Theology in the Raw - How to Die and the Scandal of Christian Discipleship: Josh Porter

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

Joshua S. Porter is a writer, pastor, and former frontman of the art-punk band Showbread. After years of loud music and louder questions, he now teaches and writes about radical discipleship, faith after deconstruction, and the subversive way of Jesus. He is the author of Death to Deconstruction and How to Die: Chaos, Mortality, and the Scandal of Christian Discipleship. Josh pastors at Van City Church in Vancouver, Washington. Find him at joshuasporter.com. Join the Theology in the Raw community to listen to our "extra innings" conversation about Josh's behind the scenes peak into the Chrisitan rock music industry. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology and all. My guest today is my friend Josh Porter, who is a writer, pastor, and former frontman of the art punk band Showbred. After years of loud music and louder questions, he now teaches and writes about radical discipleship, faith after deconstruction and the subversive way of Jesus. He is the author of the outstanding book, Death to Deconstruction, and his recently released book, How to Die. The subtitle is Chaos, mortality and the scandal of Christian discipleship. Josh also pastors at Van City Church in Vancouver, Washington. So please welcome back to the show, the Wonderly, Josh Porter.

I'm great, man. Thanks for having me again. Yeah, I think there's like the third or fourth time. Yeah. Yeah, I'm trying to, like, break some kind of record. Whatever the current record is, I'm trying to break it. Who holds our record, Kotry? Is that, uh, Joey?

Joey's got to hold that record, right? Maybe Jay Newman's coming up there, too. Okay. Yeah, that's why I was like a, like a smoking robe or whatever the on Saturday Night Live. There's like a five club. All right. So, so Josh, how I always like to ask pastors, how is ministry going, going? Are you still, still a pastor and still a Christian?

probably not in that order, but those are both worthwhile questions to ask. Yes, to both. I am still a pastor. I am still a Christian. I like to make these defiant claims about things that I can't possibly promise along the long trajectory of a lifetime

because I can't predict the future. But, you know, I always tell people, it's like, when I'm dead, they'll go like, man, he really stayed a Christian, you know. So that thing's not. change and I'm assuming maybe at some point in life I won't be a pastor I still am a pastor presently and I won't bore you with all the details like it's been a wild season of I guess anybody who not just pastors anyone who carries out life in church community or with

other disciples of Jesus knows it kind of oscillates between mundanity and excitement and joy I mean all of relational life is like this and God this sucks there's conflict and you know brokenness so it's been the last few months have encompassed all those things yeah okay but uh but overall and this is not just to let me out of this uh you know heavy thing i just overall it has been really wonderful it's just it has encompassed all those things how many years have you been at van city has it been we're on year 10 now 10 for me you know like including the year of prep, so nine years, gathering on Sundays, 10 years as a church proper. So you're past the honeymoon. Is there a honeymoon? Is it three years?

I feel like with church plants, there's something about the three-year mark and the seven-year mark. Is that? Yeah, I think, I mean, like, I'm terrifically underread on church planting. Now, everyone was like, you need to read this, and this, God, they're boring. but I was told by people more experienced than me that most church plants don't survive the first year and then after the third year they settle into some kind of rhythm of normalcy and then we gave ourselves permission to stop calling at a church plant around year five so that's when it stopped feeling like the Muppet Show.

The Muppet Show. What is your greatest joy? in your pastoral role and what is your greatest I wish this would just go away in your pastoral role well I mean I honestly as I don't know pie in the sky as it sounds the when I was asked to be you know it wasn't an aspiration of mine I was doing music and writing and a friend of mine was like have you have you thought about becoming a pastor because I was just because I was into theology and the Bible. And he was like, I think that maybe you could communicate these ideas. And that's part of, not all of, but part of what it means to be a pastor. And so that was,

and that was the thing that connected in my heart and mind, I guess. I was like, I would very much like to assist other people in some way in their discipleship to Jesus. I would very much like to you know play some small part and empowering other people to be like i would i very much like reading the bible and i and i like a theology and it enables me to love god better and and be loved by god uh and that's the same thing uh that kind of thing even really tiny you know microchips of it where people are like oh that was helpful you know that thing that you said helped me understand this thing better it's like great uh all the way up to really big things in which i'm you know only only one cog in the like, oh, this church family came around me in some such way that

enabled me to follow Jesus. Real quick, is your primary mode of stepping into that role? Is that from the pulpit from teaching, is it one-on-one, is it random kind of casual relationships? I mean, obviously, as a pastor, is probably all the above, but where do you, where is your sweet spot in that area? I mean, yeah, and our church is small, so it inevitably encompasses everything, and not in a like, wow, I do everything kind of way, I just mean that, you know, we're a small community, small staff, so everyone does everything kind of thing. My primary position is like teaching on a Sunday evening, and so, and I think that that's like, not that I'm completely incompetent in a one-on-one capacity, but I think that that's where I can arrange.

ideas in a way that could possibly be helpful to someone, or most helpful to someone, and maybe someone would disagree. But, and then, of course, yeah, I think that, like, the cumulative effect of having, like, a group of people together that follow Jesus, a lot of the encouragement that I hear that means the most of me doesn't have anything directly to do with me per se, but it's more like they're grateful for this group of people or they're grateful for the story of this church. and through those things, they've been empowered to follow Jesus and all that, in whatever form it comes. That means a lot to me, and that's what I feel like God has asked me to do or what I believe God has asked me to do.

