0:07

I have a heart full of questions quieting

0:09

all my suggestions. What

0:12

is the meaning of Christian in this American life?

0:17

I'm feeling awfully foolish

0:19

spending my life on a message.

0:22

I look around and I wonder ever if I heard it right.

0:27

Welcome to the (A)Millennial podcast, where

0:29

we have theological conversations for today's

0:32

world. I'm your host, Amy Mantravadi,

0:34

coming to you from Dayton, Ohio, home

0:36

to the nation's only production brewery

0:38

in a museum. If you're Southern Baptist,

0:40

now would be a good time to cover your ears. The

0:42

Carillon Brewing Company is a living history

0:44

museum that uses the techniques and equipment

0:47

of the 1850s to produce its beers. These

0:49

are served in a hall where you can see the brewers at

0:51

work in period clothing. It Is also a

0:54

full service restaurant offering up foods

0:56

reflective of Dayton's German immigrant

0:58

heritage. I don't drink beer myself, but

1:00

I very much enjoy their soups. If you're in

1:02

town, be sure to stop by and tell them I sent

1:04

you just so you can hear them say, "Who?"

1:07

Today, I'll be speaking with Alan Noble, author

1:09

of the book Disruptive Witness: Speaking

1:11

Truth in a Distracted Age. In it, he

1:13

considers some of the challenges that the modern world

1:15

presents for sharing the Christian faith, not the

1:17

least of which is that people are too distracted

1:20

to give much thought to the deep things of life. He

1:22

has some suggestions for how we can break through

1:24

the never-ending distractions of this age to

1:26

provide a beneficial disruption to the mindsets

1:28

of those who do not know Christ. He also

1:31

has some ideas for how we can better orient Christian

1:33

practice to focus ourselves on the eternal.

1:35

At this point in the podcast, I typically read

1:38

a passage of scripture that relates to the day's

1:40

topic, but I'm going to deviate ever so

1:42

slightly from that pattern today. I will read

1:44

to you instead from a 12th century devotional

1:46

work by Bernard of Clairvaux called

1:48

On Loving God. In it, he said something

1:51

that I think is very applicable to our modern

1:53

world and the points Alan raises in his book.

1:57

"If you wish to attain to the consummation

1:59

of all desire so that nothing unfulfilled

2:01

will be left, why weary yourself

2:04

with fruitless efforts running hither

2:06

and thither only to die long before

2:08

the goal is reached? It is so that

2:10

these impious ones wander in a circle,

2:12

longing after something to gratify

2:14

their yearnings, yet madly rejecting

2:17

that which alone can bring them to their desired

2:19

end, not by exhaustion, but by attainment.

2:22

They wear themselves out in vain travail

2:24

without reaching their blessing consummation,

2:26

because they delight in creatures, not in the

2:28

Creator. They want to traverse creation,

2:31

trying all things one by one, rather

2:33

than think of coming to him, who is Lord of all.

2:35

And if their utmost longing were realized

2:38

so that they should have all the world for their own,

2:40

yet without possessing him who was the author of

2:42

all being, then the same law of their desires

2:44

would make them condemn what they had and

2:47

restlessly seek him whom they still lack: that

2:49

is, God himself. Rest is in him

2:51

alone. Man knows no peace

2:54

in the world, but he has no disturbance when he

2:56

is with God." Bernard

2:58

is right. When we chase after the million

3:01

things of this world that occupy our attention,

3:03

we end up wearied and unsatisfied.

3:05

But when we place our hope in and direct our worship

3:07

toward the one who created us, we have lasting

3:10

peace. Keeping that in mind, let's move

3:12

on to today's discussion.

3:12

[MUSIC PLAYS]

3:24

And I'm here with Dr. Alan Noble.

3:27

He received his bachelor's and master's

3:29

degrees at California State University

3:31

- Bakersfield and his PhD

3:34

from Baylor University. He's

3:36

the editor-in-chief of Christ and Pop

3:38

Culture. He's on the leadership council of

3:40

The AND Campaign, and his writing

3:42

has been published by Buzzfeed, The

3:44

Atlantic, The Gospel Coalition, Vox, Christianity

3:47

Today, Modern Reformation, and First

3:49

Things, and he is currently

3:51

the assistant professor of English

3:53

at Oklahoma Baptist University.

3:56

You can find him on Twitter and Medium

3:58

@thealannoble and

4:00

on Facebook and Instagram @oalannoble. So

4:05

thank you so much for joining me today.

4:07

I'm really looking forward to talking about

4:09

your book.

4:10

Yeah, I'm excited. Thanks.

4:12

It's my understanding that

4:14

before you were a professor of English

4:17

and evangelical thought leader,

4:19

you were somewhat of

4:22

a big deal in the world of hip

4:24

hop. Is that correct?

4:26

Very little

4:30

of that is correct, but it's

4:32

true that I did record two

4:34

hip hop albums before I

4:38

got my PhD. Yes,

4:40

that is true. And we performed

4:43

some shows, but no big

4:45

deal. Unfortunately, it

4:48

was not to be.

4:49

Oh, well, I'm sorry to

4:52

hear that. But I mean, if

4:54

ever this evangelical thought leader thing

4:56

doesn't work out for you, at least you have a fallback

4:58

career.

5:01

I mean, for real

5:03

though, every once in a while, when grading

5:06

gets overwhelming, I think wistfully, you

5:08

know, "It'd be nice to just spend

5:11

$10,000, which I don't have, on

5:13

recording equipment and maybe

5:15

do hip hop or produce or

5:18

post-rock post-punk, or,

5:20

you know - I don't know. Various genres interest

5:22

me that I would love to be in instrumental music

5:25

and things, and then I realize that I've got

5:27

to pay bills, and so I'm like, "I

5:29

guess I'll grade some - fix these comma splices."

5:32

Well, it's just nice to hear

5:34

about people's past lives before

5:38

they became what we know them as today.

5:40

If at any point today , you

5:43

want to deliver your answer in

5:45

the form of a rap or some

5:47

other spoken word genre, feel

5:50

free to do so.

5:51

Yeah. Thanks.

5:53

So getting now to the real topic

5:55

of our discussion today, in this book,

5:57

you draw a lot upon the writings

5:59

of the philosopher Charles

6:02

Taylor, whose work A Secular Age,

6:04

published in 2007, has been

6:06

particularly influential on Christian

6:08

scholars in the Reformed and evangelical

6:10

world. Taylor uses a

6:12

couple of terms that pop up often

6:15

in your own book: one is "immanent

6:17

frame," and the other is "buffered

6:19

self." So particularly for those

6:21

of us who maybe aren't as familiar with that

6:24

book, could you provide some

6:26

basic definitions for those terms and

6:28

explain how they fit in with your book?

