Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How to Handle Doubt: An Interview with AJ Swoboda

Episode Date: June 10, 2021

It's hard to go through heartbreak or see evil happening. How is God going to fix it? Find out from Keith as we continue our series on "Who Is Jesus?" Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too.  To learn more, visit our website and subscribe to the weekly TMBT Newsletter.   Outline 0:15 - Struggling with evil in the world 1:40 - https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20John%203%3A8&version=NIV (1 John 3.8): Why Jesus came 2:40 - The story of the Bible 4:00 - Who Satan really is 5:20 - https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+4&version=NIV (Matthew 4.1-11): Jesus in the wilderness 7:00 - How Jesus defeated the devil: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+1.21-28&version=NIV (Mark 1.21-28) 9:20 - https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+27.40&version=NIV (Matthew 27.40): How Satan tempts 10:20 - https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Colossians+2.14-15&version=NIV (Colossians 2.14-15) and https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+12&version=NIV (John 12) 11:20 - The consequences of sin 12:20 - https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+20.10&version=NIV (Revelation 20.10) 13:25 - Subscribe. Rate. Share.   Social Facebook Instagram Twitter   Passages 1 John 3.8 Matthew 4.1-11 Mark 1.21-28 Matthew 27.40 Colossians 2.14-15 John 12 Revelation 20.10   Resources "Is He Worthy?" by Andrew Peterson Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. 

Welcome to Tim Minut Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. My name is Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. Also, if you want to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at TMBT Podcast. You can also check out our hashtag, hashtag, Ask TMBT, where you can ask us anything, and we'd love to connect with you. AJ Swoboda, thanks for joining us here at 10 Minute Bible Talks. Awesome. I'm honored to be with you. Thanks for having me. AJ, you work in Portland and Eugene, Oregon, which some people have probably called the

deconstruction capital of the world. You, therefore, I think, are an expert on doubt and deconstruction. And so you've written this book, after doubt, that I found really interesting, encouraging, insightful, it helped me process some questions I had. So I'm really glad that you're you're with us today. Here's a question to start with. What are some of the best reasons that you've heard, the most compelling reasons that people are leaving Christianity? Ah, well, can I be as honest as possible? I love honesty. You go for it. Love it. I think the number one reason that I'm seeing people walk away from Christianity from my generation and younger is the syncretism of trading out authentic Jesus Christianity for conservative and progressive ideologies.

And when I say that, I mean, people are leaving what they thought was Christianity because Christianity has been co-opted by a political party. And in my opinion, when people deconstruct that, they're not actually deconstructing Christianity, they're actually deconstructing something that wasn't true in the first place. And here's my point. I think people want Jesus and they want God and they're tired of ideology. And they've been sold ideology the whole time. And when they find out that it's ideology, they want to do away with it.

So here's what I'm trying to say, I think people are walking away from Christianity or what they think was Christianity because they've sniffed out the reality that what they thought was real wasn't real. So I think one of the main reasons why that's going on right now. Man, I love that answer. And there's so much in there that I want to come back. and kind of unpack one by one if we can. Can we just start, though, by defining deconstruction? It's a word that gets tossed around and probably different people mean different things by it. So in the context of your book and this conversation, what do you mean by deconstruction? Great question. The minute a writer finishes the book and hits send and it's in the hand of the publisher,

they immediately regret everything they did and want to rewrite it. One thing I wish I would have done more of in the book is spent more time defining these terms because the words doubt and deconstruction, they are adjacent ideas, but they are not the same. They aren't. I would say, and I'm not a philosopher. I'm a theologian by trade. So I know that a philosopher probably would nuance all of this with a thousand foot notes, but I think we just want a practical answer, right? Yeah, I'm going to try to give it from a 10,000 foot perspective. Perfect. I think doubt is something that happens to our faith. And I think deconstruction is something we do to our faith. Okay. So doubt is an experience that we have when we are having a hard time holding on to something we currently believe. Deconstruction is something we do when we intentionally

dismantle stuff that we believe. So for example, if I were to go through an experience of walking through profound suffering, my gut tells me I would begin to doubt certain theological ideas about things like everything is happy, clappy if you're a Christian. I'm going to doubt that. Whereas if I walk through the experience of, well, if I started willingly giving myself over to sexual sin and unwanted sexual desires, I'm probably going to have to start deconstructing my faith because my life can't handle what the Bible has to say. So deconstruction, I think, is an intentional activity, and I think doubt often more happens to us. So I love the distinction between the two because I agree they're clearly not the same thing.

