Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1030: You Are Not Your Own: Dr. O. Alan Noble

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

Dr. O. Alan Noble is Associate Professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University, editor-in-chief of Christ and Pop Culture, and author of numerous articles. His most recent book is You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World and his forthcoming book (April 2023) is On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living. In this conversation, we talk about lots of different things including the book Blood Meridian, which Alan wrote his master’s thesis on, the author Cormac McCarthy, and the content of his most recent book You Are Not Your Own, which is a pastoral analysis of our society’s anthropological assumptions and commitments and how these affect both the church at the world.  https://www.oalannoble.com/ If you would like to support Theology in the Raw, please visit patreon.com/theologyintheraw for more information! 

Hello, friends. Registration is now open for next year's Exiles in Babylon conference, and I cannot wait for this conference. Here's a few topics that we're going to wrestle with. The future of the church, disability in the church, multi-ethnic perspectives on American Christianity, and a conversational debate on the problem of evil and suffering. We have Eugene Cho, Elise Fitzpatrick, Matt Chandler, Michelle Sanchez, Justin Gibney, Devin Stalemar, Hardwick. The list goes on and on. Joey Dodson's going to be there. Greg Boyd and Clay Jones, they're going to be engaging in this conversational debate on the problem of evil and suffering. And of course, we have to have

Ellie Bonilla and Street Hymns back by popular demand. And Tanika Wye and Evan Wickham will be leading our multi-ethnic worship again. We're also adding a pre-conference this year. So we're going to do an in-depth scholarly conversation on the question of women in ministry featuring two scholars on each side of the issue. So Drs. Gary Brashears and Sydney Park are on the complementarian side and Drs. Cynthia Long-Westfall and Philip Payne on the egalitarian side. So March 23rd to 25th, 2023 here in Boise, Idaho. We sold out last year and we'll probably sell this year again. So if you want to come, if you want to come live, then I would register sooner than later. And you can always attend virtually if you can't make it

out to Boise in person. So all the info is at theologyintheraw.com. That's theologyintheraw.com. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is Dr. Alan Noble. Alan is Associate Professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University and the Editor-in-Chief of Christ and Pop Culture. He's written a bunch of articles, several books. His most recent book is You Are Not Your Own, Belonging to God in an Inhuman World. And he's got a forthcoming book called Getting Out of Bed, The Burden and Gift of Living. We primarily focus on the previous book, You Are Not Your Own, just talking about kind of a secular anthropology and how that's affected the way we think about ourselves and what is a Christian response to it.

We also began our conversation talking about one of the more interesting novels I've ever read, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Some of you might be fans. Well, Alan wrote his master's thesis on this book. So I had a lot of questions because it's a gnarly book. So that's how we kick off our conversation. So Alan's a great dude. This is a long time coming. I've been wanting to talk to him for several years now. So I'm glad to get a chance to get to know him. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Dr. Alan Noble. I came across your name, I mean, years ago on Twitter. I feel like, and again, I'm not really on Twitter a lot, but I feel like I've always enjoyed your tweets and your interaction and stuff.

And then I was just reading your bio and I was blown away that you did your master's thesis on Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, which I read, I want to say two years ago. Not an easy read. In fact, 100 pages in, I was like, am I an idiot? Or then I started Googling and people were like, no, this is his... I mean, he's not the easiest author unless you're... I don't know. I'm not a good fiction reader as it is, but that was particularly difficult. I got so many questions about the book. Do you want to start there? I mean, you said it's your favorite book or one of them. Why is that? What makes the book so engaging?

