy of Conviction in a Culture of Compromise. I'm assuming you finished writing this before COVID. - Yeah, well, it's funny. I finished writing this in December 2018. - Oh, a couple of years ago. - A year and a half ago. So yeah. Do I dare ask why it took so long to release? - I mean, that's the publishers, man. I mean, that is like literally, I think it was the, that's the publishing processing. - Yeah, sometimes it can be incorrect. - Your books coming out quicker than that. - What's your time and time? - Well, it depends on the book. It depends on the book. My latest ones with the doodles. - Yep. - They, between turning in the manuscript and releasing is only about six months. - Yeah, I mean, this was a shorter. This was a lot longer than that. I mean, they did a great job and they put a really, a really good editor in. They gave me like a really high-end editor, which I think before. So yeah, man, it is what it is. I tell you what's crazy. Two weeks before the Black Lives Matter stuff happened, I thought this book has nothing to say whatsoever to a world like that. And then like in one week, I was like, oh wow, this is like really got a lot to say about our current goal. - It does. - And that went from a relevance, yeah. - Yeah, like that overnight. So there's a lot to digest from this book, but we don't have time to get into all of it. I wanna highlight a couple, each chapter you talk about a different virtue or aspect of Christian life that you think is called upon in this moment. But the whole book is predicated on the idea that a lot of the church is as the subtitles to just compromise that we've just kind of given up or conform to the reality of the world we're in. and early on you talk to me. about idolatry. And you make a distinction that I hadn't heard before between idols of the heart and idols of the culture or heart idols and cultural idols. Unpack that. What do you mean by the difference there? There was actually another category that I couldn't get in the book because it was too, that chapter was already too long. And that was actually on what a principality is. And so like what biblically a principality is, it's like when a hot idol and cultural idols map together, they basically create almost like an ecosystem of spiritual superpower. And so how do you do spiritual warfare? It's like you've got to have clean hearts and you've got to be free from the world around you in order to really effectively like deal with sort of the principality level spiritual warfare. But I think it sounded a bit penta costal and a little bit meta. I was even trying to go sort of like the Walter Wink powers sort of framework, but it just got chopped out. So it got reduced to heart idols and cultural idols. Heart idols are the things that we tend to personally struggle with. In many ways like the inner motifs, ambition, security, fear, those sorts of things. Cultural idols are when heart idols sort of map together in a way that heart idols map together in a way where they have these larger cultural realities that hugely impact what's happening around you. And they create almost like an environment where an environment of plausibility for something to happen. So like I try and use sports for example in New York, the Yankees are a thing. When the Yankees won the World Series, they almost burned my neighborhood down. I mean, I woke up the next day and honestly stuff was still on fire. And I was like, what happened the like we won the World Series. And I was like, wow, this is not sports. I've never understood why when a city wins a championship. There are instinctives. Let's destroy our own city. I have no commentary. I mean, it's probably some sort of psychological discharge from all of like the pent up angst or whatever. Yeah. Anyway, those cultural idols are sort of larger things that sort of cast a spell like an example would be right now like political correctness. What is it that enforces political correctness and makes it happen? What are those control mechanisms, the disciplinary mechanisms that exist that basically condition you to participate? And so those those are larger cultural things. The heart idols are stuff that we struggle with internally. If enough people in an area have the same heart idols, that's when the cultural idols really exist in power. So it would be possible to not share a cultural idol would still be deeply impacted by it. Of course, of course, it is. I think that's absolutely possible. And when you think about the cultural idols now, which ones do you think are most influencing the church in the United States? It's one we never really talk about. Ma'am and I think Ma'am is like the largest threat to the gospel in America for Christians. Okay, define that because you're using kind of old King James language for and a lot of people don't know what you mean by that. Yeah, yeah. So it's not money. It's beyond that. So it's basically it's it's a vision of sort of independence and luxury that makes us not have to rely on God. It's sort of like a sophisticated independence from God. And it looks different for everybody. You know, for someone in the early 20s, it might be sort of like an Instagram sort of aesthetic. And they're just like if I can get my apartment to look like this and if I can project this, I'm willing to buy the things and act the ways and dress the way that they could be fit into this then then all will be well. For the poor, it can look quite different. I mean, it can be just like a greed for security sort of like, you know, Maslow plus sort of a thing. And for the elite, obviously plays out in New York sort of like that Hamptons and the Bentley and or whatever. And it's that spirit that walks in and sort of has an arrogant self-dependence. And how does that manifest itself not just in our in our individual lives, but in the corporate church? Where