Theology in the Raw - 856: After Doubt: Questioning your Faith without Losing it: Dr. A.J. Swoboda

Episode Date: April 8, 2021

A. J. Swoboda (PhD, University of Birmingham) is assistant professor of Bible, theology, and world Christianity at Bushnell University. He also leads a Doctor of Ministry program around the Holy Spirit and leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary. He is the author of a number of books, including the award-winning Subversive Sabbath. He is married to Quinn and is the proud father of Elliot. They live and work in Eugene, Oregon. In this podcast episode, we talk about his latest book After Doubt, which is all about deconstruction and doubt; or, as the subtitle states: How to Question Your Faith without Losing It. And A.J. is the perfect guide. He has his own deconstruction story and he very much resonates with some of the problems that conservatives or progressives have with American evangelicalism. And he helps us navigate these issues in this podcast episode.  Learn more about A.J. here: https://www.ajswobodawrites.com Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I have on the show today, my good friend, A.J. Swoboda. A.J. has been on the show several times. He might be the most frequently recurring guest on Theology in the Raw. If you don't know of A.J., he is an assistant professor of Bible and theology and world Christianity at Bushnell University in Oregon. Christianity at Bushnell University in Oregon. He has a PhD from University of Birmingham. He's the author of several fantastic books. Subversive Sabbath is one of his more recent ones, The Dusty Ones, and there's several others. A Glorious Dark is a fantastic book that was the first book I read of AJ and led him to becoming one of my favorite Christian authors. The guy's an incredible writer, a gift to the church. His most recent book is

After Doubt, How to Question Your Faith Without Losing It. Most importantly, apparently his wife, Quinn, is an avid listener to Theology and Ross. So a little shout out to Quinn. Thank you so much for your allegiance to this podcast. Really honored that you are listening, hopefully, to this episode, where me and your husband are going to banter around and pool our ignorance together. In this episode, oh my gosh, we talk about lots of different things related to faith and culture, the church. We even talk about podcasting. Is podcasting helpful for the church? Is it helping to nurture people's faith identity in their local church, or is it hindering that? We wrestle with

the nitty-gritty of that conversation among many, many others. So I'm so excited for you to engage this conversation. If you would like to support the show, again, you know it, patreon.com forward slash Theology in the Raw. Support the show for as little as five bucks a month and engage in our monthly Q&A, Patreon-only podcast. We can send in questions and hear me respond to those questions. All the info is in the show notes. So without further ado, please welcome to the show for the umpteenth time, the one and only Dr. A.J. Swoboda. Hey, what's up, dude? There he is. There I am. Look at you. You look all smart with your books.

I know. I have perfectly situated these books to make it look like I'm smart. It's wallpaper, right? It's just wallpaper. I've read none of these books. How are you? I'm doing all right, man. Yeah, hanging in in there, hanging in there. All things considered. Actually, life's good. We're, um, yeah. So my family life is really good. My oldest daughter just got done with her senior year. Um, my youngest, my son started baseball, so I'm coaching that. Um, middle two daughters are doing some really cool stuff and ministries, the center we've just gotten hit with so many requests and my wife who runs the center basically wakes up to like a hundred emails every day. I mean, it's, it's nuts. So yeah, but it's a good, it's,

it's a good nuts, you know, like it's a, we have to say no to 90% of the stuff that comes our way, but it's, it's, um, it's exciting to see people wanting to engage this conversation. So that's a good thing. I'm using you so much, bro. My wife listens to everything you publish. I'm so great. I'm sorry. I don't, but she does. Um, I can't stand what you do, but she really likes. I think my wife has maybe listened to two podcasts of mine in the entire existence of theology. She's just not a podcaster. And she hears me babble. She can hear me right now. I'm in my basement and she's right above me in the second floor here. So yeah, they can probably overhear half the things I talk about, which I'm always worried. Like if some of the conversations get a little R-rated

or if I'm talking offline to somebody, I'm like, did you hear me? Did you hear what we're talking about? And my kids are like, yeah, Dad. I'm like, oh, great. How are you? Yeah, I don't know. I think I'm doing all right.

Jesus loves me, I know. And I'm teaching and that's going well. The book seems to be doing well, very well. And that's exciting. But it's, you know, it's not a season. I tend to be really uh, really good at reflection and slowing down and hearing the voice of Jesus. And right now it's just getting through, just getting through. Is there a reason, a reason for that? Is it COVID stuff? Is it ministry stuff?

Is it just random life stuff or what? The The book, I'm teaching a very heavy load. It's just not a season of – I don't get to go to Arabia like Paul did for three years and just reflect. It's just a full season, but that's okay. We all go through seasons like that. And the way you're wired, like for your optimum, optimal spiritual health would have more space. Would that be accurate given the way you're wired? I'm a pretty reflective three on the Enneagram. Okay. Very driven and need to achieve.

But if I don't have quiet time to reflect, I start getting funky. You've got to be a wing four, right? Or no? Yes. Yeah. I would have guessed you were more of a four, but, I mean, you know you better than I know you. Just maybe because your imagination, your artistry and everything seems very four-ish. But, yeah.

