ASM069 God’s Will, Racist Grandparents, and Historical Christianity

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god's will racist grandparents and historical christianity all that and more on this week's episode of ask sciencemike

[Music]

welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life i want to let you know that june 9th i'll be in saratoga california right in the heart of silicon valley doing the saratoga federated church village forum we're going to talk about science and faith and doubt and all that good stuff i'd love to see you there but you know we've got a show to do right now so let's get it started [Applause] [Music] well hey friends uh you know i usually save the announcements for the end of the show but i've got a couple this week that are just really important and uh they're about things people have been asking me about quite a lot so i'm gonna do two very quick announcements at the top of the show and then we'll proceed with our normal question and answer format the first thing i'd like to tell you about is something that andrew golucky the one of the pre-producers on the show put together you know a lot of you when i go to different cities say you've come not only to see me to but to meet other people who think like you who in some way feel like they're on the edge of the church they don't quite belong and you've asked for ways to find each other and to get together and uh we're trying something really simple here uh it's called together and we're making facebook groups it's that simple we're making facebook groups for different cities we started with the cities where the show gets downloaded the most but if you want us to create another together group for your city we can do that and what we're going to do is if you go to ask sciencemike.com and go to this episode there'll be like a little red icon that says together if you click on that it'll be a listing of all the places we have together groups you can just click and join one and if you don't see your city listed you can contact us and we'll make one for your city this is super low tech low administration andrew doing this in his spare time i'm a part of all those groups so when i'm available i'd love to be a part of your discussions but this the main focus here is facilitating meetups and interaction and conversations among people who sometimes feel like they're the only one so that's that's one a second this fall i've got a book coming out called finding god in the waves and i'm going to do a book tour now we've already booked several cities uh in that book tour but i wanted to let you know that you can be a part of my book tour and here's how again we've taken the cities where i get the most downloads on the show and if you'd like to bring me to your city you can do so without paying a speaker's fee all you're going to need to do is pay like travel and expenses which is much less expensive than having to pay a speaker fee and then we'll sell tickets and do an ass science mic live and the trick is this has to happen specific dates and all that but you can bring me to your city for an absolutely lower cost has ever been possible before now if you're not in one of those cities no big deal we're also going to have special steep discounts on appearances during the book tour period as long as i'm able to promote the book at the event so there's never been an easier time to get me to your town to your church or college or community then this fall if you'd like more information about that go to finding godandthewaves.com launch and there's more information you can fill out a form there and we'll be in touch soon to set up well a stop in your town for the finding god in the waves book tour again that's finding god in the waves.com slash launch [Music] hey science mike love the show quick question for you uh the questions around philosophical schools of thought that existed before the birth of christianity specifically in greece from plato aristotle epicurus platinus the stoics so i've widely heard that platinism and neoplatinism heavily influenced the early church and my questions are what exactly are these philosophical schools of thought and how do they shape christianity during its infancy like you i'm a christian mystic now studying the eastern church and uh i feel like they have a higher philosophical and intellectual level that they speak out of and i think it's because of these um phil how these philosophies really uh influence their teaching so would love to hear your perspective thanks for all you do love the show and uh this could probably be a big enough question for a liturgist podcast thanks bye this is an absolutely amazing question it's an essential question and it may be the hardest question to answer in the history of the program it pulls out all my deepest insecurities that almost kept me from starting this podcast in the first place namely why would anyone listen to me since i'm not a theologian i'm not seminary trained i'm not a physicist i'm not a scientist i don't even have a college degree i'm a guy who reads a lot and is pretty good at synthesizing information and summarizing it for other people and when i speak on issues of science i've invested so much of my life into accurately understanding what scientists are talking about on different topics that i get a lot of emails from scientists saying wow you did a really good job representing my area of study and when i speak on matters of faith or life i tend to tell you about my personal faith journey which i can be an authority on and i can tell you what's worked for me and then the same thing when people ask me questions for advice in life a category i'm surprised that ends up being the most common questions