ASM156 Homebrewed Christianity Team-up

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we interrupt your regularly scheduled ask science mike for a special team up with homebrewed christianity [Applause] [Music] well as i mentioned right up front in the intro this is not a normal episode of ask science mike uh recently i was in minneapolis-st paul i don't know exactly when because that's who i am but recently i was there for a youth ministry event called a jesus wrote a dinosaur and other silly youth ministry tales it's tons of fun and as part of that event we did a public event which a ton of you came to where tripp fuller from homebrewed christianity and i teamed up to do a live podcast uh we absolutely packed out this brewery um it was free it was fun and we recorded it so that's what this week's ask science mic is uh i'll warn you uh much more graphic language than is typical for ask science mike so for those who usually listen with your kids this one is very grown up at times but it was a ton of fun man people really laughed and had a great time and i do want to let you know on that note that if you enjoy this kind of team up energy that tripp and i and my friend mike morell who helped organize the wild goose festival are putting on something called the cosmic campfire november 8th through 10th in raleigh durham north carolina this is going to be a bunch of scientists and theologians uh getting together to talk about cosmic origins deep ecology human evolution personal transformation uh it's what would happen if roomie julian of norwich darwin lao tzu socrates and jesus made s'mores together so uh it's you can't like buy a ticket yet but you can sign up to be notified when tickets go on sale so if you're interested in that go to cosmic campfire dot party no i'm not kidding that's actually the url cosmic campfire dot party because it's going to be a total party uh so sign up there to be notified when tickets go on sale and to learn who all's going to be there we're approaching a ton of people we'll see who actually says yes but i'm really looking forward to this one november 8th through 10th in raleigh durham save the date and go to cosmiccampfire.party to sign up to be notified when tickets go on sale and without further ado here is tripp fuller and i making total asses of ourself hello everybody a jesus wrote a dinosaur you're about to experience a lot of science mike and homebrew christianity podcasts so in this live experience there's going to be a number of variety of interactions we're going to talk then we're going to then we're going to be all like interstellar and junk with a physicist then we're going to talk about youth and what's like not failing at parenthood um and then we're gonna answer questions yes so and i'm going to drink alcohol yeah out of a flask and part of my solidarity with you during this experience is that i too am going to drink amazing we're recovering fundamentally greater love has no man than the one that lays his soberness down for another um so yeah so let's begin then and and here's the thing mike you have probably and you've even complained on the podcast but you wouldn't call it complaining you would have not done it in a negative way but you've said that the retelling of a certain parts of your story has created distance from them yes so don't tell me that story great but already relieved i know um i want to know i want to know what was the question in your life of faith growing up your conservative southern baptists and stuff what was the question that didn't come and you decided to go apologetic style on your fifth grade science teacher which i heard about today i'm sorry for that science teacher but the question that when you had it it stung it lingered and you knew the script you were handed religiously didn't work uh there's two they're pretty common what's with divine genocide in the old testament can i get an amen what's with that we're against it just to clarify officially anti-genocide yeah we are very progressive uh i think that is white dude progressive isn't it like we're against genocide yeah did somebody have a cookie for me yeah i need validation desperately no no the next step is that you ordain women but don't give them senior minister jobs that's it that's like beyond my awareness i was baptist too recently i feel just like coordinating women the other one was uh why are some prayers answered and not others that would be my other stinging question and who and who's had that question before richard dawkins and and who's asked that question a million time that question asked to them over and over uh there were lots of hands each time now as a youth minister how many of you are confident you failed to answer that question correctly repeatedly yeah i i i you when you fail it and it demonstrates you have a lot of student loans that's the worst oh oh like when they're like well i prayed and like it says like if you have enough faith it could move a mountain so like maybe i would you know be able to study enough to to get this test so i can get into the school and blah blah blah all the things american consumer capitalism needs you to do to demonstrate your success and stuff and i was like maybe your prayer was to an alternative religion called economism and it professionally doesn't answer prayers and they were like what are you talking about i just i just wanted to stay awake for the for the s.a.t and then i was like whatever god's not in control omnipotence sucks they're like what's up hashtag process theology and or biblical christianity um oh man i can't even throw it around biblical christianity no no but are they hypocrites this is omnipotence is not in the bible here's a true story so a god has two divine names other than one hagar gave in the bible heads up a female who's not even part of the elect names god before anyone else does that would be good news then you have like yahweh and there's a whole story about that but el shaddai that's the kicker in hebrew i've asked multiple rabbis it's either mountain refuge right or well-breasted mommy right which if you think about agricultural periods like you need females to stay wet so they can feed people and if god is the mountain refuge you go to or the mom that titties never run dry and that's the actual name of god el shaddai it would make a celibate man named jerome in the first century awkward when he translates the latin translation of the bible the vulgate so when he gets to el shaddai he can't translate because only celibate dudes are reading this he can't be like and god's name is the well-breasted refuge like you know like a little 18 year old my first time reading this part in in in the vulgate like priest is gonna like you know sin so what what does what does what's patriarchy's like like natural motive when you come into empowerful life of female images of the divine you project hyper masculinity on them so you get like uh almighty is what jerome translates that el shaddai from hebrew in the latin obviously wasn't almighty but that's the english equivalent and now everyone's litany's at church has almighty in it when you should really just substitute well-breasted deity who never runs dry because god's always ready to hold you nurse you and keep you and so yeah i'd just like to uh take a moment to thank you on behalf of every listener fast science mike for saying titties for the first time in the history of the podcast it's literally never been said on the show dude if we had a list of 10 words haven't been said i would try to fit them in i've definitely said breasts but never titties the first person said titty on homebrew christianity was katherine keller but she was quoting john cobb and uh which for science mike listeners that aren't theology nerds those are very famous progressive theologians sorry anyway so those are the two extra questions i have a i have a question for you on behalf of the science my community all right how is theology a thing what do you mean like how do you know i'm serious mike crow is literally like yes he never says because he doesn't know how does one know what is a right or good theological theory or framework oh so well because i know you know you're just like so the content so it's important when you're doing theology and you're assessing it's like validity to decide what is valid so during the enlightenment we shrunk what made theology valid to truth because we were trying to compete with the antagonism that emerged in anti-intellectual christianity so we decided what is good theology is true theology so you get fundamentalists who are like here are the fundamentals if you don't believe these you're not a christian and that means you shouldn't use your brain because the earth is a few thousand years old you know that right i know it well but then but then you also get a variety of of kind of rejection of that modern liberal theology that what does good theology look like is one that supports particular moral responsiveness and that too kind of minimizes the vision of christianity to good ethics um i think the primary eternal virtue that uh and this is not just me this is like medieval mystics and such there's a debate is truth primary goodness primary or beauty primary and one of the uh biggest decisions when thinking about how you do constructive theology is which is at the top of that triangle i think the appropriate answer is beauty because uh religious embodiment religious experience the part of your existence that can be examined scientifically but can't be really affirmed or denied or encapsulated is our emotive subjective responsiveness to eye contact while making love hearing mozart a friend forgiving you and you didn't know it was there and stuff like that and those are beautiful they're also good and true but the beauty is a compelling part so when you start to think about what is good theology i think it is better to ask what is aesthetic theology or what's beautiful theology so you've had uh in contemporary theology people have switched from theology to theopoetics as a way of demonstrating that switch but you've also had ones that recognize the tradition isn't a reservoir of truths to be organized and demonstrated affirmed and then teach all to repeat it at church but the tradition is a lively conversation about what it means to be human what it means to live before the ultimate what it means to embody justice and part of doing theology is getting to know your ancestors and arguing with them and for the church the two biggest tasks i think are going to the catacombs of the art museum of theology because we have our you know the ones that get featured and pulling out voices and experiences that haven't been featured in the art museum of christian witness and testimony and the other is rearranging them so the categories that were determined either by medieval scholasticism early modern response to uh enlightenment or kind of anti-intellectual responding to anti-intellectual and christianity they don't define christianity and so what is it like to take a tradition the conversations the questions and arrange them so as you encounter them you're invited into more beautiful living in community inspired by the life ministry death resurrection of jesus which is kind of a crazy thing to organize