do you see that idolatry of Maman? Well, I mean, it's, I mean, you know, J.R. Packer who just died. I mean, one of his least least quoted things that he said, hang on one sec, man. Sorry, but we're all packed in here and we've got a two-hour that just cannot be contrite. It's just its own animal. Hey, my dog is usually in my office with me when I do these things and many times on a podcast or my audio devotional, he is hacking away because he's 15 years old. He may have COVID. But yeah, I don't don't worry about it. Okay. Anyway, how does it manifest itself? So much as J.I. Packer has a has a quote and I'm paraphrasing where he basically says, God's vision for your life is not a comfortable middle class life. And Maman, Maman basically functions like this. If you were to ask the typical person in the world, what is it that you want for your life? And they're going to say successful, well-adjusted kids getting in good schools, enough of money for retirement. So I don't have to concern myself with wealth. A couple of great vacations a year where I can enjoy some of like the sweet stuff of life. Times 30. And the problem is, if you get a non-Christian and you say, what do you want for your life? They're going to say successful, well-adjusted kids who get into good schools. I want enough money for retirement. And what I'd love for my life is a couple of great, you know, nice vacations a year. Like fundamentally, our life vision is identical to the pagans. And so we don't have a different vision of life. So in the book, when I'm talking about sacrifice must resist privilege, my whole goal is that we have to stew what we have radically for the sake of others. France to shave a before he died in the great evangelical disaster. Basically said when the church's vision is reduced to personal peace and affluence, the church is dead. It's lost its prophetic voice in the world. And at the typical person today is about personal peace and affluence. Am I people fine? Do I have enough? End of story. So it basically seizes our vision of what life is. And if we're not careful, much of the American church exists to facilitate the exact vision that is identical to that, which the pagans are running after. It's just like practical teaching series after practical teaching series on the Maman life with Jesus language. Yeah. Well, it seems like the only difference then. And I've written about this and talked about this frequently as well. The only difference is we have the same vision of life. We're just saying use Jesus to get it. In other words, we are asking Jesus to kneel to our idols. As well. And serve them. No, that's so true. One of the greatest sort of encounters I've had with Jesus in the last couple of years. It was in our prayer room. And honestly, so I've been in man hat for 15 years. And it's not an easy place to live. A lot of people say, I'd love to visit it, but I hate to live there. And at some point that becomes true. There's a lot of things that are amazing about it, but there's a grind. There's sort of a transient, to a transient, and secularism that is it's exhausting to exist in. And I was like, oh gosh, I just I just want an easier place to serve God. I just want somewhere where everything doesn't have to be a deconstructed conversation about motives and power. And so I'm in the prayer room. And then there's the passage of a teacher of the law comes up for Jesus and said, Lord, I'll follow you anywhere I go. But please, let me just go bury my father. Jesus says, let the dead bury the dead. You follow me. And I felt, I felt just God speak to me so clearly, such a strong, impressive and, but, and basically say, a life of ease where you care about all the things other Americans care about is death. It is death. It is death for those who want my heart. So don't worry about getting an easier call. We are turning to those things. Let the dead bury their dead. You follow me. And that's one of the things that I've like tried to keep in my heart because there's many times when I want to bury my dead. And I just have to keep hearing Jesus say, follow me, follow me. So it's real. Okay, I want to jump to a chapter in the book that's on a topic. A lot of people don't talk about now. And I think it's especially important given the activism that we've seen arise in the last couple of months, particularly around Black Lives Matter. And numerous other fronts like people are getting more and more activated because there's an election coming and that often stirs up all kinds of issues and concerns. But you have this remarkable chapter about fasting. And you mentioned the story in the Gospels where in Mark 9, where the apostles have gone out and they've been engaging in ministry, but they come back to Jesus because they've been trying to cast a demon out and they've been unsuccessful. And Jesus says to them, this kind can only come out through prayer and fasting. And you launch that into this much broader conversation about why the church in North America is so ineffective. And I want to read a couple of your sentences back to you because I just thought this kind of captured a lot of the essence of the book right here in the middle. This is on page 62. You write, we are hemorrhaging young people from the church. Many churches are in numerical decline. Faith seems as if it exists on the wrong side of history. At the same time, we have more theological resources than ever before, more understanding of the roots of our problems, more conferences and training, billions of dollars flowing through church programs. Yet very little seems to change. The things we have historically done to see the world renewed seem to have no power. And like the disciples and the teachers of the law, we have turned to disputes and theories. We have formed coalitions and alliances and networks, meanwhile decline