Yeah. I think it is. It's my favorite novel. McCarthy is probably my favorite author. I did write my master's thesis and then a chapter in my dissertation is about Blood Meridian specifically. And there are a number of things I love about that novel. I mean, the story is engaging. The character of the judge is this dominating, otherworldly, supernatural figure of natural but supernatural at the same time, figure of evil. What I appreciate is that I think Cormac McCarthy has a really good understanding of human depravity. That comes across very clearly in Blood Meridian, which is a difficult text to read, both in terms of its prose being dense at times, but also, and the fact that he doesn't want to use quotation marks, but also just the horrors that he describes. It begins, the epigram mentions the discovery of a skull of somebody who'd been scalped something like 14,000 years ago. I can't remember, like,

you know, thousands of years ago. And the implication is here's this or 4,000. This has been going on for as long as humans have existed. We've been doing these brutal things to each other. And the novel is about that brutality. But it's also, the thing I love about it is the voice of the kid who, despite the brutality, which he does participate in to some extent, he provides he chooses to resist the evil of the judge. And it's not a it's not an active, violent resistance. It's it's it's passive. But but near the end end he he resists and so it seems to me that mccarthy one of the things that he's doing is he's giving a very strong account of human depravity but then he's still saying there are ways of resisting that depravity there are ways of

pushing back against it of choosing not to participate in it and And, uh, he's kind of pessimistic. So he, he, he, this is not a, an account of, of good conquering evil, but, um, there's still hope in that novel. And so that's what I love about it. Well, I found that the character, the judge was so complex because like you said, he's evil, but he's got half the time. I'm like, I want to be like him. And the other half, I'm like, I don't want to be like him. And then there's a small part where like, I think I have a judge. Like, I think he, there's a little bit of him in all of our hearts, you know, I'm trying to weed him out, but he's so compelling. And at times you wonder, well, is he evil? I mean, is that, is he trying to portray just the complexity of the line between,

what is it? What's the, what's the famous quote from Solzhenitsyn? The complexity of the line between what is it what's uh what's the famous quote from solstice in the line the line between good and evil runs down the heart of every human person you know where there's just this complex blend i wouldn't say he's good necessarily he's smart smart and wise and yeah a truth teller and just reads a ton of books and you know like he's just complex i mean I find myself fascinated with him. Yeah, no, that's right. Yeah, his intelligence is attractive. I mean, he's an attractive figure.

McCarthy is, I think, definitely pulling from John Milton's description of Satan, which, you know, famously Milton made Satan the protagonist of the story, not intentionally, but he made Satan so compelling in his speeches, so moving that, you know, some of the romantic poets looked back on Milton and said, no, yeah, he made Satan the best character. He's the most attractive and interesting. And the judge totally is. He's this fascinating character. And I think one way of understanding him is as the personification of enlightenment ideals. So there's this enlightenment drive to master all of creation, to understand. I don't know if you remember, but he has this habit or this practice of finding things out in the desert, like artifacts and sketching them or and, you know, like writing them down and describing them and then destroying them. It's like it's just so awful.

But it's as if he wants to to master everything and keep it for himself. At one point, he says the birds of the, something like the birds of the air are an affront to me. I would have them all in cages. Um, like they're too free. They're too like, I can't master them kind of thing or. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Their freedom is a challenge to my mastery of the world. So I also think about him as a sort of Nietzschean will to power. He's, he seems to understand the world is all about also think about him as a sort of Nietzschean will to power. He seems to understand the world is all about those who can impose their will upon others and those who are weak and are consumed and destroyed. And so the violence, people talk about it just being like

arbitrary, excessive violence. But are you saying that that's really part of just him showing the depravity of human nature, where you have people killing people and scalping people and their blood pressure doesn't even go up anymore? It's just – It is. It is. Yeah. And the other way of reading that violence is to think about what the judge. And he says to the kid, he asked the kid, at night when the horses are eating, the horses are grazing, who hears them? And the kid says,

nobody. And he says, right. But when the horses stop eating, who hears them? And he says, everybody. We all wake up because we're concerned something's wrong. And he implies that that's the voice, he actually says that's like the voice of God. We hear it when it's missing. And I think that's part of what McCarthy's done in this novel, is he's given us a novel where the voice of God appears to be absent, and in its absence, we're just constantly aware of how unjust and violent and depraved the world is. Um, so I think that's part of what he's, what he's doing there. I have a spoiler alert question. Um, what, it's a little ambiguous what happens at the end. So if you,

if you guys want to skip it cause you don't want to hear it, um, at the end and the outhouse, like it's already, are we supposed to assume that, um, Holden killed and raped or raped the kid? Or is it just deliberately kind of in the beginning? I kind of forget how it was, but I remember leaving. And then, then I was Googling it and everybody's like, everybody has their thoughts on the ending and what was supposed to be implied or, I don't know.

