Theology in the Raw - 775: #775 - The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: John Mark Comer

Episode Date: January 20, 2020

Back by popular demand, pastor and writer John Mark Comer joins Preston to talk about his latest book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. They also talk about many other things like parenting in a post-Christian world, ministry in an urban context, where culture is headed, the Benedict option, and many other things. About John Mark Comer John Mark Comer lives, works, and writes in the urban core of Portland, Oregon, with his wife, Tammy, and their three children, Jude, Moses, and Sunday. He is the pastor for teaching and vision at Bridgetown Church. A church built around the very simple idea of practicing the way of Jesus, together, in Portland. As for education, John Mark holds a master’s degree in Biblical and theological studies from Western Seminary, and is currently at work on a doctorate in spiritual formation through Fuller Seminary and the Dallas Willard Center. Connect with John Mark Comer You can also pursue more of his work at www.johnmarkcomer.com www.instagram.com/johnmarkcomer www.twitter.com/johnmarkcomer www.facebook.com/johnmarkcomer Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends, and welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. A couple quick announcements before we jump in. First of all, the Theology in the Raw Israel trip, October 11th through the 21st of 2020. If you would like to go on this trip, the cost is $2,900. It's first come, first serve. If you want to go on the trip or you want to inquire about the trip, you can email chris at prestonsprinkle.com. That's C-H-R-I-S at PrestonSprinkle.com. Again, it's first come first serve. The first 40 people who send in their $100 to secure their spot are going and spots are filling up pretty quickly. So if you would like to go on an amazing theology in the raw Israel trip, my brother-in-law, Benjamin

Foreman, Dr. Benjamin Foreman is going to be leading the trip. He's been living in Israel for 15 years. He's been touring people around the land more than Moses has. That's actually true because Moses never even got into the land, but anyway, he maybe as much as Joshua has. Yeah. He's been touring people around the land of Israel longer than Joshua did. I don't know if that's true. It just sounds kind of cool. Anyway, if you want to inquire about the trip, chris.pressonsprinkle.com. Again, the dates are October 11th through the 21st. Also, my spring speaking schedule is very stacked. So let me just read off a few dates here. February 9th and 10th, I will be in Orange County, February 9th and 10th, Orange County,

two different churches that I'm blanking on the first church. No, let me just look it up here. I will be at Branches Church, Huntington Beach. That's on the evening session. That's February 9th. And then the all day leaders session on the 10th, I will be at rock Harbor church in orange County, uh,

March 5th and six, I will be in Greeley, Colorado. That's Northern Colorado and Greeley, uh, March 10th and 11th. I will be in Nashville, uh,

evening event on the 10th and an all day event on the 11th, March 15th. I will be in Nashville, uh, evening event on the 10th and an all day event on the 11th, March 15th, I will be in Seattle, Washington for an evening event, April 30th, I will be in Philadelphia and, uh, April 30th and May 1st in Philadelphia. And there's a few other events that are scattered throughout there. If you want to register, you have to go to centerforfaith.com and register for these events. And again, some of them do sell out. So if you do want to attend one or some or all of these events, come be a, like a groupie or whatever, and just travel the country with me and talk about sexuality and gender, that'd be awesome. If you want to attend, you can go to centerforfaith.com

and just go to the events page and you can look at more details about the events and also register. My guest for today is a good friend of mine, one of my favorite people in the world, one of my favorite writers, one of my favorite pastors, just an all around great dude. His name is John Mark Comer. He's a pastor of Bridgetown Church in Portland. He's been the pastor of a mega church. He has been through seasons of burnout, which is one reason why he wrote his most recent book called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. We had a fantastic conversation about this topic, about being overly busy and how it can destroy your soul. We talked about politics. We talked about culture. We talked about all kinds of fun stuff. So please welcome to the show for the second time, the good friend, John Mark Comer.

John Mark, thanks for being on Theology in a Raw for the second or maybe even third time, at least second time. Second, yeah. I know, you don't love me quite enough for three. We'll see if I pass. I made it at least second time second yeah i know you don't love me quite enough for three we'll see if i pass i made it on a second time that's step in the right direction i don't know if any i don't think i've had anybody on three times i've only had a handful small handful of guests that i've had on sure we know francis chan has been on 19 times he's been on once okay let's why don't we start with your book because um i mean this is a topic what i love about your writing is every book you write is just it seems to be just a piece of you um

would uh would that be true i mean you don't just write a book like oh here's an interesting topic like it seems to be just something that you're you're living you're breathing you're it's keeping you up at night you're thinking through it keeping you up at night. You're thinking through it. Maybe you've had a life experience that is significantly, you know, played a foundational role in even producing this book. And I can imagine this book probably has a lot of that in it. Yeah. I mean, this one for sure, more than the other ones before it. And this is really my first kind of foray into writing about spiritual

formation, which is really what I want to devote the next decade or two to as a teacher and writer. And, you know, the odd thing and the beautiful thing about spiritual formation is it's a little bit different than Bible and theology, though there's a ton of Bible and theology in it, in that you can't teach it in the abstract. You have to live it because it's all about like how do we actually follow jesus and grow and mature and how do how does the bible and theology interact with our human psyche and the human condition and our wounding and our hurt hurry and the iphone and busyness and all of the stuff you know yeah so um like i can exegete

ephesians chapter two without like really bringing a ton of my life through it. Now, that's not the way to do it and blah, blah, blah. But you can, as you know. But I can't teach on how to actually grow and expand the soul into Christlikeness without living that. So there's something beautiful about spiritual formation that forces me to live it first. You know, I was reading a commentary on St. John the Cross and his work around the dark night of the soul. And Gerald May, his interpretation of St. John was that he started with experience, and then he wrote poetry, and then last he wrote commentary on his poetry as wow. And that was kind of the flow. Experience, poetry slash prayer, writing commentary.

Yeah. And that's, I mean, that's really kind of the flow, right? You know what I mean? As a teacher, like you experience something with God, and at first it's poetry and mystery and prayer, and you're not even sure. And then eventually you figure out how to articulate it, you know, to the best of your ability.