accelerates. Okay. You're right. We have more resources and tools that are disposed of than ever before, but we're less and less effective. How does that relate to this experience that disciples had of trying to engage in effective ministry, but hitting this wall and Jesus saying, yeah, yeah, so he's only praying fasting is going to do it. What's the connection there with where we are in North America? We don't have any power. We have content, but we don't have power. So we don't contain the the might of the kingdom of God necessary to exercise the demons of our age. And why does prayer and fasting bring power? I mean, so A, because God says it does. I mean, part of it is like it's the eternal mystery. But I think a huge part of it weens us off self-reliance and it actually actually brings to bear the kingdom of God. Like it's one of those tools that reaches into the invisible and activates what we cannot get through technique or pragmatism or influence or human mechanisms and all the rest of it. And because there has been such like a rich sort of awareness and reference points of Christianity, particularly in the United States, like the rest of the world thinks it is absolutely bizarre that a president is required by popular consensus to comment on his personal relationship with Jesus every election. It is hard to articulate how much the rest of the world is like, what are you even talking about? So there's a huge gap there. So we've had so many basically again religious restraining forces in our society. And we've lost the source. I think it was Kallah that said, you know, you start with you start with somebody genuinely loves God. That's one generation. The next generation is moralism and the generation after that is hedonism. So it's like there was originally something that mattered. The next generation kept the form of it. And the one after that just rebels because nobody loves moralism. And so the US in a little bit is in that rebellion phase trying to cast off that that moralism. And as a result, we don't have any power at this particular moment. We're relying on the cultural forms, obligation, laws, legislation. And we don't actually have power to change the hearts of. When you fast and pray, you're getting in touch with the resources of God himself. And that's where those sorts of breakthroughs happen. Years ago, I remember doing a little seminar with Dallas Willard with a group of pastors. And he was talking about sowing in the spirit versus sowing in the flesh, which is categories that Paul uses frequently. And he gave this weird illustration. He said, imagine that a study came out that found conclusively that if you used bright pink offering envelopes on Sunday morning, your offerings go up by 25%. He said, what do you do? Do you use pink offering envelopes or not? And these group of pastors in this room where I'll start talking about this and debating, what's the right thing to do? Because if you use the pink envelope, then you're trusting in the pink envelope and so after 15 minutes of this conversation around and around and around, finally asked Dallas, okay, what's the right answer? And he says, well, of course, you use the pink envelopes, but you don't trust the pink envelopes. And it was his way of parsing the idea that you we have a lot, we have very good flesh in the North American church, right? We have intelligence, we have education, we have money, we have resources, we have all these tools in our disposal. And yes, we ought to use them. Our problem is though we're trusting in them rather than trusting in the spirit. So it sounds like what you're saying is when we, when we practice prayer and fasting, it's our way of focusing our dependency on the spirit, on the kingdom of God, on his presence, rather than our very good flesh. And so that's why we're being so ineffective is we're trusting in this really good flesh rather than the spirit. Is that a fair way to put it? Yeah, I would think so. Yeah, it gets a little more granular than that, but that is that is the big argument. The problem, and you've written about this a lot, particularly in the book with a lot of people are using religion and faith to control things. And the problem with God is that he's God. I mean, you can't control him. He does whatever he wants, whenever he wants to do it. And so again, we've felt like we can stem decline through different kinds of churches or, you know, we've basically used, yeah, pink offerings, market understandings, generational shifts, the best of this, the best of that, in an effort to be relevant. But what we've just lacked is like the legitimate encounter with God, both the joy and wonder of it that freezes from the lesser appeals of sin. And then the fear of God, the conviction of sin that sort of draws us into holiness out of the love and fear of God. So I think those are the things that we have to recover. How do you avoid the risk? Because I know some folks who, especially when they're more inclined toward the Pentecostal traditions, how do you avoid the risk of engaging in prayer or fasting in in a sort of incantation way or a magic way that if I just do these activities, it automatically requires God to act in a certain way. Does that make sense where it just becomes a magic spell rather than something truly relational with God? Yeah, you know, it's so interesting. I agree that there's definitely people who act like that. I think we are so lukewarm and so far from God in terms of how actual prayer lives and practice of fasting that that is like not even a concern for the typical person. So far below zero, that's like a level nine question. You know what I mean? So I'm with C.S. Lewis, who says like, you know, it's the unblushing promises of the gospel. Like if we really see what it is, Jesus talks about these rewards. And so Hebrews 11 says there's two things