a museum around i'll be honest good i expected that to be more fluffy and less substantive i'm surprised to nod my head along with the theology answer so thank you not only for the scotch but an explanation of theology that doesn't make me roll my eyes as someone who's like primarily a materialist that appeal to beauty and community i think is at i wouldn't have put it in those terms before i heard you say it but it's actually how i approach my faith experience um i just never thought of that as theological because i'm always a guy that makes jokes that all theology is fan fiction like i might enjoy it but it's not grounded in reality um i mean if you'd like to pursue that further we can but you know that should probably be a completely different conversation because i would go i was doing a little a little little groundwork for whatever happens later because there's so many non-religious and explicitly atheistic listeners on my program so i want i would whenever someone on in theology which by the way people begged for more theology on a science mic but i have such a sensitivity to uh to my my atheist homies uh i wanted to lay a groundwork so people know where you're coming from because so a lot of like atheist political philosophers or writing theology books today so if you were doing a philosophy degree not in the you know the type that's obsessed with logic but if you were doing continental philosophy scotch is not as good in the nose um yeah i agree you know how many other things are better in the mouth than in the nose filtered water gosh perverts that's one this is going to be strip podcasting [Applause] see now i made you blush which is going to be the cycle mutual blushing well that that should be the episode title mutual blushes you drink your scotch i'll tell you about theo poetics i actually think it's a it is a interesting so that continental philosophy you have people like zach agamban it's pointless saying anyway a lot of famous philosophers that are very much materialist atheists have in our contemporary political situation gone back to reading like paul and theology because the question they're asking is with the downfall of the enlightenment and modernity would you see the failures of nation states democracies global capitalism being problematized what is a way to talk about anything how can you believe one damn thing in a way that brings people together to act in a way that's not scripted and determined by the market and so you have a bunch of atheist philosophers they're like well there's just one dude i don't believe anything he thought but paul was effective and so you now have a if you go to a theology conference it's easy to you know to have 30 of the theologians not being theist but think that in religious traditions and in the prophetic religious traditions the monotheist ones that have materialist commitments um as allies and thinking of what it means to be human what it means to be community and what it means to call people together where the scripted narratives they've inherited and determine their materiality are not final yeah i agree sounds good it's dangerous to pause that long because i just like laps back into talking so go ahead okay we should pray right now that the lord would lead an astrophysicist to the table are you implying that the deity has consciousness will an agency i i am that is like an hour and a half like aside throw that just real quick just oh my god i just want you to know homebrewed christianity listeners that on behalf of hospitality i'm not going to take an invitation [Laughter] to debate whether i wouldn't debate no i know you don't debate the holy we're gonna have a podcast battle and mike's like actually i'm nice i don't argue i try to avoid conflict and i'm like yeah but tony was helping organize the event and our relationship our friendship is built on the fact we both think we're smarter and more correct than the other one and we don't take our ideas that seriously so we professionally argue with each other and that's like a sign of endearment there's at least one member of my family with your personality and they feel ostracized too so it's okay i just i'm like why did you come to thanksgiving like the whole point of thanksgiving is to get done and then we drink and smoke on the front porch and argue for a couple hours and then we like once like never mind i even know my mama hear this i shouldn't even [Laughter] dear lord jesus if an astrophysicist could please come to the microphone so i've been a fan of yours for quite some time true story yes mike what can i do for you i legit have been you have we went to a um we went to an event in dc together that's right for the museum of the bible for the museum of the bible which i was very surprised to be invited to i was a little surprised too yeah yeah um but you were probably more surprised than me because you were a little bit more of a fish out of water than the words you're looking for the rest of us academic nerd types right yeah yeah i was both not an academic and not considered a christian by most people in the bible it's like for one species not real orthodox yeah not real orthodox yeah but uh they don't talk to you okay and i was like whoa not only a christian but like a legit scientist yeah not an internet science person right but like a scientist actually yeah yeah i've actually done yeah yeah done science i've done something like that yeah i know what it feels like so that's when i kind of swoon some people see like musicians or actors right now when i see real scientists you told us today how you are such an uber nerd and so scientists would be your rock stars they are yeah so what i'm saying is you're my rock star thanks for all i'm saying thank you so i've never been anybody's rock star before that is that's just like back of book material i don't know if you thought about this but on the back your next book is like you are my rock star science that mike that baby is going to sell yeah yeah i think so so i'm going to ask you will you borrow my next my book of course i'll be thank you mike's book in front of people what if you said maybe well it's like those people who like ask somebody to marry them in front of a basketball professional basketball crowd and the woman says no oh that's brutal it's not as awkward as doing a wedding where they were like i don't think i can do this today does that happen to you yes yeah i feel sorry does that really happen to you yeah but y'all talk about physics i really want to hear that story i'll tell you later yeah if you do a good job yes sir so i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna alley oop something i hear often from do you want me to take it atheist listeners okay so you're an actual scientist yes how do you do good science and hold to the idea of like a creator or a deity i don't think about that while i'm doing science i just do science i don't think what would god think of me for for working on a quasar it doesn't come into mind it doesn't like any scientists will tell you they don't they're thinking about this data they're thinking about this feature of the world they're not thinking about god in any explicit sins now i feel like i actually am god's back behind all of it but i'm not thinking explicitly about god when i when i work and i haven't done science for a number of years but for 15 years i did it and i never thought about god while i was doing it i might have thanked god that the data came in the way i wanted it to wait you mean scientists have a preferred outcome for oh yeah because they got a published baby and they know they know that the data comes in the way they don't want it it's not going anywhere yeah that's what you're tough on the next grant yeah they're just people they've got careers they've got to feed the kids so when you're doing science yeah you're not explicitly thinking about god but no do you see god revealed in physics or astronomy yes but not while i'm doing it i'll think about it later i might write a poem about it later but i'm not going to while i'm doing it you're just trying to figure out what what the world is like you know you want to know what is the world what is this place that we live in and you're just trying to figure out the next tiny little question a tiny little answer a little brick in the wall you know of of knowledge that's all you're doing but there's a deeply interactive sense i remember i was working on this quasi it's quasar uh 3egj2006 minus 2321. it's a quasar it's 7 billion mile 7 billion light years away which means that the light left at 7 billion years ago which means that earth wasn't even formed when the light left this quasar and i was trying to identify it as a particularly rare kind of quasar and there was one more bit of information that i needed to know if it was the kind of quasar i suspected it was and there were only a handful of them known it was a rare beast a rare bird and when that last piece of information came in from a colleague in brazil i got this information i got this data and i knew it and i felt like i had connected myself with this object seven billion light years away and that was a cosmic experience you know it was like the world despite all the crap that doesn't count as a bad word absolutely not like your [ \_\_ ] would yeah like [ \_\_ ] that would yeah you said like that croc of [ \_\_ ] yeah right right like my kids can't say [ \_\_ ] but they can say crap so it's not a bad word okay i felt connected to this thing and it was it was this thing is seven billion light years away there's no possible way to imagine that but it was definitely a sense of i felt at home you know like like the world despite all the crap does make sense at some deep level that's what happens and is that religious i think it is not traditionally so perhaps but i think absolutely it is what was your relationship like with other scientists as a believer did that ever come into play yeah well not as i've encountered very little hostility very little hostility to other scientists um i think i'm treated more as a curiosity you know like look a scientist who who believes in god and isn't that odd and unusual and amusing but you're a physicist right so yeah i one of the grants i helped with did like not in front of people surveying of the scientists about their spiritual religious beliefs and physicists have over 50 affirmation of a transcendent other yeah and so the less hard your science is like if you think like physicists chemists much more likely to believe in an old yeah i've got a theory about that by the time you get to i can't wait to hear what you're going to call like the least heart of the sciences at least social sciences because they were founded by atheist materialists that use marx in a certain other variety so it enculturates atheism but um what do you really think trump did you just say all social scientists are marxist no i'm saying that theories that are foundational to it are deterministically materialist and physicists tend to be idealist yeah and chemists tend to err on the side of physics like you know hair on the side of physics like you know what i mean like funny it's all right you can go on i mean like if you're taking like the spectrum of the the less hard your science is the less it is