So the book, again the ruthless elimination of hurry, which is a brilliant title. Did you, cause I'm in the middle of coming up with the title for my forthcoming book and it's really hard. I feel like I can recognize a good title, but they come up with worse. Did you come up with this or did the publishers or both or? Actually, I think this was my credit has to go to my agent. I think the original title was like hurry,

the great enemy of spiritual life. And he was like, no, that's lame. And, uh, and, but I was using that quote, you must ruthlessly eliminate and free from your life. That's the beginning of the book from that quote from Willard. And so I think my agent said, Hey, why don't we just, you know, take that title. Just, uh, not last Sunday, but the week before my pastor got up and this was one of his four kind of he drew like a you know like a uh an x through the whiteboard

or whatever and says here's four areas of kind of spiritual formation or just the christian life that i really want us to think about this year and one of them was and even said the the ruthless elimination hurry held up your book read a bunch of quotes from it and it's just blowing him away yeah he's just like oh my gosh oh what a gift oh yeah yeah um and he told everybody go buy this book so it's a small church look at your great you just paid for one kid's college yeah right so what what is it that led what What, what's, what's your story? What, what happened in your journey that ultimately kind of led to this book? There's gotta be a

story here. I mean, I know there is, cause you told me about it a little bit, but I mean, yeah, there's a ton of backstory. I don't want to like give you the four hour autobiography, but I mean, I guess the short version to make it as concise as I can is I hit a spot as a follower of Jesus and as a pastor about, you know, seven, eight years ago now, where I was into decade three. I was in my early 30s and I had really stalled out in my spiritual formation, if you want to use that language. stalled out in my spiritual formation if you want to use that language and all i mean by that is my growth and maturity into a person who is loving and joyful and peaceful like jesus and um and i had this experience of where i really felt you know we use the language of spiritual growth i don't think most people even know what they mean by that but you know i define spirituality in the christian tradition as our capacity to receive

and give love and relationship to God and to others. So by that definition, I felt like I was growing at a spiritual level, like my capacity to receive and give love and relationship to God and other people was growing through my kind of high school, college 20s. And then, you know, about my mid 20s, I felt I just hit this, like, I felt like I just hit this plateau. And I stalled out in my growth. I was still a Christian. I was still following Jesus. I was still, you know, practicing my spiritual disciplines.

But the moment that my apprenticeship to Jesus hit up against some of the deeper stuff, some of the, you know, Enneagram is the fad right now. you know enneagram is the fad right now but that kind of stuff like the ingrained habits of sin in my person that are literally in my genetic code and stretch back to my great great grandfather you know and the stuff of our culture that is just the assumptions i carry to the table and and wounding from the past like the moment it hit all of that stuff it's like all of a sudden i was banging my head against a wall you you know? And, you know, if you think about, so I had this frustrating experience where for a number of years, I just felt stalled out. And then we had planted a church. It grew crazy fast. And all of a sudden I was the lead pastor of the mega church. And I was under an enormous amount of stress and, you know, workaholic, insane hours hours and then the iphone comes in now i'm

distracted all the time and digital addiction is a thing and so then actually i felt that i began to regress not progress just due to emotional unhealth distraction exhaustion burnout anxiety you know and so there was a real like kind of early midlife crisis um not so much a crisis of faith as much as a crisis of discipleship like well i'm not this is not if you know and once you get to your early 30s you have enough time under your belt to kind of chart a trajectory for your character forward a few decades and imagine yourself at 40 50 60, 60, 70. And, you know, and most 20 somethings don't even think about that. And you get to a certain age where all of a sudden it starts to loom on the horizon. And it was really like sobering, you know, a vision of myself at 50, 60, 70 was not was not a compelling picture

for me. So there was that and then there was at the same time, there was a bit of a pastoral crisis along parallel lines. Where I began to realize that my church was full of, not my church, but the church I was a part of was full of people like me. You know, that all sorts of people who, you know, you could, to put it in sports language, had some early wins when they first started following Jesus, but then stalled out the moment that discipleship hit the really deep

stuff. And I mean, think about the stories that we often tell in church and just in our communal circles of healing and transformation. They're often like early in the journey stories. They're often like, I was addicted to whatever, or my life was a disaster. And these are beautiful stories. It's not to negate them or discount them. We rarely tell stories about like over 30 years, Jesus made me a patient person, you know, or God radically healed me of a father wound over, you know, 15 years of patiently sitting with that in Jesus, you know. So I began to just really realize that something in the way that I was following Jesus and the way that we as a church were following Jesus was not right. And that's a much longer conversation. That's what brought me to spiritual formation. That's what

brought me to really beginning to ask the question, how do people change? Because spiritual growth is a form of change. So you can't grow if you don't have some kind of a working theory of change. And I think everybody has a working theory of change, but in my experience for most people, it's subconscious, not conscious, and it's inherited, not intentional. So you just kind of grow up in your church tradition or socioeconomic tradition, and you have some kind of a working theory of this is how I think I grow and mature to become more like Jesus as I follow him. And it might be really good, and it might be really bad, and it might be a mixed bag. But I'd never even thought about it. It was just an unquestioned assumption that in my kind of evangelical upbringing, well, yeah, you just kind of go to church on Sunday,

you read your Bible and pray in the morning. Prayer is defined as intercessory prayer. You tithe and then you just work really hard at it. And, you know, we would say rely on the spirit, but that was at a cliche level. Nobody ever, I never had any grasp of what that meant or how you actually do that practically or how it actually works or, you know, all that kind of stuff. And of course, those are all good things that are still very much in my rule of life and my muscle memory. And I very much am for, but those things often do not deal with the deep subterranean wounding of the soul and, and, and just brokenness of the soul, you know? So that's all of that brought me to spiritual formation in general, which in turn brought me to Dallas Willard, which in turn brought me to his famous line about hurry, which was a watershed moment in my life, realizing, oh, wow, hurry is kind of the root issue underneath all of these other issues in my formation and my health and my life.

What's the quote? in my formation and my health and my life. What's the quote? So the quote is, hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day, and you must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. That's the quote. Oh, so that's where the title came from. Okay. Yes, exactly.