The other things that come, I mean, the things that I don't like are the same things anyone doesn't like, that we all rub each other the wrong way, that I'm busted, and so I hurt people, and people are busted, so they hurt me. And then you have to go through all the rigmarole of reconciliation. which is often just as painful as the hurting, or sometimes there's no reconciliation at all because we're so broken. So, you know, the closer that you get, the more vulnerable you become to one another.

But you can't, at least I believe, you can't follow Jesus without that proximity. I would imagine, I mean, you, I think I've said this before when you've been on, like you are kind of a unique pastor. I mean, you're a frontman of a punk rock band. covered in tattoos, and yet passionate about Christian orthodoxy, but also hold to non-mainstream views.

I mean, you and I share a lot of the same convictions about nonviolence and view of hell and other things. I would imagine you attract kind of a, not that the pastor is the attraction of the church, but inevitably, that's going to play a role. What kind of people does your Van City? attract. I would imagine it's kind of a diverse group, right? It is. Yeah. And it's nothing that I predicted, you know, like I, all of those things you said are, you know, true in that, I guess, like, in a lot of ways, I'm the unconventional candidate to be the, you know, the quote-unquote

lead pastor of a church. But I often forget that those things, and not in a like, I forget, you know, it's just like, you become preoccupied with other things and, you know, forget that, oh, I guess it's kind of weird that, you know, in some ways that I'm the pastor, but we somehow ended up collecting for ourselves mostly young families, like families with small children, and then people who have deconstructed at some point. So that, and I think that maybe the reason for the latter is what you mentioned about, I have and we have as a leadership team and teach a handful of orthodox but non, I guess, traditional for a non-denominational, quote-unquote evangelical church or however you want to describe it.

Because if you do come to our church on a Sunday, it resembles a lot of other non-denominational Protestant churches that you might visit on a Sunday. It's not like, wow, this place is crazy. You know what I mean? It has all the same building blocks that you'd come to expect from this kind of church. And yet, yeah, you know, like we hold certain things in our, even in our doctrinal statement about, you know, theological things. And so maybe that's one of the things that has attracted certain people who have deconstructed, at least deconstructed evangelicalism, if not Christianity proper.

And honestly, that's tremendously challenging because I, that's not, it wasn't a mission statement of mine. I was like, I want to gather around myself, people who have been hurt by the church. It's really hard to pastor people who have been hurt by the church because they anticipate that you're next. And they're kind of on the edge of their seat looking for fundamentalism or, you know, what they perceive to be conservatism. but you know so and in many ways like you said like uh orthodoxy is something that's not just important to me i mean as you know like that's what i think drives um the christian movement so uh orthodoxy is often perceived by the recently deconstructed or the you know deconstructing as fundamentalism it just depends on which shade or you know position theological position it might

be. So it's a really varied group in some ways it looks really suburban and in other ways it looks really like, I don't know, edgy sounds like a lame word, but you know, off the beaten path kind of like the rabble of we don't know what we think about church. We have a ton of people who are like serving and participating in church that don't know if they believe in God. Somehow we get those people and they're just helping make the coffee and if someone ends up with them and it circled up in a group to take community. They're like, no, I don't know. You know what I mean?

There's that old, that saying, you know, it was a belief, behave, belong, like, which one comes first? It sounds, I mean, have you noticed, just by what you just said, the significance and power of belonging? Have you, it seems like you really front load that a bit? Does that cultivate? Have you seen that cultivate belief and behavior? Yeah, I mean, well, it happened on accident because you,

end up with people that show up to church and they show up weekly and then they sign up to help in some capacity and naively early on, we're like, cool, this, you know, this dude or this gal wants to help and they're at church. So, you know, you make certain presumptions about what they must think. And sure, we don't know what they think on every little thing, but why else would they be here? And then you realize in conversation or in, you know, greater depth of relationship that's like oh wow like this person's agnostic or they claim atheism right now but they're on the fence or you know something like that and you're like huh okay well i mean where where do you responsibly place such a person i mean we had to work out policy sounds like a really

rigid word but you had to work out like what do we think about what it means for someone to play base in a worship bad do they need to be a christian at all do they need to be a certain like do they need to hold certain beliefs in tandem with the leadership. And so because of that, those presumptions, we had to figure those things out and found that in navigating, I don't know, maybe, and I'm not saying like our way is the only way or the best way, but we did make certain decisions. It's like, you know what? I think it's fine.

They don't know what they think. Let them come hang out and have. Obviously, everyone's welcome at church. But like, let them participate in this capacity or let them be. be involved in this capacity and we'll see where they go. And a lot of, and this is not like a, you know, we did it, but a lot of said people have come to faith over the years, you know, and not in a like fireworks kind of way, which would be awesome. I would love a story where people are just like, and then they broke down and worship and like we baptized them that night,

but more just like, I don't know, you know, after the 17th cup of coffee, they were just kind of like, yeah, I think I would like to follow Jesus. You're like, Great. You know what I mean? Yeah, there is no prescribed formula. I talk about this a lot because it comes up a lot, obviously, in sexuality conversations. You know, everybody can come and attend a service, but how far can they get involved, you know? And, you know, most people would say, well, leadership, we draw the line at leadership.