I think he dies. I don't know if he's raped or not, but I think he dies. I think he's, he's killed by the judge. And, um, wasn't the judge naked though in there or something, or the kid was, or it's just kind of weird. It's like, yeah, I mean, he, he embraces the kid. So no, I mean, there are, it's, it's definitely a possible reading. Yeah. That's what I think.

What's Cormac McCarthy like? I mean, I imagine you studied him as a person. I mean, is he a, his books are just, I mean, I've only read two. So I read the road,

which I love. And then blood Meridian. I've got a few more, um, that I want to read, but yeah, they're, they're not,

they're not an easy read for me. All of them. I mean, even the road was probably the easiest, I think, but it's, um, definitely not a page turner,

you know? Well, that one kind of was actually, but, but it's still, it's still difficult. It's still a difficult read. He's got these passages that are dense, and you're like, what exactly is going on?

I'm still not entirely sure what's going on in many of those passages. And it's also, I mean, it's about cannibals, so it's also difficult to read in that sort of, you know, this sense of morality and violence, right? So most McCarthy novels are, are difficult to read because of their complexity and because of what's going on morally in them. He's an interesting, he's an interesting man. He doesn't give hardly any interviews at all. He's, uh, quiet. He likes

living by himself. He loves scientists. Uh, he spent a lot of time with scientists and theorists of others, of languages and things like this, which is strange. But that's the kind of person he is. He spent a lot of time at an institute. I think it's the Santa Fe. I'm not going to look it up, but I think it's the Santa Faye Institute of which studies complexity theory. And so just, I mean, he's, when I say he hangs out with science, I mean, he's really in, um, uh, up until COVID, I think he was hanging out with them and, uh, he been married several times. He's a tough man to live with because early in his career, he decided that he doesn't want to work for a living. He just wants to write, which is an interesting, I didn't know that was an option where you could just say like, I just want to write because I'd like to

take that option. But for him to do that, it meant, you know, living in poverty and writing novels. And I think that's one of the reasons why he had several wives is that it's tough to live with somebody who doesn't, doesn't have an income. Um, I would imagine he makes a lot of, I mean, his books sell, I mean, especially the road and right. Or do you think he's, is he not as popular as, I mean, obviously not like a Stephen King or something, but he's, he's good now. He's good now. I mean, once Oprah picked up the road, so like lit professors like me were teaching him, uh, I wasn't a lit professor at the time, but lit professors were teaching him, uh, his, all the pretty horses, um, and, uh,

blood Meridian for a while, but it wasn't until Oprah picks up his, you know, the road that once Oprah picks your book, I'm still waiting for that to happen. I'm not going to hold my breath. So now he's now he's good. Yeah, now he's good. And he's got a you know, he has this famous interview with Oprah where she asks him because the road is so religious. You know, there's so much spirituality in it. And so she asked him, because the road is so religious, you know, there's so much spirituality in it. And so she asked him, do you believe in God? And he says, it depends on what day you ask me, which I take to be a deflection, because I just don't think he wanted to talk about whatever faith belief he has to a national audience. But that could be

wishful thinking on my part. I'm not sure. If I was going to start, I read the Roadblood Meridian. If I was going to read one more, I've heard people, like a friend of mine loves All the Pretty Horses. Would that be the next one? Yeah. Yeah. All the Pretty Horses would be a good one to pick up and then pick up The Crossing. The Crossing is better than All the Pretty Horses, but it's a trilogy. So start with All the Pretty Horses. Okay. Okay. How'd you get into loving literature? Is this something that you grew up, you know, reading lots of books and stuff, or was it something you fell into later on? Yeah. I loved, I loved reading books. Um,

not great literature. It was like Garfield. Um, like the cat or what? Yeah. Like the cat, like Garfield. It's not the name of some great author. It might be, but I don't know who it is. But no, yeah, Garfield the cat, that kind of stuff. But when I went to college, I had some really great lit professors for required classes. And I just loved the ability to be in a classroom and talk about all the issues that really mattered to me. The human experience is the subject of literature. So I could talk about all these things that I cared about and talk about it in relation to these beautiful stories and poems. And so