determined by math then the less likely to believe in god funniest part is if you're a professor at a school and have no science education since that one required class in undergrad you're more likely to be an atheist or materialist than any of the science is that true yes 100 percent true draw your own conclusions i know that's so so i said you had a theory about that i do i don't hear about that i was thinking strictly about the physical sciences though in the biological sciences not so much the social sciences i think that uh physicists like myself are a more prone to believe in things that are paradoxical because i'm not going to say quantum i don't want to get trippy about quantum mechanics because i i don't i don't get trippy about quantum mechanics but paul's the ocean i but yeah thank you thank you i am actually um but i think physicists are more likely to deal with things that really are in a discursive logical sense uh contradictory a little bit also i believe separate from that that biologists are more tuned in to the dark side of creation the dark side of the physical world i think that the idealisms of physics uh sort of lead towards a kind of platonism that removes you from the actual realities of the and and the difficulties and questions the the flood of death that is evolution the tsunami of death that is evolution we don't think about that stuff we think about galaxies like big glittering pinwheels and little you know subatomic tops that spin around and nice little patterns and it's all very mathematical and quite beautiful but we're interestingly enough if you think about the social sciences they're staring death and suffering in the face right even more intimately right fascinating mathematicians same way i don't know what the numbers are mathematicians but they're like physicists only more so i thought you meant they were about suffering i'm like math is hard but it's not it's not that hard i tell my students i can't solve for x dammit i tell my students that physics physics is like beating your head against the wall do you know why why because it feels really good when you stop [Laughter] oh my goodness so give a new book coming out yeah say something about it and talk about miracles because uh miracles okay i'll say something in the book that's easy to talk about the miracles i'll maybe throw in a comment or two whatever you're that condiment off them in a condiment or two maybe yeah sorry i'm drunk yes i am i don't know where tony is yeah he's over there um i've got a book due in less than two months now and my god am i aware of that started i started yeah yeah um it's doing a word file that counts yeah i do i do dot docx and um it's doing a couple months and what it really is going to be i'm not sure when it'll come out they'll decide that later it's really kind of uh as most direct and straightforward and simple language as i can i'm discussing the relation between science and faith science and religion science and spirituality and i'm doing it i'm actually removing words that are native to my lexicon i'm taking out long lords putting in short ones and i think it's a better thing makes it better but basically it's a simple maybe a 120 page book that lays out as directly and simply as possible as i can the relation between science and faith and the uh talk i gave today was just the first couple of chapters of it i want to apply that simple model to miracles and etc so speaking of miracles are miracles a thing i don't know i really feel like the cells of this book could go up if you have an answer [Laughter] yeah you're probably right uh yes i respect you personally yeah yeah my answer is actually yes i find it difficult as a christian to answer no to that but how do you define it it's not that hard no it's not that hard it's not that hard i'm an academic i go to shades of gray as quickly as possible and that's not always good i just want you to know that saying you go to shades as gray as quickly as possible he didn't say 50. he just said shades of gray he didn't specify half of how many how many it was it was a song on jars of clay's second album that's true it was yeah that's what i was talking about yeah there's no leather in that album [Laughter] i didn't know i don't know what you were thinking about i'm a godless heathen yeah well well we're glad you're here no i have a question this is my question whenever i get asked a question of miracles by congregants and youth yeah i feel like all of them have uploaded some program in their head called david hume uh and david hume has lots of problems with him oh i know i've read i've read which is just utterly problematic for lots of scientific reasons but the assumption in david hume's understanding of miracles is that god and the world are so distinct that for god to act it has to be an abrogation of the world as it is and i'm just like why did you let a skeptic and or atheist and or antagonistic person towards reality to find the definition of miracle and set the terms the other is it's not technically until us thomas aquinas in his contra gentilius that question 100 paragraph three that you actually have someone assert that god's reality is verified by divine intervention where you don't have double causation you're like earthly yeah yeah i got you but like interventionists and i'm just like how hard is it for protestants to say aquinas sucks sometimes and the other is how hard is it to say that hume who has lots of daddy issues and as a priori commitments philosophically are utterly problematic if you use tylenol and like receive yeah i don't know like modern medicine uh then like why do we have to define miracles in a way that for them to happen god has to like basically intervene in the world right i'm with you i just think it's a horrible definition and you want to know who the most human people i've ever meet are conservative evangelicals intervene and break every world of this god-loved creation i saw that yeah yeah and they're like that proves god and i'm like that's horrible it's not as annoying as liberal christians it's like everything's a miracle yeah yeah oh that's mine oh i use that all the time i'll use that in the q a tonight you should because it's like a christian in denmark if everyone's a christian no one's a christian and you need a kierkegaard [Laughter] oh theology nerd slow clap that's what i'm talking about attack upon christendom subjective truth stick it to christendom yeah you know i said this last time we had a podcast they're talking to you as like an out-of-body experience it's like my body's like watching this i you had one of my favorite first questions i've ever asked on a live podcast what was that i'm not going to tell you because i want them to download the last time you came out oh that was a while ago they had to do with our quantum entanglement yeah we had catherine keller are you asking me to talk about quantum entanglement no no good science mike's going to ask the last question because he doesn't you know he sat down right there i just like hearing you talk true it is isn't it fun i mean your affirmation is so high but we're going to talk to kenda about you have some like parenting issues with teenagers we're going to work oh i do oh do you yes so yes science question do you have a science question for me mike a science question for you let me think let me think let me think through the haze of scotch in the meantime what's your favorite indie rock band my favorite i don't have an answer to that question i listen to like white guy americana okay what's your favorite cracker kind of jason isabel oh good what's your favorite jason israel song my favorite jason isabel song live oak anybody know that song that's like nobody who knows that song i feel at home here have you ever seen love tractor no but i know well they're from your hometown of love tractor okay pylon yes i've not seen pylon yes yeah we're going for georgia america have you thought of a question this is true now rem i've seen about a hundred times they used to be indy you know no yeah and i'll just sit and wait for this go ahead forever okay so science mike if you could ask a final question [Music] what's the last thing you read from the sciences that filled you with wonder um the last thing i read from the sciences that filled me with wonder i don't know if i just i've mentioned her before because he's on my mind i don't know if he's a sciences or not but annie dillard i read annie dillard annie dillard she wrote the book that i want to that i would write in my afterlife yeah and she wrote pickle pilgrim on on tinker pilgrim so let's say hypothetically yeah someone had never heard of this person yeah this person related than what was wondrous this person is a writer of the first magnitude and she spent a year she chronicles a year at a creek in the woods near her house in roanoke virginia and she talks about science and religion without talking about science and religion it's one of those literary things they kind of leave it hanging out there and you got to figure it out you know but she talks about a year at the creek she talks about the animals and the woods and the stars and the and everything and she brings theology into it and it is the single for me is the single most transcendent book i think i've read every it it makes me angry how good it is it's like nobody should be able to write that good that kind of thing right on yeah and she says she's not a scientist but she's done she's like you she's not an official scientist but she's read deeply and broadly and she speaks like a scientist so awesome hard to hard to tell the difference what we want to do is everyone think paul while kid is coming up you haven't noticed like i don't take it very seriously i sit down and drink booze the weird thing is i actually i think i have more parenting questions and science questions yeah i think science is really simple compared to raising children they keep becoming their own individual selves at inconvenient times my youngest daughter's name is macy and for her whole life i would call her my macy do you know why alliteration just sounded good to my ear and two weeks ago at a party i said you're my mason i love you so much and she goes dad i'm not your macy you said who's macy are you she's her own right i was actually proud she asserted her individuality and slightly embarrassed she said that in front of 25 people i was like oh man i am the patriarchy so here's my question 44 of people in the united states will go through a faith transition at some point in their life and many many many of them according to their emails do so while being a parent of a child who can't go through a faith transition because they're still in the initial stages of faith formation what on earth do we tell our children about god when we don't know what we think about god that's your first question i thought it was thoughtful no it's great i'm just saying i'm so glad you didn't ask me that people ask me and i go that's a great question let me tell you a long story while i think of an answer we're vamping for you by the way just as long as your name well that's a great question uh let me tell you a story [Laughter] you know first of all i there are a hundred people in this room who should be sitting here answering