Yeah. The first time I walked into my counselor's office, this was seven years ago. First time I walked in, I was 33 and I had written four books. And on those intake sheets that you fill out to basically tell your counselor why you're screwed up, I walk into his office and he says, so what do you do? And I said, I'm a pastor i write i teach and he goes you've written how many books i said three and he goes you're how old 33 and he goes the first words out of his mouth he goes let's talk about your relationship with your father

um no way his point was and he was absolutely right some of my drivenness is is just unresolved daddy issues. And so, yeah, some of it's healthy, some of it's not. So I've never done this before, but I actually started recording before you called. So this is all recorded. We can delete all this and start over. Okay. All right. So your book, After Doubt, it's an incredible book, a much needed topic. And I feel like you are among, I'll say, among the best because we have mutual friends who are writing similar books. But your journey, your perspective, and I'm going to look into this camera now because this is where we're actually recording from.

It's such a needed book. First of all, how have you felt about it now that it's out? What's the response been like? How do you just feel personally and spiritually having this kind of vulnerable, I mean, if i can put it in this way um book out there i mean all your books are vulnerable in the best possible sense of the term um but this this one particularly i mean you're dealing with some pretty nitty-gritty issues um what's the response been like yeah the response has been um i think surprisingly

positive i sort of expected given the nature nature of the book, that really does hammer both sides of the theological and ideological spectrum. Given that, the response has been very positive. I expect there to be some fairly strong pushback on, on some aspects of the book, which is, which is fine. I will say, um, never have I, and this is my 10th book, never have I felt the anxiety and unsettledness around a topic, given that I recognize how viscerally timely and real this is for real people on the ground. Um, so when you talk about deconstruction, um, you talk about the, these sorts of things, man, we're talking about whether families are going to get together for Thanksgiving

or not. And I recognize just how, um, just, just how sensitive, you know, it's, it's, it's similar to writing books on sexuality. I mean, it was, real quick, give, give an elevator pitch, two minute summary, what the book's about. it's similar to writing books on sexuality. I mean, it was real quick, give, give an elevator pitch, two minute summary of what the book's about, but I want to come back to that, which you just said about the anxiety piece and the real practical ramifications. The big picture here is that, um, so that the title of the book is after doubt subtitle, how to question your faith without losing it. And basically the 10,000 view picture is that, uh, we have not fully incorporated the experiences of doubt and deconstruction

as legitimate spaces for people to meet Jesus. And essentially what we've got now is on the theological right, this sort of view that says deconstruction and doubt are demonic, they're bad, they're evil, and so it demonizes these things. And then the progressive side, which essentially valorizes it and says you have to walk through it to know God. And we've got these two things that either demonize or valorize it. And what I'm attempting to do is paint a third way that for those walking through doubt

and deconstruction, that this can be, when done well, a legitimate place to encounter Jesus. You know, when you meet somebody who's walking through deconstruction or doubt, the questions that they are asking feel as though they're the first time in history these questions are being asked. When in reality, we have 2,000 years of history of mothers and fathers who have gone before us who have shown us there is a way through this experience in a way that is faithful to Jesus. And people that are nervous about deconstruction, well, doubt, I guess that's a different category, but deconstruction, they're only nervous that people are deconstructing from the view that the person that's nervous about is, you know, but if somebody is conservative and somebody else is deconstructing from a more liberal view, they're, they're excited about that. Right. I mean, so

even that the very concern about deconstruction is profoundly subjective and individualized, I guess. But yeah, the doubt piece. How do you... Well, actually, I want to come back to that. Can I say something? Sure, yeah, yeah. This very idea that deconstruction is all bad, I think it is important to say two things about that. I think, first of all, it's important to say that we are part of a tradition that inherently deconstructs. Jesus deconstructs. In Matthew 5 through 7, when he's, you know, the Sermon on the Mount, you've heard it said, but now I say to you, that's deconstruction.

He's deconstructing false religious paradigms. paradigms. Martin Luther, if you're a Protestant, you are a part of a deconstructive movement that attempted to deconstruct Catholic liturgy and theology to this kind of core concept of grace. The second thing I want to say, and this is just to speak up a little bit for those who are in the deconstruction experience. A lot of people are deconstructing conservative aspects of Christianity right now because they have seen ways in which their tribe has propped up what they believe to be very dangerous political visions. If you are a follower of Jesus and were transformed in any way, shape or form by the ministry of Ravi Zacharias and are not questioning aspects of your faith right now or for those who have experienced trauma in the church, I think I just for a moment want to stick up for those that may be deconstructing, because for some people, I think deconstruction is actually a way to save their faith, rather than as a way to do away with it. So we need to be very cautious to just shame deconstruction and doubt as though they're inherently bad. And I've read James. I understand that there are downsides to doubt. But I also understand that we the anecdotal flood of emails, a good percentage of people listening now have gone through a period of deconstruction and even a decent percentage, I would say we're at that point of I'm on the brink of losing my faith because

I have peaked behind the curtain, so to speak, of a certain brand of a conservative tribe within evangelicalism. And again, I want to be careful here because I think there's so much good that comes from even the most far right, whatever. Like I, you know, both of us, I think we're raised in a very conservative context. And man, they, those conservative leaders, they gave 10% of their money to missions, even if they were, had two pennies rubbed together. They, they pray two or three hours every morning. I literally had seminary professors that would pray four hours every morning.

Probably still pray for me, you know, and like pray for my kids and everything, even though I haven't talked to them in 30 years or 20, well, maybe 15 years. But like there's good value. And yet, as we all know, there are these, I mean, yeah, gosh, the Ravi Zacharias moments or many other power abuses of power or sexual abuse or just things that radically challenge your faith um man so more often than not preston in my experience though when people do deconstruct um be in our context conservative evangelicalism and i i am as theologically as orthodox as you can be. I mean traditionally on sexuality, traditional, very conservative sexuality on the role of scripture, the trinity. You could – resurrection, these sorts of things. Those of us that hold kind of these core historic Christian beliefs, the process of deconstruction is usually not a deconstruction of Christ as often as much as it is a result of deep woundedness by Christians. I mean I think the parable of the prodigal son is a perfect example.