If you're on a leadership, then you have to, you know, believe what the church believes and be living, you know, trying to live accordingly. But what does leadership mean? You know, even that category can be fuzzy, you know. So it sounds like you've taken a more generous, generous approach to, in terms of requiring certain belief and behavioral standards for people to serve in various capacities at church. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, because of this unique, or maybe it's not that, you know, but because of the situation in which we found ourselves, we found ourselves also having to figure out, like,

or resolve those questions, you know, and our church plant was, no one was experienced. We didn't have anyone on the whole team that, like, we had a church that planted us, and they were experienced that we could kind of call them and say, hey, what do you do? And, you know, but on the ground, it was just like, I don't know, you know, what do you think? And so eventually we did come to a place where we, you know, we have a doctrinal statement like most churches, And we have, even beyond that, we have certain, you know, like agreements of lifestyle that are actually on paper and that to hold like an official, like, New Testament office of the church as like an overseer or as a deacon, you have to tell, look someone in the eye and be like, I'm in agreement with these things. for the sake of, you know, like official authority, spiritual authority. But then down the latter, even certain leadership roles, like leading a small group, you know,

our small group model are leading certain teams within, like, you know, the basic pragmatic stuff that helps church happen. Even, you know, like I said earlier, play bass in the band. It's like no one's going to, like, put a doctrinal statement in your face. What do you think about the Holy Spirit? It's just, we do see some value in being able to plug people into certain positions of leadership that are, we wouldn't describe as necessarily having spiritual authority in the church, but more like you're helping with alongside us facilitate this thing that we call church. All right. You've written a few books.

You just came out with this recent one. How to Die for my YouTube. viewers um i was reading it i mean i've been reading over the last couple weeks this morning i was on my couch reading it my son's looks over and he's like is that like one of those books or you're supposed to not do what it says to do that he's like should i tell mom should we be concerned uh i love your titles man i mean you you don't have any lazy thoughtless unprovocative titles The subtitle is chaos, mortality, and the scandal of Christian discipleship. This is a, it's a, it's a very unique book.

It's, it's, yeah, I don't even how to describe it. I mean, you've got like poems, you have the Nicene Creed built in. You've got some more, I guess, traditional, well, even the traditional, like, let's talk about, you know, what marriage means. Like, it's still very, very creatively written. It's a really different sort of book. But this is, that's who you are, it seems like. I mean, you're a very precise and thoughtful theological thinker, but you're also an artist. And so this book seems to merge those two.

Would that be an accurate description? Yeah, I think so. I mean, kind of by, I don't want to say accident, but like when, I mean, you know the process of like you pitch a book and you're like, I think, you know, this is the idea I have and it's kind of structured to the degree. that you can show it to someone and say, this is what I want to write, but in nonfiction anyway, the traditional format is you haven't really written the thing proper most of the time when you give it to the big wigs at the publisher. Originally, there was some creative spin on it, but it was going to be a teaching, and there's nothing wrong with books like this. I've written them before. I like them, but a more

traditional kind of like teaching book with discourse and you know essay writing sounds really dry but for all intents and purpose more essay like and uh and i was like i really just want you know because i've been asked so many times especially after having written this book called death the deconstruction which leaves people in a place at the conclusion of the book that some of them were like well i would like to be a christian what is it so what is uh the christian movement Because that book talks a lot about orthodoxy, and it talks a lot about the failures of certain, you know, like, expressions of church. And so they're like, well, great, I would like back in, but what is back in? And so what's the real, what's the essence?

And I think that in the modern kind of, you know, American, Protestant, non-denominational thing, there's a whole lot of, like, rediscovering the ancient practices of the church and all that kind of stuff, a lot of which is really wonderful. But it creates a sort of like, so what is the actual expression of Christianity? And when I see this one, does that mean that one's fake? And you have to look for these things? And do you have a book on that? And my answer was always like, well, I've got like a stack of really wonderful books. But no. So I was like, well, what if you did have like a single manual that couldn't possibly cover everything,

but it would give you like kind of a sweeping, grandiose, like, this is the big story. And that's what I pitched, and it was going to be more ceremony and more teaching, something more like death that deconstruction, or stuff that I've written in the past. And then you realize, like, this book is boring because you're trying to talk about the greatest story ever told and, like, the essence of the human condition and the love of God. and it keeps coming out like a you know a textbook entry no matter how like florid i make the writing and so i started to try to like ah but yeah let me read other people for inspiration and brennan manning ended up being one of the bigger inspirations for the book and his writing is way less essay like you know if you've read any of the like a more noteworthy or well-known you know books like Abbas Child or the Ragamuffin Gospel, they almost feel like journal entries

that, you know, climax to some kind of beautiful point. And he cobbles them together from like personal anecdotes and, you know, a quote from Flannery O'Connor and then here's this thing and then the next chapter starts. And it doesn't even have the traditional linear progression. I'm going to make this point, this point, this point, this point. And so I was reading writers like Manning and then a lot of writers who kind of write outside of the Christian tradition but but write books nonfiction that's outside of the expectation of what nonfiction usually is and was like I don't know I'll just try it like this and see what happens and you realized like to okay so to tell the story of Christianity you got to do like the

meta-narrative of the Bible easy you know and you got to do like the sermon on the out, no big deal. To do those kinds of things in a non-essay form, it just, it gets weird really fast, weird in a way that was exciting to me. Like when I realized, I'm just going to try it like this. And maybe I'll give it to the publisher and they'll be like, dude, what the heck is this thing that you've written? But when I found that voice, the voice of the book, I was like, this makes sense to me. And it still is the one volume manual that you hand to someone be like, well, this is the story, but it's like you said earlier. It's not the kind of that's like, what the heck, there's no three-point takeaway at the end of the chapter. It's more like,

but part of me thought like, well, that's consistent with the story of the scriptures. The scriptures don't present themselves in essay form or in a way that's immediately and easily digestible either. So at the very least, it's, you know, kind of the same spirit of the story of God, which is provocative and mysterious, but also at times really clear. And then you end up with a really weird book. So the older I get, the more I'm trying to pay attention to my health. And since I'm on the go a lot, I'm constantly looking for a healthy protein snack. This is why I was so excited when I came across mosh bars.

