Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Tribalism is Wrecking Lives (That's Why We Wrote a Book!)

Episode Date: September 9, 2022

Join our movement to end tribalism in the church. Here’s the first step: join our launch team. Keith, Patrick, Jensen, Tanya, and Anna Lynne come together as the TMBT team to discuss an issue facing churches, Christians and the entire country: tribalism. Has tribalism been hurting you? Can you be friends with someone who is different than you? Is there any hope for a divided world? Political tribalism is tearing apart the church. Only Jesus can put us back together. Listen to find out what Jesus says about tribalism and how to resist it. 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. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Isaiah 2:4, Luke 9:52-55, Revelation 5:9

Hey, we have a different kind of episode today. We have the whole gang. The whole TNBT gang is here together. And we're going to talk about an issue that's facing churches. Christians and really are a whole country. And it's an issue I'm sure you've been forced to deal with one way or the other. We call it tribalism. The whole world seems to be fracturing into different tribes. Yeah, before we jump in, let's make sure we know who everybody is. Now, of course, you know Jensen and Tanya and Patrick and me, because you've heard our voices here on TNBT, but we got a new voice that you haven't heard. the brains behind the newsletter. It's Anna Lynn Frazier. And by the way, if you haven't signed up for the newsletter, go to the show notes and do it because I look forward to it every week, best newsletter that I get. So, Anna Lin, this issue of tribalism, it's kind of hit you close to home. Yeah, when you asked, I think it was for maybe a sermon illustration or something, you asked me, like, what's the most outrageous example of tribalism you've ever heard? I was like, well, my family doesn't talk to each other because of it.

That's pretty big. It's pretty big. So we were, there's a family reunion right. You go to family reunions. I do now. Okay. Under protest. That was your 2020 resolution? No, that was something that I now get to enjoy. Having married into a family I didn't grow up in, but I love my family. And they do this amazing, massive, over 100 people, family reunion, been doing it for 30 years. And the reunion, right before the 2016, the election, it just came out how this really, really large family from all over the country has a lot of different viewpoints. And there was some tension. And then that conflict continued into a Facebook group after the reunion was over. And so that was, what, six or seven years ago now and six years ago now. And- Wait, so your family then made a Facebook group? No, there's already a family Facebook group. That's how we all chat. But the fight from the reunion went to Facebook. Right. It went to Facebook and it just got ugly and to the point where people were saying things that they wouldn't have said to each other in person. And falling out of that, like there's been weddings and funerals and subsequent reunions that people just don't come to anymore.

And there's family members that we have not seen since that reunion. Think about how amazing that is this family has been getting together for years and years and years and years. And they'd had all these differences. But for some reason it comes out because of, I guess, the controversial election between Trump and Clinton. And then all of a sudden they turn on each other. And even if you think about it in previous decades, it would probably all have been forgotten before the next reunion came around.

But now, because of Facebook, it can continue to go on well after the family reunion has ended. So the argument continues. And now the family's not speaking to each other. Yeah. Yeah. It's really hard. It's super painful.

And it just shows why tribalism really does make our lives miserable in countless ways. And Keith and I, you know, we're both pastors at the church that we all attend. And I think all of us have our own stories of tribalism. Maybe we can get into that in just a little bit. But it's what drove us to write a book. And that's part of why we're doing this podcast, just to be honest with you, as we wanted to share with everybody who listens to TMBT that somehow we managed to write a book.

It's called Truth Over Tribe, Pledging Allegiance to the Lamb, not the donkey, or the elephant. We wrote the book, not because we wanted to write a book. In fact, I twisted Keith arm. I tricked him. I said it was going to be as easy as writing 15 blog posts. Yeah, it wasn't about it. killed me. Not exactly the same. It about killed me. This book

was fueled by monster and cupcakes. And Skittles. A lot of junk food. Keith's diet. It was a lot of work. And Anna Lynn, she was tremendously important in reading through every chapter and giving us lots of good advice on how to make every chapter much better than it would have been otherwise. However, we wrote the book because we care about the church and we're seeing more and more tribalism tearing people apart. Yeah, the title of the book is truth over tribe pledging allegiance to the lamb not the donkey or the elephant you know i already said that but i'm

impressed because the last time we did this you got it wrong you kept saying pledging allegiance to jesus it's good for you to getting it right and said it and i thought are we going to tell them the name of the book that's good i tune you out that's good you know i think that i've seen a lot of what annalyn was talking about not just in my family and my friends but also we see it happening in the church even on Facebook, I see a lot of people from both sides of the church throwing flaming arrows at each other. I'm a Christian and I believe this and I can't believe those Christians believe this. And you just see these riffs happening between people that I know used to go to the same church just immediately going at each other's throats.