You have this younger son who runs away with his inheritance. And you read that parable and you're like, why in the world did the younger son run away? And I have consistently believed he ran away because of the older brother. That he got – just something happened with the older brother and he couldn't take it anymore. And he ran away because of this experience with the older brother. I don't see a lot of Christians right now. Some do, but I don't see a lot of people deconstructing Christ. I see a lot of people deconstructing Christianity

and often deconstructing because of an experience with an older brother, with an experience with a Christian. We don't deconstruct because of Jesus. We deconstruct because of Christians. It's that classic DC talk line, right? Brennan Manning quoted, the single greatest cause of atheism today is Christians. So I think there's a great deal of deconstruction that's happening simply because we've seen behind the curtain, as you say, and we know that what's behind the curtain is not what Jesus is about. Yeah. No, that's it. I mean And Christians, or even more Christians, but also a certain culture

created maybe by Christians, like a certain American conservative evangelical culture that becomes formed through habits and liturgies and practices. Also, in my experience, the people that I've talked to combined with kind of a nationalism or a certain political kind of, you know, covering that seems to kind of house becomes the shell make the wrong assumptions that they are deconstructing from Jesus because maybe they left a certain subculture of Christianity. And that eats me up, man. That really bothers me. But there is another side precedent. I mean, just to point out, I was not raised in a Christian home.

I was raised in a very progressive, really not a Christian household. And when I became a Christian, I went the opposite direction and deconstructed progressive ideology. So now I'm actually coming from the left towards orthodoxy when a lot of people are going from the right towards orthodoxy. And to your point about nationalism, we need to be very careful here to take aim at both sides. Because white nationalism on the conservative far right side is inherently destructive and inherently anti-Christ. But I would also say wedding progressive ideology and ethics of sexuality, anything goes,

of sort of American enlightenment values with the gospel is as inherently dangerous as white nationalism on the right. Both sides. Here's what I'm finding. We all believe the parts of the Bible that we are doing and don't listen to the parts of the Bible that we're not. So we have conservatives who love the text on evangelism and caring for the unborn and worship and sanctification. And then you have the left that highlights the verses about refugees and rights and people being treated with dignity. And essentially both sides believe in the version of the Bible that they are doing and ignore the parts that they're not. And the problem with both sides now is that we have essentially the kingdom of God appears to be split in two.

And this third way of the kingdom is going to offend both sides. And I would hope that if we're deconstructing, we are seeking to do it to embrace the whole kingdom and not just the part our ideology accepts. No, that's super good. I recently had Josh Butler on the podcast, mutual friend. And we talked about, we dabbled in kind of the same conversation with the integration of like partisan polarized politics and how that's stunting discipleship in the church. And, and yeah, I'm, uh, you know, I think I said the front of the line, I think I still agree with it. It was one of those off the cuff things. I was like, how's this going to land? You know, you know, when you're halfway through a sentence and you're like, I don't know if I should, I'm just going to say it, you know, theologian around, I'll clean it up later. Um, but I said, you know, I said like,

believing that for instance, Donald Trump is the Messiah is, and I'm just going to say, given my audience, obviously problematic. Like my audience typically does not lean that direction, but if you believe he's Satan, then that makes, you know, who Joe Biden, the Messiah, like, like the, the kind of hyper pro-Trump or even hyper anti-Trump creates a really problematic story that conflicts with the kingdom of God invading, you know, the kingdom of the nations. And, and I am seeing just that, that tribalism across the board, political partisan tribalism is so equally problematic. Even if there might be some values on one side or the other that you might at the end of the day resonate more with, it's the tribalistic identity or allegiance. It's equally, in my mind, problematic.

Was that what you – 100%. Is that what you – A hundred percent. We – I don't know that this – one of the things that I do see shifting in the evangelical conscience, particularly with younger evangelicals, not just younger but all evangelicals I see across the board, is that about 20 years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, we would say things like the gospel is not political. We need to stay out of politics. And then we saw what happened with President Trump and realized actually Christians need to be political. In the sense that we need people of conscience who are voting Jesus' values, that care about the things that Jesus says. I see a huge shift. You watch my friend John Tyson in New York. That's January 6th experience that his tweets became very political.

And I'm glad they did because he is beginning to see that being a Christian means that we do speak about these things. But here's the thing. The kingdom, the gospel of Jesus is political. Yeah. But it is not partisan. Right, right. And the distinction between those two is so fundamental. You can't say Jesus is Lord and say we're not political. Yeah.