parenting questions this is like the most terrifying role to ever be in is to try to say oh here's how to because i see my kids are grown now and they are they actually turned into wonderful functioning human beings but the most i wanted no no yeah that's a pretty good opener no but yeah but i'm one for one on the faith part so you know i mean the um and that's the that that sentence belies the problem right i'm one for one you know i do this professionally right so i'm supposed to be able to did and at some point it dawns on you that wait a second this life that this life they they have their own life they're not you and i can i can think of the moment when i remember coming to that conclusion it might be like the my my yes um so i don't know is you know i don't know what it's but parent you're right parents don't they don't know what they think and what's more they don't have confidence in what they think they think and the but i think the big thing i'm getting here at this conversation is you know science tells a bit a better story a lot of times than the church does anyway and and i want to say that that as a christian i think the christian story has a pretty good is a pretty good story but the fact is we don't tell that story we tell other stories because they're safer or they're more swallowable or you know they won't raise eyebrows or whatever it is we're just we just chicken out most the time or we don't know it ourselves um and science feels like a much more compelling story um and i've not found anything to i can say to my kids that they would care to listen to it's so it's not like what i ever say right and sometimes my husband and i just look at each other and go well shoot we're just gonna have to make you know life as a christian look like fun and um i kind of that's really profound actually i i think i actually think joy is a pretty good evangelism strategy you know and um that is tweetable joy is an evangelism strategy i just as that's very tweetable statement cool [Laughter] it's better than like internalizing guilt and shame on behalf of the transcendent deity yeah i think you got you guys can take it from here i was just affirming how smart and eloquent you are um anyway i i it sounds like macy's gonna have her stuff together oh yeah she's full of fire yeah and if she's full of fire you know what that is the holy spirit oh i so often forget to use religious imagery in my daily thinking she's full of fire um thermal energy metabolism it's metabolism isn't it so for those of you who don't yet have children it's so worth it aren't you so excited one day to have these experiences [Laughter] you've educated youth ministers for a long time and a lot of times when you go to div school seminary and such you're already a practicing youth minister because parents are like i don't want to talk to them let's do the untrained person like what are the questions you used to hear with a higher frequency that have gone down and what are the newest ones that have emerged oh wow there used to be questions like you know i want to be a youth minister or i want to be a minister or i want to be ordained i'm not seeing as much of that anymore but it's not that it's not there but i think people have a much broader understanding of what their role is as people who are christian leaders you know i don't think they're feeling quite as well i think the institution is you know sufficiently what's the word i want dilapidated maybe to um that that they're not so interested in you know propping it up so they want to do other things i think that's good i think that's a good thing the stuff that is new that i'm hearing i think has to do with the fact that you can't assume anymore that the people in your church are christians you can't even assume that church is a thing you just have to assume that you're called to be um somehow um somebody whose life is going to point to um jesus in whatever way it is that that makes sense in your context and sometimes it looks like a church and sometimes doesn't look anything like a church and a lot of people don't want it to look anything like this thing that we've come to call youth ministry because youth ministry has become an industry in some ways and what we know to be ministry isn't an industry and so we don't have good language for this right so um we just say well you know i want to work with youth or i love kids or i want to be a witness but but don't put me in that youth ministry box you know it's a real problem with language we don't have a better language to describe it all we know is that there is something that this generation of apostates are telling us that is good and true and it may be that we're not doing such a good job institutionally and we may just have to do it relationally at least in term not that the institution doesn't give us an opportunity to have relationships but it might be that you know we got the cart before the horse and if we start with figuring out how to build communities and relationships we'll get around to the church part in in students yeah in students third year what are the questions you want them to pick up and be disturbed by or when you hear them wrestling with them you go theological education actually benefited you because i think there is a anxiety in theological education because of well lots of reasons about whether we matter what are we doing are we doing well or even preparing for you know people for something that existed after the 60s and all that kind of stuff but it's someone who you get feedback a lot more when you work with people that go and work with students right um what what does the what does externalizing your faith questions spirituality and such look like when you think they've really benefited from three years in this intense intellectual spiritual communal formation i guess i'm thinking of particular people right um some there's one guy who's he's actually really good at looking at this the community this is the political situation the actual world situation he's in and and naming sin he he he does it through um a concept called han which is out of asian theology but he um he names it in a fresh way i think that's i think that's a good thing i mean and then there i i think there's the other people who are you know looking at what they are going to be doing in some kind of an institutional position but understanding that what they are really there to do is to you know participate with god in building a new thing um that what what they're going into as a platform it's not the box they have to fit into it's what they're going to use to kind of grow up this new thing that looks like ministry that they may not even have a vision for yet um and i think the other thing is the people who don't think that they're going out with anything that looks like a master of anything you know um that that would be a real misnomer when it comes to divinity so um i think the ones that the ones that i have most confidence in are the ones who go out pretty humble mike's gonna ask you you should have just dropped the mic on the floor yeah i said it on the table just it's a masters of defense what one of my wow that's a terrible term there is a like southern desert called divinity oh so it's white fluffy powdered sugar and sticky yeah just saying it it basically hates low carb diets so as does the entire south yeah i mean if you had to pick between jesus and eliminating carbs the south would just be i don't know florida supreme court should decide but he was an ethics professor and uh and at the like gathering of the graduating students and faculty before the your divinity school graduation he came in with a big plate of divinity and he said he's from west texas so he said now i just want you to know the only thing you're a master of is these delectable delights and i'd like to demonstrate right now how to appropriately eat the divinity and he grabs it and now this guy's like late 80s and he goes and you enjoy no crumbs no powdered sugar on the clothes now you're a master of divinity otherwise keep asking questions [Laughter] it was hilarious that was my vamping for you to ask the last question i you i actually listened to you you start talking i'm just like it's like the opposite of when i co-host with tony yeah i'm just like complete your thought i'm attentive and interested he's talking right now just look at him i mean i have plenty of questions i'm trying to not give another um unanswerable one but isn't that that's parenting right it's just unanswerable question after unanswerable question after no matter what i do they're going to have to go to therapy and it's my fault like that's just parenting like i love them more than anything and i'm going to do everything i can to keep themselves safe and i'm going to probably hurt them more than anyone else ever will and it's going to be you know what i mean like it's just the other day i was uh i was playing video games i played video games it's important i was but i was playing fortnite you were i was playing fortnite we got a friend on that i've gotten brought into this from elgin and he's like don't any of your internet friends play fortnite can't we be friends because i won't let him friend people he doesn't know in real life or i don't know i play and i this current match out of 100 people there were eight of us left and i was like but were you in the bush because that's cheating i was not in the bush but what i do is i do just hide and wait and then the storm moves and i move to another place and hide and wait because even in a video game i don't want to shoot somebody so that's true ask the people i play with i'm like i can't shoot someone what i do is i'm playing on a team i just run around and revive people are you serious yes peace be with you peace be with you peace be with you hold down eid peace be with you jesus loves you and i do too so i was number eight our youth minister my daughter comes in this time my older daughter and she says hey dad you got a second i was like well i i'm number eight in fortnite for the first time so can we talk in a minute and she goes sure i just wrote a song for you so i finished the round and then heard it so given that we're terrible people what can we do as parents of faith to make sure our children know we really do care about them then they'll remember that in therapy oh wait that was supposed to be an easy question yeah maybe when your daughter wants to play you a song i don't know well she didn't say hey dad can i play you a song she said hey dad do you have a second i mean what priority are we talking about i'm number eight and around a fortnight that's pretty legit never fired a shot beats me i mean there's i don't know how to do anything it's not that i don't use words you know when i'm with my kids to the point but they all they always roll their eyes and they're like oh my gosh they do know and they've known from the time they were three that if they wanted to stay up later ask a theological question right at the time you're supposed to go to sleep and then mom is gone at that point but um but somebody somebody said to me once that was somebody that i absolutely vehemently disagree with on everything theologically um but he was saying that you know at the end of the day you can't you don't