But yeah, we see this happening inside the church. And so we want to talk about with another election season coming up why this matters and why it's so important to talk about this and not just let this frenzy continue to grow and happen in our churches. Do you guys hear people say that Jesus doesn't really care about these political divides? Because I have people tell me that sometimes. Is that something that? Wait, was that me? Did I say that? It's a really passive, aggressive way of figuring out that conversation. It's actually why we've invited you here today, too. Yeah, I thought, okay. Intervention. No, I do have people say, I don't know that this is a big priority for Christians to unify the church. And I think there's

something we're missing in the gospel that Jesus didn't just come to reconcile us to God, although he definitely did that, but he also has come to reconcile us to each other. Yeah, I think one of the most interesting things that I've seen in recent political decisions, I think about Roe v. Wade, a lot of people, a lot of Christians that I know were posting on their social media, if you believe X about this decision, unfollow me. Like, if you believe this, I don't want to see you on my feed. You shouldn't be following me. That makes me uncomfortable. And that was really interesting because it's completely antithetical to what the church should be, which is coming together despite these differences. And just such a clear picture of how much people are ingrained in their tribe that they don't even want people who believe something slightly different than them to follow them.

Yeah, and it's interesting to me, or maybe it gives me hope because tribalism is nothing new for the church. When Paul went around and found Gentile followers of Jesus and put them into the same churches as Jewish fathers. followers of Jesus. It caused all kinds of division and controversy and people upset at each other. And in that case, ethnic tribalism. But he wrote in Ephesians 214, this about Jesus. He said, He is himself our peace, who has made us both one. He's talking about Jews and Gentiles in Jesus. He's made both of us one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility. And it's a great verse because it reminds us that Jesus reconciles us, not just to God. I mean, every Christian's like, oh yeah, Jesus made me a right relationship with God. But we forget

the horizontal dimension. It's not just vertical, the horizontal dimension, the sociological dimension, which is that we have all been brought into relationship with one another despite our differences, whether they're ethnic or ideological or whatever else it may be, and that this is supposed to be an expression to the world of the power of Jesus. If Jesus can bring together Republicans and Democrats, doesn't that prove that he really is a higher king than the president or any other official in the world? But let's just bring it home for a sec. So we live in, what would you call it, politically diverse town, right? Don't you think, if we're being honest, like even in our church, they were people who were probably surprised that other people who disagree with them actually go to

church. Oh, yeah, absolutely. We say that we live in a blue dot in the middle of a sea of red, a red state. And that means that the people we live around are really politically diverse. It's easy to find Republicans and Democrats. And that's becoming harder and harder to live in that kind of community, where now more and more people are separating and living around people who are just like them, vote like them, look like them, have the same economic condition that they have. But we have this great privilege to be a part of a church that is pretty diverse, not just politically but racially and everything else, at least for the demographics of our city. But that also puts a lot of strain on our church.

It's hard to be members of the same church of people that you don't see eye to eye on things that are kind of controversial today. So it's messy. It's very messy. It's a good way of saying it's messy. Yeah, don't go to church if you want to be around people like you. And there's a long-term reason for that because when you get to heaven, guess what? Some of those people are going to be there.

I have a lot of angry Twitter followers. No. Yes, you do. I know. We're going to talk about that later. We should. And this guy was coming at me about he was, I think he was saying I was a Marxist. It wasn't totally clear, but he was saying I had interacted with the work of someone who was a Marxist.

And he said, I can't believe you would do that. And I just responded. I said, hey, I think you're going to be really. disappointed when you get to heaven because guess what there's going to be some Marxists there you know and so I'm going to treat those people in this life with respect I might have profound and I do have profound disagreements with Marxism but I know that there's going to be Marxists in heaven and that's not what defines a Christian or not a Christian so we all have stories as I'm sure our listeners do but can we just start and talk for a little bit about how tribalism has really affected relationships

can anyone do worse than Annalian's story I wouldn't even try to compete with Anilin's It's personal. I mean, these are people you love and you care about and they're part of your family. So let's talk about something that's bigger in our community. When COVID hit and everything started shutting down, there was a group in our town called Love Columbia. And they are dedicated to helping single moms, people who are poor, homeless. They do great work. Hopefully your community has something like that in it and that you serve and volunteer there. But Love Columbia had this little coffee shop and they sold Danish's cinnamon rolls coffee.