submitted to the program i just tell you what i've learned in my years of being an idiot trying to survive in the world but questions like these really important historical questions that inform our faith i just have to start with a disclaimer that i'm in no way qualified to answer this question it's a question that i've spent you know a long time digging into and it highlights for me the fundamental difference between history and more hard sciences like biology or physics and that is history is messy we don't have especially as you go further back into history really great forensic records that have a lot of detail letting us know when things happen who informed whom we just don't have that information so historians kind of build a narrative out of the fragments they have and that's why historians can have such dramatically different opinions on what really happened or what's the most accurate so i'm not qualified to weigh the claims of one historian versus another and so i just kind of try to familiarize myself with as many as possible and then see which seems the most reasonable to my completely unqualified self so as i answer this i spent a day and a half brushing up on this topic just for this question it's more time than i put into any question on the show i literally have notes like notebook paper i have a ton of websites and i have uh several of my favorite books about the topic that i went through and re-read key passages and here's the thing even with all that work some of my answer i'm about to give you will fall outside of historical consensus i'm sure some of it i'll probably flub dates even though i've worked really hard to fact check myself so the best thing you can do is use this as a rough overview because people spend careers trying to address this topic not just books but volumes of books an hour or two hour allergies podcast could barely scratch the surface much less an answer on our science mic and i've spent like two minutes on the disclaimer here so we'll go ahead and i'll kind of talk to you about how i understand that in a very specific context i'm going to give you a light overview of what happened just before the time of christ in the time of christ and then after okay and i'm not going to be able to go into depth on anything because there's just not time but basically the region of the world that christianity emerged from is today called palestine a historical judea and samaria and that part of the world was conquered about you know 400 bc by alexander the great it's this great greek conquest of the world and then later uh you know like 150 200 years before the time of christ it was conquered uh by the roman empire so it had these you know successions of conquerings which is frankly very normal for that part of the world it's been occupied territory for most of its history and that means the soil from which christianity sprouted and even jesus himself had three distinct influences and the first would be roman influence and the roman context for the life of christ and for early christians was the government background the economic background their currency for example they provide the law the legal background and uh of course there was a huge religious impact from rome on the church via constantine but that was much later in the time of christ the religious impact of rome on christ was not as significant and even on the early christians although a pagan faith did play a big part in opposition to judaism at the time and early christianity because the monotheistic claims of those two face ran heavy counter to the culture and therefore the term atheist was coined to deal with jews and christians because they denied the existence of the pantheon very interesting that that word today that christians hurl at secularists was originally hurled at jewish people and christians so the first stream is that roman stream the second stream would be the greek stream the cultural stream now the greeks had been conquered by rome militarily but greek culture was incredibly influential in the roman empire and because of that the educational context the cultural context and the philosophical context of greek was incredibly influential especially in the early church but also played some role in jerusalem and in israel in the time of christ now there were a lot of different competing philosophies happening in that part of the world at the time that were greek in nature you know this is when some people will say well that's greek to me and that that joke would suddenly be literally true uh so you had kind of the epicurean versus stoic uh philosophy happening uh starting about 300 years before the birth of christ but still a serious discussion in that part of the world the epicureans were believed in a very material world they then tend to respond with a very sensualist view because gods exist but they're apart from the world they don't have any role with us so we don't worship them and uh they don't need us so we can do what we want to do you know we're basically random right very interesting how that epicurean ideal so influences modern philosophy and then you have stoicism which kind of asserted the world was divine in nature and there was this unmoved mover and the way to enlightenment was to control the emotions and was to live with a will and alignment with natural order okay and among all that you also had platonic philosophy which was becoming a big deal and in platonic philosophy you had this idea of ideal forms oh everything in reality was an imperfect representation of some ideal structure in a third realm of course that's what plato talked about all the time of course later in greek philosophy you also had the influence of gnosticism whose origins are more