And the story comes, it's a great backstory. It comes, it's a line actually, it's not in one of his books. It's a line that he said to John Ortberg when Ortberg was actually on staff at Willow Creek Community Church. This is quite many years ago, late 90s, I want to say, and was getting kind of sucked into just the busyness and hurry and overload of life and megachurch culture and called up Willard and basically said, what do I need to, you know, in his own language, what do I need to do? And Willard was just quiet and said, you need to ruthlessly eliminate hurry. He identified hurry as like the issue underneath all of the other issues. And that to me was so striking. I'm living in Portland again,

like crazy far left, uber secular, super post-Christian city. And I'd never thought of hurry as really the great threat and challenge, even more than any of the other stuff. And you felt that in your life, you were just going from thing to thing to thing. I mean, I was reading on the Amazon page of your book. I got to read this. This is so, it was hilarious. So, so you said it's Sunday night, 10 PM, head up against the glass of an Uber, uh, too tired to even sit up straight. I taught six times today. Yes.

Six. The church I pastor just added another gathering. That's what you do, right? Make room for people. I want to, I want to, I want to come back to that, that, that I got some thoughts and questions about that. Um, I made it until about talk number four. I don't remember anything after that. I'm

well beyond tired, emotionally, mentally, even spiritually. When we first went to six services, I called up this mega church pastor in California who had been doing six for a while. How do you do it? I ask. Easy. He said, just think about just, it's just like running a marathon once a week. Okay. Thanks. Click. Great. He's this total jock, like athlete kind of guy. Yeah. like running a marathon once a week okay thanks click wait here's this total jock like athlete kind of guy yeah is it a marathon really hard i like cracked up at that i well it keeps going on and on and on but i mean i'm like oh easy once a week marathons yeah great once a week uh yeah and the funny thing, so I immediately got into long distance running, which actually really did help for that season of my life. And he had an affair and totally disappeared from church. Really? Yeah. That does not bode well for my future, you know?

Yeah. But that was a good sobering moment for me. Was it, here's a question I ask myself sometimes, well, for you. Was it the number of hours you were clocking? I mean, were you working 60, 70, 80 hours a week? If you add up anything that can be considered work from a pastoral perspective, was it the number of hours, or was it simply the kinds of things you were doing, or both and? kinds of things you were doing or both and yeah definitely both and it was uh yeah it was definitely too many hours um but then it was also me attempting to be somebody i'm not and you know i think to operate outside of uh my calling and what i have grace for and i had to learn the hard way i'm not a leader of leader of leaders a apostolic kind of

you know um that's just not who that's not how i'm wired you know it's not what i'm i don't think it's what god made me for parker palmer has that great line about how burnout isn't always a function of giving too much um it's often a function of giving something that's not yours to give in the first place which is why people can work 40 or 50 hours a week and still burn out because you know what I mean and other people can work 90 hours a week or not 90 hours but can work 70 hours a week and be full of life and energy and creativity and passion a lot of it has to do with what your time is going to because you and I I think are almost the exact same. Like you're a three, right? On the Enneagram or? I'm not actually.

Oh, you're not? Five? I actually, I feel like such an idiot, but I'm, I'm, that's a, this is a total rabbit trail, but I, I'm, I'm, I have mixed feelings about the Enneagram and I, I, I'm not sure that I feel weird. I feel like totally pretentious saying, I don't want to say my number, but I don't want to say my number. No, it's fine. So I thought you, so I'm not, I don't know much about the Enneagram. I've never even taken the test. I think I'm a three. I don't know. People say different things, but so, I mean, you're, you're, you're very much introverted. Um,

but like a lot of pastors that are introverted, you're really good on stage. You can speak to thousands, move the crowds, but put you in a small group and say, all right, lead these 10 people. And you'd probably just wither up and die. Like that's how I would much rather be on a stage in front of 2,000 people than in a room with eight people. Yeah, or one-on-one doing like spiritual direction or having a nice glass of wine within that deep conversation that's great yeah but you're like writing reading thinking reflecting doing deep work uh on an intellectual level yeah i love that and i love the one-on-one spiritual direction kind of pastoral work but you know as long as it's not like you know 50 hours a week but all the like running of a community, the community organization, management of a staff, like none of that is my jam.

And you were doing that, right? That's what it means to be a megachurch pastor in the 20. Yeah. I mean, we had like 93 people on the payroll at Ed Sieniff. And, you know, at that point, you're not a teacher, you're a, you know know you're an executive director of a non-profit which is great i'm not against that at all that's just not what i wanted so what do you do now what's your schedule like now i'm curious oh the million dollar question yeah like what do you know it's yeah it's in flux it keeps changing you know and we're we keep us way i'm in a totally different role now and um And Sundays are still a pretty long day, nothing like they used to be, but you know, we have three gatherings and the last

one's not till seven o'clock at night. So Sunday's a kind of a long day and which means Monday's a bit of a recovery day. But most of the time in the mornings, I just pray and read and work on my sermon study right until about 1130 or 12 if i can swing it and my phone's totally off i don't look at my phone until about middle of the day and then i'll exercise and then do kind of pastoral leadership stuff in the afternoons you know meetings and stuff like that so it's a little bit more complex than that but what's your day do you have one or two days off friday saturday saturday friday saturday off um friday is day off so i do all the work i don't Do you have one or two days off? Friday, Saturday, Saturday only? Yeah, Friday, Saturday off. Friday is day off, so I do all the work I don't get paid for on that day

and sometimes do author stuff or run errands or just read if I don't have anything going on. And then Friday night and all day Saturday is like deep Sabbath rest, phone off, around the table, family, don't go out. It's just like deep, deep rest and delight. family don't go out it's just like deep deep rest and delight so what do you do um the ruthless elimination of hurry what about somebody that say actually let me let me really rethink so i asked the right question much of i haven't read the book yet not yet i'm going to um it seems like it's born out of your

pastoral experience, right? And are you speaking mainly to people in ministry? I mean, obviously, you're going to say what I was saying. It applies to everybody. But what about, say, I don't know, the mechanic that his wife left him and he's trying to raise three kids and he's got to work an extra night job. So I was raised by a single mom who had to work you know 14 18 hours at 16 hours a day to put food on the table and just yeah to barely you know like we were really poor

just to get by yeah yeah and if i could imagine if she and i don't even know again i but i i let me assume if she read your book she might be a little frustrated saying well it must be nice you know like yeah where you can kind of like not do this or not do that, or I'm not going to work too hard today or take this day off. She's like, I physically can't, can't do that. Um, does what you're saying, is it very contextual to like people in ministry or is it? It's not at all contextualized to people in ministry. I mean, that's my story. So I tell a little bit of autobiography, which comes through that, but no, it's not remotely, uh, contextualized or geared at pastors or ministry leaders. It is to a degree geared at middle