and they employ people who have disabilities. And because of the COVID shutdown, they're going to have to close everything down. And so we as a church were just like, well, is there anything that we could do? And so we said, well, what if we just bought a lot of cinnamon rolls? And by a lot, I mean a lot of cinnamon rolls. And we gave those cinnamon rolls to people who were on the front lines

early in the pandemic, which were school teachers. School teachers were going out. They were working. It was tough conditions. And while the cinnamon roll wasn't going to cure all the problems they were facing, it was a way of saying, hey, our church is behind you and recognize all the good work you're doing. So what happened is that teachers would get these cinnamon rolls and they'd say, hey, thanks to the crossing for thinking of us. And we'd say, thanks to you for being out on the

front lines. It was all just kind of this happy story until one day the cinnamon rolls got canceled. And here's what it goes down is we get an email from one of the principals saying, hey, we can't accept the crossing's cinnamon rolls because they come from the crossing. And all of our staff don't necessarily like or agree with the crossing. And so what do you do when your cinnamon rolls get canceled? So what I did and I just said, okay, you ate them. I wanted to eat them. But there are a lot of cinnamon rolls. So, okay, we got to do another plan. So I just said, I'm going to go meet this principle and try to make a friendship. So I try to get in touch with them and take them to lunch. And it takes a while for us to actually sit down. But we sit down

over pizza. And we just started sharing life together and talking about things. And he's a great guy and we're kind of clicking and then I said okay can we bring up the great cinnamon roll controversy and as we talked we kind of got it worked out or we both agreed that neither of us were as bad as maybe our worst critics had painted us and he realized we weren't some fundamentalist angry church and I realized he was just trying to advocate for one of his staff members so we left that conversation saying hey surely people who disagree on things can work for the common good in a community for example we can work for the good of teachers and education, students, and parents. And I think it was one of those kind of breakthrough moments

for both of us, where we both realized we don't want to just talk to people just like us. We want to work across tribal boundaries. We want to break those walls down. I wish all stories had a happy ending like that. They usually don't. I mean, that's the unfortunate part, is that you had a resolution at the end where you get to meet with the guy and you realize you guys aren't so bad after all. Whereas usually tribalism just breaks down relationship or causes division on our other podcast, Truth Over Tribe. I interviewed a guy named Isaac Adams who wrote a fantastic book called Talking About Race. And the book uses stories to have a conversation about race. But it turns out a lot of the stories were from his personal life. And when he was interviewing me, he told the story of,

I think he was in fifth grade. And I believe it was the Bush versus Gore election. And someone posted a sign on his, did I get something wrong? No, I'm just laughing because I think that I was like, too. I was trying to remember how old I was. I was like, I don't remember that. What was the first election you voted in? Do you remember? It was Clinton and Trump. What a 2016? Big one. Baptized in the fire, baby. Wow. All right. There we go. That's a fun one to start with.

So someone posted on his fifth grade classroom this sign that said, who are you voting for? And kids were going on the sign and saying who they voted for. And his class happened to be pretty racially diverse. And what ended up happening was that every black student put their name on the Democrat side. and every white student put their name on the Republican side. And he said, this was the first time he felt really strong racial consciousness. Because he looked at the time, he said, whoa, that's really weird. Why do we think differently about these things? And he said that previously, everybody in the class got along really well, but it caused this

year-long division where out on the, you know, court when they were playing basketball or soccer, whatever it was at recess, they would pick different teams at times based on who they were voting for. And so, again, it just shows how tribalism comes in to a group that previously wasn't tribal at all and begins to divide people and even cause animosity between people. Yeah, I went to a small Christian private school and high school. Well, hang on a second. You and Patrick have a lot in common. I did not go to a private school. I know. I love it whenever you roast Patrick and I am actually someone who has attended a small private school. But I remember going to school and there was this

one teacher who you knew was a Democrat. Uh-oh. And quite literally, did people say that quietly? I mean, you would never say, hey, I heard you're a Democrat to her because it was so like, how is she a Democrat? It would be like Mrs. So-and-so is a Democrat. And I remember literally like whenever my friend told me this, wondering, how is she a Christian? Because I was in this world of like, Republican Christian school because I just, I mean, I always cheered for the Republican to win because that's like what your teachers wanted. And we would have little parties when Bush won. And it's so weird. Hold on. No, no, no, no. You had parties in. class when Bush won? I mean, like, I remember we, like, we colored in the states, like, as it was happening.