poorly understood historically than platonic philosophy or epicurean philosophy or stoicism but all this discussion of greek philosophy is almost getting ahead of itself because remember in this region you had alexander the great come through 400 bc in that neighborhood conquer the region then the romans came through and reconquered it also ended up uh incorporating or conquering greece and putting greece under the roman rule so littleo israel was not a global power at this point king herod herod the great and later his son herod antipas were both kind of puppets they just submitted to roman rule which was probably smart at this time the roman military was an unstoppable force uh and so for the elites for the connected in society greek philosophy and culture were really influential but out in galilee in nazareth and kind of this backwater small areas the hellenization of this region wasn't as significant and so more significant probably to jesus and his disciples were several movements in judaism all of which were kind of reactions to roman rule you had the pharisees which anybody from a christian background has heard of the pharisees and knows something about them they had this belief in an oral law that god gave to moses at sinai along with the torah which was the written law and it was uh you know the authority on how to please god and live life uh the pharisees believed in an afterlife and thought god punished the wicked you know all the kinds of things we read about in uh the old and new testaments they were also the sadducees who wanted to have you know priests and a priestly cast but they were way more willing to incorporate hellenistic ideas into their lives and their religion which is something pharisees staunchly opposed so in addition to some theological differences for example sadducees completely rejected the oral law and insisted that the torah was the only law uh they also were way more likely to cooperate with uh roman authorities and greek uh cultural influences okay uh and so the pharisees and the sadducees were like the major ruling elite of jewish society in the first century now there was a third faction called the essenes who had total disgust and content for the first two and they reacted by living monastic life committing to celibacy and uh just completely separating themselves from society in addition to the essence there was another group which would be mainly considered maybe a subset of the pharisees and that was the zealots and the zealots wanted to overthrow the roman government by force they wanted to cast off roman rule and go to war and those systems you'll notice are defined not just by theological differences but also by differences in how to relate to roman rule and so absolutely that was conversations and influences that would have been at play in the life of christ and in the life of christ's disciples and you can't really read about the words of christ and the teachings of christ without considering that what christ taught was in the context of roman rule you can't read the book of revelation without thinking about the history of conquering that happened in the land of israel without rome without babylon without that context you just can't read these texts well now as we get later after the life of christ so you get an appalling christianity and post-pauline christianity and the early church then you see an ever-increasing influence from greek philosophy neo-platonic philosophy was a huge part of how early christian theology was formed especially the idea of emanation you know god this this great being and these these uh spheres that extend out from god and god emanates into reality uh it's from that idea that a philosopher named philo came up with the word logos in the context of christianity so what philo did was try to marry jewish and greco-roman and primarily greek philosophies together and was very influential in the early church as a result and you have all those streams at play at the same time in this part of history it was radical radical you so here's the thing and what i've just given is like a really simplistic summary there's really significant fine points and how all these things would intersected intersected at different points of history and uh the point i want to make is when we interpret christianity that we view as some objective lens or without a historical context what we're really doing is interpreting christ's christ's teachings in church history through modernism because we live in the modern era and we when we read it like modern texts modern histories we're doing a disservice to that text we're doing a disservice to those teachings and we have to i feel like we have to admit that what we understand about christ and christianity primarily comes to the bible and then also comes from church history and that those processes were carried out with agendas and needs and beliefs that happen in a culture which is why when i read the bible i read it in a historical critical way so here's a few things i would say i've included a link to an article interviewing several actual experts from pbs called hellenistic culture the influence of greek language philosophy and culture on jews and early christians you can check that out and read it for free it's a great little summary if you want to go deeper i'm going to recommend to you some of my favorite books from modern scholars backgrounds of early christianity is available on amazon it's not a well-known book but it's one i've personally found very helpful just for getting some academic grounding in the interplay of all these cultures i just talked about another great book is a history of god by karen armstrong she's one of the most respected religious scholars in the