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slash theology thank you mosh for sponsoring this episode it is interesting how diverse the genres are in scripture that are directly kind of referring to the gospel in particular we know the bible's filled with different genres but even the gospel story is about a narrative about you know a virgin birth and it's also a parable about a pearl of a great price it's also you know uh a kind of a wild sci-fi story about a dragon trying to kill a woman you know and like but that that captures the the diversity of the human experience too doesn't it i mean um i think that's intentional that there's so many different genres and different ways and angles through which scripture the scripture talks about the gospel it's not just a creed although there are

creeds first christians 15 you know um and so on so um it does is that was that i mean is that is does that just kind of come intuitively to you because you do have this like hardcore like theological more left brainy ability to analyze theology but then this like hardcore like really creative side like like did you this book it just did it just come out of you or did you kind of plan like all right this time i'm gonna you know be a little more like linear and this time i'm maybe a little more poetic or it was like both things in tandem, meaning that once I kind of wrap my mind around, well, I'm going to take this approach and just see what happens. Then it became a little

less outlining, you know, because when you're writing something that's kind of essay structure, you outline it based on, I mean, a lot of Christian nonfiction that you read, in the introduction, you'll get a, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to make this point, then this point, so that you'll see this. And it's helpful. You're like, great, okay, I see the map. I know where we're going. And I did have a map in terms of, like, well, you know, I divided into three books. Part one, I'm going to do stories from the Bible that will make any of this make sense in theory. And then in the second book, I'll do the sermon on the mountain.

And then in the third book, I'll do the practical stuff. And even when you sit down like that, so I was like, great, that makes sense to me. And I made the decision that I'm like, I don't, I want one of the challenges I gave myself is I want to finish it without any footnotes. because a book without footnotes means that, you know, like, I'm relying on storytelling less than, like, quotes or citations. And, you know, my previous books are absolutely like most Christian nonfiction. They're filled with footnotes. And then you can't call on somebody else's expertise, at least not in the specific sense. So it's like even doing something like the Sermon on the Mount, you know, I'm reading all these other smart.

harder people and then trying to communicate what they're communicating about the context and history of the sermon on the mount but without actually stopping to say so in the first century you know what i mean like you're just trying to build that into uh and keep it like jesus small sound bites you know that are really provocative and packed and like you said as soon as you even start to mess with the sermon on the mount you're like ha lee he does he in one little block of teaching we'll do like plain speech discourse a word picture a metaphor some crazy theological allusion to the old testament and then something offensive and it's like so do that and then he'll be just moves on to the next thing you know and so you've got to find some way to pack all that in to you know

two or three pages because in your ordinary New Testament, it's like, you know, three inches of teaching. And so I'm like, oh, okay, well, here's what Scott McKnight said. How do you translate that into this, and N.T. Wright's idea about whatever, you know. Once I was like, I know what I want to do, that makes it easier. But I used to, when I was, like, I would take little writing breaks to go work on this freaking book and every time I would be texting my wife and I kept calling it this stingiest book

ever because it felt like you'd agonize over like two sentences and be like, okay, those are good. Those are some good sentences whereas ordinarily with less parameters I could kind of like, I don't know, bang it out a lot faster.

It did come out in conceptually but on the actual page. I had to really fight that thing. Let's drill down into the three books, the three books within the book. So the first one, you title it, The Ruiner. That doesn't leap off the pages like in terms of like, what's this about? Why that title and then maybe highlight some distinct parts within that portion. And then I want to, we'll go through the other two portions and and do the same. well you know like uh in terms of like i'm a titles kind of guy i like i really think a lot about

like uh what what to call the thing in such a way that encapsulates uh with some aesthetic consistency and i do like um there to be clarity and something cryptic kind of paired together uh and i like it when titles kind of give up their immediate meeting to only to a degree. And then once you're kind of invested in the work, like, you're like, oh, now I understand a little more why it's called what it's called. So Death of Deconstruction is an easy example that it's just like makes people upset when they see them. They're like, what the heck? I love decon. And then ideally, if someone actually does read it with an open mind, you're like, oh, it wasn't exactly talking about what I thought he was talking about it ends up being a lot more about even just life and death in general so i like

that kind of i like that kind of payoff and i don't mind if it doesn't pay off to someone who's not fully invested and i'm also like uh you know the titles within the title and you know i go in every book with like a i need to know what the first line and the last line are going to be those are like the two most important bits of writing to me in the book uh and then up beneath those are the like kind of chapter headings or book titles. Ruiner was something that as soon as I started drafting and had an idea, okay, it'll be three books and they'll be these three things. That word came to mind and I just put it as a placeholder because it wasn't even immediately

evident to me. Like, where does that come from? Is it some, you know, like it just sounds cool to me or is there some subconscious thing there? And I was like, I'll put it on. I'll probably end up changing it. But the more that I wrote, the more that I felt. like I was populating the meeting of it.

And then the folks at David C. Cook, the publisher, they put, I think it's a banner on some of the promotion of the book. It might be on the back of the book that says something about like following Jesus will ruin your life, which isn't something I told them to do, but I think is consistent with the idea. This like being, you know, everything came from the how-to-die idea and the Bonhoeffer quote that opens the book when Christ calls a man he bids him come and die

and the Jesus word picture of take up your cross and so the prerequisite to discipleship in Jesus' really provocative language is like you gotta give up everything that you thought you needed and you have to all the language that's now become deeply familiar to church culture about you have to die to yourself but it's such a really jarring

way to invite someone into like you know fully realized humanity is you have to die like a and so i thought like well i mean like in one sense ruiner kind of tells the story of humanity is a big predicament that you know like god made things good we along you know with evil in the world have kind of ruined everything um and so the The story of the scriptures becomes God's rescue mission. And in another sense, Ruiner kind of prefaces what follows, which is the teachings of Jesus in that like the expense of discipleship. You know what I mean? I love that.