And I want to talk mainly about the deconstruction part, but first let's just think through the doubt thing for just a moment. Doubt seems like it's a pretty normal part of the Christian life, right? You see people in the Bible who struggle with doubt. And sometimes Christians get freaked out when they start doubting as if this is abnormal. or weird or it says something bad about them. They don't have enough faith. So help us think. If we're Christians who have doubts,

help us think about that just a little bit. Yeah, well, I should be very clear here. For all of my friends who are New Testament scholars and biblical scholars and theologians, there is a lot of debate as to whether doubt is a valuable, spiritual part of the Christian life. I wrote an article with my friend Nijoupta two months ago that came out with in Christianity be today that almost got us run out of the country because we suggested that doubt can be actually a positive part of the Christian life. So there's a lot of debate and I don't want to, I don't want to give a glossy answer to a very complex question. But as I see the story of the Bible, you have

essentially two sides to this doubt experts. Okay. So the Bible does not use the word deconstruction. The Bible doesn't use this word. But I think that the Bible, in a level, way has two general patterns around the doubt experience. One would be the sort of negative, destructive component of doubt. This is represented, for example, in the book of James. The Greek word diacrinos, the word for we, it's translated as doubt. It's also unbelief or distrust. And James says that that sort of doubt makes you a double-minded person. You ask and you don't receive as a result. So there is a negative, I think destructive vision of doubt, but there is simultaneously given space and voice to what I believe to be a more positive, truthful, authentic

kind of doubt that is reflected, for example, in the Psalms. You read Psalm 22. Whoever writes Psalm 22, it's been ascribed to David, but whoever ends up writing this thing, clearly is articulating and giving language to a moment in life where they have no idea what God is doing. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Which becomes ultimately the language of the cry of dereliction and the death of Jesus. That kind of expression is, we have a word for that. It's called confession. It's telling God what is true.

And in those moments, when we are struggling to believe, telling God that that is happening is a part of the Christian life. Now, you and I, I've done pre-marriage counseling. And if I had, and you know this, if you've ever done pre-marriage counseling, if you have a couple that comes in for pre-marriage counseling and you ask them to tell you the last time they had an argument, if they said to you, they've been together for a year and they've never had an argument, you tell them don't get married. Well, you don't know each other very well, right?

Something's off. You haven't talked about important things yet. There you go. Something is off when there is not disagreement or struggle. The sign that you're doing it right is it's challenging. That, to me, is the sultan kind of doubt. The sign that you're actually trying to believe is that it's a struggle. So what would you do with, say, Abraham and Sarah, you know, they laugh in a sense at God's promise that God is going to bless them through their child and in their old day. age, they laugh at it. Or someone like John the Baptist, who is in prison and he sends messengers to Jesus to figure out if he's the one, because here's John the Baptist, doubting in a sense. Has my life been worth it? Have I thrown my lot in with the wrong person? Are those healthy doubts? Are those doubts that are God rebukes? It seems like God treats those differently.

You know, Sarah, he rebukes, and John the Baptist, Jesus kind of encourages by saying, And here's what I'm doing. Here's who I am. And to Sarah, yeah. Oh, you did laugh. He says. But to Abram, he doesn't. Abram laughs.

And there's no seeming comment connection. It leads you to believe that there was something going on in the heart that the reader of the text can't see. These underlying affections, assumptions, heart attitudes that can't be seen. You know, Tim Keller, Tim Keller has, I think. perfectly illustrated this particular paradox as it relates to how Jesus engages the two sisters in the death of Lazarus. Because one, they both say the exact same thing to Jesus. If you had come earlier, he wouldn't die. Things would be okay. To one, he comforts and to one he corrects. And yet their words are the same. Cane and able. They both offer sacrifices. One God receives,

one God rejects. And we're never explained. exactly why that's the case. Why can't enable why the two sisters? Why is the difference? Underneath all of that is something that you and I cannot see the human heart. And the difference, I think, between the good, the constructive and destructive, dangerous doubt is it's the difference between when I have a student that comes into my class or my office and they, for office hours, academics have a confession booth. They're called office hours. Like I didn't do my homework or what did I confess? Lord have mercy.