you need to know about God, right? Number one, he's there. And number two, he rewards those diligently seeking. So it's always threading the needle. And that needle thread is not about, can I get God to do what I want? It's like, Lord, you promised this. I'm asking you to fulfill your word in this situation. I'm asking you for you to act because I can act on my own. So to me, it's a lot about the motives. Again, a lot of people use the incantation as a religious way of controlling God. So he does what he wants. Genuine prayer and fasting basically says, God, you got to break through. We're powerless. Our eyes are on you. We look to you. Maybe more like Johosaphat, who you know, he calls on the covenant promises and he basically gets the whole community and they just fast and pray before God and they show up and they say, we're done without you God. And you said that if we humble ourselves and we come to this place and we turn our eyes to you that you would act on our behalf. And so it's to me, it's about the conditions of sincere repentance and sincere desperation that God responds to rather than the requirements of my faith or some formula that I'm looking to. And it's ultimately about intimacy. Do you think the church in America can get to that place without circumstances that are so dire that we have to be there? In other words, can you choose that posture rather than find yourself there because of that? You can choose that posture. But it just is like going to cost us so much. When I teach on prayer, like one of my teachings on prayer, as I say, ultimately what's happening in prayer is that God is changing you by being in His presence to make you the kind of person who's willing to do His will. And we don't know how much our imaginations have been seduced by the world that all of our previous stages of prayer are trying to get God to do our will. But we finally get to a point like Jesus, he says, not my will, but yours be done. And all of us, if we're really going to live in the way of the cross, we'll face a Gethsemane or multiple Gethsemane's. When we're going to have to say, okay, God, I am now willing to live for you, to lay it down to die. And so sometimes people get their voluntarily, but quite often it's circumstances. And that to me is why I feel like we had such a missed opportunity with COVID because at the start of COVID, there was all of those panic prayers, man, there was like 24 different prayer chains and thousands of churches doing their 714 twice a day. And I was genuinely affirming of that. Like you don't tell people they need a repent and they repent and you say, why are you repenting? It's like, no, this is awesome. Everybody's been shaken much of what we trusted and it's been stripped away. But again, And as soon as it looked like we were over it, we couldn't sustain it. And so the great goal of the crisis is can we embed within the crisis the new reality before we have the ability to return to normal? And it's like it didn't happen. For the most part, it did not happen. - Reminded of the quote from Ramamanual, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Okay, hypothetically, if you were put in charge of some reform movement in America right now, pick your movement. There's a dozen to choose from. Some reformed resistance movement, populist movement, how would you incorporate these truths into that effort? How would you structure it so that it really is a beautiful resistance rather than the type of resistance that we see so many people and so many activists involved in right now? - Well, I mean, so I want it to be beautiful because I think Jesus is beautiful and compelling. And so it's gotta be Christ's centered. I mean, much of the modern justice movements are not taking their cues from the scriptures. That's what was so compelling about Dr. King. It was rooted in the ethic of Jesus. So his whole vision was non-violent resistance based on the sermon on the Mount. And so his emphasis not on destroying his cultural enemies but converting them into friends through love and resistance is very, very different than the modern worldview. Much of our modern worldview is sort of a Marxist, neo-Marxist worldview. And by that, I mean, a perpetual and eternal class struggle. And so because it's a fundamentally materialistic worldview, there's no eternal life, there's no heaven, there's no later with which this can be worked out. It is now. And so you're basically trying to implement an eternity's worth of justice in a lifetime. And that has a very, very different feel to it than a vision rooted in the sermon on the Mount that Dr. King had. And so I would try and return to reform resistance movement to particularly for Christians to an emphasis on the scriptures, the way of Jesus. And I tell you what's interesting, my true activist friends, I mean, people playing the long game 10, 15 years in New York City in the worst neighborhoods. And they're there all the time. You would be amazed at how much they rely on things like Sabbath, they rely on joy, they rely on fasting and prayer. And I remember talking to one of my friends who's been in this for so long. And she said to me, all these young whippersnappers come out of sociology school, they come into the projects, they're going to fix everything they burn out in six months because they literally don't have the internal resources to deal with the brokenness that they see. And so to me, it would be taking care of the inner life, dealing with our motives, our practices, our pace, that sort of thing. So we have the resources to work on the external issues that face us. So yeah, I mean, it's sort of contemplative action. That feels like both what Jesus did and the most effective reform movements in history have found a way to do. - Which is really the essence of your book. I mean, you have chapters here on