I mean, Hauerwas would say the statement Jesus is Lord is the absolute climax of political statements. Yeah. Oh, yeah. absolute climax of political statements. But the minute we wed the kingdom of Jesus with a partisan system, that is where we jack it up. And both sides have done it right now. I mean, both sides have done it. And the third way is going to be so painful, because if you're actually preaching the whole kingdom, you're going to get crucified on both sides. And it seems like, and I would love to hear your thoughts on this, because you're in a college context, you're in a more progressive environment as a very firmly Orthodox Christian,

which I'm sure creates loads of pastoral opportunities for you. It seems like when one side of the partisan spectrum hunkers down or gets more obnoxious, it just creates the same thing, a reaction on the other side. So it just keeps getting, like the polarization keeps feeding off of each other. Have you noticed among a younger audience, the problem that maybe you're identifying that just kind of swing in more of a progressive direction is becoming very common among young people. That's the stereotype. But is that stereotype more or less true in your context? It's true. It's true everywhere right now. You know, in a marriage,

you learn this. I've been married for 17 years. My wife, Quinn, we're best friends. When you've been married that long, the other person usually starts doing the thing that you're not good at. So I just found over the years, 17 years, there are things that I do that are really, I'm really good at that she's not good at things that she does that I suck at. And, you know, in a marriage, you're committed together in fidelity. But what's happened now is it's like a we've become a marriage that's it's that it's divorced but both side is now doing the other side what the other side doesn't know how to do so the right does some stuff that the left doesn't do and the left does some stuff that the right doesn't do and across the board it doesn't matter again we're hitting both sides

here so for example i have a student and I think that this is paradigmatic of what's happening right now for all of us. I have a student comes in my office a few weeks ago and I did a lecture on first and second Corinthians and talked about sexuality from a Pauline perspective. And I have a student in my class who's progressive and I'm a more historic kind of Orthodox on the, on the, on the, on the topic. And I ask her, I say, so when you read Paul and you read the Bible, what do you see? What, what does God think? And she says, well, I think when the Bible was written, God thought a certain way about it. And she says, but I think now I think God's evolved.

She says, I think God thinks is more open minded and sort of changes view. And I looked at her and I said, and I at the time that I said this, I didn't really even conceptualize what was coming out of my mouth. Like in theology in the raw, you just say it and then realize later what you said was actually really important. I said to her, I said, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Are you talking about God or yourself? And what I realized when I said that was she wasn't actually describing God. She was describing her own journey. And we have a word for that. It's called projection. and what we, we have a word for that. It's called progression.

We are all now projecting onto Jesus, our own journey. We think God is where we are. It's the classic Reinhold Niebuhr. God made us in his image, but we've been really good at returning the favor. I've not heard that. That's brilliant. That's, I mean, so true. We are all now, and we have a word for this, by the way, it's called idolatry. We have a word for this, which is making God in our image. And it is on the right and the left. On the right, God is being made into a conservative Republican. And on the left, God is a hippie that's cool with

anything. And both sides are creating their own golden cows. And it's when you, when you worship one of the ideals of God, when you worship an ideal of God, one of the ideals in the Bible is justice. One of the ideals of God in the Bible is rest. one of the ideals in the Bible is justice. One of the ideals of God in the Bible is rest. One of the ideals in the Bible is sanctification. One of the ideals in the Bible is worship. But the minute you begin to worship the ideal, you are committing idolatry. You are worshiping an attribute of God over God himself. So we worship justice. We worship compassion, we worship truth. That's

idolatry. I mean, the classic example is like marriage or family, you know, two obviously goods of creation that God created, but how easily they can become idols in our lives. I mean, yeah, idolatry is often of something that is intrinsically really good or possibly neutral. But it's what we, yeah, when we give our allegiance to that good thing, then that's when it becomes problematic. No, it's good. I'm curious, when you talk like this, AJ, with a more progressive leaning younger crowd, do they kind of rethink maybe some of their allegiances or, um, or how does it sink in? But, but only as long as I'm willing to leverage the same critique of the right as I would for the left. Right. And it, here's the sign that, you know, your preacher has turned to ideology over

the gospel is if in your church, the left is always the offended one. Yeah. Um, or if the right is always the offended one. Um, Or if the right is always the offended one. I think the only way that gospel preaching can happen effectively is if all of us, as Paul says, let every man be a liar and God be true. If we are only offending one side, then we have drunk from the keg of ideology. But when everyone, everyone finds himself at the foot of the cross as broken as the other, that is the sign that we're doing it well. So, yes, I do hear progressives rethinking what they're thinking. But that's because I'm willing to call conservatives in my class as equally as I will the progressives. I'm telling you, the way of the future, the church of Jesus, the righteous mind, Jonathan Haidt, the only way to heal the righteous mind is through a gospel that can look both sides of the ideology in the face and say, bull roar. So good. It is only the gospel that can do that.

Because without that, tribalism is all that's left. Yeah. So we talked, I think it was six months ago. And gosh, that was pre-election. We're still 2020. Here we are. We're recording this mid-March 2021. New president, new shift in whatever. Trump trump the scent of trump is still lingering but his with his twitter account gone that you know it's a

weird we're we're in a weird time how have you reflected on let's just say the first three months of 2021 um yeah yeah how have you processed? So little of my reflection has been on the presidential stuff that my heart, uh, has been overwhelmingly drawn to the experience. So many of us are facing of seeing our heroes in the faith be shown for being very broken people. Uh, the Ravi's situation. I mean, I had to go through and edit multiple lectures as a result of, you know, and it is weird. It's funny how, you know, it's not appropriate right now to be using Ravi content, but I'm completely fine quoting the Psalms, which is very weird that I'm okay using David, but not Ravi. There's a conversation to be had there.

Or, I mean, we wouldn't be able to quote from MLK. We wouldn't be able to quote from Jonathan Edwards. I mean, again, I hate even saying it. I should go without saying obviously I don't want to whitewash anything Ravi did at all. Obviously. But

there is a profound brokenness among many humans, especially as the distance gets... This came up in the nonviolent conversation with Yoder. Yoder is a big, you know, the politics of Jesus, you know, big John Howard Yoder. I mean, brilliant, brilliant theologian, but there was sexual abuse allegations that came out more recently. So people have kind of rethought that. And I just, I don't brilliant, brilliant theologian, but there was sexual abuse allegations that came out more recently.