world and it's a it's a dense read but it will take you through basically the history of human belief in god including the genesis of christianity and what was happening uh contemporarily uh zealot is a great book by renee azlon um that's a biography of christ basically and then bert ehrman has two books i really enjoy one is misquoting jesus and the others how jesus became god now depending on your context some of these books will be radically different and they don't all agree with each other i'm inviting you to weigh people's claims against each other but if you want to go deeper in these topics and i think it is important one of the great weaknesses of the modern christian faith is the way we excessively modernize it and personalize it to our context these resources will help you dig deeper our next question came in via email and it reads science mike we often hear sermons about the concept of god's will in some christian circles martyrdom is glorified kind of the concept if i want to do music i better learn to lay that down because god might call me to the mission field in the worst parts of the world that threaten my safety because humility then you have those in the more creative rob bell camps who promote the pursuit of creativity and shockingly the enjoyment of our lives and talents and passions and dreams my question is what do you personally believe about god's will and how one interprets the calling on their life great question interesting question um yeah the whole god's will thing in some more conservative or even fundamentalist streams of christianity almost have a acerbic or stoic tent you know if you enjoy something you can become prideful about it so you always have to be careful about what your motivations are and i think there's a kernel of wisdom there i do i think we can do things for unhealthy reasons i think when people aren't affirmed or validated enough especially by themselves they can become really hungry for approval or praise and that's normal for a social primate but i think ultimately it's healthier to learn to do things because they are fulfilling or helpful but that's a value judgment on my part in terms of how i or what i think about god's will remember i'm a mystic so i primarily approach my faith and the bible from a historical critical context i'm placing these ideas within a historical framework and when i'm going to make claims about my faith i'm going to use anthropology and archaeology i'm going to use history to make fact claims about jesus his disciples the early church and god's will i can talk about what we believe with an understanding of their cultural contexts jesus or the disciples or paul would have said about god's will and i find those things instructive to me i am a christian and i'm a part of a church and i'm specifically a methodist of the methodist have this quadrilateral where the scripture is one thing that helps us understand god's will and another thing is reason and another is tradition and i can't even remember the fourth one some methodist i am i'm gonna google it right now and i'm not editing this out on purpose so greg leave this in i want people to know my knowledge is limited uh scripture tradition reason and experience oh yeah experience is a good one and i like that idea i like that those four things kind of interplay together to help us understand god help us understand our faith in terms of god's specific will again i kind of look at things in this mystic way and i say i can't speak for god or nor fully understand god's will i can look at how god was revealed in the christ i can look at how god has worked in history i want to talk about more about that in a question in a couple of minutes actually the next question but i say that and then i read the bible using lectio divina and when i do that i'm actually reading the bible through an entirely personal context saying what what the words may have for me today what my ex how my experiences can intermesh with the scripture and create insights in terms of calling for life i don't know i don't know that there is one way to know god's will that's better than all the others or even if that's a thing i think i think i have friends who are not christians who do not believe in god but they have callings they live lives of purpose and they're fulfilled is that god's will i have friends who are devout orthodox little o orthodox christians who are depressed and despondent and don't know what to do with their lives is that simply because they haven't uncovered god's will i don't know i don't know i tend to think that a life of meaning and purpose and i find that in my faith is when i learn how my suffering has shaped me and i use that to help others suffer less and i think that's a very jesus centered idea i was bullied as a kid and you if you follow my work at all i talk about it all the time not because i haven't recovered from it i've really integrated those experiences into my life but the way i was shaped by bullying gives me insights that help other people who suffered in that way or even other ways so in that way i go back to the echoes of that pain in order to help others feel less alone and maybe come up with coping strategies and then there's things i do just because i enjoy them i love video games blizzard just released a video game called overwatch and i played it for like three hours the other day i was really exhausted actually from researching the first question this week and i just needed to like turn my brain off so i played i played blizzard's overwatch and i had a blast i don't feel guilty about it it's just something i enjoy there's a rhythm in life we spend and we have to refuel uh is that god's will i don't know i think that pattern is certainly