And then we were excited that Bush won. And I knew nothing about Bush, you know? I remember being sad whenever Obama won in 2008, because everybody was sad. My first vote was for Barack Obama in 2008. Fun fact. I like Obama, but I didn't know. You're making me think of a funny story. So my daughter is also in a private Christian school. And she was in preschool. This was during the 2016 election. they did some sort of preschool vote where they would vote on different animals. Well, I actually don't know what they were voting for. All I know is that she came home and she goes,

I voted for the duck and everybody else in my class voted for the duck. And I go, what are you talking about? She goes, the duck. And I go, like Donald Duck? Was the duck Donald Trump? And she goes, what are you talking about? I go, I'm not talking about anything. I think I'm just looking too much into this.

Oh my gosh. But I'm still not entirely sure by the way. I'm still not entirely sure whether or not that Donald was his hand in for President Trump. So there you go. There's my funny story. Any other stories of how you've seen tribalism hurt relationships? Whenever you ask this question, I think about the first time that I had a conversation with Keith. I don't know. Do you remember this? The first one? Oh, this is good. I came to a class that you were teaching and you said, I think we were like learning about theology. Okay. And you said something about women in the church, very brief. And I came up after and I was like,

hey, I'd really like to talk to you about this because I was revolting from my Republican chains of Christian school and I was figuring out who I was and I was mad. You were mad. I didn't remember that. I'm glad that you admit that. But I wanted to have a conversation with you. And I remember you thankfully sat down with me and we had this long conversation. And I remember at the end of it, you looked at me and we were saying goodbye. You kind of laughed and you were like, man, that went a lot better than I thought it was. And I was like, what? Why? And you were like, man, when you came up to me, I asked people like who you were and like how this conversation was going to go and everyone told me it was going to be terrible, like that I was just going to. come just with fighting, throwing hands. And you were like, that actually ended up being like a pretty good conversation. You're actually like a nice person. I was like, oh my gosh. So it's just a fun little, you would have thought that I was someone totally different if we hadn't have sat down and had that conversation. Wow. I'm really sorry. Sometimes I put my foot in my mouth. Sometimes. So I probably shouldn't have said that. But I think I probably felt comfortable with saying that because we did have a good conversation. And I do remember now that you give more

context that I do remember sitting in our office and just sitting talking about it. And I thought you had really good points. And I can understand why you held the position that you held based on your experiences, what you'd seen. And I learned something from it. And I think that's just a good model for how we interact with people who are different than us. When you get to know a person, then all of a sudden you put their beliefs in context and you understand why they came to those beliefs. And you understand there's a reason why you came to your beliefs and that you can learn from one another and dialogue with one another. And it turns out to be kind of fun because getting to know you since then, I don't know

how many years ago, was like four years ago, five years ago. I mean, I was still in college, so it was like six. Okay, so it was a while back. But my life got better because you're a part of it. I guess smarter because I had this relationship with you. But that wouldn't have happened had you not had the courage to come up and say, hey, let's talk this through. But see, I love what you guys are saying here because you're bringing up this whole point

that the opposite of tribalism can actually be harder. Like it's harder to talk out things and listen and like invest in relationship. If you're tribal, you just like put up the wall and you're like, I don't ever have to see you again. Peace out. We're done. And it's just easier sometimes to walk away than to have those hard conversations, don't you think? Oh, yeah. I mean, I think I was like in that time in my life, I was really comfortable with kind of the anger that I had and the frustration.

And I remember there are multiple things that Keith you said to me that made me stop and think things like Jesus left the church. and like are you trying to tear the church down from the outside or are you trying to come in and help her? And so I think I walked in like a probably like flaming feminist. And I walked out and over the course of a couple years having conversations, I became more and more understanding of both sides. And that would have never happened. I would have been very comfortable in my beliefs if I hadn't have started having conversations with people that made me uncomfortable. Yeah, that's really good. And I think it also illustrates like even if you want to fight against tribalism, it's in all of our hearts. you know Keith when you got into the conversation with Jensen you're asking people and nervous about it because she might be in the other tribe I don't know she's smarter than me

you went to private school I'm a public school kid poor guy I'm just hanging on over here and Jensen you know I'm sure probably making assumptions about Keith because that's what tribalism does is it gives us a set of beliefs about the other person which may or may not be true but I think it also sets us up for war you know it makes enemies you're on the other side so I'm ready to destroy you and it makes me think about a passage in the Bible Isaiah 2 4 and I love this little, it's a tiny little chapter in Isaiah, chapter two, because it's a vision of what the kingdom is going to be like. And it goes back to Tanya's point about what's easier and what's harder. It is harder to actually have the conversation. But what's simpler, what's our