class and up people in, you know, kind of the digital age or metropolitan centers. Absolutely. But my experience has been a little bit different than what most, a lot of people go to the hypothetical scenarios and your mom is not a hypothetical scenario, but that's also a different era, pre iPhone era, you know? And so people will go to the hypotheticals, but in, in real life, my experience, and again, this is just anecdotal, but has been that busyness is like across every socioeconomic factor that you could possibly imagine. Like if you just ask people, how are you doing? Most people say, oh, I'm good, but busy. And I hear that from everybody. I hear that

from men. I hear that from women. I hear that across the ethnic spectrum. I hear that from urban to suburban to rural. I hear that across generations. I hear that from like super hard driving lawyer people and down to like part-time students that are like playing video games 30 hours a week, you know, and everybody that I talk to is busy. And often, you know, we go to the hypothetical scenario of poor, and that is a very legitimate thing. And I would say two things there. One, most of those in the lower socioeconomic end of the bark, you know, thing, the problem is not too much work. It's not enough work. That is most problems there. And two, those people, for the most part, are not reading my books or listening to your podcast. I mean, you know, the stats part are not reading my books or listening to your podcast.

I mean, you know the stats on podcasts. The average podcast listener makes $81,000 a year and has a bachelor's degree. So the kind of people that are reading a book about hurry and listening to a podcast are likely not the kind of people like your mom who are just trying to get to the end of the week. And they probably don't need to be told to slow down. They need to be told, like, how do you cultivate, you know, how do we help you and how do you get through it? But for people with an iPhone, for people who are middle class and up,

for people in any kind of even close to a metropolitan setting, man, it's just like the crushing and crippling, you know, I think. So, yes, in that respect, this book is not written for, you know, it's not written for people in the developing world. It's not written for people that are, you know, really on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum. And I absolutely be honest about that. Yeah, yeah.

No, that's good. That's super helpful. Do you, and a lot of this is just personal too, because I'm constantly, but how to say battle? I don't know. Like, um, I feel like my life, especially my ministry life has been one of like seasons of like, you know, there was one season where I was trying to pay off just a pile. I mean, a pile of student debt. Yeah, working, you know, gosh, yeah, some some days, I'd work 18 hours a day, get up at six work till one, two in the morning, because I wanted to pay

off this debt in five years, you know? Yeah. And then now the last, I would say four or five years, there's a lot more traveling and speaking, I would say, maybe two years ago, my family, maybe three years ago, we really became vigilant as a family to figure out, okay, it seems like traveling and speaking is kind of wrapped up into what I'm doing. I can find a different calling and we can go that route. But in terms of what I'm doing now, how can we figure out a manageable way to do that. So then we become much more ruthless at, you know, for me taking time off before I travel, taking time off after. I don't hit the desk right when I get home the next morning. I'm taking kids on with my trips and making it integrated with the family

and to have the freedom to be able to do some of that. We've also built in like really long vacations. Like spring is a lot of traveling man it's a lot um come june we're my whole family's out of the country like we're gone yeah i don't even take a computer nothing i mean it's i might take i might check email once in a while but it's like i am i i need to physically leave the country to just – it's like one big brain fart. Yeah. And now even at the fall, sometimes we plan in something if we can afford something there.

And the summer can be pretty low-key. Like I don't travel during the summer. So the summer is really a long – I'm working. Wonderful time. You know, it's normal hours. It's in my basement here. We take time off to go hiking and stuff. So, um, I guess my question is, what is my question? What would you, I mean, pastor me now. I mean, just let's, I mean,

I know that we're, we're talking in front of thousands of people right now, but I would genuinely love some pastoral counsel. Like, um, my explanation, does that sound pretty good? Or what kind of advice would you have? No, I think it sounds like you're on the wisdom journey. And, you know, obviously most people don't have the life of a, of a traveling speaker and theologian podcaster guy. So I think that you're very much on the journey and you're learning. How do I, you know, it's one thing, like, how do I pay off school debt quick is a different question than how do I maintain

fruitfulness and faithfulness over 50 years? And how do I operate in love and enjoy and in wisdom? And how do I not, you know, lose the plot line along the way? That's a very different question, you know, and they're both appropriate questions for different seasons of life. And, you know, at some point you realize that hustle is just, I mean, it'll just, it'll, it'll wear you down to the bone. I think my only, so basically I would just say, yeah, that's great. It sounds like you're on the journey. That's wonderful. All good things. I would just say,

what would it look like for you and your ministry to recognize hurry and busyness as one of the primary problems that people are facing in their apprenticeship to Jesus? And one of the main, I'm convinced that one of the main reasons that millennials and Gen Z are being so colonized by post-Christian secular assumptions and worldview is simply due to busyness, phone, digital distraction, lack of time to just sit in prayer, sit in quiet, sit in the scriptures, be in community with other followers of Jesus. All of this takes a lot of time. You know, you're about to launch this whole beautiful course around sexuality and whatever that takes time. People who don't have time won't do it. And even people who do have enough time to

do it, but don't actually have time to sit in it and process it and pray about it and discuss it with friends and live it out. Like, so I would just encourage you just to begin to take that and put your pastoral eyes on that as you do your itinerant work, what would it look like? I mean, Henry now, and I just reread his little book on Christian leadership, and he has this great paragraph. I remember the first time I read it, it was the main thing that stuck out to me too. And it's same thing the second time through where he talks about our job and he's talking about pastors and priests or spiritual leaders. And I think it very much would apply to you. Our job is the opposite of distraction

yeah which is this great line and then he basically just talks about our job is to help people slow down and pay attention to the very real presence of christ in their lives and our question is not how do we keep people busy in our parish but how do we how do we keep people from being so busy that they lose god and the busyness of life and if we're not doing it we can't teach others to do it absolutely yeah so i'm like as a leader i am way less rah rah rah than ever and more like how do i even cultivate environments uh when i travel or at our own church of quiet and of listening and of sitting and you know what i mean and helping people to actually i think it's one of the great gifts that the church can bring over the next few decades

is actually creating places where people can get free of their phone and actually come back to God and their soul. All right. You got me inspired. I'm going to do something here online. Okay. You see that wait shoot not siri all right check this out dude in honor of you boop delete gone what did you delete i couldn't twitter for my phone oh good man there you go that's right it's funny i deleted um i've done that before through a season uh but i did i deleted facebook a while back for my phone and i've never put it back on i