at a certain point, I was like, I want to do that. And at the time, I didn't understand what the grading load was like, but I don't know if And at the time, I didn't understand what the grading load was like. But I don't know if I would have gone down this path if I knew. But I loved that idea. And I thought, I want to do that for a living. I want to every day go with a bunch of young people who are hungry to think through things and talk about issues that really matter in literature. Yeah, I would imagine being a lit professor,

you're, I mean, you're grading, you're not grading like, you know, multiple choice exams or something. You're, you're doing a ton of reading and I would imagine the quality coming in is probably all across the map. Yes. Yes. We have some good students at Oklahoma Baptist, but, uh, you know, yeah, it's challenging for everyone. And COVID certainly made things harder. You know, some of the students we have coming in now didn't get their, you know, their junior or senior year, um, or at least not properly. And so we're going to have ripples from that for years to come. Yeah. Okay. So you're, you're, um, you, you write both fiction and nonfiction, correct? I mean, I'm only seeing... Or have you written...

I don't. Oh, you haven't written? I don't write any fiction. I'd like to. Why not? That's your gig. Or is it just so hard to break into, or what? It just has to do with time, right?

Like, trade books, trade nonfiction, I can get in advance and justify to my wife and kids the time that I'm taking, right, to do this. And that's one of the ways I decide whether to speak someplace or to do something. It's like, okay, can I justify this time away from home, away from my family? And I could do that with nonfiction. Fiction's really hard. Yeah, I mean, it is hard to break into, but I do have a story I want to tell about taking my grandpa from Missouri to California after he broke his hip right before he passed away. That's quite an adventure, but I need the time to sit down and do that. So your latest one, you've got one coming out in April. I'm just looking at your Amazon page on getting out of bed, the burden and gift of living.

Your titles are so good. And then the one that was out, came out just about a year ago. You are not your own belonging to God in an inhuman world. I'm just assuming, I mean, that one coming out in 2021, meaning you probably wrote it or finished it right during the pandemic. Tell us about that book. I, I, given the title, I'm, I'm guessing I could probably guess some, some, some, some of the gist is going to be in there, but yeah. What's, what's this book? Yeah. Yeah. So I, uh, this book started out as a tweet,

which is why I hope Twitter doesn't go anywhere because I've actually really benefited from throwing out ideas and then just hearing from people. And so, um, this was, I think 2015, yeah, it was 2015. And I was thinking through a lot of the cultural issues that were being debated at the time, which are the same ones still being debated among Christians about, um, sexuality, about abortion, about justice, about all these different things. And it seemed to me that a lot of them hinged on this question of to whom we belong. And in my church, I'm Presbyterian. And so we were going through the Heidelberg Catechism and we did the first question and answer. The question is, what is my only comfort in life and in death? And the beginning of the answer is that I'm not my own,

but belong both body and soul of life and death to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. So that was echoing, which is what a good catechism will do, is sort of just echoing in my head. And as I'm thinking about all these debates going on, that seemed to me a part of the key, at the heart of a lot of these. And so I said something like, I think the church will weather modernity to the extent that it really understands this idea that we belong to God. And shortly after tweeting that, I was like, this is a big idea. This could be like a book. And I had just written my first book, Disruptive Witness. And so that was echoing in my head. And so the central argument is that our contemporary society is based on a false anthropology. All societies have an anthropology, some conception of what it means to be a human person.