default is to go to war. Our default is to say, I'm just going to dislike you, I'm just going to hate you, I'm just going to pick up my arms and fight against you. What's hard is to lay down your arms. And yet, that's exactly what Isaiah's vision describes. What does the kingdom look like? It looks like when people do the hard work of laying down their arms. This is a, Isaiah 2-4. They shall beat their swords into plowshares. So, you know, you're going from a weapon to farming equipment. Tina, you know all about farming. You grew up. I am the expert on plowing. I've plowed a lot of fields. I know that what you're saying is true. She's not joking. I know she's not. And they will beat their spears into pruning hooks. Nations shall not lift up sword against nation. Neither shall they

learn war anymore. It feels like right now in a lot of Christian circles, somehow we are going the exact opposite direction. We're taking our pruning hooks and, you know, making them into spears. We're taking our plowshares and we're turning them into swords. And again, I think that's why this topic is so important is that Christian should be the first people in a tribalized society to lay down their weapons and to actually try to do something productive and good in the world. That is so real. And even as I'm hearing, like, I'm not contributing too much right now, I feel like because I feel this anxiety just hearing the conversations about the conflict. I'm a lurker on social media. I watch other people get into arguments on Twitter. And again, I feel this

secondhand anxiety for like, how do I even jump into that? And I'm just wondering if you guys have experienced that similar thing. How do you think tribalism's affecting us emotionally and internally? So we're talking about how it affects relationships. But I think it really is damaging for us, too. Yeah, I can relate to the anal-land. So it's like you have something maybe on your mind or maybe it's even just something helpful that you think people need to hear, but it's hard to know how to say it or when to say it without looking at sounding like a total jerk. And what happens when we're afraid to talk, when we're afraid to speak up, we don't develop these kind of cross-tribal relationships because it's easier just to keep quiet instead of

maybe saying the wrong thing. Or to avoid. Yeah, I was meeting a couple of our minister teams yesterday and we were just talking about the trans debate. And we're not going to get into that here, but we weren't so much talking about the debate as much as how should we as a church welcome trans people and how do we speak the truth in love? And what you realize is that when you're talking to a parent or a high school student or college leader or whoever, it's just so nerve-wracking because you're afraid you're going to say the wrong thing. And if you say the wrong thing, you know it could do a lot of damage. It could sever a relationship. Maybe that person is going to go around and tell others you said the wrong thing. So the easier thing to do is just withdraw. But then we withdraw,

we cut off relationships. So this whole tribalism and looking for others to mess up and then pouncing on them, it shuts down the kind of conversation that we need to grow and learn and build friendships. There's so much vulnerability to having those hard conversations. So, you know, there's the fear of hurting somebody else. There's also the fear of, you know, your words getting twisted to use against you. There's the fear of not being heard compassionately or charitably. And especially with how much of this conversation now is happening on the internet, those words are just out there with no space for nuance.

You're talking about tribalism making you anxious. Who doesn't get anxious watching Patrick's Twitter wars? I didn't say that earlier, but really when I say I'm a lurker, I mean, I just sit and look at Patrick's being on Twitter. I mean, Patrick is always in a Twitter war with someone? And we're all watching to see, is he going to say the wrong thing to the wrong person? And then the whole thing gets canceled. You've gotten way better. Okay, no, so to Annalyn's point, I have gotten better. When I got back onto Twitter after a long hiatus, my tribalism came out big time. I didn't realize it was in me in that level until I was on Twitter and I would find people who would say things I disagree with. And rather than either ignoring them, which actually online might be the best thing to do, in person I don't think it's a best thing to do, I would go after them. You know, I would say, oh my gosh, I can't believe you think this. Or I'd have a snarky, you know, kind of sharp response or retort to what they were saying. And after doing that for about,

two months, I had a few people come up to me and say, hey, I don't think the way you're doing Twitter is great. Anna Lynn was one of them. My wife was also one of the... Thank you, Annala. I'm not scared of conflict, just conflict on the internet. Yes, that's true. Yes, that is 100% true of you. And it really made me reflect. And so, you know, I had a lot different routes. I could have gone. I could just say, you know, I need to get off Twitter. You could just post dog pictures. I can just post dog pictures. Is that what you do, Tanya? Yes, it works. dogs are the most popular thing on the internet other than cats

Jensen loves her cats so I don't have cats I thought you were a cat person I'm like definitely allergic to cats I think you just put Jensen in a box yeah why do I think you were a cat person I apologize I'm not a cat person I hate cats me too one bit me when I was a kid

I have a lot of weird animal stories as a child I think I had an issue anyways I had to change how I engage with people and what I try to do now is not avoid controversial topics you don't avoid those at all well I don't think it's the answer I want to be intellectually honest and authentic. But when I engage with people, I try to read what they're saying charitably. I try to be able to restate it better than they could say, I don't do this perfectly.