So people have kind of rethought that. And I just, I don't know, I really do wrestle with that. Like, can somebody have a legitimate contribution to our own spiritual journey and be profoundly unrepented and broken? Not just broken, but like actually like doing really bad things and, and, and, and being abusive and so on. Is it, is it, is it content of what somebody is saying perpetually tied to their unrepentant sin? Like, does that just detract away? I mean, MLK is a classic example that that dude is a womanizer and misogynistic and obviously a profound leader. And, and I mean, we owe obviously so much good to the work that he did. And can we hold both intention? I don't know. Do you have any, I mean,

help me with this. Yeah, no, I think, I think, well, to your question that you asked, you said what, what in the last three or four months has really stuck out to you? I'm, I have really gone through some shifts in how I think about, um, sainthood. So, so, you know, Catholics have, Catholics have the idea of, of sainthood, which is that you can be a saint as long as you did a miracle and you're dead and you love the church, but you have to be dead. You can't be a saint and be alive.

And a lot of evangelicals would say, well, sainthood is bad. We're just looking at the past, and it's all about tradition. And the more and more I think about it, there is a real—evangelicals do have saints, but they're not based on much. They're based mostly on platform and size of churches and how many books they've sold. And the more and more I think about the crises we are facing as evangelicals is that all of our saints are around right now. And I don't think the living can handle sainthood. I don't think the living can handle being our heroes. I think that it's too much pressure. I mean, I look at Joshua Harris, right? The story of Joshua Harris,

who wrote A Kiss Dating Goodbye. He was like 18 years old when he wrote a book that sold 3 million copies, 16 years old. That's too much. That's too much pressure. And we are putting sainthood on the living when I think really only the dead can handle it. I think I'm beginning to – here's what I'm trying to say. I'm really shifting in the way I think about our sources. And I am more and more and more apt to read dead Christians over living Christians. Yeah. Well, there's – for various reasons really. I mean, I think being a, well, not just scholar, a scholar, not in the formal sense, but somebody who is well, has loads of wisdom, knowledge on certain areas, right? A

thought leader. Being a thought leader in the post-internet world is really different. And there's pros to that, but there's also cons too. I mean, just our ability to do what Kyle Harris calls a deep work, to the Jonathan Edwards who would sit there and linger on a thought for 10 hours with no distractions or whatever like that. Just the way our minds are being reconfigured through social media, through cell phones and internet, it's reshaping how we even do. And we don't know the ongoing social ramifications of this. But there is something, although to your point,

I think there is something really pure about older thinkers just because the way you went about being a knowledge expert was really different and took a different kind of spiritual discipline almost, you know? Preston, I think there's an interesting, somebody's got to write this book, this dissertation. Maybe it's been written. I haven't found it. But some investigation on how social media impacts our theology. Social media really impacts us on an emotional level. We are deeply moved by compassion and injustice and seeing wrongs. Those things really impact us. There's a good side to that. I mean, the fact that we have imprecatory Psalms, we're supposed to feel rage about

injustice. We're supposed to be mad about those things. That's good. But there's a dark side. And that is that increasingly, we are making theological decisions for emotional purposes. We are being moved emotionally, and as a result, are changing core Christian beliefs, because we're mad, or because we feel a certain array of emotions. Somebody has got to write on the relationship between the emotions that social media brings and our theology. Because I have a suspicion more often than not nowadays, we make most theological decisions because we feel a certain thing. And I think you and I both agree that when emotions become the main reason that we make theological decisions, that's a bad trajectory. Totally. Oh, man.

Yeah. I think, why don't you write that book, AJ? Or maybe John Mark would be a good one to do that too. Yeah, somebody that has, yeah. And the way, you know, two weeks ago, I preached at John Mark's church on this topic of doubt and deconstruction and to hear him describe the kinds of visceral responses that somebody like him faces for simply holding kind of core Christian beliefs at this moment in history is really astounding. And I think, you know, when I'm in places like Kansas or Texas, and I tell them about these

experiences, or the few people that I know who live in Boise, Idaho, to say that experience is on its way. It's on its way. It's going to get harder and harder. Yeah, absolutely. Emotions are powerful. The social media, I ended up deleting all my social media off my phone. I deleted all my news apps because I just, I mean, once you peek behind that curtain, you see that the truth, not even truth, I don't want to use that term, the event, the thing that's being mediated to you that is stealing your affections, it's firing you up. Maybe it's righteous anger. Maybe it's injustice that's being passed down through a news clip. That is so heavily filtered through a narrative designed to draw you into their camp.