build our laws, our structures, our institutions, our roads, our housing, our cultural artifacts, our novels are based on that conception of what it means to be a human person. Which means that if you start with a flawed conception of a flawed anthropology, a flawed conception of a human person, then there's going to be this feeling of alienation. There's going to be anxiety. You're going to feel continually out of place. There's going to be a disconnect between your environment and who you actually are and even between yourself and who you really are. are our own and belong to ourselves. And from that ideology, we have five responsibilities, what I call the responsibilities of self-belonging, these burdens that are placed on our backs, which are justification, identity, value, meaning, and belonging. And all of us are required to create these things for ourselves and sustain these things for ourselves perpetually. We have to create, discover, craft, and express an identity, for example. And we need constant affirmation to feel like that identity is being, that it is

secure. So that's part of my argument. The other part of the argument is that we live in an inhuman society. And part of what's so inhuman about it is that it doesn't understand what a human being is. And so if, the way I like to describe it is this, there's this interesting phenomenon called zookosis. So if you've been to a zoo and you've seen like a tiger or a bear pacing in circles, that's zookosis. So often what you can do is you can see that there's this path that they've created on the ground where they've dug through the grass into the dirt because they've just been compulsively pacing. So this is a psychosis of captive animals.

And these are animals who are not made to live in cages. And so when you put them in cages, they are ill. And what's fascinating to me about that is when I was doing research for this, I discovered that the primary, two primary ways that they treat zookosis are antidepressants and enrichment activities. And when I read that, I was like, wait a minute, that's me. That's how society tries to fix me. When I'm anxious and depressed, it says you need antidepressants and you need to, which have their place, absolutely. But you needants and you need to which have their place absolutely but but you need that and you need you know watch netflix do some go exercise or something and that's that's going to fix the problem um exercise is good too antidepressants and exercise have their place so this is how i

get in trouble but antidepressants can be overused i mean if they're just given out way too freely without dealing with maybe the source of it, I don't want to cheapen people who struggle with deep, dark depression. I haven't had that experience, but I know people that do, and it could be no joke. But it seems like any... Well, I read that book by Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score. And he was pretty diplomatic about it, but all throughout, he seemed to be kind of coming back to when this is kind of our first response is just to medicate we're not really helping probably most people in the long run i this is not my area so i'm just trying to relay what he said but um i

don't know because you have a whole thing on uh your chapter four we all self-medicate so i'd imagine you deal with this to some extent yeah Yeah. So, I mean, my argument in that chapter is that whether that some of us medicate, um, officially through some legal means, some through illegal means, some of us medicate through, um, as I said, exercise, some medicate through playing video games endlessly. I mean, there are some through retail therapy, as it's called, being a shopaholic. There's all kinds of ways. But part of my argument is that if we live in this environment that's sort of like this experience of zoonosis, we're going to need coping mechanisms. And when I look around, I see a lot of coping mechanisms. I mean, so that's the argument.

Yeah. Is social media a huge part of that? I just had a podcast with a guy who wrote a whole book, Doug Smith, called Unintentional. He's a software engineer and a Christian, and he just kind of looked at all just like how we're just being really kind of hijacked by them out there who are feeding us what we want to meditate with or whatever. Do you deal with that side of things too? Or, um, yes, yes. I do talk about technology, um, as both as a coping mechanism, but also as a way of facilitating this idea of belonging to ourselves because, um, especially with the, the, the issue of identity. Um, I, You know, I think that so many social media platforms are responding to our desire to create and express an identity. So if you can't get an identity from anywhere else, if you have to create your own identity,

then you're going to have this burden, this constant anxiety that you're not being the authentic you and that you're not getting enough affirmation enough um you know a reassurance that your identity is is is is true um i like to think about it you know there's that scene in back to the future where marty mcfly starts changing his family's history in the picture the photograph of his family and you know his siblings start disappearing i think for a lot of people, if they're not, if they're not constantly on social media projecting their identity, there's that feeling that they're sort of just slipping away, that they're disappearing from the consciousness of other people, and therefore their identity is liquid, it's insecure. That's what social media can do for us. It can provide a way for us to um project ourselves

and express ourselves in in expanding different ways right expanding uh options so social media platforms are always releasing new ways to express content to promote content the other thing that it does is it provides measurable affirmation because everyone who has an identity needs to have a witness to that identity and who affirms that identity. And so, um, which is actually pretty ironic because if we are our own and belong to ourselves, then we want to say things like, um, nobody could put me in a box. Nobody can define me. Um, nobody can judge me. This idea of being, you know, an autonomous identity, yet at the same time, we're all radically dependent upon other people to affirm us because everybody needs some kind of external affirmation. And the internet provides that, right? In