I try to be winsome in my conversations as opposed to unkind. If I don't have anything kind to say, I don't say anything. But the goal is, too, that you want to be a learner, right? Like, you want to be taught by other people. And, you know, good teachers, like create classrooms where there's learning because the environment's safe and you can hear ideas and you can absorb ideas and you can pivot. And it's like that's the kind of environment we want so that we can be learners. But we're not really very good at doing that right now. Patrick, you called me out whenever I first got back on Twitter after, I don't know, probably a couple years. And you asked, hey, why is your page blank?

And I responded because I'm terrified to post because I saw how whenever you post things, people come after you. And so it's cool to see the way that you've figured out how to communicate well with people. but how do you get past that anxiety? Because I really am terrified of posting anything, even if I do it winsomely, of the anxiety of people coming after me and then not knowing how to get myself back out of that. I think that the anxiety is real. And I think it's not just online.

I think people experience it at work when, you know, whether it's the HR team or someone who's just on your team, comes around and says, this is what we think about X. And you say, well, man, I don't agree with that. But the anxiety you feel like, do I need to say something? Should I not say something? What happens if I say something? or I think there's also anxiety that comes when you see someone else getting attacked.

You've got crusaders in your organization who are going after someone and you're like, whoa, this is wrong, but I'm not going to say anything because I don't want to get caught in the crossfire. And again, I just wonder what Jesus would do in that moment? Like, do we really think Jesus would stand by as people were being wrongly harmed? Or would you take the hit? Would he be willing to step into the gap? And of course, I think Jesus would step into the gap. But all of these stories, they highlight that anxiety causes tremendous.

amounts of anxiety for all of us in a wide variety of ways. One quick closing thought before we talk about something different from the Bible. The story of Elijah has given me a lot of solace in these moments. I won't go through all the details, but Elijah was a prophet, and he was a prophet at a time when idolatry wasn't just on the loose. I mean, it was defining the culture. People weren't even allowed to worship Yahweh anymore. And he gets in this showdown with the Ba'al prophets, and he wins, and he's like, yes, I've won, I've done it. And then all of a sudden, everybody turns on him and starts hunting him. And as you can imagine, he feels incredible anxiety, and it leads him into this deeply depressive state where he's not eating, he's only sleeping, he's barely

drinking anything. And God shows up for him. And eventually he goes to the top of a mountain, Sinai, where Moses went, to try to tell God, hey, the people don't love you. The people won't worship you. So why don't you start over with me? And that's exactly the offer, by the way, that God gave Moses on the top of Mount Sinai after the Golden Calf, which we've talked about in recent episodes. God said, hey, the people are idolatrous. I'm going to kill them all. I'm going to start over with you. But Moses intercedes. He prays for forgiveness. He says, no, God, would you please forgive them? Elijah wants to take the deal. Elijah's ready to say, yeah, let's kill them all. Let's start over with me. And God never offers him the deal. And I think the reason why is he wants Elijah to understand, first of all,

you are not the only person worshipping me. There's 7,000 other people out there who are still worshiping me. But maybe even more importantly than that, I know you're anxious. I'm still in control. I know you don't see how all of this fits together and how all this is going to work out in the end. And I know that it's scary for you, but I'm still in control. And I think that's what frees us on some level to not be the bystander who says nothing, to not be the person who's unwilling to have the conversation because we don't want to break the relationship. It's saying, you know what, this may or may not go well, but at the end of the day, God is still in control. And that frees me from some of my anxiety. I mean, I might continue to feel it, but it frees me to act faithfully and courageously in a

tribalistic moment. So we have a favor to ask you, and that is if you would consider being a part of our launch team for the book, Truth Over Tribe, we're trying to do something more than just write a book, more than just try to sell a few copies of something we wrote. We're trying to launch a movement, a movement of people who love the church, who love Jesus, and want to see the church put Jesus over their tribal loyalties and have a deeper commitment to him than they do their political party. But we can't do that on our own. This is the first book we've ever written. So, we need your help to do that. And so would you consider being a part of this team? Yeah. So being a part of our launch team is super simple. There is a link in the show notes. Click that link. You'll give us your

information. And all you have to do is show that you pre-order to copy the book. Now, full disclosure here, Keith and I are not doing this for money. We are not keeping a dollar of our advance or our royalties or anything else. All of it is going back into ministry. We're doing this because we believe in the cause. And so you can go pre-order the book on Amazon. And then in return, we'll send you some swag. You'll be invited to a live interview with Bob Goff via Zoom. You'll be invited into a little community that we're starting online. There's a lot of really cool little things that we want to offer you as a thank you for being with this. You've got a free copy of the audiobook, so that's another fun one. But the big picture is this. We just want you to pre-order the book and share about it if you're on social media and then

write a review of it on Amazon once you've had the chance to read it. So if you would just take two minutes, pause this podcast for just a second, click that link and go sign up. We can be a part of this movement trying to end tribalism in the church. So how do we fight this? All right. So I think one of the ways we work through this is to build relationships with people. And I think that's really hard, but I think it's really important. And so just back up a little bit. We were talking about the cinema roll story.