Yeah, you have that famous Bonhofer quote. And then on the next page, you have a quote by Nietzsche. This book belongs to the very few. I love that so much, man. That's, yeah, it read the book, you just, it's, it keeps you on your toes. Like, especially if you read a lot of Christian nonfiction, you just, you almost can be a passive reader where you almost can anticipate what's going to come next. And this book does not allow you to anticipate what's going to come next.

How would you, what's the main, so this is kind of the, the meta narrative of scripture, trying to get, you know, the, the overarching story down. What are some key, like, if someone is going to, like, summarize how the 66 books of the Bible kind of summarizes the meta-narrative scripture, what are some, like, really key points that are really fundamental that you think people should grasp? Well, you know, so I've done it in a few big swoops in the, in that first book in Ruiner. The one is the metanarrative proper, which is, I think I called something like a short note on the history of life and death. and then in that you do what you'll get at a seminary class which is like creation and the fall and then Israel and exile and you know the big building blocks of the metanarrative Jesus and the church and the renewal of all things and encompassing all that in something that's a little more of a literary structure as opposed to the seminary structure but then beyond that you write that part and you kind of go like the that's it, right? And I started to look for, well, what are some components of the Hebrew scriptures that people a lot smarter than me think are intended to encapsulate the story of God

in a meaningful way? And right away, you know, you read like, well, Exodus. Exodus is in many ways like the salvation story, the desert, and the freedom. And it captures all those big movements in a way that the trick, I guess, is that like anytime the New Testament authors or Jesus himself call on something a lot to explain what's happening, then it probably has some kind of great meta significance for the entire story of the Bible. And then one that was surprising to me was Ruth. You know, I read a lot of scholars that were arguing that Ruth in a lot of ways, in a really simple and sweet kind of way tells the story of, you know, like lost hope and salvation and redemption in a way that, and then actually leads into the story of the Messiah in an explicit way

through genealogy, but, you know, leads into it nonetheless. And I was like, oh, that's kind of interesting. How do you retell Ruth in a way if that's? And I liked the idea of it of feeling to the reader a bit like, like you said, like you expect to get certain components. Maybe even Exodus is something, you know, we've got the Prince of Egypt, so it's not like a lesser known book of the Bible. We've got Charlton Heston. But, okay, so the metanarrative, Exodus, that kind of makes sense. And then Ruth, Ruth, you know what I mean? But trying to put those stories on the page in such a way that's like these are for many people really deeply familiar stories and tell them from angles that might surprise and the way that I did that was like I'm actually praying through

these passages like using lectio divina reflecting on the words and um you know one kind of uh traditional lectio divina practice is like okay well I'm putting myself in the through the eyes of a character in the story and like what does it mean to read this and imagine that I might be Peter or that I'm not whatever and the more that I did that I'm like yeah but this angle's really familiar that angle's too familiar and so the Exodus story like at one point I was like oh what I'm just reading the kind of slaughter of innocence and like all these babies go into the Nile which is again really familiar to the point of numbness that like that's a pretty barbaric and horrific even amongst the stories in the Hebrew scriptures it's pretty wild what was that

like for a mom, you know, that you just imagine the scene itself, not like the lifetime that follows a tragedy like that or a trauma like that. And so the story of Exodus in Ruiner is told through the eyes of like a mother who had lost two sons to the Nile and then experiences the redemptive work of God as an old woman and is resistant to it because, you know, from where where she stands is like, well, where was my salvation when I needed it, which I feel is, you know, often the question that the disciple of Jesus asks when we see redemption and justice in the world. It's like, well, how come there's not more or why haven't, why didn't I have it in my time of need? So you're trying to make these things not like relatable in a lame, like it's just like you kind of way, but in a way

that jars the reader back into how provocative the story is on the page. But we need like language and history and context to get to that scandal sometimes. So how do you like bring the reader right into it without having to do a bunch of, you know, seminary work? It's so good. Wow. Yeah, Ruth, I just spent some time recently in Ruth. And it is fascinating how, I don't know, deeply theological it is, you know?

I mean, in seminary, it's like, yeah, you got the genealogy at the end and God uses this woman and grafts her into the genealogy of Jesus. And that, okay, so that alone is like, oh, wow, gosh, this is more than just a heartwarming story. it's interesting that Ruth is set in the context of the judges. The judges, I mean, judges is basically the fall. It's like an expanded version of the fall, right? I mean, if all these people just over and over and over echoing the sin of Adam, and then Ruth pops on the scene. And you even have some key words like, uh, Hesed is used. I think in chapter three that her covenant faithfulness, you know, was praised among many or something. You have,

you have, um, what was it, Leah and Rachel at the end? It says that, you know, they help build the house of Israel or David or something like that in that term build is used of like God building David a house that would ultimately lead to the Messiah. It's almost like you just have this like these layers of just theological depth in the book

and Kinsom Redeemer, obviously the theme of redemption and everything. So yeah, it's fascinating, man. It's so sad when books do get so familiar that yeah, you kind of turn into autopilot when you're reading them. And yeah, I mean, your book does such a great job preventing that from happening.