measurable forms, like I can count the likes, I can count the follows, I can count the comments. And so I do, I do talk about social media. I mean, the cliche is that this drastically affects Gen Z and young millennials, people under 25 is, have you found that to be largely correct? Or do you feel like this is not, it's not just a young person issue when it comes to just this endless quest to find out who we are and you know? Yeah, no, I, we can absolutely, yeah can absolutely yeah it's not um it's not just a certain age um and i think that's one of the the misnomers and the ways that we we can blame this on the young kids with their internets and their tiktoks and their snapchats and what whatnot but

i mean you know i just i just had a high schooler tell me, you know, Facebook is for old folks, which is, you know, okay, fair, fair enough. But, you know, spaces like Facebook are filled with older people who are just as concerned with projecting their identity. It may be that, you know, you've got an aunt who likes to share really tacky religious memes, right? So some photograph of an eagle that's highly pixelated and then like a verse overlaid on top of it. And by sharing this, this is one of the ways that she expresses who she is, who she is to the world. And your uncle, it's politics. But there's still that anxiety. And what's interesting is like, you know, your, your,

your uncle who's really into politics, or maybe it's you, I don't know, whatever is, uh, less concerned with persuading the other people that they're communicating with then announcing themselves to the world, right. Announcing their position to the world. And that's, I think, one of the tells that, you know, that we're talking about what's called expressive individualism, which is another way of describing this burden of responsibility that I'm talking about. Well, I was going to say that this sounds a lot like Carl Truman's book. I'm sure you've read it, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Is it very similar in some of the concepts you're talking about, or at least the anthropology, the anthropological themes that he's identifying there? Is that what you kind of like, do you have any critiques of his book or do you feel like he's pretty, pretty right on or? I don't have any specific critiques. Uh, I started reading it,

uh, and I have not gone back to finish it. So I got, I got an early, I got early access to it. So I could, cause I was writing this while they early access to it so I could, because I was writing this while they were editing his book. I was finishing up my book. And so I was able to get an early copy so I could see, okay, do I have to quote this? And, and I decided, no, we're, we're both doing the same thing. Um, but we're doing it from very different angles. So for Truman, who's a historian, he gives a historical account, and I'm not interested in history. That sounds bad. I'm not trained in history, and so my book doesn't give a historical account. It's also much more, I've been told, it's much more pastoral and existential than Truman. So

it's just a different emphasis. But we're all talking about, I mean, Ashley Hales was a good friend of mine. She wrote a book on our busy life that, what is the name of her book, that is essentially talking about the same thing. My friend, Jake Meter, he's writing about the same sort of things, but I mean, you can go back, um, even further, you know, Lewis is talking about similar things in the abolition of man. Um, so we're all just approaching it from different angles and in part because people have been sort of raising this alarm for a long time and it still needs to be heard. So it's an interesting challenge as a writer because when I was sitting down to write this, I was like, this message has already been received, but it still needs to be heard.

So I'm going to try to do it. So it's like any book. I mean, even books that sell a lot have become really popular. Even a book that sells a million copies, which is the chart you know it's like it's still a tiny percentage of people that read it or bought it then smaller percentage of reddit and then people that actually read it and actually did something about it which you know so yeah it is a little frustrating to think you know how little of a dent one or two or ten books can make. But it does get the ball rolling. This episode is sponsored by One Million Home,

an awesome organization dedicated to winning the battle to get orphaned kids home. Did you know that there are 5.4 million kids in orphanages worldwide? Did you also know that the majority of those kids, given the right support, could actually return to their parents or other family members? In the face of family separation throughout the world, God is setting the lonely into

their families. And One Million Home is doing an amazing job creating pathways to reunify kids with their families throughout the world. You might remember that I had Brandon Stiver on the show from One Million Home a few podcasts ago. It was episode 989. And I was so blown away at the amazing work that he and One Million Home are doing. So we are inviting Theology in Raw listeners, the Theology in Raw community to join the movement of family reunification for Giving Tuesday this year. That's November 29th. It's coming up.