hospitality, obviously fasting and prayer, which we talked about, worship, rest and Sabbath, generosity, celebration, joy. Let's wrap up with this. You have this chapter about cynicism and the danger of cynicism. And I can certainly be guilty of this. This is a definite temptation just based on my temperament. And I think, frankly, my ability, which I hope can be used for good at seeing things as they are, some of you can see the truth so clearly and that truth can be so ugly, it's very easy to get cynical. And you have this wonderful couple pages in there where you talk about why the character of God is incompatible with cynicism. Explain what you mean by that. - Well, I mean, what sort of mood is God in? I mean, what sort of being is God? I mean, it's Dallas Willard, who's obviously written about God being the happiest being in the universe. And so what is the scripture telling us about the disposition of God? And it's telling us that his response to sin of anger and wrath is a temporary response to sin's presence. But when sin goes away, those components will not need to manifest themselves. God's default state is joy. That there's joy in the Trinity, the reciprocal relationship, there's joy in creation, the angels are shouting for joy. There's joy in the commands of God, just read David on the law of the Lord. There's joy in redemption, there's joy, the angels, I mean, all of creation's sort of weeping. There's joy in heaven at the state of the new covenant. And so we have to understand that's God's default state. And so the response to the brokenness is a temporary response. One, we should feel. But it has to be rooted in what our ultimate destiny is and what the nature of God is. - Yeah, I honestly, other than some authors I've read that have spoken that way, like Willard and you mentioned, that's not a message I've gotten from 30 plus years in the American evangelical subculture. And when I think back about it, I think the core message I've received is that God is angry. And in different environments, in different communities, the direction of that anger may be different. In some cases, he's angry at you or me for our sinfulness or our lack of devotion or our lack of worship, whatever it is. And in other communities is God's angry at the world because it's so broken and evil or angry at America or angry at this social injustice, whatever, but it's anger, anger, anger. And then it doesn't surprise me that we've made anger into a virtue in much of the church where we think that should be the default position of a truly devoted Christian. So we should be ticked all the time at everything broken and wrong in the world, but you're absolutely right. The emphasis on God's joy is overwhelming in scripture, but if that's not, who wasn't it, Tozer said the thing that comes to mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you? If what comes to your mind is that God is angry, that's gonna shape everything. So yeah, it's just, I'd say it's a helpful reminder in your book that we have to recapture that vision of a joyful God and certainly a joyful Jesus when that's not what's popularly presented. - Yeah, I mean, in essence, I mean, it's Tony Campolo's, the kingdom of God as a party or whatever. I mean, that's basically it. All the parables of the kingdom, their feasts, their celebrations, their welcomes or whatever. And so it's a challenge because sometimes we don't really have joy, what we have is basically culturally conditioned to temporary happiness. And so a lot of times people are, "Ang, we need to feel angry because we've sort of numbed out, we've escaped and we're not really engaging the brokenness of the world or we're not living in deep biblical joy." And so a lot of the anger can be a response, particularly around injustice. It's sort of like a wake up and just because you're happy, you know, on Netflix season two, doing your thing, not everybody gets to live like that. That's legitimate anger, but a lot of it, like the cultural anger, just like it's basically moralizing our opinions and then inventing our wrath and projecting it onto God. Like that's bad anger. And yeah, that's what basically has become, that's America at scale, you know, and I think that's unhealthy. And when it gets inside the church, when everybody in the church is angry at everybody in the church, like you've got to lift your eyes. You've got to get your eyes above each other's opinions on these things and we have to have a taste of eternity. I mean, we really have to fix our eyes on the beauty of redemption. We have to see it. You have to retrain your eyes to look for grace and wonder of redemption. And you know, Jesus is always, always trying to get us to do that, you know. - Well, John Tyson, thank you again for being back here. You're gonna stick around because we're gonna do a short bonus segment for our Patreon subscribers. So if you are supporting this podcast through Patreon, go to that site, go to Holypost.com or to our Patreon page and you'll be able to get the bonus segment with John. And for those of you who wanna pick up his new book, it's beautiful resistance, the joy of conviction and a culture of compromise. It's a fantastic book and like you said, you may not have thought this was gonna be a timely book a few months ago, but it is incredibly timely. And it does root us in that deep gospel vision of the world and redemption that gives us a long endurance to actually engage in the work that God has called us to. So thank you so much for being here and thanks for writing such a timely and important book. - No worries, thank you so much, bud. - The Holypost podcast is a production of Phil Vischer Enterprises, that's Phil's Company and Sky Pilot Media, that's Sky's Company. Production assistance by Julie Betcher, editing by Jason Rugg. 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