you can't do faith to somebody else you can only work on yours you know we can only be who god calls us to be and um and god has given us these kids to walk with and to um and to be light in their life to the extent that it's possible for us but man we screw it up i screw it up i want a do-over my kids are my god my son's turning 30. i still want to do over and um i i think i think he was right i mean i think the bottom line is it's not about them it's about it's about me and what i do to you know try to stay clear-headed and walk with god and to let my life reflect that so join me in thanking kenda [Applause] [Music] in every asked science mic i've ever done there are far more questions than opportunities to answer so if you're polite and wait your question will not get answered there we go let's see never takes more than six seconds well he's close there we go from your various disciplines what makes us moral from your various disciplines what makes us moral dude your low end just came in it was like more that's my announcer voice do you want to take the first step at how we create morality uh morality is primarily a cultural and social evolution to create in-group cooperation across the species over 120 people so that you could survive in a competitive environment which nice guys and nice cultures were finished first uh and then over time morality had the possibility of having an in more inclusive expansion of the kinship network and the radical part of christianity is that jesus offered a vision of the kinship network in which your enemy was included you included all my [ \_\_ ] and then some yeah that sounded real similar real i did not expect that bradley schmuckler that's i don't know how you spell the name wrote a book called the parable of the tribe it's excellent about that topic okay next question ask theology trip dude tony said don't talk more than three minutes for an answer so i just was like go you did it you could you could do it okay yeah who's next yeah morality is a thing we evolved in order to survive like if you want like a more like how do you create a morality in our contemporary sociological framework that's the second question that is a second question do you want the answer to that one you consider uh not violating the consent of others allow people personal and body autonomy and avoid either through application of agency or active negligence the production of unnecessary suffering in the lives of others another element is you don't create a mythology with rights around property that instantiates systemic oppression and evil around people of color and people of the lower class that libertarians give i don't know you might have heard it in the first talk today uh a mythology around property rights and a mythology around the creative destruction of capitalism and if you just justify those points along with the first three then you actually don't get the moral evolution that the enlightenment actually made possible as they externalize the moral reflection out of monotheistic traditions into a cultural place where you don't have to accept the particular truth to embody and share certain moral commitments paul it really is like an out-of-body experience i feel like carol anne i keep going to the light sorry there's a poltergeist reference you people are too young who's next next person can't be a dude i mean the person following you can't be a dude i'll be more explicit yeah that was like counter science mike love that's scotch mike actually not science all right what is the relationship between psychedelic substances and authentic mystical or spiritual experience with the divine are y'all planting people in my podcasts psychedelic community how does this come up at literally every event multiple times that's what i'm talking about you oh so in october we're going to do an event called the cosmic campfire campfire where you're the first to hear this other than i mean i told my wife because it was on our channel i haven't told my wife yet so you're hearing this before my wife but i hope it's on your calendar so it's called cosmic campfire and the whole goal is to set a religion science framework that then in the second conversation we do what was the title that you were like this is the most marketable title of all time i don't remember all right so we'll edit it in it was something about like sex drugs and jesus something like that but it was cooler i don't remember it was answer the question so yes neurologically what is the relationship between psychedelics and authentic mystical or spiritual experiences they're pretty much the same when we brain scan people on psychedelics it looks like what happens when you ask you know monks or gurus have a lot of experience meditating and can go into a state of oneness the brain's doing the same thing um so there's obviously like a lot of fascination and interest in psychedelics in our culture today probably a shockingly high amount if you're over 35 you aren't aware how much interest and also lack of concern there are about these substances um and uh so part of this i find really encouraging because i'm a person that just kind of naturally my brain's just like hey you know what would be good right now a mystical experience i'm like really brain i'm just driving you should probably pull over that is not signs of my confirming shrooms while driving no that's me just like if the sun looks pretty my brain's like you are the ocean you are the wave like my brain just does it i just a little lsd factory gland in there just caucasia's like hey man you want to trip balls i didn't take anything i'm just all sudden like god is everywhere that's just me i've always been that way i was the kid who's like hey mom yeah god was talking to me about my homework really yeah that's great okay so neurologically very similar what concerns me when i would go back to like the la wu thing just because mushrooms come from the earth doesn't automatically mean they're healthy and good for you so like we have some uh scientific literature that shows really profound emotional health benefits from occasional scientifically administered doses of psilocybin or lsd and these things were produced in laboratories by grad students and are very pure and their dosage carefully controlled what you buy from joe on the street do you mean shaman joe sure whoever there's no telling what's in it and also when we consume medical substances in the west they've undergone an incredibly rigorous process of trial and test that encompasses hundreds or thousands of intersected studies and if you look at how many total experiments have been on psychedelics since the 60s it's dozens so what's the long-term health cost you don't know right so the thing i find encouraging about psychedelics is that they could potentially open certain aspects of spirituality to people who don't have naturally trippy brains like me what i find concerning is uh people approaching these substances too casually hey they are federal crimes that's pretty important for some you'll go to prison and then second of all you don't actually know what the long-term implications are and people if they take them they ten some people take them like touristically like oh man you know go great with this record some lsd and i feel like assess that based on what record they're talking about well i don't know maybe but my point is if you look at indigenous cultures that have used these things as teachers they they were rights of passage things they were occasional major life events they weren't like it's thursday and i'm kind of bored and that's not how i think you should approach the divine either so i would say like what would i hope for i would love to see psychedelics descheduled at a federal level first for clinical research and i'd love to get 15 or 20 years of good decadal studies on these substances so we can accurately understand the long-term implications of their usage and then if things look okay just like marijuana let's make them okay for recreational use but also by the way right now we're legalizing marijuana and we haven't done the research we're just kind of haphazardly well you know it could turn out 40 years from now that there's something about marijuana this is bad as cigarettes were we don't know we haven't done the science and and to be true to science and a lack of information you just don't project assumptions you wait for data so i don't like the kind of taboo moralistic blanket prohibition against psychedelics nor do i like hey man it's from the earth so it's okay do you do you think that if the very same relationship to the data was employed about anything that was connected to market capitalism of the environment we'd have a completely different society because if you were like oh well the data is out we don't really know yet we should investigate more so in the meantime i don't know we probably shouldn't [Music] i think we should lower the low end on my microphone um that taboos when you talk about them in a religious context are treated with a level of delicacy you don't treat other topics and so i mean for most people yeah so i'm not particularly i'm just saying like for me if you if you're just thinking the science yeah and you're like let's be cautious about the weed and the mushrooms and that but in the meantime just just drive an suv and use a lot of carbon footprint and all this kind of stuff to me like if you if you're just basing it on science we would re-evaluate a lot of things and it just i think we should that's why it's like that's that was my only point yeah it the same methodology applied to a lot of our lifestyle would be i mean i have a marijuana vape pen have i when i moved to california my neurologist who took who treats my crippling brain injury migraines was like listen i've got a friend he's a researcher he sings some really promising things with cannaboids it'll be legal where you're going if it helps good we like in the advice of a physician he said you should try this thing and uh so i got a vape pen and i didn't do anything with it i put on a shelf and then i had um what happens to me is i start to see a really bad distortion in my left eye and then i'll either get like a really severe headache or a severe headache and i'll lose vision in my left eye for 12 to 24 hours so i got like you know i'm looking at my screen and all of a sudden there's a picture and the person's midsection disappears just a head and feet like okay here we go migraine time i guess i'll go lie down i'm like oh wait i've got that pin so i went oh my gosh i'm gonna die my lungs are on fire and then it stopped and then i didn't get a migraine and then i also didn't i have brain fog every afternoon and i didn't have any brain fog for four weeks right so now i i've been in in california a year my vape pen which is good for 30 doses it has been it has 60 percent left so i'm like a frequent user you're not very good at smoking but what i my my approach to weed is primarily not a oh man this would be great with pizza although actually it is um surprise surprise it actually that's that's a true story anyone on yelp deliver funyuns my my approach is literally i have a brain injury and if this helps not only does it help it helps better than the other medicines i've tried