6:32

Yes . So they are related concepts.

6:35

What Taylor is trying to do is give

6:37

an account of how it is

6:39

the case that we could go in

6:41

the West from a situation in

6:43

which in, let's say 1500, it

6:46

was perfectly natural and

6:49

the basic assumption that you'd be

6:51

raised Christian, to

6:53

the point where we are today , in

6:56

the year 2021, where belief

7:00

in God is possible,

7:03

but it's only one of many possible belief systems

7:05

available to us. And he says something like

7:08

it's increasingly the less plausible

7:11

for most people. So he's trying to give an account of what happened.

7:14

How did things change? One of the ways he sees

7:17

things changing, as he says that for virtually

7:20

all modern people, we live in what he calls

7:22

the "immanent frame," and you

7:25

can think about this as the natural

7:28

world or the strictly

7:30

material world. Now

7:32

he talks about it as a frame because he

7:34

says even Christians and

7:37

other people who believe in something transcendent

7:40

- the spiritual realm, that humans

7:42

are body and spirit, somebody

7:44

who believes in a magic let's

7:46

say, or any kind of supernatural

7:49

or transcendent ideas

7:50

- they're still in

7:52

the immanent frame. It's just that he

7:54

says that these people live in what would he call the

7:56

"open immanent frame." The example I like

7:59

to give is of rainbows. I

8:01

found this to be a helpful example. When

8:04

contemporary people, Christian or non-Christian

8:06

, see a rainbow, I think they have

8:08

three basic reactions.

8:11

The first is they sort of elbow whoever's

8:13

next to them and say, "Hey, look, there's a rainbow."

8:16

So just a recognition of awe in

8:18

the face of beauty. The

8:20

second possibility is they take out their phone and take

8:22

a picture and post on social media and say,

8:24

"Hey, look, here's a rainbow," and so

8:27

there we're mediating our experience

8:29

with nature. And the third possibility

8:31

is we might say, "Oh, wow, rainbows.

8:34

I remember from third grade

8:37

how rainbows are made. I think it's something

8:39

like light reflecting and

8:41

humidity or water." I'm not

8:43

really sure. I teach English and I was homeschooled, so I

8:46

don't actually know how rainbows are made,

8:49

but I think that we think of the natural

8:51

explanation of it, right? What am I seeing?

8:54

How is it caused? What causes it, physically?

8:56

What's interesting is I think, as I said,

8:58

secular people, people who are not Christians

9:01

and Christians, have those

9:03

similar reactions to rainbows, even

9:05

though for Christians, the rainbow

9:07

is literally a sign from

9:09

God to us. And

9:12

I think if you were to ask a Christian, you're

9:14

asking the average evangelical in your church,

9:16

"Hey, is the rainbow a sign from God, that he's

9:18

not going to flood the entire earth again?" they'd

9:20

say, "Yeah. Yeah. I remember that because I

9:22

remember that in Sunday school or I remember reading

9:25

that passage." So yes, conceptually,

9:27

we see that. Okay. But when they

9:30

experience the rainbow,

9:32

when they experience the physical world,

9:34

they experience it not as something

9:37

that has a direct connection

9:39

to the transcendent - to God - but as

9:41

something in this world, purely

9:44

immanent, purely in this immanent

9:46

frame. So that's the immanent frame. It's

9:49

our default setting: the default way

9:51

we move through our modern

9:53

world. We tend to think of things in

9:55

purely physical, materialist

9:57

terms. Even if we believe

10:00

in religious ideas, our

10:02

default setting is not to think about them

10:04

as touching the transcendent. And that's

10:07

a problem with - We want to believe in

10:09

the existence of a living, loving God,

10:12

who is a personal God who interacts

10:14

with us. The buffered self is related

10:16

to this. The immanent frame

10:18

is part of what allows for the

10:20

buffered self. The best way to understand

10:23

the buffered self is to think about what

10:25

Taylor calls "the porous self," which

10:27

is the sort of medieval and ancient understanding

10:30

of what it meant to be a person in

10:32

those times. You would expect

10:35

that there are things that could, we could say,

10:37

get to you. So for example, if

10:39

you went to certain places, spirits

10:42

could affect you. If you did certain

10:44

things, you could have some sort

10:46

of a spiritual reaction moving

10:49

through the world. For example, there would be sacred

10:51

times and sacred places, cathedrals,

10:55

sites , saints' bones, all these

10:58

things that could affect

11:00

you. Now, what happens

11:02

with the rise of the Enlightenment

11:05

is that people become, Taylor says,

11:07

more and more stuck in our heads so that we're more

11:09

rationalist. And as a result,

11:12

we tend to think of ourselves as buffered,

11:14

as protected. So we can allow

11:17

things to influence us if we choose,

11:19

but it's always a choice. There's nothing out

11:21

there that can force me to believe

11:23

in certain things. And so

11:25

one example that I like

11:28

to think of is Communion. When I

11:30

take the Lord's Supper, I believe that

11:32

it's a means of grace: that God is Christ

11:35

is actually ministering to me in some

11:37

spiritual sense, and I don't

11:39

understand exactly what that is

11:41

and it's not dependent upon

11:43

me understanding it. God

11:46

is affecting me whether I understand it properly

11:48

or not. And I think sometimes I've

11:50

taken communion, not in

11:52

doubt, but in

11:55

a kind of ignorance

11:57

or confusion, feelings of guilt. Am

11:59

I good enough to take this, right?

12:01

Which is bad theology, but

12:03

we don't always believe good theology.

12:07

We don't always feel good theology, I should say.

12:09

So many times I've come

12:11

to the table and I've thought. "I'm not good enough

12:13

to receive this." And the beautiful thing,

12:16

is that in taking the Lord's Supper,

12:18

God is ministering to me, even

12:21

though there's nothing I'm doing to earn

12:23

it. Even when

12:25

I have these doubts about my own worth,

12:28

God has ministered to me because he's the one

12:30

that's acting. He's the one that's faithful.

12:32

So that's a porous self. That's the idea of the porous

12:34

self instead of the buffered self. The buffered self goes

12:37

to the table and says, "Well, if I

12:39

elect to this will have

12:41

a certain effect, if I don't elect, then it

12:43

won't," right? The buffered

12:45

self imagines that your human

12:47

consciousness is in command of your

12:50

feelings, your emotions, your experiences,

12:52

your meaning, your value, all of these

12:54

sorts of things. Yes.