don't miss it yeah but the one thing twitter is the one thing i typically because i i get a lot of my news from there but then i i'm looking at the news section in twitter and it's all like bro you should not get your news from Twitter. You need to pay for news. Like seriously, if there's anything that you need to pay for, it's journalism. Twitter will just feed you into the digital algorithm that'll lock you in the echo chamber and the angry stuff and the stuff designed to clickbait you and get you to click on it. Like, man, you can't. The nice thing about Twitter is you can do it from your desktop. So like what, you know, you can just schedule like, Hey, every Thursday at 3 PM or whatever, I go on Twitter and I tweet and I

answer questions and whatever. And then you're off, you know, Instagram's the harder one. Cause on your phone, I've just pretty much decided I'm going to go on like once or twice to Instagram. And then I'm going to delete the app off of my phone and then just re-upload it a week later or three days later or whatever. So it's just not there as a distraction it's funny for me instagram somebody talked me into getting it they talked took them two years to wear me down finally i got it like a year ago i hardly ever have to like remind myself to to get on and post something once a month so that's that's good but twitter is the one you don't press and you don't even have to be on it. You don't have to remind yourself. I just read Jared Lanier's new book,

10 arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now. Really? It's a great read. Yeah. And a great, I mean he's one of the Silicon Valley originals, one of the founders has become a really big critic of social media and what he calls bummer the way that everything is, you know, designed for attention, attention economy. So for me, so I, I mean, I run a nonprofit, that's my, that's my job, my livelihood and everything. So, um, and I don't want to, and because it's a self-funded nonprofit, basically, um, if I want to have a marketing budget,

that means I have to like speak four extra times I have money, you know, it's like, so I'm like, like well i don't want to do that like twitter is your marketing budget what's that twitter is your marketing budget so but yeah my point is and this is this was the advice i got from others who are like hyper pro social media but they're like ah for what you're doing you kind of do need to be on these i mean you could not but i mean that's good it is going to affect the very nature of what you're doing so um then the question becomes, how do you use social media as a tool and not be used by it? You know, because it is intentionally, it's not designed for you to market the Center for Faith and Sexuality, which is a great thing. steal your attention and distract you and addict you in order to manipulate you through advertising from third party people to get you to vote a certain way, think a certain way and buy a whole

bunch of products that you don't need. That's what it's actually designed for. You know, it's funny, you have to find out a way to use it not for what it's for, but for what it has the potential to do as a side effect, which is social media. and i feel like uh for me when it comes to facebook and instagram is huge win 100 i'm not i don't get distracted and i mean maybe i would say maybe i probably check facebook twice a month um and maybe once every two months i'll get sucked into like a couple things for about 10 minutes that's about it but twitter is the one that they they've got me they've conquered me they distracted me you're just getting it off your phone is such a huge win and then if you just do it on your desktop and limit even if you do it every day like limit it every day like every day at four

from four to four thirty i'm on twitter or whatever awesome that's great what they don't realize is all the far left stuff that keeps being thrown at me is actually making me more conservative like wait i don't think that some of the far left movements I see are actually, in my opinion, going to put Trump back in the office. Because when you criticize, when Iran shoots... Part of the problem there is social media is designed to get the farthest extreme on either side and the most incendiary comments, Cause that's how it drives user engagement. So you're not at, that's why, I mean, you've read all the,

you read the more in common study, I'm sure, you know, last year and these studies keep coming out. Which one's that? You can just Google it more in common. It was a great sociological survey done of the political landscape in America. And you know, there's a bunch of different surveys. Andrew Sullivan had a good survey of it. David Brooks had a great summary, I'm sorry, summary of it. And you can actually just go read the raw data. And basically,

this is my interpretation of it, is that if all you had was Twitter, you would think that everybody was either a super woke far left person or like an old white, you know, evangelical racist. And basically they said that that's, that doesn't remotely capture the reality. They broke America into six different political tribes. And they said that the far right, I think they called them the alt right. And I think they called it progressive activists was the far left, are the two smallest groups. They're like 7% and 6% of the population, respectively.

And they are also the whitest, wealthiest, and most educated of all groups. So in particular, the whitest, the only group that was whiter than progressive activists was the alt-right. the only group that was whiter than progressive activists was the alt-right. And so they basically concluded that progressive activists don't actually speak for most people of color, don't actually speak on behalf of the poor. If you actually look at what most brown people and black people and indigenous people think at a political level, they're not represented by that. Contrary, I mean, the majority of them are not not represented so it basically just upended a lot of assumptions and at the same time made sense of like most people i

meet aren't like crazy leftists or crazy alt-right racists most people are just like confused and in the middle and trying to get groceries for the week how do you spell that again? The study? More in common. M-O-R-A-N? Yeah, more in common. Oh, more in common. Like we have more in common. I think the heart was like to show people we actually aren't as divided as Twitter would make you think. We actually have more in common than you would imagine. I did remember coming across.

See, I was looking for this actually because I kept hearing some podcasters refer to it, but they never gave the name. That, no, that's, oh, that's so funny. Because, yeah, I see that anecdotally as well. I mean, you're in Portland, right? The most progressive activist city in America. And it's also extremely white, right? Yeah, 100%. It's the whitest big city in America.

And people can afford to drink $5 coffees and go out to expensive restaurants and, you know, afford to eat healthy and all this. Well, some people can. The whole city's not, you know, it's not a super wealthy city, but yes. Yeah. Interesting. Let's talk about culture for a second. I mean, you and Mark Sayers, thank you for introducing me to Mark. I had him on my podcast last summer. What a gem he is. How can we get his... I mean, he would probably not want this, but I just want his voice to be heard by more people.

And it seems like it's growing for sure. Yeah, that was really one of my main agendas with that podcast was the same. Like everybody needs to know about this guy and everybody needs to listen to what he's saying. Where do you see culture going? So right now it is so volatile and angry and polarized. And to me, I find it fastened. Like in two years, five years, 10 years, like where are we going to be?