It only costs $250 to reunite a kid with their family. So that's what your Giving Tuesday gift will be going to. So if you have a heart for orphans, and if you're a Christian, you kind of should, and you want to contribute to more effective and biblical ways of caring for orphans, then go to 1millionhome.com forward slash T-I-T-R. That's the number one, the million home, no spaces,.com forward slash T-I-T-I. I mean, you work with, you're a college professor. So I mean, in the sexuality gender conversation, the identity piece comes up a lot, especially with younger people. When I go to churches and they tell me kind of like what their youth group is going through, I'm like, oh, and they look at me like, what do we, how do we walk with people through this? And it's so, I don't, it's so hard. You have to be incredibly loving and listening and, and,

and affirming. And yet you want to help people to have, to adopt a view of self in the world that's actually going to produce human flourishing. And so that's such a hard tension, you know? Especially the gender piece is really tough because this is or even the sexuality piece, you know, I mean, how I guess my question is kind of a very general question. But do you have any advice on how to help young people in particular, your college students to think more robustly and health healthily, healthily through this kind of narrative or ideology that they're just swimming in, you know, or maybe ideologies, you know, sometimes it's so hard to get through. I don't know. No, it is. It is. And that's, I mean, that's part of why I wrote the book the way I did is that I, I wanted to be able to, um, I wanted a book that would address some of these issues of gender and sexuality without directly addressing them. Right. So, and that's, I, I think one of the differences between my book and Truman's book is that I do talk about sex. I do talk about marriage,

but it seems to me that there are these underlying assumptions that are more important to deal with first. Right. We want to do both, but it seems to me that we're saying, on the one hand, okay, those people over there who are living certain sexual lifestyles think that they're autonomous and they belong to themselves and they can live their own truth and whatever, but we in the church reject that. And I wanted to write a book that said, you know, this is kind of, this really is in the air and we're all breathing this. And it's not that we're all equally guilty, but, but, but we need to take, if we, if we really want to be honest about this idea of autonomy of radical autonomy, um, boy, a lot of us are invested in this. And so

maybe we need to pull back and look at how deeply this is embedded in our society and in our culture and start there and then have that conversation. And I wanted to write a book that showed that belonging to yourself tends to make you miserable. And so that's part of, there's this French sociologist Alain Einrenberg, who wrote this book, The Weariness of the Self. And in it, he looks at the way modern depression, experiences of depression and anxiety differ from past manifestations of it because the people the way people describe depression has changed over time which is super fascinating and um and he draws this direct connection between the the kind of person the modern person who's self-created and self-sustaining and this feeling of anxiety and depression, which he connects with feelings

of inadequacy and inhibition. He says that most people who experience depression today describe it as this feeling of being inadequate and being inhibited. You're unable to act in the world. And he says, well, that is a condition, a symptom of someone who's been told that they have the burden of creating themselves and sustaining themselves. So anyway, super fascinating. So that's the approach that I want to take is I want people to see, let's talk about these foundational things that I think are motivating us in lots of different areas, not only sex and gender. But then let's talk about those areas as well. And I don't get to that in the book very forcefully, but it's there.

So that's what I think is helpful for students So especially so that we're not just sort of like calling out this one sliver of society, like this is the, this is the problem. I think that's, that's really helpful and wise because that, that is kind of the, I guess the conservative evangelical, like the hobby horse, right? Young people and sexuality and gender, but then they're, you look at boomers and they're dealing with all kinds of identity issues when they become empty nesters. Grandmothers who their whole existence or they're now maybe not grandmothers. So people with the kids out of the house.

My wife and I talk about this all the time because we've got teenage kids and we'll be empty nesters in a little bit. We've spent so much time with our kids. I think, you know, hopefully we didn't screw them up too bad. But one thing we did do is we were around them a lot. We had a lot of adventures together and stuff. But when I thought it's gone, like, who are we? My wife's like, who am I? You know, when all the kids are gone.