and unlike the other migraine medicines i take which is i take them i need them more and more when i take this i need it less and less so my my time between dosing actually increases not decreases but as i do it as a person who's science-minded like i'm so concerned about the limited clinical insight so that's a decision i made in conjunction with my primary care physician a neurologist and a research scientist like a significant conversation with three parties who said this is legal where you live do you see what i mean yeah you still southern baptist on the inside i'm just saying if someone has spent 10 years in l.a like you could have just asked your youth group [Laughter] and they would have said it's all good and guess what mike you are the waif and the ocean does that work they'd answer okay who's next no a female is next yes but which particular one what's my question so so on the same track of brain modification substances what might you say to a student who clearly needs depression or anxiety medication but is afraid to do that because it messes with their mind so i have been the youth minister of i last accounted was like 320 some teenagers votes over like 16 years and then because of a survey i got asked about the number of ones who had prescribed psych meds on trips you were on it was 72. so you do the math that's like a legit percentage of people the number isn't that how you quantify statistics and as we can see here it's a legit percentage of the control group i i just know i it was a legit percent a legit percent mike even in a congregation where the relationship to uh prescribing psych meds wasn't as much a taboo it was within the group and even in a situation where um the resources in los angeles for mainline protestant youth ministers there's lots of support groups that inform you and help you figure out you know to not violate the insurance policy of your congregation when you uh go on youth trips because your property's worth a lot of money that's probably the primary motivating factor but or and or jesus um tonight get sued they provide a lot of support structure the biggest question to me around like the availability of meds has to do with the stigma around saying i need help and sometimes it's mad sometimes it's someone to listen in a private situation sometimes it's someone to go have weird fun with and just celebrate with you some like there's so many responses to an individual who their experience in coming of age and if you think back to being a teenager something that's like a level two emotional moment it existentially feels like whatever the highest number of your skill like it's turned up to 11 and you're like why because she wasn't going to go with me to the dance and you're like damn death and destruction and and so the one of the gifts a youth minister has is affirming and being present in student stories so that when parents or teachers or whoever it is that begins a conversation around using meds like you can speak back to them their own narrative and their own experience at a time like you felt shame here you were like wanting to know if you had a place here like you can help them re-remember their own experience because teenagers have this wonderful gift of the moment it's good to say that's how it's always been and you're like you kept me up like three nights in a row telling me you didn't know if you belonged on this planet and six months later you're like i just like feel like joy oozing over everything and you know they their identity switches and stuff so well teenagers ooze a lot anyway i mean yeah like that's obviously why the ninja turtles were teenage but and so when i think of those psychological issues i feel like one of the things is that religious people need to know they have to refer at the right time like it's not your job and the other side is you're going to be their friend no matter what decision their medical psychological or parental units decide for them so not taking sides on conclusions but taking their side regardless of what it is is the ministerial affirmation i would say and that doesn't mean if they're lying to their parents you don't call them and go i just want you to know your intuitions were correct they're lying to you but i don't want to say anymore they probably need help in this way or if they're if their counselor says they want to talk to you it's just as their ally it's it's ridiculous to cut off contact point because of a particular conclusion around like how you do medication and stuff and you're going to be the one that knows they have it regardless and i'll say that just as someone who has like adhd and went through that weird period of being the person that had their medicine unlike people that just took dimetapp did not have to get distributed by the youth minister it doesn't matter if it makes you a better person it's just creepy as hell that your youth minister has to give you a little pill and the person with a headache didn't because teenagers professionally pick small things turn them into i don't know eternity and then freak out about it and so the biggest gift i think we get when it goes to teenagers figuring out how their chemistry works or psychology works is just being present and affirming regardless of what shows up because if you can do that the group's more likely to do it and if you can't you get stuck taking sides between a doctor and a parent and a kid and that is a family systems theory triangle i just got a gtfo the one thing i would say there's two things that seem to be true to me in america right now one many people have a personal or social prejudice against medications that provide mental health benefits that need to be knocked down also true many people put too much faith in medications whose clinical trials involve durations of a period of time between 6 weeks and 12 months so the people who designed it designed it that's the scotch talking the people who designed most of our antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications did so with an understanding that these would be substances designed to provide someone a temporary boost in conjunction with other mental health interventions and not be on them permanently because what we are finding is when you're on most antidepressants or anti-anxiety medications for the long term their efficacy in treating symptoms drops so you have to boost the dosage which creates new side effects and if you don't or if you hold the dosage steady they lose the benefit of the medication and if you stop taking the medication they go through severe neurological withdrawal and i don't like to say that a lot because if i say that it provides ammo for people resisting these medications who should use them so there's a there's a lot of complexity here i think one of the most important things we can do when people are facing anxiety or depression is offer real solidarity and honesty i am a person who has struggled tremendously with depression and suicidal ideation and so i can offer empathy there but i also have to be honest in that every time in my life i've had severe depression it has been situational depression and not clinical depression meaning when i figure out what is the circumstance driving my depression and address it my depression goes away but for people suffering from clinical depression there may not be any experiential or environmental factor they can change they literally have an asus asymmetric level of activity between two parts of their nervous system that have bias them basically to a more melancholy life outlook than someone like me who is just kind of naturally sanguine so i would say to someone suffering depression i've been there and i also don't understand what you're going through and that the important thing is that i want to affirm the fact that you have spoken up and been honest about how you feel and i want you to know that you are not alone and you will not be alone and i don't judge you and you shouldn't be embarrassed for wanting to seek help and take care of yourself and in the meantime we need to do some more science um so my question i guess is kind of predicated on this statement so but don't worry it's quick um heteropatriarchy is sort of like baked into a lot of theology philosophy scientific you know stuff [Music] so the question is as two white presumably straight men we're both married with children and married to females so yeah presumably is a good word to use there i agree yeah um so as to white presumably straight men how do you uh respond to the as i see an obligation to confront that sort of heteropatriarchy and like just the mess that that is in your nose so if you're a youth minister play a game and monica coleman who is a woman a theologian she was on my dissertation committee we got we co-taught a class and um this was an exercise she came up with which i then did as a youth minister who was co-teaching in class with her she said track who talks in your cl in your youth group and then decide is that the voice of god and i did it and after that i mean i don't know if i've told her this so monica if you're listening you are correct but when in doubt patriarchy can run through the most progressive ucc church in los angeles so just know that um the second part is if you keep track and are intentional and ask for other voices to speak because they aren't socialized into wanting to be heard then it with teenagers it takes six months for all the ladies to have feels and want to share and they're like let me tell you i actually i don't know about you fellas but i already knew the liturgical texts for this week so i read it in advance and i have some thoughts i googled it and one of my youth would say i googled the text followed by rosemary bradford ruther because i know if she ever said anything about it i wanted to find out what the person the author of god and sexism said about it and then she would present like a voice and a contribution in it that you didn't know and so a lot of times if you're at a congregational level the issue of patriarchy invoices is a lot bigger than if you're at a youth group level because every year you cycle out people and bring new ones in and they go like what's this community mean what does it mean to be christian what does it mean to be here and if you if you can create normative expectations uh voicing and such it it can shift rather dramatically so um i before that experience i was a youth minister seven years and after i was youth minister nine and i've had forty youth that became ministers if you took the youth that became ministers in the last half they're three fourths female and it's one fourth before and the only difference that changed was that i said can you pause and let a female talk it was not that hard and like no one at a ucc or disciples of christ youth group is like i can't believe you tripp this is part of the radical marxist agenda asking for ladies to talk they're just like obviously i thought ucc were radical marxists no you know on the weekends but i just mean they the the it's not like it's offensive or anything the moment you mention it it gets internalized and then the youth self-select they're like oh well i really feel like you should talk first and it got to the point where you would have four females in a row