12:56

So those are those

12:58

two terms.

13:00

Yeah, thank you. I think that makes it a

13:02

lot more clear and you do discuss some of

13:04

that in your book, of course, but I just thought

13:06

given their importance in your book, those would be two

13:09

good terms to focus on. Another

13:11

scholar you draw from is

13:13

James K.A. Smith, whose

13:15

Cultural Liturgies series makes the argument

13:17

that, in the words of another one of his books,

13:19

You Are What You Love. Like

13:21

him, you make the point that our habits

13:24

influence our loves and in turn

13:26

our beliefs. How have some of the

13:28

changes that have occurred in Church practice

13:30

over the past century or so influenced

13:33

the overall mindset and loves of Christians?

13:36

Yeah, this is a great question

13:38

because for a couple of reasons, but one

13:41

is that it ties back to this idea of the buffered self.

13:43

So if we think of ourselves

13:45

as buffered, then really the only important

13:48

thing is what goes on in our heads. It

13:50

doesn't really matter what our habits are, our practices.

13:52

I mean, we shouldn't be sinning, let's say: all right , we

13:54

all agree about that. But our church practices

13:57

or what we do, our liturgy, isn't

13:59

really important. What's really important

14:01

is the ideas. That's how

14:04

contemporary people too often

14:05

think, and that is

14:08

directly related to what Taylor's talking

14:10

about with this buffered self. If we are buffered

14:12

selfs, all that matters is that we have right thinking

14:14

or right doctrine, and what we

14:16

do with our bodies doesn't really matter. And

14:18

what Smith and others are

14:21

pointing to is that actually liturgy

14:23

does matter. What we do

14:25

with our bodies is important - that

14:27

it shapes what we love. As

14:30

an example, there are so many in the Church

14:32

and in church services, but I think the

14:35

passing of the peace or greeting

14:37

one another, hugging one another

14:39

in church. I mean, we're

14:42

still in the middle of the pandemic, so it kind of feels

14:44

weird - it feels wrong. But that vulnerability

14:47

of looking at your neighbor, your

14:49

brother and sister in Christ and embracing them,

14:51

and acknowledging, "The peace

14:53

of Christ be with you, I'm passing

14:55

the peace of Christ. We are sharing

14:58

in this. We are united through

15:00

Christ and there is something physical

15:02

to that." And it helps shape our loves because

15:05

quite honestly, it is

15:07

the case, at least for me - sometimes

15:09

you look at the pew next to you and you think , "I

15:12

don't particularly like those people. I mean,

15:14

I don't hate them or anything, but

15:18

you know, they're not my people. Yeah, we're not

15:21

into the same things. They have different

15:24

political views than me. We go to

15:26

the same church. Hey, that's great, but I don't want to

15:29

greet them. I don't want to hug them.

15:32

I don't want to shake their hands either. But

15:34

here, this part of the liturgy breaks

15:37

us out of ourself and says, "No, you know what?

15:39

It doesn't really matter what you think, ok? It

15:41

doesn't matter what you feel. You are a part

15:44

of this body." Singing is

15:46

a similar thing. Singing

15:48

is bodily, right? We're using

15:50

our voices. And

15:53

Paul calls us to encourage one

15:55

another: to exhort each other with

15:58

hymns and spiritual songs. And so that means

16:00

that I don't have the option to

16:02

just be in my head when it's

16:04

worship time. I'll tell you, when I

16:07

was younger and attending a very different

16:09

church in California, the

16:11

music was so loud and frankly so

16:13

tacky that I found myself thinking,

16:16

"I don't actually need to sing. Why

16:19

am I singing? I don't even like the lyrics.

16:21

The music is corny. It's

16:24

way too loud. My neighbors can't hear my voice anyway.

16:26

I'm just not going to sing, and to

16:28

avoid having really bitter thoughts,

16:30

because I don't like this worship style,

16:33

I'm just going to pray or I'm going to say

16:35

the words of a song in my head that

16:37

I do agree with." So for

16:39

me at that time, this is what

16:41

Charles Taylor calls "excarnation." The

16:43

only part of the worship that mattered was the part

16:46

that happened in my brain, right?

16:48

The worship just happened in my brain. It had no

16:50

external manifestation at all,

16:53

but since then, I've come to realize that that's

16:55

disobedient. I am called to

16:57

sing. Now, that means that the music

16:59

has to be quiet enough

17:01

or the volume has to be low enough that other people

17:04

can hear each other singing, so

17:06

that we can encourage each other. But

17:09

there is something that happens when we do that.

17:11

There is something powerful that happens. It does shape

17:13

our loves.

17:16

Yeah, I think those are some good examples.

17:18

One phenomenon that I've definitely

17:21

witnessed in having conversations

17:23

with people is that they often seem

17:25

to have little sense of the

17:28

background philosophical assumptions

17:30

behind their declarations and

17:32

how those assumptions may in fact

17:34

contradict one another. And as someone who's on

17:36

Twitter a lot, this is something that comes up

17:38

on Twitter a lot. So you

17:41

discuss this in your book and note that our

17:43

distraction is partly to blame

17:45

because we're taking in so much information

17:48

at such a pace and responding

17:50

so emotionally to it all that there's

17:52

little room left for deep thought, and

17:55

we tend to pick up bits and pieces of belief

17:57

here and there resulting in a hodgepodge

18:00

system. You also hit on

18:02

the fact that much of what we do

18:04

is actually about signaling our identity

18:07

to others as much as anything else. For

18:09

example, you write that, "Identity

18:12

formation becomes the central concern

18:14

in our beliefs, or just another way we articulate

18:17

that identity. Since we hold these

18:19

beliefs loosely, we have less

18:21

cognitive dissonance when picking and choosing

18:24

beliefs that contradict one another. A

18:26

lack of reflection makes it easier

18:28

for us to hold contradictory beliefs, but now

18:31

we see that our secular age contributes

18:33

to this condition by leveling beliefs."

18:37

Obviously this has an impact

18:39

on how we share our faith with others and

18:41

help them to understand the truths of Christianity.

18:44

How might such a conversation

18:46

be different in the 21st century

18:49

than it was in the 19th or even

18:51

in the 20th century?

18:54

In the beginning 20th century, you

18:56

still had a great number of people

18:59

who saw Christianity

19:01

as a viable

19:03

belief system, and who

19:08

still believed in the

19:10

possibility of there being

19:12

truth that is accessible

19:15

through reason and reflection and

19:18

meditation - these sorts of things.