Have you thought, do you feel, do you like to think ahead on kind of where are things going? Because it seems like we're at a tipping point with some things right now. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. That's over my pay grade that's a good question for mark you know i i'm not yeah i don't know i don't want to get anxious about i'm not optimistic i don't think that like i you know and i i mean it would be amazing maybe we'll get just a good moderate president in and everybody will calm down and facebook and instagram will turn over to a $10

month different business plan that won't reward, you know, this kind of polarizing incendiary anger and anxiety based, you know, social media thing and families will get back together and parent their children and parents will grow up, kids will grow up just feeling safe and at peace and clear and who they are and you know but it's hard for me imagine that happening you know i do think that the far left will burn out and you know it's funny i was touring the local high school we're trying to decide if we're going to put our our oldest boy in the public high school or not we've sadly concluded that it's just it's so far left it's into indoctrination, not education anymore. So we're not going to, but I was touring his high school

and there were Foucault quotes on pretty much every wall who, if you don't know who that is, a French philosopher who basically was the founder of post-modernism and critical theory. So a lot of the stuff that we hear about post-modernism and power and intersectionality theory and all the critical gender theory and critical queer theory all kind of goes back to a lot of his his mind he's a brilliant thinker but you know he had this great line i think it was him that was in quotes where there's power there is resistance and i thought that's you know that's a really true statement but now the power is in the hands of you know the secular leftist elites and so there's going to be resistance there's going i think you're going to be see a shocking

gen z uh swing back to the kind of ben shapiros of the world but it'll be a secular angry return it's not like every you know what i mean not like a return to kind thoughtful you know christians or whatever i think well i feel yeah i feel like um and maybe it's just the world i live in with that with lgbt stuff but there's such a a group so lgb activism marriage equality all these things um you know, a lot of just the standard liberals we're totally on board with. But now there's a lot of backlash against some of the extreme activism, some surrounding the T, and by people who are transgender. OK, I mean, again, like you said before, there's a small number of loud activists that are kind of speaking for the whole group, but there's a growing number of even trans people, but also liberal people, gay people, especially lesbians who are speaking out saying we fought for decades for certain human equality,

but now there's certain radical activists that are just denying. They seem ideologically completely incompatible to me. Right. You know? Yeah. Well, it's just denying basic scientific categories and it's like a lot of liberals very liberal people are like this extreme activism has gone so far now we're shooting ourselves in the foot because now we look like we're flat earth flat earthers by denying

some really basic things that the average human being is not going to go with you know um so i don't i i even look at like look at the number. It seems like a growing number of comedians who are kind of speaking out against hyper. I've always said that some of the good comedians are like secular prophets. They function, I think, in that prophetic role of critiquing culture from the inside. I mean, look at like Ricky Gervais' mon monologue did you see that i didn't see that last week i was my jaws on the ground saying this is remarkable he basically at the uh what's it called

the um the golden globe awards the ones that nobody really cares about except for the people that attend um he in a very funny comedic way pretty much laid into hollywood and saying you guys are a bunch of moral hypocrites when you come get your award take your little award sit down shut up don't make a political speech because nobody respects your kind of inconsistent morals you know you have no place to speak to people in the real i was like oh my goodness it's nice to hear that i mean me too me, it was just such a fascinating moral thing. Like of all people, I mean, to have a Hollywood attempt to advocate for like women's rights. I mean, I was just shocked.

I'm like, like you literally have done more to degrade and objectify women than any community in history. You know, practically, that's probably an overstatement. So I feel like there's more and more people that are finally starting to speak because i feel like the average person knows that and now more and more people or even dave chappelle on the few size recent thing yeah but he got crucified though you know i mean and jk rowling last week came out you know against as a turf you know and he came out against some you know there's a doctor in the UK that was fired because he refused to negate biological sex and a woman that was firing. So she spoke out on grounds of feminism, you know, and, and, but then she's just crucified. Here's the thing. I think she was crucified.

But I don't think she's actually crucified by the majority of people. She's crucified by the internet, you know? So Ricky Gervais got crucified by certain journalists, but then he gained 300,000 followers on Twitter the next day. So I think the massive popular, or even Dave Chappelle, you know, certain people were just horrified at his, his skit. Um, but it is incredibly popular and like, and this is where maybe going back to that, that more in common study, I think that the, the majority of people who might be very just liberal in in in their morals or whatever um are not really on board with this capital w woke kind of culture um and i don't know if we need to make a distinction for our audience on on that but

yeah and unfortunately it blends together things like racial justice with sexuality which is such a right and then it brings lg you know blends lgb stuff with t stuff and so unfortunately all this stuff gets put together that are that are really fairly different categories and i think should be thought about in some pretty different ways at times you know so yeah i mean um so yes i definitely i don't think things are going to keep going left left left left left left left, left, left, left. But unfortunately, the reactions that you're mentioning often tend to be angry, unkind and unchristian reactions. And so that's where I just it's the ping pong effect that, you know, social media exacerbates because that's how social media drives engagement is through the ping pong thing.

So you get this hard left, hard right, and mocking each other. And, you know, and I think more and more people are just confused, you know, and I mean, I mean, what is what is all critical gender theory around trans stuff? I mean, it's the end of the day, it's just people are confused about what it means to be a human being, right? You know, and what the meaning and purpose of life is, and what the telos of life is. These are central human questions that you cannot not ask, you know? So, I mean, my dream is that I'm going to go back and reread failure of nerve this year with my elders and staff, which is Edwin Friedman's book. He's the one who coined the phrase non-anxious presence. There's two books that we're going to, I think,

go back and reread as a staff this year. One is Coddling the American Mind. I don't know if you read that last year. Best book of 2019, dude. Yes, so helpful. And then we're going to reread Failure of Nerve by Edwin Freeman. And just, I think, trying to ask the question, how do we as a community become a community of stability

and non-anxious presence and love and wisdom in the middle of this culture that's falling apart? And that's where, you know, many have pointed out Patrick Deneen, Rod Dreyer, and many others have pointed out the parallels between our current cultural moment and kind of the fourth and fifth century AD and the decline of the Roman Empire as the Visigoths sacked Rome and the Roman empire, which was once this bastion of order and wealth and, you know, Pax Romana just began to fall apart and there was chaos and there were warlords and it was dangerous. And these monasteries, that's where the monastic movement came from.