I just don't trust anything anymore. People say conspiracy theory. I think everybody's into it. There's so many. Not conspiracy theories. Obviously, those are wrong and bad and terrible and everything. theories obviously those are you know wrong and bad and terrible and everything but like there's just such narrative soaked mediums that are that aren't trying to give us like the event the truth they're trying to draw us into a certain camp or critique a certain camp and i'm just like i don't

i don't need that i've got enough real humans in front of me to care for uh in my embodied context that um that alone can take that you know take my time. So I just, yeah, I agree. I just wonder how much discipleship hindrance is happening because people are spending too much time online. I mean, it's so cliched, but I mean, it's just so true. I don't know, man. St. Augustine in one of his sermons coined the phrase virginity of the mind. And he's talking about distraction as an enemy, an antichrist, as an enemy to the enfleshment of the gospel. You know, when you're a pastor, for 10 years, I was a pastor in Portland. When you're a pastor and you would literally die to be in the room with people to pray for them on their deathbed, when you would drop everything you're doing to be there for people and to serve them on the ground,

the experience of having those people be more formed by the podcast they listen to, by people who they'll never know over you is the most disheartening experience in the world. It is like, as a pastor, it's like being replaced. You, you, you are no longer needed because I've got this podcast that I listened to that gives me talks, um, that is disembodied and I never need to hold accountable. Um, Patreon has become the new tithe and in this new environment we are replacing the flesh and blood with digital environments it's not that we're not being pastored

we're just being pastored by the liturgists we're just being pastored by our favorite podcast you get a little close to home here man with all due respect to the liturgists and to you, I have my own podcast called In Faith of Doubt that I just started with Nije Gupta. Podcasts are terrific. There's a reason. There's a cottage industry of podcasts about deconstruction. They exist because the church has for years not allowed people to have questions in the church.

The minute you create safe environments for people to bring their questions to church, those podcasts can't exist anymore. I just lost a few Patreon supporters. No, no, you know me. I will go here, both feet in. How should we – because I agree that even my podcast, which has grown over the years, especially in the last year, it's really, the audience has grown. And I get these emails that are just that. It's like, finally, you're having conversations that I don't hear in the

church. And I'm like, that's so sad. Like, I'm just talking about what stuff that everybody is already thinking about and doing so with a level of honesty, I hope, and hopefully some measure of thoughtfulness. To me, it's, this seems like a no brainer. So it's like, but am I, am I ultimately, and I'm willing to wrestle with this question. Am I on it at the end of the day, helping the problem or am I exacerbating it? Or is it too early to tell or is it a both and? I mean – No. See, this is not a critique of – this is not a critique across the board of podcasts in the same way that it's not a critique of the higher education system that I work in.

You could make the critique, well, we shouldn't need the university if the church was a place where people were learning. That's not what we're saying. We're saying when it replaces the flesh and the blood. And what I mean by that is, I remember when Donald trump won the election and the worst day in the world was having to lead on that sunday because you have half a church that voted for and half that voted against and everybody in the room walked away disappointed that I didn't give them everything they wanted.

And what we need is we need environments where we can learn to be let down at a rate we can handle and come around the flesh and blood of Christ, the communion elements, the gospel of Jesus. So we're all disappointed together around Jesus. Here's what I don't like about podcasts is I can find podcasts that tell me everything I want to hear. And I think that's a dangerous place where we can surround ourselves with people that scratch my itching ear. Because you're choosing which one you want to listen to. It's not like here is the podcast that you're going to listen to sometimes it's going to challenge you sometimes it's going to resonate with you but it's going to keep you in that healthy uncomfortable space i love when i come to church and i come to church angry at something that happened in the world that

week i love it that i get to sit in church and the experience of not having my issues perfectly dealt with up front, that I don't get what I want. I get what I need. I am drawn to the front to believe in Jesus, lay my life down, and ingest a cracker and some juice to follow Jesus. I need a place where I am let down. And I don't get everything I want. I need that. Yeah. So, man.

And I guess part of podcasting, it's filling. Well, I mean, it's not too different than books have been for the last 500 years. Here you have people reading John Piper books, John Piper books, John 500 years. Here you have, you know, people reading John Piper books, John Piper books, John Piper, maybe they have a cassette sermon, you know, and so their discipleship is being radically shaped by somebody who's not their pastor, lives in a different state, they'll never meet. And then they go to church and there's that tension, right? Well, yeah, but John Piper says this or whatever. So in his, I mean, post printing press, right? I mean, this has been

this tension of your identity and discipleship and submission to leadership being in the local church and yet having outside influences and voices and even allegiances that might be healthy. I mean, help me out here, Patreon supporters. I hope that, yeah, this podcast is ultimately producing discipleship goodness in people's journey. And yet I do want to... So let me give you another example because you know about Eternity Bible College. You even taught it for a brief time. When I taught at Eternity Bible College, we deliberately didn't have chapel. We deliberately didn't have chapel.

We deliberately had really low level discipleship programs because we wanted to cultivate a thirst among students to find that in the local church. And we knew that we could probably pull off a really good chapel. We can get Francis Chan to preach at it, whatever. We get AJ down to preach at it. We'll probably handpick the best music. We could pull off a good version of a church experience. Like we can pull off a good version of a church experience. We can probably pull off great discipleship. I mean, half of our professors

have master's degrees, PhDs. Like we can do really robust discipleship. But is that helping our students find their allegiance to the local church? Not allegiance, maybe identity in the local church. So we actually wanted to do all that stuff really poorly or not do it at all so that they would find it in the church. Now students would come back and say, yeah, but it ain't happening. And I don't know what to do with that tension. I don't know. But it's the same thing we're talking about,

it seems like. Well, I'm not a Catholic and there's a reason I'm not a Catholic. There are a lot of reasons I'm not a Catholic, but there is a brilliance. There is a brilliance in the Catholic tradition around the Eucharist. And that is the sermon may be blah, the worship may be blah, it doesn't matter. But you have to take the flesh and the blood. You have to. And that is the high point is Eucharist, not the quality of the sermon. But the problem in evangelical Protestant circles now, the problem is we all gravitate like a group of unhappy church refugees from the best preacher to the best communicator to the best worship from thing to thing to thing. And there comes a point where we're not chasing Jesus anymore. We're chasing our adrenal gland and just chase a certain feeling.