19:20

In other words , you still had

19:22

people - and I'm thinking of the literature

19:25

because that's what I do - the modernist

19:27

poets, someone like T.S. Eliot or novelists

19:29

like Faulkner or F. Scott

19:33

Fitzgerald, they might not know what

19:35

the transcendent truth is, but they believed it

19:37

was out there: like we could, if we work

19:39

hard enough - maybe we can get there. And

19:42

what happens through the

19:44

20th century through

19:48

postmodernism , which is less a movement than

19:50

a description of what our society goes through,

19:52

I think most people lose that faith that

19:54

there is an ultimate truth out

19:56

there, and instead we

19:59

do have our subjective experiences

20:02

and values. So

20:04

I think in the we're in the earlier

20:07

20th century, it would be easier

20:10

to have a conversation, and also

20:12

the 19th century, certainly easier

20:14

to have a meaningful conversation

20:16

with somebody about the truths

20:18

of faith, and maybe h

20:21

ere formal apologetics would be

20:23

or what we think of traditional apologetics

20:25

would be helpful: talking about reliability

20:28

of scriptures and these sorts

20:30

of things, arguments for the existence

20:32

of God. Those might've been,

20:34

I think, more effective, but

20:37

my fear is that today,

20:39

when people hear those traditional

20:42

arguments, that they

20:44

don't actually interpret what we're saying

20:47

as an argument for objective

20:49

truth - this is the one truth - but

20:52

instead they s ee, as I say in the book,

20:54

us posturing a lifestyle. What we're

20:57

really saying - they interpret us - is

21:00

that this is what we find very

21:01

satisfying, and so maybe you would

21:03

find it satisfying, just like people

21:06

will say - people who are into CrossFit w

21:08

ill be like, "Hey, come on. This

21:10

changed my life. You've got to come join this."

21:13

And there's a kind of evangelism

21:15

that goes on, r ight? A proselytizing. "Hey,

21:18

come. This is o kay. " Or the

21:21

other one I 'd like to pick on is essential oils. "You

21:24

got to try this. This will revolutionize

21:27

your life." And our appeal is,

21:29

"This w orked for me, so it's g oing t o work for you."

21:32

And I'm not saying

21:34

that that when Christians evangelize,

21:36

that is the conversation that

21:38

we are intending to have, but

21:41

I do suspect that many times,

21:43

that is how we are heard

21:45

when we g o give testimonies. People

21:48

perceive them as another marketing

21:51

pitch, as another lifestyle on

21:53

offering before them, which they

21:55

can pick up if it sounds appetizing

21:58

or appealing or not, and

22:00

so that creates the challenge. That's at the heart of this

22:02

book: the argument of creating

22:04

a kind of disruptive witness, which

22:07

isn't a specific

22:09

thing. There's not a

22:11

specific method of doing this, although

22:14

I give some suggestions. Instead,

22:16

it involves, I think, the

22:18

recognition that our hearers

22:21

are probably not going to hear things the way we intend

22:23

them, because we live in a secular

22:26

age and they don't think in terms

22:28

of God actually existing.

22:31

And so part of our challenge with

22:33

that background information is inviting

22:36

them to question

22:38

their presuppositions, inviting them

22:41

to - as you read

22:43

that passage about the fact that we f ail to

22:45

reflect - inviting people to reflect

22:47

intentionally. Saying, "Consider this.

22:51

Spend some time just meditating - considering

22:54

this possibility." But I also think

22:56

we need to look for opportunities

22:59

where the cracks

23:01

in the secular world are revealed.

23:03

Taylor says that all

23:07

modern people feel across pressure.

23:10

So on one hand, we're being p ulled towards

23:12

secularism. We want to think in just

23:14

in terms of the immanent frame: there is no God,

23:16

it's just us down here living our lives, living

23:18

our best l ives. But then he says t

23:21

hat we're also always pulled

23:23

to the fact that this

23:25

is inadequate, that it doesn't satisfy us, t

23:27

hat there's a kind of emptiness, a kind of longing.

23:29

Well, I think for Christians pointing

23:32

to that longing, pointing to that pole,

23:35

emphasizing a nd inviting people to spend

23:37

time in it a s an opportunity to

23:41

disrupt their way of thinking about

23:43

faith, and whether that is - in the book,

23:45

I talk a lot about - beauty

23:47

and suffering, I think are two

23:49

of the most potent ways - when you e

23:52

xperience great beauty or joy in life,

23:54

then you recognize, I think, that

23:57

what you're experiencing is not just

24:00

an immanent thing. It's not just a this world

24:02

thing. It can't just be explained through evolutionary

24:04

biology and psychology.

24:07

I think that the birth of a child, for example, i

24:09

s this kind of experience where you think, "This

24:12

means something that I can't articulate,

24:14

and I could describe all the medical things

24:16

that are going on, all the biological things that are going

24:18

on right now, and I could explain

24:20

the process of how evolution brought us

24:22

to this, but it still would not

24:25

get at the meaning of this event, the

24:27

birth of this human being. And death,

24:29

I think - this is similar t o suffering. Suffering

24:31

i s similar. You can say, "Well, here's

24:34

the rational, empirical explanation

24:36

of what death is," but

24:38

you're left feeling that something

24:40

is missing. And I think those are opportunities

24:43

for Christians to step in and say, "Well,

24:45

you feel something's missing because something

24:47

is missing, and the thing is God, b

24:52

ecause he made you for eternity and he made you

24:54

in his image." And that's why birth is so

24:56

miraculous and death is tragic

24:58

in a specific way."

25:01

You write that in many cases in our

25:03

culture, Christianity is considered,

25:06

as you just noted, another lifestyle

25:08

choice among many rather than something

25:11

rooted in historical fact with

25:13

eternal implications. It seems

25:15

to me that certain tendencies of the

25:18

evangelical church have tended to exacerbate

25:20

this, such as our abandonment

25:22

of traditional forms of worship and

25:24

emphasis on doctrine, and those

25:26

are two things that you've also mentioned here. The

25:29

standard narrative that has taken hold in

25:31

recent decades is that people are abandoning

25:34

traditional established denominations

25:36

for non-denominational or broadly

25:38

evangelical churches, but there's also

25:40

a move of people in the opposite direction:

25:42

out of more generically evangelical

25:44

churches and into those that

25:46

seem to have more of a connection with

25:48

historic theology and practice along

25:50

with more of a high church liturgy.

25:53

Have you witnessed this latter trend

25:56

, what would be your thoughts about it, and

25:58

should we expect it to increase in the

26:00

coming years? Personally, I've seen it happening with

26:03

a lot of my friends.