described in the bible i think that's a lot of what sabbath talks about and how sabbath is a part of finding shalom god's peace i guess if i have to pin it down this would be a defining feature of why i'm not just a christian but why i'm comfortable in the methodist stream of christianity is that quadrilateral idea that scripture and reason and tradition and experience all come together to help us understand god better to the degree that god can be understood which is why i guess i'm a mystic too great question [Music] hi science mike my name is sarah i live in cincinnati i have been wanting to ask you this question for so long and finally you mentioned one of my favorite authors brian greene on your liturgis podcast a few weeks back i have been thinking so much about his work and i heard him on on being with krista tippett and at that moment i suddenly realized that i thought god could be real i know he's just um comfortable with being an agnostic and not particularly interested in god but i was fascinated by his multiple theories of the multiverse and it really got me doing some crazy thought experiments in my head about what is god's mechanism of action in my mind god could be a conscious entity that interacts with us somehow and if god interacts with us there must be some way that god does this so does god have some mystery wave frequency that he hasn't um allowed us to discover yet or that we haven't discovered yet is god folded up in one of those other dimensions of string theory um is god in a one of the brains that's keeping up or that's occupying the same space as us have just found this to be an extremely fun and kind of creative thought experiment to do i haven't come in into any good conclusions but i thought you might have some fun insights so hope to hear what you have to say thanks i think uh wow i know what you feel i i know where you're at with this question because physics-centered theological pontification is probably my alcoholism it's a thing i do in moderation it's fun if you take it too far it destroys your life and i have a tendency to not be able to theologically pontificate in the context of science in moderation i tend to do it in excess until i get sick and fall over and this is a question i've thought about a lot and here's the problem i'll start with the problem and then i'll go back towards actually answering the question when we look for a god of some preconception like a god who's a being who could be described as having consciousness and we start to look for that god in physics which really doesn't reveal a god of that kind we find a god that is either either intentionally hiding or we just haven't discovered yet the first god is logically troubling and the second god comes close to the idea of the god and the gaps that god is simply that which we don't know right that god is beyond the understanding of science today and i don't find either of those ideas to be very encouraging satisfying or epistemologically sound now i've spent a lot of time you know it's really fun to learn about the multiverse it's fun to learn about the frontiers of physics but it's important to remember that when we talk about the multiverse when we talk even about string theory and brains b-r-a-n-e-s these uh space-time constructs that undergird our reality and some variations of string theory we are talking about a hypothesis that is not accepted or demonstrated scientifically today string theory is popular but every string theorist will tell you they don't have experimental or observational support to firm up or make accepted this very mathematically elegant model of reality now here's where i'm at today as you know i've said it on this show already i am a mystic so i don't think i know very many facts about god but if i were to talk about god's mechanism of action all of them i find god in the higgs field this uh higgs ocean and brian green's terms that allows matter to exist during our universe i find god in the fundamental forces of physics i find god at the heart of black holes and in the singularity from which our universe likely emerged i don't separate god from the universe i guess when i think about god in that way i get closer to pantheism or panentheism than any other theistic approach to god but i don't even want to you know lock myself into terms like that god is a great mystery god is not a being in my mind god is being itself the ground of being a god is what allows anything to be in the first place so when we learn more about science we learn more about god it's not that god is what we don't know in science although i think we will find god there but we're finding god already in science werner heisenberg is one of the architects of quantum dynamics and particle physics and he said the first gulp from the glass of the natural sciences will turn you into an atheist but god is waiting for you at the bottom of the glass and i believe that fully what happens with science is that it starts to dismantle our preconceptions about god it does undermine some ancient historical claims fact claims about god but when we study deeper in the sciences we find that the things we ascribe to god something that creates sustains the universe something that we experience day-to-day in our lives there is scientific grounding for those ideas and i've spent the largest chapter of my adult life and the most energy i have diving into that question and where i've arrived is is the god of my axiom this god that is physics itself this god that is impersonal and distant this god that may be beyond human understanding ultimately but that god is a god we can't really know and yet we know god and so i also find god dwelling within us in our synapses and our neurons in our brains