When a student comes in with a question, there are always two kinds of questions. There is the question of the student who comes in who wants to trap me and they have a question, they're pointing their finger. And then there's a question of the person with open hands who really wants to know. The heart of a question changes everything. The heart of the two sisters was different. The heart of Canaan Abel is different. And the only way to discern the difference.

God is the only one who can know. The difference between a doubt that says, God, I'm struggling to believe because I want to believe. And I'm struggling to believe because I really am tired of believing and I want to be done. The motivation for why we struggle with doubt or deconstruction is what changes everything. Because if we are struggling with doubt or deconstruction, because ultimately we want to follow Jesus with all of our hearts and will abandon anything that gets in the way of that, the student who says to me, I want to follow God with everything I want. I'm going to doubt anything that's not true. That to me is beautiful.

But to the person who comes into my room who says, I'm struggling with doubt and deconstruction. Because frankly, I'm just really tired of having a book telling me to do some stuff I don't want to do. And ultimately, I just want to sleep around and do what I want to do. That's our posture. So the heart, Keith, the heart makes a difference. So earlier you said, if I remember right, and correct me if I got. Has anyone else told you you look like Bill 9?

Bill Nye, the science guy? Yeah. No. Spot on. That scares me. I'm not good at science. You're a key nigh the Bible guy. That's what we're going to be able.

Well, well, I'm speechless. I don't know what to say about Bill Nye, the science guy. He has a bow tie, doesn't he? He does. You should get a bow tie. Maybe I'll tighten up and get a bow tie. If I remember right and correct me if I got this wrong, but you said doubt, because I thought it was really good distinction. Doubt is something that happens to our.

faith and deconstruction is something we do actively trying to dismantle our faith? Doubt is something that happens to our faith. And deconstruction is something we do to our faith. Okay. So if we are experiencing doubt or the difference between doubt and deconstruction, you're also saying is oftentimes a heart attitude. What's motivating us to go down either road. Are we asking sincere questions, kind of like a Mary, how can this be that the son of God lives in me? Or are we trying to justify and get what we want out of life and trying to jettison the faith? So as we move to this deconstruction, the more hostile, the more dismantling, what are some of the patterns that you've seen? Because I'm guessing there are. I'm guessing that a lot of people

come to you and they all think they've got the unique story. I'm the only one who's thought of this or something like that. But my guess is in your role as pastor and professor, you've seen that there are some patterns, some common elements. Yep. I need to be very clear here for your audience and for you. I do not believe there is a lot of conversation right now going on about deconstruction. You could search over deconstruction on Twitter and you will find a cottage industry of arguments about this conversation. Whole podcasts are just about deconstruction. The liturgists, right?

You name it. There's a hundred of them. I do not believe, and I'm a fairly conservative, Orthodox Christian, okay? Deconstruction is not always bad. Okay, we need to say that. For example, let me give you just a couple examples.

Number one, we are part of a tradition in the Protestant tradition that was started because of deconstruction. Luther nailed some theses on a wall, and that led to what you and I call Protestantism. It was essentially a deconstruction of what he saw to be abuses and wrong theology in the church. I think that's good. Jesus, when you read Matthew 5 through 7, every time Jesus says, you have heard it said, but I say to you, he's deconstructing religious, pharisaical interpretation.

Deconstruction is not bad. It is what is being deconstructed. important. If we are deconstructing bad theology, praise God. If we're deconstructing the faith, that's dangerous. There's a difference. I would say three things, in my experience, lead to the experience of deconstruction for young people in particular, three things in particular. The first, as I see it, the first often goes hand in hand. hand with, and this is going to sound really weird. It goes hand in hand with major life transitions. So, for example, when a student moves from their home and goes to college, they disconnect

in their social environment and often their family of origin and the church in which they were raised and are now in a new environment. And that we are as people way more social than more comfortable talking about. And it turns out that when you remove yourself from your family and your church tradition and go to another environment. Often students are one YouTube or lecture clip away from undermining the faith that they were handed as a result of the fact that we are social beings. There's nothing wrong with being social beings. We become the people we are around.