26:05

Yes , me too. I mean,

26:07

that's my story. I mean, I

26:09

went to charismatic

26:13

and non-denominational churches in California

26:15

that were untethered from tradition,

26:17

that had a very low view of doctrine,

26:19

or if

26:22

they didn't have a low view of doctrine, they were still very shallow

26:25

traditionally, so

26:27

their liturgy was very low church.

26:29

We would never recite

26:31

a creed: the A postle's Creed, the Nicene Creed. We

26:35

would not c ite catechisms.

26:37

There was no sense of history. And

26:40

I began attending a Presbyterian

26:44

Church of America when my

26:46

wife and I moved to Waco for - we pursued

26:48

our graduate degrees. And

26:51

it was weird at first, but it very soon

26:54

felt like home. It felt like the right thing.

26:56

N ow, I think part of what was going

26:58

on was that both my

27:00

wife and I felt a kind of emptiness,

27:04

a kind of phoniness, a kind of plastic

27:07

plasticity, the

27:09

thinness of evangelicalism

27:12

nod at us - the thinness of evangelicalism nod at

27:15

us - and part of that has

27:17

to do with the fact that it's

27:19

so shifting. There is

27:22

not a strong core center.

27:24

There's the Bible, but there's lots of different

27:27

interpretations and it doesn't

27:29

seem like there's anything

27:31

sturdy to it. And

27:33

the fact that you have an exploding

27:35

number of denominations and n

27:38

on-denominational churches. I attended a

27:40

number of churches where people who never went to seminary

27:42

- they just read the Bible a lot

27:44

and then decided I'm going to be a pastor, and then all of

27:46

a sudden they were a pastor. Those kinds

27:48

of things to me now are sort of mind

27:51

boggling. Well, in the modern

27:53

world - There's a great

27:55

philosopher named Zygmunt Bauman. He's

27:57

great, mostly because his name is Zygmunt Bauman,

28:00

but he also has some really good things to say.

28:02

He wrote a fabulous book called Liquid Modernity,

28:05

and in it, he argues that our time

28:07

- the best way to understand the

28:09

world that we're living in is as a

28:11

liquid state. Nothing is solid. Everything

28:14

is shifting. Values are shifting. Beliefs

28:16

are shifting. I dentity, belonging,

28:18

places are shifting. Everything is constantly

28:20

shifting, and so that

28:22

gives you a kind of anxiety. I mean, if

28:25

you think about being on a ship, there's

28:27

a kind of anxiety. Why can't

28:29

I feel safe? Why can't I feel sturdy

28:31

and secure? Well, that's because e

28:33

verything's shifting under your feet constantly, and sometimes

28:35

evangelicalism feels like that. And

28:38

so when you're tapping into - whether it's

28:40

Presbyterianism or Lutheranism

28:43

or Anglicanism, or I had

28:45

a number of friends who became Catholic - I

28:48

think part of what's happening is they

28:50

realize this

28:52

society is sick. This unmoored

28:55

floating belief systems

28:58

that appeal to the individual,

29:00

this is not right. We need something

29:02

that has a s ure foundation, and I

29:06

would say more liturgical churches are

29:09

tapping into that, and I

29:11

know a number of Baptist churches who are

29:14

trying to recover those

29:16

things. So even though it's not

29:19

a part of most Southern Baptist liturgies

29:21

to recite the creeds, they're saying,

29:23

"Hey, we need to go back. We need to do that. That

29:26

needs to be a part of what we're doing, because we

29:29

are part of this long tradition. We are

29:31

grounded in something that goes beyond

29:34

the contemporary brandings of

29:36

denominations." So that's

29:39

my take on what what's going on.

29:42

And of course, there's no such thing as a perfect

29:45

church or denomination, so sometimes

29:48

you'll see the movement is brought

29:51

about by people who have had particularly

29:53

bad experiences,

29:55

not even because of anything doctrine

29:58

or in terms of practice, but just

30:00

they've had "church hurt," as some people put

30:02

it. And sometimes looking

30:05

to that historic tradition,

30:07

it can be seen as something, like you said,

30:09

that is likely less likely

30:11

to give way to one person's authoritarianism

30:17

because it's rooted in something much deeper

30:19

with more accountability. But I think

30:22

more even than just looking

30:24

at which particular denominations

30:27

are gaining or losing, the fact that people

30:29

are feeling the need to go in these different directions

30:32

does say something about what's

30:35

missing in our overall culture

30:38

and the way that we're practicing Christianity

30:40

in the United States and beyond.

30:43

In your book, you ask Christians

30:45

to reconsider how we think about time.

30:47

Although many people may not be aware

30:49

of it, we've moved away from the

30:52

historic Christian notion of time rooted

30:54

in the liturgical calendar and the divide

30:56

between the secular and sacred,

30:59

or ordinary time and higher time, into

31:01

understandings of time that are entirely

31:03

rooted in a modern, scientific

31:06

understanding championed by Isaac

31:08

Newton and others. So this would perhaps

31:10

be a good example of the immanent frame

31:13

as opposed to the non-immanent frame. So

31:16

you write in your book that in viewing time as

31:19

raw material, we reject the idea

31:21

that time may

31:24

have meaning in itself: that it may

31:26

be more than a measurement of intervals,

31:28

but contain truths that place obligations

31:31

on us to act in certain ways." What

31:34

have we lost in relying

31:36

solely upon modern notions

31:39

of time, and how can the Church take

31:41

steps to restoring our

31:43

thinking about time and eternity? And I'll

31:45

just add that as someone who

31:47

writes novels set in the 12th century,

31:49

and I'm constantly having to refer to the

31:52

liturgical calendar to know what's going

31:54

on in my character's life, that's

31:56

helped to make me appreciate

31:58

how different our thinking about time is now than

32:00

it was then. So what do you think

32:02

about that and what are some steps that maybe

32:05

the Church can take, or should we indeed

32:07

be trying to go back to previous notions of

32:09

time? It seems like you

32:11

feel that we should.

32:12

Yes. I mean, I

32:15

would say there's really no going

32:18

back. This is part of the challenge

32:20

of secularism is that there's no proper

32:22

going back, and Taylor makes this

32:24

pretty clear: that we can't go back

32:26

to a state where the i mmanent frame is not the way

32:28

we think of things. We can't go t o back

32:30

to a place where everyone thinks of themselves as

32:32

a porous self - that these

32:35

understandings, these postures, these conceptions

32:38

of life are so deeply rooted

32:40

in our society, even our technology.