and i can't this this is the like week you guys are sending me questions i can't fit in uh ask science mike which we're 38 minutes into the episode and i think we're on the second question uh so sorry about a really long episode but um so here's here's what i'll tell you one there's a book called grounded by diana butler bass and it talks a little bit about a god that's found everywhere it's a great book and then there's another book coming out in september called finding god in the ways that i wrote and the two chapters in the first half or the second half of the book the first two chapters in the second half of the book are about this question two full chapters now i'll be honest when you read my book the first half of it is like this memoir that is about losing my faith and then up to that moment at the beach and then the second half of the book kind of changes tone and i topically bit by bit show how i understand god and jesus the bible the church everything of christianity in the context of science how i relate to it today and the two like most science dense chapters in the whole book by far are the two chapters about god i actually worry that some people won't get through them because they're so dense but hopefully people continue because as you get further into the church and the bible it gets much more personal again but when i talk about god i really get to the heart of how i understand not just science but philosophy and epistemology i mean it's a big question so i hate to push you off to other resources but i can answer the question better in my book and of course i also would encourage you to check out grounded it's a great book as well so i'd like to take a moment and talk to you about the show's two sponsors this week i really love them both and they're products i use personally the first is pinatagrams i mentioned it on last week's show and they've told me there was a big response from that so thank you it's amazing you send people a pinata in the mail you go to pinatagrams.com you fill out a form you pay 20 plus shipping and they ship a pinata full of candy to a person of your choosing it is adorable it is simply adorable uh i've sent one uh to a couple of folks and then i've received one as well you literally not in a box or anything this pinata just comes in the mailbox or to someone's office imagine that people get flowers they get cards candies letters all the time it's whimsical and fun to send a pinata so it'll be full of candy it'll have a label on the outside as well as a message for the person you're sending it to it's really going to stand out and be memorable uh check it out pinatagrams.com the other sponsor this week is sanebox i get so much email it's insane and so email becomes a point of dread for me am i going to open my email and get swamped and get taken off task but not anymore sanebox is magic it's like having someone go through your email and sort it for you only the important stuff that you need to act on from people you know makes it to the inbox everything else gets put in another email box you can look through at your leisure it works with almost every email service on every device and every email app you don't have to change anything about your email setup sanebox will just come in and start working for you it's amazing so you can get a discount on your subscription by going to sanebox.com science mike i highly recommend it it's an amazing product and both pinata grams and sanebox help make ask science mike possible our last question came in via email and it reads hey science mike my question stems mainly out of frustration with old people now before i sound too heartless let me give my question some context i am currently giving pro bono psychological evaluations to undocumented immigrants to aid their court case in their fight to stay in the united states when ted cruz dropped out of the presidential race recently i was at my fiance's house while his grandma was watching fox news she said she was heartbroken that her favorite candidate had lost being the liberal i am i stepped out of the room to make sure that i didn't say anything to start a political conversation with her because we agree on nothing in that sphere after a few minutes she wandered into the room and told me that she was heartbroken for my generation because we will be stuck with the president who will have policies that forces her grandchildren to deal with the illegals i was raging upset with her but of course i don't feel comfortable going down that road with my fiance's sweet grandma here's where my question and need for advice lies i understand that her generation grew up in a very different historical context than me they dealt with war national poverty and government-driven xenophobia of course she is going to base her opinions on her own experience but it blows my mind to see a woman who so deeply cares for her family and friends and of course is a very strong christian to reduce a group of marginalized people to an identity of illegals let me say that she is probably not what you're picturing one of those caricatured and classically racist white grandmothers she isn't that way at all she really is very sweet and always doing things for other people but how can somebody who really does live out love still be thinking this way how do i engage with the people of this generation on the topics that i care about is it even worth it when the reality is that they're at the end of their life how can we practically engage with her generation and should we thank you mike mckenzie from seattle what a timely question in a likely hillary clinton donald trump primary i would imagine that a radical political polarization will be something a lot of us are going to be