and one of my favorite youth serena she is now uh in divinity school she said uh i really have something to say but if a guy would actually like to contribute to this before i talk that was the first moment i realized that the first five years or so as a youth minister that was kind of how it functioned it was like dudes talking and if you had something to say you could break through and so if we want to shift that where it's not just conceptually affirming but to in like affirming at an embodied level youth ministers are the best place to do that because like no youth gets mad at you that you think certain other youth should get to talk to and we all they also all know they're all socially awkward and stuff so half the reason the guy talks first is because he's socially awkward and he knows that when socially awkward moments as family get going his dad probably talks first because that probably silences the question or complaint the females that the house had and then they can move on and never address them i do a terrible job of dealing with heterosexism because it is almost invisible to me i am white i am male i am straight and a huge problem in my life is when i do even the most basic modicum of participation and justice marginalized people line up to thank and affirm me i have this uh when i get dressed i have a very careful regimen for how i get dressed i reach into the closet and i grab a shirt without looking because they're all black or gray and then whenever one comes out i put on and don't think about again and i have a shirt that uh says like rule like ruth and it just lists all these feminist icons um that one of my daughters gave me because we went we did a women's march together and i was wearing that shirt on an airplane and i forgot i was wearing the shirt all i noticed was that i was getting literally so many cookies and drinks from the flight attendants literal cookies and literal alcohol and i was like what is this is a great day and then as i'm walking off the plane one of no red wine which i'm also a huge fan of the woman of color flight attendant said hey i love your shirt and i've never seen a man wear one like it i wore a t-shirt let me tell you the level of personal sacrifice that decision involved in my life i put it on without thinking and for doing so was literally heralded as a hero i have a black lives matter shirt i wear a lot same thing i don't think about it and then so many black men will give me like the nod that's not for white guys and i go like what's happening and then i'm like oh yeah i'm wearing a t-shirt and occasionally i'll be sitting at a bar and an older white man will go you're a disgrace and i go man i don't care what you think you're the problem right it cost me nothing it cost me nothing so when i say this is this is literally a thing i say things that are outrageously outside the bounds of institutional orthodox christianity and i get invited into the most conservative institutions and paid money to disagree with him meanwhile my friend rachel held evans if they could burn her at the stake they would because she has a vagina and i have a penis [Applause] i do a terrible job of dealing with heterosexism i just do my best so here's a couple things i'm working on one intentionally creating space at the liturgist gathering and theology i stood up and said hey this is a guy paul you might have heard of him and he once said i permit not a woman to teach or have authority over a man and we forget he was talking to a specific community wherein there were priestesses who offered sexual sacraments and it was kind of a problem there were some dangerous rituals involving violence and maybe paul was a reckless patriarchy guy he probably was but i said here's what we're going to do for the next hour i permit not a man to teach or have authority over a woman and then michael gunger and i sat down on the stage and my wife and lisa gunger stood up and took the microphones and oh before i did that i said and we are going to stay on stage as eye candy as is so often the role of women in society so we could sit there and smile and laugh and look adorable but under no circumstances could we have the microphone and at first the room was silent because being explicitly offered the floor was not something the women in the room had experienced even in progressive spaces it took i think 30 or 45 seconds for the first person to say something and it started out with what people thanking michael and i for doing it and then and then the grief started to come and then the lament and then the anger and then the rage and then the obvious discomfort of men in the room and me and my mr rod yourself so desperately wanted to say time out guys it's going to be okay women have to do this all the time and i thought to myself no they need this discomfort this will teach them something i never could by making them comfortable and an hour turned into two hours turned into we'll come back after lunch and continue this is one of the most beautiful experiences of my life because with men in the room several hundred women for the first time were allowed to be truly and fully themselves because the men weren't allowed to talk or offer commentary the other thing i'm doing that i think is really important i had a a a period not too long ago where i thought about retiring from public work because i'm white and straight and male and i'm like the last thing the world needs is another book from a white straight dude or another podcast with white straight dudes most of our listeners are women did you know that like 65 percent of the listeners of the literature's podcast are women um it's a similar number for ask science mike and when i started floating this idea with women in my life they were like why would you step down i was like because there's got to be space made and they're like you're one of the good ones convince a conservative [ \_\_ ] to step down if you leave what are we left with and then i noticed around that same time the work of a man named jordan peterson and many formerly progressive men who would have used the term social justice warrior in a non-derogatory context suddenly begin to espouse the problem with the social justice movement right why because in justice work rightfully so we point out the problems with white supremacy and heterosexism rightly so i am a a trans affirming person who has to catch myself calling god he all the time right rightly so those critiques are well earned but the script we're handing handing progressive white men is you're the oppressor and that's your role your role is perpetual repentance and even if that is correct that doesn't groove with human psychology so progressive men are reaching the end of a script and saying well i don't want to just be the oppressor jordan peters peterson says the problem is with people who tweet too much i'm not the problem the tweeting people are the problem but he didn't just mean the president so the the other thing i'm trying to do is offer through my life a new script for men right if jordan peterson is going to take a bunch of young white men and show them how they should live guess what i'll do a better job my wife is actually happy because i respect her as a person so if the answer in the traditional script is men are supposed to be strong protectors i want to tell men our job is to be strong advocates that we stand for people and not over them if the traditional script is men are supposed to be stoic and emotionally reserved and when they can't handle it shoot other people the new script is men are men when we are vulnerable and open with our feelings and trust other people in real community the the role in dismantling heterosexism for white men is to dismantle heterosexism in our own lives and support other men as they do the same because heterosexism does not come from women and it doesn't come from people of color and it doesn't come from trans people or lesbians or gay or bisexual or intersex it comes from straight white men and the only people who can get rid of the toxin completely are the ones unthinkingly producing it and that's why i think one piece of this advocacy has to be a new script for white men that says historically we have been the oppressors but now we have to with intent and action becomes something else so the last thing i want to say and this is a quote from sarah heath because you're texting me and tony also told me tripp stop talking like y'all should wrap this up hold on i gotta find the text because i'm not fabricating it i really feel like y'all shed in the podcast by talking about what doing ministry for the deconstructed looks like because i don't know but i feel like you're two of my friends that have talked about it so the last question is if you were talking to ministers who the people that are attracted connected and making first contact with their congregation are people who have just walked out the room they were born into but are thinking about walking into a place where communion and baptism still happens what does that ministry look like i think it looks like embracing the embodiment of doubt and the embodiment of doubt are questions i'm not qualified to answer any literally any questions other than questions about like computer networks and operating systems those i could answer with authority if you have a question about kernel extensions in mac os 10. um you want to know about like ip6 and how to roll that out on your network i can help you out if you want to know about anything else i'm just talking [ \_\_ ] so the value of my work is not in my education or credential but my availability and my empathy my acceptance of wherever people are um i actually think it's important forty-eight percent of people who listen to a science mic identify as republicans forty eight percent that blue what percentage atheist twelve there are more republicans that listen i would have totally guessed the other way around atheists make up a really tiny percentage of the population but they're the cool ones 54 of the audience identifies as no specific religious affiliation so that is bigger than anyway but it's like half of mainline protestant congregations yes if you play the game raise your hand are you a nun then like you're like why are the elders raising their hand that i'm a nun and you tithe and show up half the time it'll happen but i think that's the point i think that understanding that people are in a situation where they've reached the end of answers and they're almost fatigued by all the schools of thought and what they really want is to be accepted amidst that whole process without being required to subscribe to a new thing without being required to say no here's the place you have to land first um a lot of these people there they're crash landing they can't they don't have any thrusts left in the engines they're gonna they're gonna land where they land um and then everything's gonna blow up and they just they need ems workers more than they need theologians right um i just i i don't know i can only answer with like what my work looks like and what my work looks like is an affirmation of the struggle that led people out of something that worked for them anyway but i don't necessarily offer i've you know i a lot of times i talk with pretty