That sounds a little focus on the family, but it's actually quite true. So transitions make a big deal. Number two, major theological disappointments. And when I say that, what I mean is, If we were handed at some point in our life, a formula for the way God works and it didn't work out, we begin to question the whole thing. Let me give you an example. When I was 16 years old, I became a Christian at 16.

The first Christian book I read was a book called I Kiss Dating Goodbye, read by Joshua Harris. Now, Harris, to his credit, has utterly rejected the message of the whole book. He's also rejected, walked away from his fate, but he rejected the message of the book. The premise of the book, at the end of the day, the premise of the book is this. If you don't have sex before marriage, God will provide the most incredible spouse for you that will make your dreams come true and it will be incredible. My generation believed that. And they went on and thought that was the formula.

And it turns out the formula doesn't work. As a result of ideas like that, at some point you start waking up to the idea that, oh my gosh, that's not how God always works. sometimes you're faithful to God and actually it doesn't work out well for you at all. The formula is broken. And so because we thought the formula was Christianity, we reject Christianity because the formula was false. So when we find out sometimes that the theology we're handed was not actually about Jesus, we throw the baby out with the bathwater.

And I would say the third thing that I've already mentioned, the third thing that's to deconstruction is when we begin to see that the system, that the systems of the faith, ideological systems, political systems, that often the system of the church has become co-opted for other things of Jesus. And so the church becomes co-opted to serve Donald Trump. It becomes co-opted to serve a political, progressive ideology. The church becomes co-opted by systems of thought that are worldly. And there's something in the human soul that knows, that's not the way of Jesus. That is not the way of Jesus. And so if you see, I'm not saying that this is universal case. I'm just saying for young people,

when they see that their church tradition is being co-opted by a political party, it makes them want to do it with the whole thing. And that is why I, with a whole cadre of thinkers, people like John Mark Comer, Mark Sayers, John Tyson, there's a whole variety of people. And there's a whole variety of people who are crying out. We have got to return to Jesus and stop being disciples by CNN and Fox News. Because that co-opting is killing our witness. It's killing our witness. And it's killing our souls. I mean, I love what you're preaching.

And it sounds very close to mine and Patrick's heart. We talk about it in the language of truth over tribe, but people have become so tribal that they're being disciplined by their digital devices, and they're being disciples by the donkey and the elephant instead of the lamb. And we've got to help all of us, me included, get back to following the lamb and not the donkey and the elephant. We could go down all of these. Let's go down this one for a second. you talked about transitions, and specifically you put it in terms of a kid leaving high school and going to college. So you have kids. How are you going to build in them a faith that will stand those transitions,

that will go through those transitions and keep loving Jesus? It might be different. The love for Jesus might look different as a high school kid, as a college kid, as a young adult, or whatever, right? But the love for Jesus, is there something you're doing that can deconstruction proof their faith? What a great question. I want to be cautious how I address this because every parent has asked a question themselves. So what I'm going to share, I think, is my and my wife's posture towards our nine-year-old son, who will maybe in 20 years watch this video, and I hope that he says what we did was good.

my wife and I reject the minimalist gospel, which has been the evangelical approach for too long, which is we have created the bare minimum thing that needs to happen for somebody to be a Christian. So the minimalist gospel says this is the basic belief that you've got to do to be in. And we are giving our son the comprehensive gospel, that it requires your whole life, everything you have and nothing less. And the reason we're doing that is we want to make his faith harder and more challenging. We want to make it difficult. If you put it in theological terms, evangelicalism has been doing theology of glory way too much. We need the theology of the cross.

We have been emphasizing resurrection to the degree that we have not emphasized the dying with Jesus part. So here's what we do. We talk with our nine-year-old son about really hard theological ideas. I tell my son stuff in the Bible I don't understand or don't like. And the reason we do that, we don't do it all the time. I'm not saying we sit around and just beat up our nine-year-old's faith. But I want my son to know that I have struggles with my faith because I want him to know you have permission of struggles with your faith and follow Jesus.

So here's a way to think about it. This is a way to, I think, an illustration that it's been helpful for me and maybe it will be for you or your listeners. a number of years ago, the University of Arizona did this. They built this huge biodome in the middle of the Arizona desert. A biodome, of course, is totally encapsulated, covered with glass. But it allows the sun in, but there's no environment. And they planted all these trees in the biodome. And the trees immediately grew up really fast.