32:43

So time is a great example

32:45

of this. We're not going to get rid of

32:47

the watch, but in t he medieval

32:49

world where church bells

32:53

rang the times, people thought

32:55

of time differently. They

32:57

conceive of time differently.

33:00

We can't go back from that, right? I

33:02

mean, even

33:04

if you became dictator of the world that said, "All right, all

33:07

t he clocks are gone." It just can't

33:10

happen. It can't happen.

33:11

Yeah. It seems like there would be some negative consequences

33:14

of that, potentially.

33:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

33:19

So what can we do? Well,

33:21

I think there are some reasonable things that we

33:23

can do that push back, I think

33:26

- ways of resisting,

33:28

I would say, so that the reign

33:30

of mechanical time isn't

33:32

total over our lives. That's the way

33:34

of putting it right. We want to resist

33:37

so that the reign of mechanical time is not total

33:39

over our lives: that there are spaces

33:41

where we're pushing back. I think Sabbath rest

33:43

is one great example of it . Sabbath rest is

33:45

- I talk about in the book - is

33:48

from a sacred

33:50

perspective, absurd. It's inefficient,

33:53

it's gratuitous, it's

33:57

a waste. It's prodigal. It's a waste.

33:59

It's a waste of time. If you

34:02

spend your Sunday - let's say you go to church

34:04

and you spend time fellowshipping

34:06

with friends, having them over for dinner, playing

34:09

together - you know, kids playing together - spending time

34:12

reading, not trying to

34:14

work, not trying to labor,

34:17

not trying to get ahead and make yourself

34:19

a better person or more

34:22

financially stable or more

34:25

accomplished or more improved

34:27

in some way. If you just rest in God's

34:29

grace for a day, that's

34:32

radically different than what the world says, because the

34:34

world says, "Look, you're going to die.

34:36

You've got very limited time. You need to use

34:38

every second to the maximum

34:41

advantage. You constantly

34:43

g otta be working. You constantly have to be striving,

34:46

improving yourself, ok? Maybe you don't go to work

34:48

on Sunday, but you should be working

34:51

out. You should be reading

34:53

things that are going to improve

34:56

your productivity. You're going to be doing

34:58

things to make yourself a better

35:00

person. So it's

35:03

still always about efficiency a nd earning

35:05

your place in the world, where I

35:08

think Sabbath r ests says, "G od's got

35:12

this." You c an just sit down and

35:15

you c an just chill and you can enjoy beauty,

35:17

go outside, go for a walk, just to

35:19

enjoy beauty - spend time with friends,

35:22

not in order to network or not in

35:24

order to rest your mind

35:26

so that you can be more productive the next day at work, but

35:28

just because it's good to be with friends. And

35:30

so those are ways - setting

35:33

times where you say, this is what I'm

35:35

going to do here, that this is a special time. It's

35:38

very difficult to do. I have a hard time with it,

35:40

to be quite honest, because

35:42

the d emand, because the rest of society

35:45

does not think that way. So it's difficult

35:48

to resist because everyone else is

35:50

like, "Well, why

35:52

aren't you working on this? Get to work! Do more!"

35:55

And we have to be able to say no.

35:58

So I think that's something - I

36:00

think a lot of churches I

36:03

remember, o r actually, I don't remember being

36:05

a kid when I was younger in evangelical

36:07

churches, I remember no mention

36:09

of Advent. No one practised Advent that

36:12

I knew growing up. It wasn't - Lent was - I

36:16

never heard of it, never heard of

36:18

it throughout my teenage years, and now it's

36:22

much more common i n evangelical churches

36:25

that aren't even very liturgical

36:27

to recognize, "Hey, you

36:29

know what? The seasons are

36:31

ways of remembering, of

36:34

acknowledging God and acknowledging

36:36

his story with us." And

36:39

so that's, I think, another way of pushing

36:42

back against that mechanical time.

36:45

Yeah. I think those are a couple good ideas. And

36:48

particularly on the Sabbath, like you said,

36:50

it is very hard, if

36:52

you want to be practicing

36:55

the Sabbath, depending on what that

36:57

means. You know , it means different things to different people,

36:59

but the world around

37:02

us is not at all set up to have a Sabbath.

37:04

So it just puts

37:06

you into all kinds of practical difficulties

37:08

that - When I'm reading writings by

37:11

Christians of yore from centuries past where they're

37:13

talking about all the things you should or shouldn't do

37:15

on the Sabbath, I think, "Yeah, but your

37:17

whole society was doing this," so it became

37:19

very easy to just

37:21

say, "I'm not going to have my business

37:24

open or I'm not going to do even

37:26

things a lot smaller than that," because

37:28

everyone else was doing them. But now,

37:31

maybe I have a conviction

37:33

that I don't want to be going out to

37:36

a restaurant Sunday, but none of my friends

37:38

feel that way, and they're all inviting me out

37:40

to eat, and if I say no, they're going to be offended.

37:42

So it puts you into

37:44

all these situations where you

37:46

do feel that pressure in both directions

37:49

and you have to kind of decide, what does it look

37:51

like to live faithfully

37:54

and practice the Sabbath in our society?

37:56

Is it different than it would have been in a previous

37:58

one? So, yeah, I think you hit on some

38:00

good things there. In your book,

38:02

particularly in the latter third or so

38:04

of the book, you talk a lot about a double

38:07

movement that involves turning

38:09

from our observations of God's

38:11

goodness to expressions of gratitude.

38:13

Could you explain that a bit more?

38:17

I wrote the book a long time ago, but here's what I think

38:19

I meant. This has

38:22

been a great interview because as you read passages,

38:25

I'm like, "Hey, you know

38:27

what, I'm glad I said that. I

38:29

believe that. That's good. Good for me."

38:34

"I'm a pretty good writer. I'm pretty clever."

38:34

"You know what? That's nice -" Writing a book, as you

38:36

know, you just, you have

38:38

no idea what you're doing. I mean, you do, but you

38:40

don't. You have no idea if it's a terrible idea

38:42

or if it's making any sense

38:44

and then it's nice afterward.

38:45

I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm totally confident in everything

38:49

I'm doing.

38:51

But it's a good feeling afterwards, cause sometimes

38:53

you will go, "Oh, I wrote

38:55

that? Well

38:57

, good for me. How about that? What do you know?"