They became these centers of stability in a world gone mad. Like you go to medieval Europe and you'll see monasteries that have like turrets, you know what I mean? Like wall, they look like castles and turrets. And part of you thinks that's horrible. Like how far, how much do you have to lose the plot line from Jesus to like have a turret and a moat and a dungeon in your church, you know? But then you think about, so it's easy for me to judge, but then I think about how would I create a community of Jesus that does, you know, that is a bastion for the common good. If I was in a failed state like Mogadishu or the Congo or Syria right now, you would probably put up some walls and lock them. You know what I mean? You probably have to

have somewhere to put people that are dangerous, you know? And it's like, it's easy for me to judge, but then I think, oh man, like what, there's something here, you know? And so I wonder, I'm not saying we should build castles, but I do think that whatever the future is for the church, it's a neo-monastic, kind of anti-digital, intensely relational, intensely disciplined discipleship-based kind of rigorous community. And my hope is that it operates as some kind of a center of stability in a world that is increasingly kind of gone mad. That's fascinating. Is that the Benedict Option we were referring to, Roger? Yeah, which again, when that book came out, it got a lot of flack. And I read it and was like,'s good but really dour and it's so funny i just reread it this last year with a

bunch of my friends you know three four years later and culture has gone so much crazier since the trump election and since the far left and since all that you know gender stuff that all of a sudden it just made like it sounded like perfect sense it's like yeah that's exactly where we're at you know it sounded like this really harbinger of doom. And now I'm like, yeah, that's basically life right now. So I need to read that. I've been dying to read. I've been intrigued by the idea. And I'm not sure. I don't know what to think. Well, it's not the kind of book you read and agree with everything. So the benefit of the job from Rod Dreyer and then even better, very similar, but even better,

though less Christian is Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen, one of the most influential political books I've ever read in my life. And it's not about politics like partisan politics. It's about political philosophy and how we got here and what's the future. Very two harbinger of doom books and two very intelligent books. In particular, Deneen's work is just, if you're not familiar with him, Google Patrick Deneen, D-E-N-E-E-N. He's a political philosopher from Notre Dame. I think he's a conservative Catholic, though he doesn't talk as a religious person, so I'm not sure. And you can listen to podcasts and interviews with both of them. And, you know, Deneen's harder to understand because he's wicked smart. But his thinking around this is hyper influential in how

I'm thinking about this. And neither of them hold out much hope for the future. So, you know, David Brooks and others would be more hopeful for the future. And I don't know. That's just over my pay grade. All I know is that I think whatever the future of the church is, it's either back to a rigorous discipleship, neo-monastic communal kind of life or it's obliteration on the right or the left, because the right is corroding faith just as much as the left is now. So,

you know, the old stereotypes are breaking down. Yeah, for me, because I came from the right, I would even say far right, I sometimes take for granted that that's kind of a bankrupt direction. And that's why more recently, i have on the on the spectrum in my life trajectory it was like far right moving more left and now just moderate prime right now in my i don't know let right of center i don't even i don't love those categories at all but um to me sometimes i forget to even critique the far right because it's just so self-evidently yeah you know but that's just my context too. Some people that weren't raised in the far right, maybe only critique the far right because it's more fresh.

So much of it's your context. Again, I don't even think about it because I just don't, it's just not the world I live in, you know? Yeah. So the church moving forward, I mean, I am interested in this. I don't know. I mean, I am interested in this. I don't know. I mean, it sounds so basic, so just like New Testament-ish, but the church does need to be intentionally countercultural on several different levels. You know, even take something like sexuality. We think that the church has a conservative sexual ethic, but we've basically adopted a secular sexual ethic and added one little footnote.

Wait until you're married. You know what I'm saying? But we still have the same view of our weddings look the same. We spend the same amount of money. There's no sacramentalism in our weddings. And then even, I mean, if you look at the right and the conservative, I mean, I'm not sure that it's all that different sex ethic other than some of the views around gender and gender, you know, stereotypes or whatever. But as far as like premarital sex, I mean, I don't know that it's any different on the right than on the left. Statistically, it's not even. But even if we say, no, don't have sex until you get married, we still have a very secular view of sex. It's the same view of it's largely for pleasure,

procreation is sure if you want, you know, but there's no problem. Stop. I mean, how was I raised for all these years without even raising a moral question about separating sex from procreation? Like that's just nothing. Yeah. How did I not even come into that? It wasn't even a question. Yeah. That's like one of the most basic like scientific things that.

And nobody even really had the option to separate those things until, you know, our parents really. But because we can, therefore it's morally right. And it's like, what kind of ethic? you know, our parents really, but because we can, therefore it's morally right. And it's like, what kind of ethic? It's just, it's bizarre to me how, how blindly we have adopted. Um, so do you, have you rethought your theology of birth control? Yeah. Um, not, not completely, but, um, do you have podcasts I can listen to on that or what's the, what's the cliff notes version? That's been like an open question. I feel like the way about birth control that i used to feel about non-violence like before i studied it yeah totally i don't really i don't really want to study it because i'm afraid that i'm probably wrong but nobody around me is

questioning my theology so i'm just gonna say i don't have it totally ironed out at all um but i just i wonder if the catholics Catholics are more right than wrong. Here's where I'm at now. If a Christian couple said, we want to get married, but we don't want to have biological kids. Not can't, not infertile, but like, you know, we're going to take steps to not have biological kids. I would say the moral burden rests on you to justify that position. I can't just say, oh, cool, that's totally fine. I would say I would at least raise the moral question,

justify that morally that you're going to separate marriage from having kids. You're going to have sex. You're going to get married. And that vocation, that calling is disconnected from kids. At least convince me of that. Don't just assume that that's totally fine. That's where I'd be at right now. I wouldn't say it's immoral necessarily, but I would, I think we just need to

think more deeply about haphazardly separating sex from procreation. Now that raises questions. Well, you know, what if you're have eight kids, you know, or nine, you know, like the health of the mother and is there ever a place for family planning within? Yeah, climate change and urban centers and cost of living. And yeah, totally, totally. I just I think that I don't think we realize. Again, I mean, sometimes I wonder, are those just the people like hearing a biblical theology of nonviolence and being like, yeah, but what? Like North Korea would take over America and we'd all be speaking Arabic, you know, like, like they don't want to have the conversation. So sometimes I wonder, am I that person? And I'm just like, well, yeah,

but I'd have 13 kids and my wife would be dead and you know what I mean? And, and I wouldn't be able to afford anything. And, you know, I don't know. I mean, I definitely don't think that Genesis one, the blessing and be a fruitful multiply is a, is a binding command in perpetuity. I can't get there exegetically, but it does seem like to go against that. You're going against the natural Trinitarian biological flow of life in you that God created Trinitarian God created man and woman to come together to, you know, to go from otherness to union and then to spill out in Trinitarian love, which requires a third, which requires a child. So that, that flow of life of not being one person, but coming together as two and then

creating a third in order to move from egoistic kind of narcissistic control to agape, which is the spiritual journey that i mean that impulse like to go against that feels like almost like you're going against the trinitarian flow in you you know that's beautiful man no that's that's exactly that's exactly but i could be wrong and then but then my question is like but once you've had a child yeah do you have to keep having children or and does that mean all have i mean i don't are there other ways to let the trinitarian flow through you and your marriage? I think Jesus models that at some level.