They just sort of grew up and did fine. But after a couple years, there was this weird thing that happened. the trees, all of them almost at a moment in time just started falling over, like toppling over. And these scientists are scratching their heads and wondering what in the world's happening with these trees. Why are they growing up and just falling over? And so they, you know, well, maybe the soil's not good. So they look so it's fine. Maybe they're not getting enough sunlight.

They got plenty of sunlight. And then all of a sudden, you just imagine the light going off on one of the scientists. They figured out what it was. there was one thing these trees didn't have. Tell me. There was no wind. And it turns out when trees don't have wind, what don't they have to grow? Roots?

They don't have to grow roots. So it's the wind that causes them develop roots? The depth of the roots is consistent with the kind of wind that they experience. And so when there's no wind, they don't have the strength. When they grow up, they just fall over. That is literally what happens to college students when they go and take their first year philosophy seminar. They go and find out there's all this stuff they didn't know about. The wind blows, but because they never had the wind blow when they were kids, they just fall over.

Here's what we need. We need kids to deal with the hard stuff of Christianity way earlier on. We need to start talking about things like theodicy and sexuality. And when it comes to sexuality, I'm very conservative, very, very conservative on the topic. I do not want my son going and having his first exposure to sexuality in his freshman year in college. I want him to have thought through this stuff very early on. It's difficult. But his roots are going to be so much deeper because we, we open the window.

You turn on the fan. So I think the instinctive, the instinctive, the instinctive. instinctive parenting thing is to protect your kids and protect their faith. And what you're saying is, no, you need to intentionally introduce some. In a Jesus-centered way, I am not saying that you go and exasperate your child's faith. I'm not saying that. But there is a tactful way to offer the faith to your kids and then be also the one that challenges the faith. Yeah, both.

Because it's going to be challenging. And if you don't do it, it'll happen on YouTube. And I think the church should not be the place where we only go to get the answers. It also should be the place where we go to get the questions. Oh, I love that. That's great. Okay, so I think that moves us to the next thing I want to go back to that you said. And that is that if we have a formulaic version of Christianity,

So you gave us the example of purity culture. If I stay sexually pure, I'll have this great marriage, great sex, great everything, kind of almost a sexual prosperity gospel. You could see that formulas play out in something like suffering too, right? If I obey Jesus, then I will have a good life however you define it. And then of course, we know that's not true. I mean, Jesus obeyed the Father, and he ends up crucified, misunderstood, abandoned, betrayed, all that. So that's another one of the formulas that we hear.

and then it's not just kids, adults believe that. And then when hardship comes, even though they're obeying Jesus, they might abandon the faith. So that leads me to this, is that sometimes when people reject Christianity, I don't think they're really rejecting Christianity. They're rejecting a caricature of Christianity. Because what they're rejecting, I raise my hand. I go, yeah, I reject that too. In the book, you compare that to your wife's tomatoes.

They're not my wife's. They're my tomato. Oh, I'm sorry. I misread. But, but my wife said my tomatoes. Yes. Okay. So the saint, Dallas Willard, called it barcode Christianity.

And barcode Christianity is when you go to the store and you get, let's say you get some bananas. There's a barcode. They usually put these little barcodes on the bananas or something. Well, if you wanted to, you could take that barcode and then just put it on an avocado and then get it sold as a banana if you wanted to. So what a lot of people think is Christianity is really just a barcode from something else that they've slapped on Christianity. I see. Okay. And people all of a sudden take the thing home and they start eating it.

And they're like, this is not a banana. This is an avocado. And then they start going like, this isn't what I was sold. I want a Jesus, but you're giving me politics. What is happening here? So my wife and I, yeah, so we grow tomatoes. We grow tomatoes. Okay.