38:59

In any case...Yeah, so

39:01

the idea of the double movement - I'm trying to push

39:03

back against the immanent

39:06

frame, and at the same

39:08

time, push it back against our distracted

39:10

age, and both of what those things do is they

39:13

keep us in our heads. They keep us from

39:15

recognizing God's

39:17

presence in the world, which

39:19

should lead us to gratitude and repentance

39:22

and dependence upon him. And

39:25

so in thinking through these

39:27

two problems, I couldn't

39:29

come up with - There's not a five point

39:31

plan to overcome secularism

39:33

or a five point plan to overcome distraction, but

39:36

it seemed to me that there was one truth underneath

39:39

both of those problems that I could

39:41

recommend, and that

39:43

is that if we make a practice

39:45

- a conscious, intentional

39:47

practice of being

39:50

grateful to God for things

39:51

- that practice

39:53

pushes back against the immanent frame, because

39:55

it says, "This is not all that there

39:57

is." Okay? And it

40:00

also pushes back against

40:02

this constant mediated, constant

40:04

distracted culture, which

40:06

says, "Just focus on the immediate, right?

40:09

Just focus on what's in front of you, what's on your screen,

40:12

what's on your plate. What do you need to be working on

40:14

next?" So on and so forth. And

40:17

I guess what I would say is that in our contemporary

40:19

culture, we're good at the first step - so observing

40:22

something beautiful, something enjoyable,

40:24

participating in something that gives us pleasure.

40:27

But that second step, which is we draw our

40:29

eyes up to God in gratitude, and we

40:31

say, "Okay, now I know where this

40:33

good gift comes from," -

40:36

I think secularism and distraction

40:38

work against that second movement.

40:40

We're less likely to do that

40:43

instead. We just reflect on

40:45

our own pleasure, our own enjoyment. Yeah.

40:47

So that's what the double movements is about.

40:50

It's nothing mystical. It's nothing revolutionary.

40:54

It's merely pointing out the fact that

40:57

a major challenge of living in the modern world is

40:59

that we are going to be encouraged

41:01

not to feel God's presence, and

41:04

so we are going to have to be more intentional

41:07

about recognizing when God's

41:09

presence is felt.

41:13

Imagine that you were

41:15

speaking to the mother of a young child

41:17

who also happens to write

41:20

novels and run a podcast

41:22

and who finds her opportunities for

41:24

the much prized quiet time with God

41:26

to be minimal. How might such

41:28

a hypothetical person find

41:31

ways to break through life's continual distractions and

41:34

focus on the spiritual? And I think this

41:36

is the part where I'm supposed to say, you know, "Asking for

41:38

a friend."

41:40

I mean, I'll ask the

41:42

same thing. So one

41:45

of the interesting - I've got two

41:48

days, I think, to finish my next

41:50

book, and part

41:52

of the inspiration for the second book comes

41:55

from that very question, because I've been

41:57

asked it many times, and as

41:59

I thought about it and I reflected on it , it

42:03

gave me serious pause, because I

42:05

realized I don't have these

42:07

things figured out either. And

42:10

so then I began asking myself, "Well, why

42:12

is that the case?" So I

42:14

think some of it is because of a lack of willpower,

42:17

lack of self-control, sloth

42:20

on my own part. Okay. That's true.

42:22

But sometimes it's because

42:25

the contemporary world is

42:27

- what I'm going to argue

42:29

in this next book - a fundamentally inhuman

42:31

world that demands

42:33

- it puts upon us the

42:35

anxieties, it puts upon us the worries,

42:38

the obligations that puts upon us

42:41

are incredibly draining and stressful

42:44

and anxiety producing. And

42:46

as a result, we're all running around

42:49

frantically trying to keep our lives together, and

42:52

we're exhausted. I talk in the

42:54

book about a phrase that keeps echoing

42:56

in my own head that I tell myself as

42:58

almost as a kind of prayer. I always say to myself,

43:01

"I just need to..." So it might be something like, "I

43:03

just need to do the dishes and

43:05

then I'll have time to read my kids," or , "I just

43:08

need to grade this stack of papers, and then

43:10

I'll get back to reading the Bible in the morning." You know,

43:12

"I just need to get

43:15

through this and then I'll exercise

43:17

and then I'll feel better about myself." "I just need

43:19

to..." And it never ends. It's always,

43:21

"I just need to, I just need to," and

43:23

there's never - that next day - that never

43:27

comes. So that has

43:29

drawn me to the conclusion

43:31

that one of the things we'd need to do is have grace

43:33

for ourselves because God has grace

43:35

for us. We need to understand that one

43:37

of the things that makes it difficult - it's not

43:40

just our laziness. It's not just our sin

43:42

nature. It's also that the structures

43:44

of our society are not made for

43:46

humans designed in the image of God, and

43:49

because of that, it's really hard to

43:51

live a human life. It's really hard to

43:53

live in honor of God, and

43:55

you gave a great example of that with

43:58

the Sabbath, when the entire structure

44:00

of society demands that you stay

44:02

busy on Sunday too , it's

44:04

difficult. It's hard to

44:06

push back. And so we need to have grace for ourselves

44:08

and recognize, okay, I'm

44:10

striving, I'm working towards this,

44:13

but it's only in God's grace.

44:16

One of the quotes you included from

44:18

Charles Taylor that really struck

44:20

a chord with me was where

44:22

you quoted him as saying, "All joy strives

44:24

for eternity, because it loses some

44:26

of its sense if it doesn't last." You

44:29

reflect on that quote by noting that suffering and

44:31

tragedy have an ability to break

44:33

through our distraction and force us to consider

44:36

things beyond our present moment. As you

44:38

mentioned earlier in this discussion, the coronavirus

44:41

pandemic has placed the entire world

44:43

in one such situation over

44:45

the past year, and it's been my

44:47

continual observation that rather

44:49

than causing people to contemplate

44:52

their mortality and the things of eternity,

44:54

we've found all kinds of ways

44:56

to remain distracted by lesser

44:59

matters. How can we as

45:01

Christians use this present situation

45:03

to call people to a joy that lasts?

45:06

That's a great point. Yeah. I think

45:08

your analysis is exactly right, and

45:11

sometimes the lesser things

45:13

are actually debates about the pandemic itself.

45:15

I mean, that's been the chief distraction,

45:18

right? So 4,000 people a day are dying

45:20

and what are we still debating? Well, should we be

45:22

wearing masks, right? Or , you

45:25

know, policy arguments, frantic

45:28

policy arguments that are important.