okay sermon on the mount why i guess it's kind of a softball question but why of all the passages in new testament why the sermon on the mount do you see this is kind of like the heart of christian ethics um as many do yeah you know i mean like uh i this not to be like you know punk rock about the but like even back when i was young or on the even on the fence or deconstructing myself like the sermon on the mount was always the kind of this like man this thing is crazy and the imagery in it is wild and the um the invitation seems borderline unrealistic uh but the the heart of what was presented even as a you know completely dumb adolescent was just like i think probably most people it's like it's not hard to like the even if you're

looking at it like an impossible ideal. You're like, this sounds good. But then, of course, the more you get into it and learn the depth of, like, scholarship. This is like the canon within the canon that, like, the core teaching of Jesus in the sermon on the mount and everything and not just explicitly taught, but inferred by it, like how, you know, everything in the teaching is relational. Like, it has to be carried out within the context of relationships. This things that you take for granted that, I mean, and you know, obviously the heart of Jesus'

is teaching on nonviolence and the present, like everything that we get about enemy, like, just in their little blocks of text. And in your New Testament, they're like, in this much writing, he says something that continues to provoke the entire world for hundreds and hundreds of years. That's some serious, like, artistic sophistication as a teacher. it's like obviously without peer and everything that you want to communicate about Christian life

is condensed into the sermon on the mountain you know like obviously like I said earlier the book's not meant to do everything but I thought like if you can do the sermon on the mount you could like contain the heart of discipleship in terms of like you know the kingdom manifesto or however you want to describe the sermon on the mount I haven't gotten there yet

so with the sermon on the mouth do you Do you explicitly talk about nonviolence? Like, do you see that as kind of like a, how do I say it? Like, some people lean this direction, you know, they go all the way, but we shall just generally love our enemies as a general posture. Or do you kind of push nonviolence as kind of like this is a Christian ethic? I think I probably push nonviolence as a Christian ethic. And the reason I say it like I don't even know is I will admit that, well, it's your, I mean,

it's partly your fault. But I've been thinking along these lines for so long that there's, certain things I take for granted about and it's not I mean like I do understand and you're much more gracious about this than I am but I do understand that there's like a you know a spectrum of agreement and disagreement in terms comes to like the application of nonviolence or enemy love but one thing I was trying to do honestly is like uh again like I said if you read all these different uh Bible scholars and everything they say like well to understand this part you have to understand this about Jerusalem. You have to understand this about the ancient world. And there's

this theory about the gate, but then there's this theory about the gate. And you want to get out of the weeds of being like, look, there's three theories, you know, and you want to get out of the weeds of like, well, first you have to understand what this word means. And instead, distill it down to where you can communicate the essence of those interpretations in a way that doesn't sound like an essay. And so, you know, I don't think that I intended to be like, look, this is it this is the only way and so here's what it has to say about the military and nothing like that but i do present it as in the in the in the section it's called the law of grace um as opposed to the law of retaliation i tried to summarize it in a way that i think is consistent with the way

it was expressed and summarized by the early christians um which is the you know uh abstinence from violence and warfare and then I don't bring that to bear on like contemporary politics or anything like that but I do summarize it in the way that I and maybe someone will disagree with me but I felt like it was like I mean if you look at the writings of the you know the New Testament in the early church like this is probably how they would have described it as well and you do with that what you will you know what I mean I love that about your writing yeah you're not you're not afraid to say what you think I mean I mean When it comes to nonviolence, I've, over the years, I just, I don't, I totally get that taking a, like, a position of absolute nonviolence that in every case, in every situation, Christian should never use violence, which is where I end up landing.

I'm sympathetic to people that say, yes, yes, yes, but what about, okay, but if an axe murder is breaking into your home. and wants to rape your wife and kids and chop off your head, then maybe in those situations, you know, you can use violence. I'm like, okay, we can debate that. But if that's, if, if, if the overwhelming pattern and posture and commitment of the Christian, the global Christian church is nonviolent, with some maybe individual exceptions, I can, I can, I, that's a world I can live in, for sure. Those are tough questions.

They really are. Like, what would I do when the axe murder breaks in, you know? Like, I, I don't know. of all hypotheticals. I know, really? Yeah, like I'd probably grab a bigger axe, you know? I don't know. But if, to me, it just seems pretty indisputable scripturally and even historically speaking,

because maybe prior to Augustine, historically speaking, that the global Christian church should be known as a passionate, nonviolent people. So that when, you know, countries are at war with each other and civilians are being, massacred, the Christians aren't supporting that. They're like, that's evil, and you are an evil nation, and you should repent, and God's going to judge you, whether you're a Christian living in China, protesting what its government's doing somewhere else, or whether you're a Christian living in the country now called America and all the many wars that that country is involved. Like, like, the Christian church should be

known for, first of all, not getting on board with that little and supporting it, but like protesting it like okay axe murder breaks in kill him but our overwhelming general posture should be one of like oh that's the religion that does not resort to violence they have horror violence they

they protest violence like I just don't I mean I don't know to me that seems like a very very basic reading of the New Testament and a clear reading of the first 300 years of how early Christians read the New Testament yeah but Jesus whipped people to temple didn't he I'm like