I'm going to come to your house and have. have some. You're coming, baby. In Oregon, you know, beautiful tape, but like 15 months out of the year, it's rain in here. But in the summer, we grow these tomatoes. The Oregon tomatoes are the best. And the smell, when you, when you've touched an Oregon tomato, the smell on your hands, I mean, it's just thick. So we grow these tomatoes. And they're the most incredible tomatoes you've ever had. And in the summer, we have friends who come over for dinner. And it is a pretty common experience that somebody comes over who doesn't like tomatoes. But my wife and I know what we're doing. still serve the tomatoes. And we'll serve these heirloom tomatoes sliced like steak and we'll put

them in front of people. And they'll go, well, I don't like tomatoes. And I'll say, eat it. And they'll eat it. And they'll go like, this is a tomato. And I'll say, this is a tomato. And they'll go, oh, my gosh, I love tomatoes. And you learn something about tomatoes. You learn, actually, people don't hate tomatoes. People have spent their life hating fake tomatoes. and they've been eating fake tomatoes their whole life. They just never tasted the whole thing. I'm not convinced, and I suspect Keith here the same. I'm not convinced this deconstructed Christianity people are throwing away as Christianity.

I think they've been tasting the fake thing the whole life. And their heart is yearning for the living God. We didn't accept Christianity into our hearts. We're not called to follow Christianity. We're called to follow Jesus, Christ, and His kingdom. and if we've been given fake tomatoes our whole life and we start rejecting it, that's our first step towards salvation. That's part of the deconstruction is good.

If you're deconstructing a bad form, a mischaracterization, a caricature of Christianity, then you might be getting closer and closer to the real thing, closer and closer to Jesus. Yep. Now, this whole politics thing, we've mentioned it a couple times. let's just spend a couple minutes going right after it. I see a lot of people who are saying, I don't like a particular political opinion, and therefore I'm leaving Christianity,

because in their mind, Christianity has become so united, usually, with conservative politics. Do you see that? How do we get out of that? Because I think there's a growing number of people who want out of it, but it's almost as if the media won't let us out of it because the reality is the church that I'm a pastor, it's a pretty diverse political group of people. We have people on all kinds of all across the political spectrum, but it's like the media has this narrative. And I'm not saying that it's totally wrong. Clearly there it's rooted in reality. But at the same time, it's not the whole of Christianity or even, to use their terms, white evangelical Christianity. So how do we as Christian? get away from this reputation, those of us who want to get away from being too identified with one party. Do you have any solutions for us? No, I don't have any, but Jesus does. And I think that we have an interesting pathway forward in the Gospels with this very question, this question of, and by the way, I'm not suggesting that we need to go to progressive ideology to solve the problem. That is equally damnable. White nationalism and progressive ideology are equally as disturbing. And they should.

they are both a big problem. Amen. Okay. So Jesus, so how many, Jesus has 12 disciples. Some of them, we know we have their names, but some of them have nicknames. And often their names are their occupation. So we know, for example, Jesus called this guy named Matthew the tax collector, which is a, it's a noteworthy descriptor.

Because to be a tax collector in the first century would have put you in a class of people that you and I would call oppressors. He worked for the Roman government. He was a big government guy, big government guy. Jesus also called a man named Simon the zealot. And a zealot in the first century was a particular kind of apocalyptic person that believed that the system of Rome needed to come down. I mean, burn the whole thing. And Jesus says to both of them, come follow me. It would be like taking the leader of the Tea Party movement and the leader of Antifa and saying to both of them

come follow me. I can't imagine. Okay. And they both follow. Jesus, together. Can you imagine the conversations they had? What's that? Can you imagine the conversations that Matthew small group prayer meetings? The guy who's working for Rome is having with Simon the zealot, the guy who wants to overthrow Rome, I'm sure following Jesus didn't resolve all their political differences. Yeah, no suggestion that it solved him.

But it's as though Jesus is saying to the two of them, your politics are cute. How about you can follow me? So here's the question for our day and age. At what point does what Jesus have to say mean less to me than what Tucker Carlson has to say? At what point does what the Bible have to say have to bend? to what is said on NPR. We are a church of people who are being disciples by Tucker Carlson and NPR.

And there's a word for them. It's called idolatry. And if I am more shaped by NPR or Tucker Carlson than I am the words of Jesus, there's a big problem. The sign that you're actually following Jesus is that what you believe, believe and preach offends everybody. If you are preaching and only the progressives get mad, then you're just preaching conservative ideology.