Again, I'm not a Roman Catholic, but I am increasingly having a higher, higher view of the Eucharist as being the central high point in our gathering. Because friends, the church, if you've watched a TED Talk in the last 10 years, the church is way behind when it comes to just quality of communication content. I don't think the church's job is to compete with TED Talks. I think the church's job is to proclaim Jesus and him crucified, nothing else. And the highest moment that we do that is around a set of broken loaves and some broken grapes called grape juice or wine. And that is the high point. So this is not to critique. Listen, I have my own podcast. I believe in

podcasts. I listen to your podcast, and this is phenomenal discipleship content. But when we replace the Eucharist with this, that's a problem. Yep. Yeah. And I would be the first one to say this. I hope that my podcast supplements comes alongside someone's discipleship journey, but this cannot be a replacement for church. And yet I do get the emails for people that are de-churched, unchurched, more de-churched than unchurched, going back to our deconstruction conversation where they're, for whatever reason, just they can't, they haven't found family, community, and yet they want to follow Jesus. So they need some kind of community-ish experience. And in lieu of that, hopefully temporary exile in between this,

this is filling some kind of need. And yet I don't want this. Hear me in my audience. I don't want this to become your church. I am not your pastor. I can't be your pastor. And yet I do hope that this content helps you in your discipleship journey on some level. But man, I do, man, yeah, it's hard. It's both discouraging and encouraging when I get those emails from people saying, you have been pastoring me for the last couple of years because I've been in exile. I can't step foot in a church. It's triggering. It's traumatic. I can't do it right now. And look, I've been on similar journeys where going to church pushes me and my family away from Jesus and the gospel. And that's a whole nother conversation. Some of my audience knows

that. So I understand that feeling where going to a church service can actually hinder your faith walk. I think that is a thing. But I don't want this to be – I don't know, man. It's hard. We live in a weird world, man. We do. And church trauma, dude, the levels – when you – gosh, I have friends in my classes, students, people in my own church who when you hear the trauma that they walked through in a church, sexual abuse, getting hit on by elders in the church, I mean these sorts of things. That stuff has to be addressed head on. And from time to time, we all likely will go through a season in exile, what you're

talking about. And that is a holy, sacred moment. And you provide a conversation partner for people in the middle of that. And it is so good and important. But I know you, Preston, your hope would always long-term be restoration and reconciliation to the local church. You would always want that. 100%. 100%. I long for it. I envy it. When people talk about their church communities, they have, man, where they have this strong sense of community and identity and belonging and

high view of God. And they come and they're challenged by the word and the sacraments. I mean, I'm like, dude, I'm jealous. That's what I long for. This is kind of a related question, but somewhat a little bit different. But I've often thought this and I haven't formed formed a conclusion yet. This is probably 90% of my brain. So a lot of our forms of church were created and nurtured and were very successful at a pre-internet age. We're long past that now to where now, you know, somebody, you know, in the early 90s, if somebody wanted to hear an expert on the Bible expound on the Word of God and teach them, they had to wait till Sunday morning, maybe Wednesday night or Sunday night or whatever. So there was this almost like this need simply for the dispensing of biblical knowledge or even prophetic challenge, you know,

that had to, they had to go to church to get that. We live in a world now to where if you want to know the meaning of the Sermon on the Mount, you can find sermons by Matt Chandler, I don't know, figure payer preacher, John Tyson, or, you know, like, and like, if you really want to know a good, robust, applicable understanding of this text or that passage or this theme that you can get it within seconds, right? Does that alter that, that ability to find good, solid biblical knowledge, theological knowledge, doctrine, that a big, quick ability to find that, does that alter how we approach Sunday morning preaching? Have you thought through this and do you have an answer for that? Well, I do have a response, at least a sort of gut level response.

There has never been a time in history, right, where I could find the best biblical, I have Logos Bible software on my computer. I can find anything I want at any moment, anything. I don't need my pastor for biblical content. I don't need him. And you're absolutely right. We've got our sort of Protestant popes now, right? Our pipers are, you know, whoever they may be, we've got our new popes that we look at and esteem, and that's fine. That's absolutely great. We need these people to offer us really important theological insights. But there's one thing that content cannot do. And that is, content cannot shape character over a long period of time. And here's what I mean by that.

A family member of mine is in AA, and she told me that when COVID hit, AA went all online. So you would have your AA meetings online. And she said, they found very quickly that AA meetings, um, can't happen online. And I said, why can't they happen? And she said, because you can't smell. Oh my gosh. And the way that you can tell someone's drunk is you can smell them. You can do all the content in the world, but there is something that happens when we are in a room together that you can't do through

a Theology in the Round podcast. You can smell. Here's what I'm trying to say. Content is so great, but the real work of character formation has to include smell. We have to be in the room together. When you read the early church fathers, they always rip, they shred the monks that travel between monasteries. Because they say the monks that are always on the move between monasteries are secretly running away from something in their life. Wow. Wow. Yeah.