45:30

I'm not saying that they don't matter. Whether we

45:33

should open schools or not - these things matter. But

45:35

what I am saying is that when our

45:38

consciousness, when our imagination primarily

45:41

conceives of this pandemic in terms of

45:44

policies and the culture

45:46

war, which I think that is

45:48

- for a significant portion of society

45:50

in America, that is how they are imagining

45:53

this crisis. They are imagining it in terms

45:55

of the culture war of right versus

45:57

left, liberty versus

46:00

liberalism, whatever it might be , oppressive

46:04

scientists versus entrepreneurs

46:06

and free Americans. And so

46:08

when that happens, it mediates

46:11

our experience of the pandemic so

46:13

that it doesn't feel entirely real. I

46:15

don't think a day has gone by where I've really

46:19

felt that 4,000 people have died or

46:21

where it's like hit me, like, "Oh, that's

46:24

a lot of people who didn't need to die.

46:28

This is a tragedy. This is, you know, the death

46:31

toll of 9/11 every day now." It

46:34

feels - there's a sense of unreality

46:37

to it, and that

46:39

protects us. You're right. We're not thinking

46:42

about mortality. So this

46:44

is difficult. What can we do? Well,

46:47

as the pandemic continues

46:49

to grow, I think one natural

46:51

reaction is that it hits closer

46:54

to home, that we know people who

46:56

are hospitalized, that we know people who have lost

46:58

family members, and those are opportunities

47:00

for us to step in and point

47:03

out and walk alongside people

47:05

in love. And as I say

47:07

in the book , it's not that you want

47:09

to encourage people to suffer needlessly,

47:12

but I think when we come alongside

47:15

people who are suffering in

47:17

the modern world, often our response is, "How do

47:19

we get them to stop mourning as

47:21

quickly as possible? Do they need medication?

47:23

Do we need to distract them? I'll take them out to the movies.

47:26

What do I need to do so they don't feel this

47:28

way?" Well , that's

47:30

not a Christian response. A Christian response

47:32

is "momento mori," which is remembering

47:35

death, remembering it, that it's coming for

47:37

you. And that should

47:40

turn us to Christ and remember

47:42

that this life is not all there is. Again , it's

47:44

pushing back against the immanent frame. So I think

47:46

as we're walking alongside people who are experiencing

47:49

mourning, first step is don't

47:52

be a part of the group that encourages

47:54

them to just quickly get over it and stop

47:56

thinking about it and stop feeling that's bad.

47:59

Okay. Second is find

48:01

ways of loving them

48:03

, inviting them to

48:05

consider the significance

48:08

of this, allow them to think about

48:10

the meaning , allow them to feel

48:12

it - not to torture them, not to manipulate

48:15

them, but because it is real and

48:17

because you don't want them to hide from the truth.

48:20

So those things I think are important. I think publicly

48:24

Christians ought to be

48:26

some of the people who are

48:29

being solemn about this

48:31

crisis, who are recognizing this

48:33

solemnity, the tragedy

48:35

of it, right? So instead of being

48:38

distracted with all these policy debates,

48:40

some of which are important, but instead

48:42

we ought to be a force pushing back and saying,

48:46

"Thousands of people are dying. What are we doing

48:47

to mourn this? What are we doing to

48:49

care for the people who've

48:51

lost loved ones?" We

48:53

can treat this as a more human

48:56

crisis. We have the

48:58

biblical framework to do that, and I think

49:01

that would maybe help our

49:03

neighbors recognize, like you're saying,

49:05

"Hey, this is real. People are dying.

49:07

I'm going to die. What does that mean for my life?"

49:11

I've been seeing on social

49:14

media, this hashtag:

49:18

#hcqa1. Does that mean

49:20

anything to you?

49:22

Yes, good plug. So

49:24

this is the Heidelberg Catechism first

49:27

question and answer, which is what is our

49:29

only comfort in life and death: that we are not

49:31

our own but belong body and soul, in life and

49:34

in death, to our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. And

49:37

that is the heart

49:39

of my next book, which is tentatively

49:41

titled something like "You Are not Your Own,"

49:44

in which I'm going to argue that the

49:47

fundamental inhumanity of

49:50

our contemporary society, which I mentioned

49:52

earlier , stems from the fact

49:54

that we have a false anthropology. Our society

49:57

is built for a certain kind of human.

50:00

It assumes we're certain kinds of beings.

50:02

It assumes that we are our own

50:04

and we belong to ourselves, and so our

50:06

institutions, our systems,

50:09

our laws are myths.

50:12

Our stories, our values,

50:14

our markets all assume that we

50:16

are people who belong to ourselves,

50:19

not to God, and the ramifications

50:22

of that are innumerable, and

50:25

they lead to a society

50:27

that is inhuman. I mean, all societies

50:30

are built assuming

50:32

what a human being is, what they're for

50:35

and what it means to have human flourishing. So

50:37

if we have a society that gets that question wrong,

50:39

that doesn't actually build a society

50:41

for humans as God created us, then we're

50:44

going to be walking around in a place that doesn't

50:46

work for us - that doesn't fit, that treats us

50:48

wrong - and we're going to feel terrible,

50:51

which I think a lot of people do. And

50:54

the response to that is

50:57

the true anthropology, the biblical anthropology,

50:59

which is that

51:02

catechism answer, that we are not

51:04

our own but belong body and soul, in life and death to

51:06

Christ, and that I think changes things.

51:09

Well, thanks for sharing about that. I'm

51:11

really looking forward to your new book.

51:14

I enjoyed the first one, so hopefully the second one will be

51:17

just as good. I'm looking forward to it. Thank

51:20

you so much, Alan Noble, for joining me to talk

51:22

today. It's been a pleasure.

51:25

Thank you. Yes. I've had a great time.

51:52

[inaudible]

51:55

It was an honor to speak with Alan today about

51:57

his book, Disruptive Witness, which is

51:59

available from InterVarsity Press. I

52:02

hope the discussions on this podcast provoke

52:04

a lot of positive thought for you as they do for

52:06

me. The music you've been hearing is

52:08

the song "Citizens" by Jon Guerra off

52:10

his album Keeper of Days. He

52:12

will be my guest on the podcast next week, so be

52:14

sure to listen and hear him explain what led

52:16

him to write this song and what we can expect

52:18

from him in the near future. "Now

52:21

to him who is able to do far more abundantly

52:23

beyond all that we ask or think, according

52:25

to the power that works within us, to

52:27

him be the glory in the church and in

52:29

Christ Jesus to all generations, forever

52:32

and ever." Amen. Have

52:34

a great week.

52:36

Is there a way to live always living in enemy hallways? Don't know my foes from my friends and don't know my friends anymore. Power has several prizes. Handcuffs can come in all sizes. Love has a million disguises, but winning is simply not one.