prominent atheists like you really confuse me as a christian you seem really comfortable a lot of people read my book and they say i read your book and now i'm back in church i'm like that's beautiful and then an equal number of people say i read your book and i don't believe in god anymore and i say that's beautiful like how are you how's your monday morning how's your relationship with your children or your life partner or your parents or your community that's the stuff that animates me so when you say that's beautiful you're saying the effect of what i contributed to your spiritual journey led to more beautiful embodiment in the way you relate to yourself to transcend to other to community to your neighbor your friends and such i'm i don't know i might be a fundamentalist that's the only doctrine i'm like really committed to is the incarnation and i really feel like that would be the appropriate response like in whatever way you narrate things so that your own embodiment has more beautiful relationships to yourself and your neighbor and the enemy and all that kind of stuff then that would be the word being incarnated in that space and i just want you to know there were christians in the 18th century that said what i just said so like this isn't like weird liberal nonsense this is like we've had hundreds of years of christians that have said this and they're just kind of called protestants and and so a lot of the anxiety that americans have that lead them i one of the things that blew my mind about people that self-identified as atheists but they came to the like tuesday theology group the wednesday prayer group and church and went volunteer and la it blew my mind was i was like and you self-identify as an atheist i bet every church wished everyone that self-identified as a christian showed up half as much as you and gave and and so i feel like there's been a like separation for those categories of theist atheists or whatever the hell those things mean i don't know um and that they they are sitting there functioning culturally when most of us that battle that used to exist culturally where a theist and atheist would argue and reason science and facts and have a fight like it's now been internalized and so the battle is not like bill nye the science guy battling out with ken ham yelling it's a day of the day as today is today because honestly if he said it any faster and had been drinking you know his first bucket of scotch it would sound like tongues you know but yesterday and [Music] that that fracture that battle line runs right through the middle of most people that all of us are skeptics and believers at the same times we're believing skeptics skeptical believers and that part of what it means to be a faith community if your community postulates the possibility of faith and honesty about the world and what we know it means you get to be there as a believing skeptic or a skeptical believer and your questions are invitations to faith not means for your exclusion and that the content of your faith is the material transformations of your embodiment not the your inability to you like i managed to do the creed without crossing my fingers and that type of thing so achievement unlocked so well i just think of it when like sarah asked a question what does it look like to ministry for the deconstructed a lot of them are people that want to know whether they can be fully themselves and fully affirmed at the table and whether they can be fully themselves and the identity proclaimed over them at baptism is true and i just want you to know as a minister of the gospel all of you that minister the gospel on this doesn't mean you might you don't have to affirm this in the fullness but just to say like you baptized a lot of people have a lot of good questions and doubts and god made them and knows them completely you've served communion to people who were being [ \_\_ ] and you didn't know about it and god loves them and knows them completely and you've baptized and served communion to people when you were a scumbag and god loves you and knows you completely so if you want to be a church for the deconstructed the best opportunity you have is just being yourself honestly because if you can name your doubts and your brokenness and all the things you're trying to deal with and be honest about then you have made space at the table and in baptism for anyone and everyone who wants to hear someone else believe when they speak over them that you are god's beloved that's [ \_\_ ] awesome like it's literally [ \_\_ ] awesome that you don't have to cross your fingers when you hand them the bread and the wine and say you or god's beloved the most true thing about you regardless what your parents said your minister said your peers at work or your therapist said is that your god's beloved what a beautiful gift and most of you get to talk to teenagers [Music] they don't know if they believe anything except things that demote themselves and you get to tell them their parents are liars in their gospel of it and you get to tell them that when their teachers say they're not good enough they're god's beloved and when you get to tell them that so and so they want to go to the dance with so and so thanks your scumbag you're like yes and your god's gonna love it and so like simple thing is connected to our propensity as humans to believe lies are true we believe lies are true we act as if they are and we put material reality into falsehood it happens at the macro level and it happens in the micro level in your family you'll internalize things your parents said about you and your performant or your peers and such and to me when you're talking about ministry to the like the deconstructed the greatest opportunity you have is to straight face with all your nerdiness say yet the most true thing about you is you're made known loved and affirmed by god and there's nothing you can say that will change that and when you do that like [ \_\_ ] i can't believe we get paid to do that that's a crazy thing is it we're in a world where they require ministers to tell just normal humans the most amazing truth like to say you're the product of a quantum fluctuation in a vacuum billions of years evolved like no one gets done with that and it's like that was i really feel affirmed but say the most true thing about you is that's my animating myth so there's a multiplicity of animating myths one of which by just saying that as as ministers and thinking about what it means to have a community of the deconstructed there is an invitation to affirmation that acknowledges the deconstructive element but also acknowledges their humanity in ways that the market their peers culture family and religion often can't and you're stewards of a mystery that big that's amazing i gotta say one thing because this is really important you should do the conclusion i've been told to conclude okay this then this will be my conclusion we tend to think of deconstruction as a thing evangelicals in skinny jeans do while drinking espresso right that's the picture of deconstruction and sure i see those people at events and they're lovely by the way but when i talk about deconstruction i'm talking about someone who might maybe two weeks ago and said i read your book and i want to pray again but whenever i try to pray and imagine a god i can only think of my uncle fondling my penis while asking me to read from the bible oh my god deconstruction is not a goddamn parlor trick some people have been hurt in the deepest possible way with explicitly christian imagery the word god breaks their heart the idea that jesus loves you is indecipherable from some severe form of personal or societal trauma ask a black child who grew up in a white church what the jesus experience has meant to them since trayvon martin this is not low stakes stuff and so i would say to minister to the deconstruction it is not enough to say you are god's beloved because for some people saying that reinforces and deepens the trauma they are trying to move beyond and i would argue a ministry for the truly broken deconstructed spiritually homeless frustrated i medicate myself with whatever i can find is a slightly reduced phrase and it is simply you are beloved and if they say by who me never let your faith allow you to take a step of distance and say only god does the loving because that's disembodied and it's uninteresting and it breaks hearts if you believe in an empty tomb your job is to love your neighbor and not say that god does told you i'd cry at least once oh i told you there was a very small chance i would but i thought about it the the last thing i'd say in is that a couple of months ago i had an experience as a youth minister i never thought i'd have i i have a daily prayer list so like every person i've ever confirmed i pray for in a specific day of the week which might be my residue of being a baptist church planters kid but it does mean that you're reminded of individuals who are now like having their first children and realizing how old you are as a youth minister and one of them was a student at the park at parkland high school and it was on the day i prayed for him and his sister his sister had never joined my youth group before they moved from california to florida but david hogg had gone was my youth student was a youth minister i was a youth in my youth group and that morning before i heard anything had happened i had prayed for him and his family just like i had prayed for him and his family every week and i've done that for children who grew into youth that grew into adults all over the country every time i've been their minister and at no point did i think that prayer included i hope you and your sister don't get shot and it was an existential experience after it i showed up i was talking to a friend of mine who i i was like i don't even know what to do with this i called his mom we were talking on the phone she's freaking out blah blah you know that like checking back in and stuff and a couple weeks later the reconnection happens with him and the moment that was most affirming to me out of like coming out of tragedy and thinking like how can my faith inspire organizing and activism around gun violence and stuff was when he said oh oh it's totally cool to respond you know i've already talked to insert like 10 names of other youth that were in the youth group who hollered at him two of which were his confirmation senior youth who like they're four years older than him when he began confirmation and we're just like you know this is what we sho we decided to show up for and i found out like i thought i was showing up for pastoral care and the students themselves have already done it and so one of the things i think so often for us as ministers that think about challenges and such is we think we have to be in a position and be in the know where we show up and in that like crazy extreme experience they had realized that the community the relationships the affirmation happened in them was the point and that they had already showed up and they already knew how to connect before i ever figured it out i find that to be a possibility that's inspiring past the normal terms of religious community i'm going to stop talking [Laughter] oh that's the best into a podcast ever