I do think there is some discontinuity between marriage and procreation in the Old Testament and the New. For instance, in the Old, I mean, you have laws set up to where if your brother dies childless, you have to go have sex with his wife. Which is a beautiful law. Right. Well, seriously, I just taught on that two days ago. I taught on Jesus line of the Pharisees about that. I mean, that's actually a compelling act of social justice for women and care for women.

Yeah. And that's it. I think there is, there are certain social structures and differences back then that aren't here today, and how much of those commands were intertwined with the social structure that doesn't really apply to – And the agrarian economy, you know what I mean? And that's one of the big – I was chatting to a therapist about this recently and just saying one of the big challenges for parents now is that in an urban information economy, children are a burden.

Yeah. Yeah. They're a drain on the family's resources. They don't contribute. They're not needed. And so that creates not only narcissism in the kids, but it actually creates low self-esteem. So why is the suicide rate highest among teenagers and elderly people? Most people say it's because they're not contributing in any way.

And there's a fascinating psychologist I read recently who basically said that zero to three, self-esteem is a function of unconditional love. But after that, self-esteem is basically a function of contribution to a social group. Meaning from the time you're like in kindergarten on, you basically feel happy and good about yourself, not just from unconditional love from your parents, but actually from contributing something to your family, your church, your village, your tribe, your whatever, and just helping out. And this is why, you know, like kids that come from big families and live on farms tend to be the happiest, most well-adjusted, least narcissistic people I know.

There's just something about that, you know, that does good to the soul. That kids growing up and, you know, more like my kid's life, just really struggle to become those kinds of people, you know. So it's a massive parenting question I'm asking right now. It's a massive parenting question I'm asking right now. How do I artificially create for my urban kids, middle class kids, what they would have had if they were like one of 10 kids on a farm and had to get up and milk the cows every morning? How do I artificially create that? That's actually the question I'm asking as a parent right now. Oh, gosh. I ask that question almost every day.

I know. We live in Idaho where there's a big farming community. So we still have a residue of some of that. You can tell the difference between teenagers who are raised on, literally raised on a farm or still on a farm versus those that are, you know. And do you see a similar effect, like a positive effect on their personhood? They're kinder. They're less selfless. They'll stop. And it's not uncommon for, if you're broken down or something for somebody, for a teenager.

This is a true story. We were camping last summer and one couple blew a tire, didn't have a spare. We were two hours from the city. And these two teenage boys that were just out fishing basically devoted their entire day to driving this guy around, trying to find a camper that had an extra tire. I was going to give you know an extra tire for my car it didn't fit so then we found this old broken down car and they were kind they were just um and yeah they were just good old good old yep good old boys you know um and they didn't even think you know these were teenagers like and they just gave up on themselves

and yeah they were literally like yeah hey where are you from they named some community that has like population 78 or something, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It's so, it's so hard to duplicate that in the rhythms of life. But you know, it's funny we did. So we just had, we have a community group, we call it simple church that meets every other week. And our group has six families and each family has about three or four teenagers. So it's really interesting has about three or four teenagers.

So it's a really interesting community group with loads of teenagers. Yeah, I would imagine. And we have a big basement in our house. And this last Sunday night, typically the kids are off playing games, playing ping pong, hanging out, doing whatever, running around. And then the adults are kind of praying together, whatever. And we keep saying, like, we need to, like, not, let's bring it together. So we bring all the kids up. And instead of, like, sharing prayer requests, my let's bring it together. So we, we bring all the kids up and instead of like sharing prayer requests, my wife throws out a question. She, she said it was all quiet.

And we're like, Hey, I got a question. What do you guys think about abortion? Like, have you, and the kids, they all lit up. They all had strong, well thought out opinions, both from the like the pro life side to like, what about the shame that covers the person that actually gets an abortion? In other words, like, yeah, I've been, we've been talking about this in government and I have no place where I can kind of like express my opinion. I'll get screamed at or whatever. And they were, they, they were, I've never seen these teenagers so engaged because they were contributing

to the conversation, to the group. But it just goes back to your point that that idea of actually feeling like your role is meaningful, like you have something to contribute. This community would not be... Not just we love you. We need you. Right. Yes. Gosh.

And how to duplicate that in white middle class. iPhone saturated. Well, dude, it's coming up on an hour. We should probably start wrapping things up. Oh, man, I could chat to you for hours. You're always such a delightful hang. Thanks for having me on and letting me ramble. Dude, my pleasure.

So I want to mention, let's see. I got your, okay, yeah. So the Ruthless Elimination to Hurry, your latest book, your one before that, God Has a Name. The one before that, Garden City, Work, Rest, and I can't see this. The Art of Being Human. It's okay. You don't need to hawk my stuff. It's okay. Dude, your titles kill it. And then Loveology and others. Are you working on anything right now? Can you talk about it or no? Are you done for a little bit? Um, yeah, I don't know that I, I don't know if I'm allowed to now. Yeah, I actually have already written the next book. So, um, are you serious?

Yeah. I think you're supposed to kind of keep it on the DL. Yeah, no, the next one's already written. Yep. Ready to roll. Can you talk about what the topic is or no? That's totally fine. Um, well, I don't want to, I don't even know if, well to i don't even know well yes i it's um it's it's a weird book it's totally different it'll probably sell three copies but i think it's by far my most interesting one it um it is an attempt to take the historic ancient church category of the world the flesh and the devil and to update it for the kind of secular educated post-christian worldview so it's talking about the world the flesh and the devil through the lens of post-christian secular sophisticated

america uh john thanks so much for being on theology in iraq we'll have to have you on again for a third time sometimes thanks man it's always a pleasure Pleasure.