dealing with conversations that we've typically avoided are going to happen at dinner tables and holidays and how do we have those conversations best well the first thing i like to remember is that my grandchildren will probably judge some of my views harshly in general our moral vision moves faster than changes in moral behavior and this is in my opinion good it urges us to always do better it wasn't too long ago historically that people would get together in a tavern and boil a live cat in hot oil as a means of entertainment it wasn't that long ago we watched humans fight to the death as a means of entertainment but today we watch humans pound each other with their fists with long-term health consequences today we eat animals produced in horrific factory conditions and i suspect future generations will judge us harshly i think even those of us who consider ourselves more forward thinking on race issues will be judged harshly by people in the future for how we've dealt with racist systems in society or addressed poverty at least that's my hope so i offer the grace to older people with older moral views that i hope will one day be offered to me i hope that my grandchildren will understand that i was doing my best in the context in which i was raised and that's what most people do so i always start with a measure of grace even in situations and topics that genuinely and deeply offend me or give me some sense of moral outrage now if you actually want to have a productive conversation you can go farther than just offering grace i've always found it helpful to take the conversation away from the theoretical and into the personal and i don't make it personal between you and your grandmother-in-law i mean don't speak of undocumented workers and their plight in some geopolitical context use names of people you know and their stories and simply tell how that story provoked compassion in you or a change in the way you view things don't offer any defense don't get tricked into a debate just say you know i hear where you're coming from and i identify with that in a lot of ways but i had this experience and then just tell the story just tell the story and don't even necessarily try to drive that story home or land people anywhere just let them sit with that narrative we understand scientifically that is an extremely powerful way to shift people's opinions over time here's the other piece it's perfectly okay to set boundaries or tell someone when something makes you uncomfortable even your grandmother one of my older relatives when i was younger would frequently call black people the n-word and that was just the term he addressed black people with and i found it offensive and i said that and he stopped using that word in my presence it's okay to say when something makes you uncomfortable that you know that's how we have civil society and if someone can't respect your reasonable wishes you know that's when you use boundaries that's when you limit your exposure to that relationship so be full of grace personalize conversations using story and actual experiences and understand it's okay to set boundaries and tell people when they say something makes you uncomfortable which by the way that kind of social pressure especially when presented in a way that's non-inflammatory can also help change people's beliefs and behaviors since we are social primates super super timely question uh in the age of donald trump [Music] well there's another episode of ask science mike and you've listened to the whole thing almost an hour long maybe greg will uh you know trim that down he's pretty sharp that way uh but we'll see hopefully it was interesting as always i go where you lead the questions and these were the questions that people picked this week so i have to answer them um in addition to the stuff we talked about the top of the show i'll let you know i'm going to be at wild goose in july the liturgists will be there as well so we're going to have an ass science mike live we'll also do the first ever live version of the liturgist podcast if you'd like to join us use goosecast 2016 when you buy a ticket to get 25 percent off i believe any ticket that's available so that's a really amazing deal goose cast 2016 also uh the liturgist gathering that we're doing it's not just you right we're learning that there's a lot of us that feel drawn to god that want to have some part of historical christianity but feel homeless or frustrated in the church today we're getting together in chicago and denver in september and october you can go to the liturgists.com or any of the literature social media profiles to learn more but those events are filling up so we're about 75 percent full right now for chicago a little less than half full in denver but tickets are selling every day i know it's it's the fall seems so far away but um if you're thinking about going get some more information maybe set yourself a reminder uh the tickets are really affordable and we'd love to see you at the liturgist gathering i want to thank a few people i want to thank all my patrons on patreon not only for making the show possible financially you are the show's biggest sponsor but also for doing the work of picking the questions every week uh thank you it takes a huge load off my shoulders to know i'm talking exactly about what you want to talk about i'd also like to thank andrew the lucky who does the show's pre-production who's also organizing the together project kind of like the gathering help help us find each other help us feel less alone in the world i want to thank greg nordin for producing the show and jeb bottaford for writing the ask science mike theme song thanks for listening everyone and i will talk to you next week [Music]