Gosh. From teacher to teacher, you go from church to church, you've forgotten the smell. There's something lost when we replace fleshness of the church with podcasts. There's something lost. What's hard here is like, and yeah, I will go to, and I don't have any specific church with podcasts. There's something lost. What's hard here is like, and yet I will go to, and I don't have any specific church in mind. So if anybody's listening and I went to your church,

but like you can, people, humans, Christians can go to a church service where there are many other bodies in the room. They can do that for many months on end and not find any sense of community or belonging. So does this mean that pastors, leaders should give greater attention to fostering that embodied community over maybe as much attention on making sure they are the primary dispenser of content and theological knowledge or whatever? I think you're really close. We don't need to put more pressure on pastors and leaders to do everything for us. We need the laity revolt. And we need the laity... You say revolt? I love that. Pitchforks. But we need the laity of the church, which is the priesthood of all believers, to take responsibility, the sacredness of greeting time. That the person that I'm sitting next to is flesh and blood that Christ drew into our midst.

And the pastor can't be everything to all people, so let's stop asking them to be. And we need to take the responsibility of being the laity of loving and serving the people that God put next to us on this Sunday morning. So no, we need to stop asking pastors to be messiahs, and we need to start stepping up and being lady that take responsibility of the priesthood of all believers. Well, what about, I 100% agree, I would maybe one caveat, there are certain kinds of rhythms of church that are better at fostering those kinds of things and other ones that aren't right. I mean, and then that does come from the, from the, not just pastor, but the leadership, like how are we creating a culture, not just opportunities. Like we have home groups on Wednesday nights, but like just the, the rhythm of the church is, man, if you're in this, if you've participated in this rhythm, you're, you're gonna, you're gonna be encountered and loved on because individuals are doing that.

They're being intentional, but also there's just opportunities and a culture of that kind of thing. Would that be? Yeah. Okay. If you're at, if you're sort of dancing around the size of the church thing, certainly there are certain models of church that make it very difficult to

embody the flesh fleshness of the church. A certainly there are certain models of church that make it very difficult to embody the fleshness of the church, 100%. Yeah. And just the way post-Christianity is coming about, I think we're all going to be forced into smaller church environments in the next 40 or 50 years. And I'm not all that sad about it. I think we're going to end up knowing each other a lot more in 40 or 50 years. I loved, um, when I first got to Cornerstone church where, where Francis Chan was a pastor at, um, what was it? 2009. We moved to Simi Valley, California. And as part of being on staff at eternity Bible college, you're also kind of on staff at the church and they had just, um, I think I could publicize all this. Let me just think real quick about, yeah. They had just made some radical changes in the ecclesiology

because it was very much, you know, it's Francis Chan, right? I mean, people are going to hear him and they want the experience. And he went out of his way to discourage that. He would sit there on a Sunday morning and say, why are you here? Go do something. Go away. Go. Don't be here. And he would double the size of the church. Oh, it felt so good. So convicted. He'd come back and do exactly what he said not to do. So he couldn't shake it. So they ended up, and I think the leaders would say, great vision. We implemented it really quickly. And we could have maybe done it a little smoother, but they ended up almost overnight, like canceling all the programs, divided Simi Valley, which is six miles by three miles into like a grid and said, okay, your primary identity is in your neighborhood. Each square mile has a group, a leader.

That's your church. These churches will also have come together on Sunday, but your primary kind of rhythm of identity of church is in your neighborhood. The other believers that are living in your neighborhood. I think great, I mean, great, great vision. Again, I think it was a little, I think maybe disciple people into that a little,

a little more, but yeah. Um, Francis isn't known for doing things slowly. He just kind of, um, the adrenal gland of the body of Christ. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but I, I do think something like that and I don't, man, I don't, I don't know. I don't know how to foster that or do that. But that kind of idea where your maybe more local community of believers is your primary ecclesial identity. And that's the rhythm of the liturgies of your faith. And the big gathering for big churches, I think those big gatherings can be incredibly powerful.

I used to be a little bit more down on like big, but now I'm like, dude, there's some of the most radical movements in my own discipleship journey and many others have encountered and a prophetic word from a large stage, you know, a worship experience. Like I think those are goods,

but they can't be, they're insufficient for fostering discipleship when that's all you have. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. I'm with you. Anyway, dude, after doubt, we never, I literally never even came back to the original question that you started. The anxiety, you said that you, and then we'll end with this,

you've never felt more anxiety kind of seeing a book released. Talk us through that just briefly, and then we'll close out. No, it's just real. You know, these are, I mean, I'm writing about 22 years of walking people through doubt and deconstruction. I've primarily spent 22 years serving the college age-ish group as a pastor, as a youth pastor, as a college pastor, as a now a university professor. And I would say that that stage of doubt and deconstruction is such a sacred stage and we need healthy dialogue partners to walk through it. And I

recognize the ideas in this book will impact people disproportionately because the decisions we make in those moments shape us for the rest of our life. And so in a sense, you know, when you're asked if you get nervous about preaching, you know, if you're never, if you're never nervous about preaching, then I don't know if you're preaching, like you're holding up the word of God and the word of truth and it should terrify you. Yeah, that's a good word, man. That's a good word. AJ, appreciate you.

Don't die anytime soon. Keep writing books. I know you've written a lot of books. I hope you keep writing more books. And yeah, so the book is After Doubt. What's the subtitle again? How can you question your faith without losing it and if you if you it's weird to yeah i have started recently a podcast called in faith and doubt which really is a way to think about the doubt and deconstruction stuff i feel a little disingenuous

now plugging a podcast on a podcast where i talked about we we hedged it enough and and uh nijay gupta is a mutual friend and he is one of the most, I mean, up and coming scholars, like evangelical scholars, who's just this guy. Yeah, I love Nije. I love Nije. He's super talented. So yeah, check out the podcast. AJ, thanks for being on Theology Narah yet again, man. I love you, Preston. Thank you, brother.