If you are preaching and all the conservatives only get mad, you're just a progressive ideologue. The sign that you are actually on the kingdom path is when Pharisees and Sadducees and celets and theologians and rulers, and rulers all want you dead the way they did with Jesus. Everyone. Everyone. I mean, we live in a world where name one political party,

where I am simultaneously allowed to say that the lives of unborn children are sacred, beautiful, and they are lives, and to kill them is murder. And there's a party that says the same thing that the lives of the children at the the border in cages is as equally as important to God. I have to pick which kids I love in our political system. And when you actually embody the kingdom that says both matter, then both sides hate you. I think it's Tim Keller that says that there's no political party. Well, I mean, everybody says this part, right? At least people who think like you and I do, that there's no political party that fully embraces God's kingdom, God's agenda. He breaks it down and says, whether it's

the protection of the life of the unborn, racial justice, poverty, and sexual ethics. That just those four issues, neither party embraces Jesus' way on any of those. And so I think what you're encouraging us through the story of Matthew and Simon the zealot is to say, not that you can't have political opinions, not that you shouldn't go vote, not that you shouldn't maybe run for office even, or donate to somebody who is running for office, it's just relativizing those under the lordship of Jesus and putting the king. kingdom priorities above the political priorities. And seeing people in the church that disagree with you on politics as gifts from God to you

rather than the problem. Because the difference between an ideologue and a follower of Jesus is a follower of Jesus sees people who are different as a gift from God. The ideologue sees people that are different as enemies. Wow, that's really good. Because when Jesus is the truth, then everybody's wrong. But when you're the truth, then people that disagree with you are the enemies. To believe when you say Jesus, if you actually believe Jesus is the truth, then we are all wrong.

And I need other people to help me see Jesus better because I'm not the way the truth in the life. When Jesus is the truth, people who are different are gifts. When you are the truth, people who are different are enemies. So it is that you said it. It's the difference between wanting truth or tribalism. As secularism takes its place in our culture, when you don't believe in somebody that is true outside yourself, you have to become truth. That is just a construct for civil war. When Paul says, let God be true in every man a liar, he's saying, stop replacing the one.

who is true with yourself. You're a liar. We're all liars. Jesus isn't. He's the true one. And when Jesus is true, I don't have to be the truth. It's so freeing. It's liberating. So it seems like part of what we're saying is that maybe we as a church, we as Christians, not my church, your church, all of our churches is we try to genuinely follow Jesus here in our generation. maybe we're part of the problem that's leading to deconstruction. Maybe we have minimalized our faith, like you said earlier, that we want the full gospel, not of asking Jesus to be my Savior, but seeing Him as Lord and Savior, following him, not just praying a prayer.

We've got to get away from the easy, trite formulas that aren't found in the Bible anyway. We've got to put Jesus as Lord instead of our favorite political candidate. because the kingdom, I think it's Mark Sayers, who has that line that people want the kingdom without the king. And there's so many different ways you can say that because I think sometimes people think if they get the right king, then that king, man or woman, will usher in the kingdom. And so we've presented this view of Christianity that I don't, again, we as a large church that I don't even want to follow. Sometimes I look around and go, I'm kind of embarrassed to be a Christian. Now, I don't want to take that too far because I have all those same things in my own heart. so I don't want to look at other people judgmentally.

But maybe this whole deconstruction thing that's happening is partly to be laid at the feet of the church. Yeah, I appreciated that you said you don't want to be judgmental. But here's the problem. We have been so anti-judgment for so long that we've just let so much crap get into the system. Judging is actually a gift. And Paul calls us to judge. A spiritual person judges all things. And we need to get back to the place.

I think Bonhofer was here. he'd be like stopping such pushovers and call evil evil because when you don't call evil evil early on, it grows up into big evil. Little elephants become big elephants. And if there's an elephant in the room and you just let it grow up, it's going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. I mean, the only way, by the way, I can interpret that psalm that says dash the baby's heads against the rocks. Ooh, that's a tough one. I don't actually think that the author there is saying kill baby.

Now, of course, a baby author's not saying that. I think the author is describing sin. Kill sin when it's when it's tiny. Like, we've got to return to the gifts of graceful judgment. Judgment is a holy and good thing. Read the prophets and tell me that they were nice people to be around. Well, I agree with you. We need to call truth, truth, and lie, lie.