And that is actually a good friend of mine. And I know his wife really well because we run together. And the thing about this situation is that we go to different churches and our kids go to different schools. But we essentially want the same things. And we want the same things for our community and for our friends. and for our kids. And so we really are way more connected than we think. And yet you don't know that unless you get to know people as real people. If you just listen to what the media says about them or social media or other people say about them, then they just become caricatures. And you don't really

get to know them on a deeper level. And I think about the story in Luke where Jesus and the disciples are heading toward Jerusalem. And they stop in the Samaritan village and they're going to maybe stay there, but the Samaritans, they won't let the Jewish disciples stay in their village because they're going to Jerusalem. And so James and John, two of the disciples, they look over at Jesus and they're like, hey, Jesus, should we call it on fire from heaven and destroy them? It never quite made sense to me why you look over to the Prince of Peace and say, hey, should we napalm this village? That's probably what you'd want, isn't it? But it turns out that Jesus rebukes them. Now, you think, okay, why is it that James and John had this thought that Jesus was,

would want them to destroy this village. And I think it's because they totally misunderstood what Jesus was up to. He wasn't going to Jerusalem to try to defeat the Romans. He was going there to die for the Romans and for all of his enemies. But even more than that, I don't think these Jewish disciples knew any Samaritans. They lived in separate villages. They worshipped in different temples. They had different scriptures.

They just didn't know any. They didn't mix. When you don't mix with people who are different than you, then it's easy to demonize them. But when you get to know them on a personal level, like you said, you go run with or eat lunch with them, you build friendships with them, then you realize, oh, we have more in common than not. So I think what we see is the scriptures really do speak to this, that Jesus really cares about unity inside of his church. And he really does want us to love people who are different than us. But the first step toward loving them is just getting to know them. And taking the

step, right? Because Jesus in the Gospels is just the ultimate initiator, right? He's not standing back waiting for people to come initiate. He is the ultimate initiator. And he is the ultimate initiator. And we tend to think relationships are 50-50 even, and they're not. Like, we are always reaching out and extending the invites and doing the things to build those. And we have to hope people will do the same in return. But that's not the agenda and that's not our why. Yeah, it's really interesting in that scripture that you're talking about. My first thought is, yeah, it's an overreaction and there's tribalism going on.

But part of me is also like, well, they were kind of mean. Like, you know, the Samaritans like, yeah. And I think that's one of the things that kind of. of the justice, the fighting for justice or the if the other side is really doing something wrong, I believe is wrong, or harming other people. There's this almost like anger and pride in me to want to step in. And I think that to build these relationships, there's actually a lot of humility that has to happen. Because there is a chance that you have been hurt. And there is a chance that people were wrong and did say something mean or, you know, at your family reunion, people on both

sides probably weren't kind. And so there's real feelings hurt. So there has to be a humility of Christians to step back and say, my feelings aren't going to matter right now. And I'm just going to try to build this relationship. Are you saying we kind of have to die to our agendas and like not make them our identities? That's a really interesting way to put it. Yeah. That's it. I think that American Christians, people in our Christian culture are really okay with the idea that following Jesus is going to be countercultural. Like that's not a new thing, but maybe the ways that we think about that are in terms of how we interact with things of the world that affect us as individuals and how we as individuals are kind of following Jesus and choosing to give up certain things or not. But this is just

showing how that counterculturalism extends to those relationships and extends to, like what y'all are saying, dying to that desire to be right, like have other people do what you think is right. I think sometimes I would like to think that I am free from that influence of individualism that is just so common in this. It's like the air we breathe in our American culture. I agree completely, Annalian, that we are prone to think about our relationship, God, in individual terms. And what we're seeing is that Jesus is trying to build a community, a community of people who are naturally enemies, but who have come together to love each other because of what Christ has done for them. And I think the other countercultural aspect that you're bringing up goes back to what Jensen said, which is humility.

Now, I think humility looks like two things that are totally countercultural right now. Number one, repentance, saying I'm sorry and I got it wrong. I'll go back to Twitter for just a second. With no butts. I'll go back to Twitter for just a second. I have said things that were wrong on Twitter. I have misrepresented people. I have said some things that were unfair.