Well, it doesn't quite say that, but okay, okay, maybe if you're cleaning a temple and you need to snap a few tails with the way, okay, okay, again, maybe there are some fringe, you know, instances, but the core of the gospel, I believe is the death and resurrection of Jesus. You could debate that, which is clearly a display of like conquering evil through nonviolence when he had legions of angels at his hand when he could have just like, he could have just, dude, he could have like taken out the Roman Empire with a smack of his finger. and he chose to submit to violence and that has theological meeting according to 1st Peter 2 and other passages so I I don't know I'm not preaching to the choir although people listening may not be further away honestly I know you know this as well but I it seems to me that in all the very legitimate and often worthwhile discourse around and debate around nonviolence what gets lost almost immediately is the

essence of what Jesus communicates actually pretty clearly in the sermon on the Mount in his whole like well you need to be like in his language perfect or maybe a better way or a more understandable way for us

to hear it is like you need to be like brought to full maturity and completion like God you know and so it's like the emulation of the heart of God and we kind of turn it into like an ethics thought experiment i know i have like a bazillion times and then you're kind of you know and i and i'm with you i i know that this sounds like the most posary thing to say

but having kids like changes the you know when people say the whole as long as i've been thinking about nonviolence you get that mother of all hypothetical somebody breaks into your house so they got a gun and i'm like when will i ever be in the position where it's like the wild west and i've got this gun here like i don't even have a gun a loaded gun already so you got you got got a loaded God nearby. But sure, for the sake of a thought experiment, you know, and when I hear stories about horrific things happening to children, you're, you know, like I'm a broken person like everybody else.

My mind goes to like, if, you know, my own family and this happens to me, and you become in your heart a violent person, which reveals, I think, the essence of what Jesus was saying. So, like, I think those conversations are obviously worthwhile because I engage. them all the time or stir them up myself but the question you know like of like well it becomes questions of like what's practical or what you would what you want to do and not a question of like like what does it mean to be a person of love that that is even willing to love enemies to the degree that god loves his own enemies um i don't know i don't know exactly what that means in

every single applicable situation per se but it probably doesn't doesn't mean killing people. You know what I mean? That's kind of the, and what would you do? I don't know what I would do. I'm pretty busted. So I hope that I hope that I could be a person empowered by the spirit to think of an option aside from kill or be killed.

I don't know that I would. I definitely don't have a gun, so I'm screwed in the mother of all hypotheticals at least. But yeah, and I think that's what I'm trying to do in the book anyway, too. It's like one thing I say early on and again and again throughout the book it's like that all of life is configured for the, you know, the destruction of the religious imagination. And by that I mean that like we, the way that we approach these conversations, even Christian ethics, is in a way that's not like Holy Spirit empowered thinking. And like, man,

how could there be more grace? How could we embody the love of God? It's more like, well, what would you do? And what does it make sense in a geopolitical sense? You know, like those kinds of questions. All right. Last section. The last book is on discipleship. You talk about, I mean, spiritual disciplines. What does it mean to follow Jesus?

You did talk about prayer and silence and solitude and fast. Your short description of fasting was extremely good. My wife and I talked about it all the time. It's like, what is fasting? Like, what is it? I'm like, I don't know. It's in scripture. It's kind of assumed that you should do it, but it doesn't really spell out like,

what's the function or purpose, you know, what's for prayer? It's like, what does that mean? Like, every time you get a hunger pain, you pray or whatever. You're, I mean, basically a page, a little more than a page is so, so good. I mean, I guess I can read it. I'm not going to read it. It's on page 212. Somebody else can go read it.

But yeah, give us like what your vision of discipleship seems pretty hardcore. I mean, the title of book is how to die. This is death of self. This is hard. This is rigorous. Is there joy in dying to self? Like, how do you mitigate or navigate that tension between the rigorousness of the Christian life with also this is the most joy-filled, meaningful life you can live? Yeah, well, I mean, honestly, I went through a pretty significant theological shift in my thinking while I was writing the book.

And so it started to color the draft while I was working on the first time, you know, obviously you know, you go through. several drafts of these things and so then it started to like reshape subsequent drafts of the book in which i'd always planned like i said to do the bible sermon on the mount and then pragmatic stuff um and you of course can't contain all the pragmatic stuff but you can like i'm looking at it on a board and going well what do i think is like crucial to communicate to the disciple of jesus for what it means to live into the things taught by the sermon on the mountain. So, you know, things like prayer and things like fasting is mentioned in the sermon on the Mount, so we got to bring that up, that kind of thing.

And I had spent years in the, and kind of participating in what will probably at some point be referred to as something like the new spiritual formation movement. Like John Mark Homer, like Yeah, by my friend John Mark and, you know, he and I, geez, 10 years ago, like we wrote the first year of

what would become his whole practicing the way thing as like beta practices and we were like, you'll test them in your small group, I'll test them in my small group and we'll come back together and see what we think about it.

And obviously that line of thinking was informed by, writers like Dallas Willard or Richard Foster kind of formation based on spiritual disciplines and all really great stuff like I don't have a punchline that's like and it's bad you know it's it's all really great stuff but 10 years into it and this is a fault of mine not of the thinking or the movement or of John Mark or anything like that but 10 years into it you know I start to and I'm not like a type A personality or what you you know, if you like this kind of thing,

an Enneagram 1 or anything, like, my wife is, I'm the opposite. So I don't think in terms of, like, achievables, and I don't think in terms of, like, doing the thing to get the thing. But I realized that I had somehow, if only subconsciously, kind of bought into, even though I'd never taught this,

I taught the opposite, but, like, well, you do the spiritual discipline to get the maturity. And that's important. Like, you're intended to grow as a disciple of Jesus. That's what spiritual formation is. You're being formed more and more over time.