We don't want to be, as Isaiah says, those who call dark light and light dark. All I mean is that I don't want to act as if the problem is outside of me. all the things that I get frustrated are also inside of me, too. So I know we're running out of time. You have to go teach class, and I want to let you go on time. I just want to hit one more thing in the last couple of minutes we have. And in our culture, it sounds so enlightened to say you're post-Christian, right? I'm post-Christian.

I'm post-inlightenment. I'm post-modern. I'm post-whatever. You just sound so smart. Do you find that as you talk to people and they're going through this process of deconstruction that there's just a sort of hey, I'm a little bit elite. I'm a little bit beyond that. I'm a little bit enlightened.

Is that part of what you see or are not so much? So I wrote this book about deconstruction and I walked through a season of deconstruction. And I'm no longer in that season. I've been walking towards reconstruction for a long time. And when I say that, I can feel within my own heart the sense of because I've gone through it and come out the other side, I've transcended it. and anybody that's in it, I know more than you because I've gone further than you. You hear that when people describe, they particularly will say they will speak about if they were

raised in a kind of a conservative town. They'll talk about like, you know, I was raised in a small town, conservative middle America. They don't say it, but there's this undertone of I'm beyond that now. And C.S. Lewis had a word for this. C.S. Lewis said that we always think it's one of the marks of sinful humans to think that we're better now than anybody before, that we have fully arrived, we have progressed to this place of evolved self. He called it chronological snobbery. For the person who was in the church, who walked away from the church, they can look back on it with this sort of arrogance. You know, I experienced it. I was there. I was there. and I know.

And we're now at a weird place where authority is given to people who used to be somewhere rather than people who are actually in the thing. That's well said. So why in the world does somebody who's deconstructed and walked from their faith 20 years ago in like the kind of world we live in, they are apparently, they have more authority than somebody like myself who's all in with my whole life. And so they wouldn't interview me. They'd interview the person who used to be there because that.

that's a more interesting story. That's chronological snobbery. It's arrogant. It's just totally. And I get why we do it. You know, we want people like me to feel shame and horrible for believing in Jesus and all that stuff. But it's just a new form of pride.

It's just a new arrogance. It's just, and that person in 20 years is going to look back and look down on the person that they are then. So, so yeah, no, it's in built. There's a sort of built in pride that we have,

that we've progressed, we've evolved, we're beyond. And, it's just arrogance. Yeah, when we say things like you're on the right side of history or you want to be on the right side of history, it's interesting that the right side of history is always the new side, right? And, you know, at some point in the future, people are going to look back at us and judge us or whatever

because the new always looks back in askance on the old. So, AJ Swoboda, thanks so much for joining us. I know you've got to get out of here and you spent some time with us. We really appreciate your time. where do people find you? The book after doubt is the book that you've written about, deconstruction and doubt. And so I'm sure you can get that on Amazon. But where else can they get your work?

Yeah, that's it. I mean, your local bookstore, I always want to fight for the mom-paw person who's trying to sell books in the local area. But I'm on Twitter, MRAJ-Spovoboda. I don't do a whole lot there. It's not that glamorous. Okay, hang on. Say that again. Where are you?

MRAJ. Spoboda. Because I tried to tweet at you. a quote from your book and A.J. Swaboda came up. I thought there can only be like one A.J. Swaboda in the world. Turns out I tweeted at a completely different person. So I figured you weren't on Twitter. He's soccer player in Argentina and he, yeah, but I'm sure he found what you said interesting. Yes, you find me there. AJ writes. J.Spobotor writes.com. I have a website. But really, I'm not online very much. And actually, I just hate the internet. So if you want to find my stuff,

you can read a book I wrote. Otherwise, read C.S. Lewis or like, or the good guys. How many books have you written that are published? Yeah, this particular book was my ninth book. I got some work to do. I've only, I haven't read all those. I'm a neurotic writer, and actually a lot of my writing is reflective of the fact that I have some pretty deep wounds in my childhood parental wounds from just, yeah, making up for some unhealthy childhood stuff.

I'm actually going to be writing less, and I'm going to be writing a lot less. So my next book may be out in 20 years. Well, thanks for spending time with us. I hope we crossed paths again. You got a lot of wisdom that you left us with. And I'm sure we got more in your books. And we hope you do something in the future we can benefit from. You're awesome.

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