And I have a rule. If I do that, I will delete the comments and then publicly repost whatever it was and say, hey, I'm sorry. I got this wrong. I made a mistake here and I'm owning it and I apologize, right? It's really, really counter-cultural to have that kind of attitude, right? Or you could take the lurker approach and you never understand. I'm sorry. Yeah, if you lurk, you're never apologizing. But, you know, that's part of getting into community is that's it. You're not making things better either. The other side of humility is forgiveness because we cannot end tribalism without forgiveness. If you go back into the Old Testament in the book of Daniel, there's this picture of one warring, powerful nation being

defeated by the next, being defeated by the next, being defeated by the next. And what's trying to be communicated there is interesting. The older power became oppressive and unjust and violent. And so the new power comes along and justly destroys it, defeats it. But then in the process, it becomes the monster it was trying to destroy. And then it's replaced by another monster and another monster. And this is where Jesus comes into the picture, because he throws himself onto that wheel of violence. He says, I'm not going to exact justice against my enemies. I'm going to die for my enemies. I'm going to forgive my enemies. We can't get through tribalism until we're both willing to repent of the ways that we've gotten things wrong, but also have a willingness to forgive whenever people harm us,

whenever they say things that hurt us. Without that, there is absolutely no hope of ending this, because we will keep trying to execute justice against a person who hurt us. And should we also just constantly remind ourselves that we are those very enemies that Jesus died for? Yeah, it takes us back to James and John and the Jews and the Samaritans and how they were divided and they wanted to call down fire on them. It turns out that Jesus goes to Jerusalem. He dies and he rises from the dead. And then James and John become friends with Samaritans. The Samaritans, they come to faith in Jesus. And the very people that they wanted to kill, they now are friends with and in ministry with and probably attend the same church. So that can happen around Jesus. That's what his death and

resurrection does. It frees us from the need to be right and execute justice against everyone. It allows us, like Patrick said, to ask for forgiveness, to be humble, to take the low road, to learn from people different than us, to see that they too are made in God's image, that they are people who we share a lot in common with. So as you're listening to this, what could you do to end tribalism? Not just by our book, although we'd love that, but what could you do? Well, you could just reach out to somebody who's different than you. Take them to coffee, to lunch. Not to lecture them or to tell them that they're wrong and you're right, but to learn from them, to hear their story. What if you just said, hey, I know we have some things different.

I'm just curious in learning more about why you think the way you do. I'd love to hear how you were raised or what are some key experiences that shaped your life. How did you come to these views? And maybe they'll ask you to share some of the things that have shaped you in your life. And you'll learn to appreciate them and value them. So here's what we're going to do is we're not going to build these walls. We're not going to call down fire on our enemies. We're not going to try to even defeat them at the ballot box.

but instead we're going to try to build bridges to them. We're going to try to understand them and learn from them and love them. Jesus provides these really tangible examples because I know for me saying, yeah, I need to go get coffee with somebody. That even seems like a tall order sometimes because it's like, well, how do I find the people to go get coffee with? Jesus models this really well and gives us some tangible examples, right? So you see him extending his hospitality to people that nobody expected him to be friends with. He wasn't afraid of what his cultural context would have thought of his relationships with prostitutes and tax collectors and having dinner with them.

He also asked a ton of questions. Even though Jesus is God incarnate and knows everything, he's still asking people to reveal their hearts to him. And he also, as we've been saying, extends this generosity that people don't deserve, right? His kindness and relationship, completely apart from the whole dying on the cross thing, Like his friendship isn't dependent on other people behaving a certain way. It's actually in spite of how those people behave. I think that's really good.

And maybe it's a great way to wrap things up by saying this. When we get into the renewed creation and we're worshipping Jesus together and we're living in our resurrected bodies into eternity, we will be surrounded by people who are different than us. And so the best way that we can give this world an appetizer of that world is by doing it now. Let's not wait until we get to the new creation to have a conversation with the Marxist that we think is going to hell, right? Let's not wait to have a conversation with the alt-right dude who you think is going to hell. Let's repent.

Let's forgive. Let's listen. Let's talk with the people that everybody else wants to ride off and ignore because we know that one day we may be enjoying the rest of eternity with them. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I hope you enjoyed it. And I hope that you will join us in fighting tribalism, not just in the church, but across our whole country and across the world. Let's do it in the name of Jesus and the way of Jesus. If you have time, again, would you just click that link in our show notes and join our book launch team?

All you have to do is pre-order the book, and I think it's going to give you a lot of very practical down-to-earth tips on how you can fight tribalism in your context.