And so these practices are the means by which you grow. And so they're like levels in a video game. You beat this level and you get further along in the journey and closer to the goal. And I was talking with the, I have a spiritual director and I was talking with him and explaining these things. And he's like, what the heck are you talking about? And he's like, how is this not? Something he asked me was like, how is that not? theology of duty. You know, you do the thing to get the thing. And I was like, oh, no, no, no, no,

that's not what I said, you know, and that's not what I teach. And he's like, no, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what you said. And you realize that, like, I've definitely experienced, like, a monumental change through the practice of what we would call spiritual disciplines. You know what I mean, like I've been changed through prayer or worship or even fasting, which I've, you know, picked up in my adult life is something that has been really meaningful to me. So I know that these are tools that create space to meet with God or to be affected by God. But then there's also times in my life, and certainly many times where I've witnessed this in others, where the love of God changes

someone exponentially in an evening through no proper practice at all, you know what I mean? Like just through like they're at a dinner with a friend and someone speaks something over them prophetically and by that I mean like, you know, the Holy Spirit

kind of thing and oh my gosh, like scales fall off the eyes and people have stories I have stories like that where you're like someone said this to me and that really changed the way I think about myself and God. Or it's like something that no one could possibly condrive. It's like, you know, it's during worship at church. And through that, even though it's a familiar song, a familiar

atmosphere, God breaks through. And the love of God changes people in ways that you can't outline in a practice rhythm. You know what I mean? And that to me became like, well, good grief. So how do you communicate this in a book? It's like, good luck. There's no, I mean, I don't know how you can't fabricate it you can't contrive it you can do these disciplines every single day and not be changed by the love of god um yeah that's good and you know a friend of mine he he says often that like the the disciplines they can form you but they can deform you they can make you more a person of legalism or a person bound to rhythms more than bound to like the heart of god um so that began to shape the way that i was writing um and the way that the

book begins and ends, which has a lot more to do with what it means to be the beloved of God and less to do with, you know, you pray to get the thing, you fast to get the thing. But it doesn't change the fact that these rhythms, these disciplines and practices are not only in the scripture. They're certainly well represented across all Christian traditions for centuries. And so, I think that what I'm attempting to do is to create for the reader the possibility of what a wild and beautiful thing it is to be the beloved of God and then essentially say like and here are resources for drawing your attention to the love of God. That's where I'm at now is that like a spiritual discipline is not a thing that you do to get better. It's not like training for the boxing match per se. It's a resource.

It's a resource that turns your attention to what is already true so that you can be brought more into the truth of who you are and who God is. I've peppered the parables of Jesus throughout the book, and I put the prodigal son at the very, very end of the book, and for that reason, to end with the love of God as opposed to prayer, fasting, solitude. Good luck. You know what I mean? Yeah. It feels less transactional the way you frame it. Yeah, because I felt that in the way some people talk about spiritual disciplines. It does, they don't say it's transaction, but sometimes the way they describe it can feel like that a little bit. As you're talking,

it made me think of like how I've shifted my thinking and why I exercise and work out. Back in the day when I was an athlete, I'd go lift weights. I would do sprints. I'd do all these things so I can get faster so I can hit the ball farther so I could be a better. There was very much a do this so that whereas now, especially somebody who sits a lot in front of a computer, I feel less human when I'm not exercising. To me, exercising is an essential part of being human and becoming more human because God made our bodies and they're designed to do things and move. And when you're not doing that, you're not expressing and living into your full humanity. I feel that.

I feel more human when I am integrating some kind of physical activity in my otherwise sedimentary, sedentary, sedentary life. And I just wonder, yeah, spiritual disciplines. Again, maybe this analogy doesn't work. I'm going on the fly here. But like, you're just being more Christian, living and more in tune with the pattern and life of Jesus. and does that, could that have a, you know, do this so that effect? Does it lead to more Christ-likeness and joy? Yeah, I think so.

But I'm not, I don't know, my approach isn't transactionally longer. Does that, does that work at all? Is that similar to what you're saying? Maybe not. Oh, yeah, I think that's actually a great metaphor. I'm happy to steal it. I think, I mean, like, in earlier stages of the Christian journey, disciplines will inevitably be understood as transactional, at least in kind of like a

subconscious way, because you're like, you know, I'm told to read my Bible in the morning and pray. And it's not like God won't meet a person in that space. He has, for me, I think that he will. I think God is willing to work powerfully, even in skewed theology, like because of his great love for people. But the exercise thing is a great point because, you know, like when, you know, I first started exercise myself as part of like an actual program in life or a routine, do it to like, I want to look good or, you know, like I want these benefits that are promised from exercise. And then eventually it's just like, oh, that was neat, I guess. And maybe you do get those benefits, you know, like in the way that you expected to get them. But for me, now,

it's kind of like a, well, I would like to be around as my kids grow. As at least as much as it depends on me, I would like to take responsibility for myself. And then, of course, you inadvertently still incur the benefits of like, you know, we know from science now that exercise contributes to mental and emotional health and things like that. So it's not like you don't get the thing. You do get the thing. But the motivation shifts and the motivation is like, well, I, I know that this is part of what it means for me to responsibly embody my humanity. That's good.

Hey, can you have time to stick around for a few more minutes? I want to really shift gears and talk about because you've been involved in the Christian music industry. I have some questions about the Christian music industry. This always seems to flare up from time to time. Recently, you have the whole situation with Michael Tate and the allegations and then newsboys and all that stuff. So I don't know.

I just got some questions that I would like to kind of ask. you offline so um hit me cool i'm ready these are going to be good if you would like to listen to our extra innings conversation where we peek behind the curtain of the christian music industry then head over to patreon.com forward slash theology and raw to become a member of the theology in the raw community This show is part of the Converge podcast network.