And I would imagine you're dealing with the same kind of fundamental anthropological tensions there. Or boomers who were pastors for 35 years and then now they go to church and no one's asking them questions. You know, they retire. You know, I mean, the list goes on people whose identity is wrapped up in politics or patriotism, whatever. I mean, um, I, I would, I, I'm glad you said that cause I, I think that this is a common human problem for those in the West. I would imagine. Um, is that, I mean, yeah, that's what I think. I like to point to Dante cause I teach Dante Is that, I mean, yeah, that's what I think. I like to point to Dante cause I teach Dante and, uh, Dante, the beginning of the divine comedy, he wakes up in these dark woods and he's lost and he's midway, it says midway through my life's journey. And so I, you know, that opening canto can really resonate with people cause they're, you know, they, they wake up one day and they

look around and they're like, I, I feel lost and I'm, it's my midlife. I don't know who I am. Uh, and so it seems to really resonate, but what's interesting is Dante feels lost, but he knows exactly who he is. Dante's lost in relation to God. So his, his crisis is a spiritual crisis. And the rest of the story is all about him understanding his sin nature, purging that sin from his life, mortifying his flesh, and then ascending into paradise. But for modern people, it's not a spiritual crisis that is the norm. It's an identity crisis that is the norm. That's what we wake up with. Yeah.

No, I see that. Have you, have you, have you heard some good success stories? People read in your book and their life has had some changes for the better as a result that you're allowed to share? Yeah. I'm trying to get a concrete, like, what does it look like for us to take this seriously and improve for the good of our own human flourishing? That's a great question. Yeah. So, you know, the response that I offer in the book is recognizing that we belong to God and therefore we are not our own, but belong to God. And therefore we also belong in what I call a subsidiary way to our families, to our neighbors. I think we have a sense of belonging to creation. It's not the same way we belong to God, but we do belong to the created order in some ways and, uh, to our neighbors, to our community and to the church. And, uh, I don't

know that I've heard a lot of success story, a lot of, a lot of stories about people who, uh, have told me, uh, they haven't told me details about what's, but you know, that it, that it was eyeopening to them or it was life changing to them. I have had quite a few testimonies of that, but they haven't told me exactly. Maybe I'm just thinking of Goodreads reviews where people aren't actually going into the details of what, what changed. But, um, for, for me, I think I've been thinking a lot about friendship, which I think is just such a critical part of human life. And one that is, um, very difficult, I think in a society that teaches that you are your own, because we don't like to have commitments to other people and

friendship requires commitment of some kind. One of my favorite philosophers, Zygmunt Bauman, um, says that for modern people, commitments are always until further notice. So there's this until further notice-ness to our relationships. I'm your friend until further notice. I'm your husband until further notice, whatever it might be, right? So that makes it challenging. But to me, I think about, as far as living this out, having communities, having church communities, for example, where spontaneously inviting people into your home without an agenda is part of what we're doing. Where there's this leisureliness to our existence. Those are the things that I think about.

How much do you think, and maybe you talk about this, just as you're talking, I just think of like kind of a, well, you're in a PCA church. Yeah. A little more liturgical high church, I would assume, compared to like your average non-denominational. So I go to an average non-denominational, very low church. And that's kind of the air I've been breathing for most of my church life.

And it seems to foster this kind of like all the stuff you're saying too, maybe on a lower level, but very individualistic all the way from the, the, the, the, the lyrics of the songs. It's very much when people ask how was church, it's typically they're asking about your emotional, where your emotions stirred, you know, as an individual, not individual not like wow that message i thought was crap but i know there's a lot of people like my community was really impacted or whatever you know or like yeah i hated all the songs but the i don't know the members aren't even good examples but like it does i don't know i wonder how much of it very unintentionally is fostering this

kind of weak anthropology that you're talking about is that something you talk about or do Or do you have any thoughts on that? I don't talk about it in this book. I do talk about it in my first book, Disruptive Witness. And I use Charles Taylor's idea of excarnation, which is really fascinating. So this idea of just being stuck in your head. Okay. And so I do think, I mean, I grew up non-denominational churches and it was this excarnational experience. I walked in and it was private. It was a private experience. I worshiped in private. The music was so loud and it was about my personal relationship with God. You know, Paul has that command that we're to encourage each other with spirit songs and spiritual hymns. I'm getting that wrong, but you know what I'm saying? And, uh, I never, you know,

I didn't experience that until there was a Christmas service, an evening Christmas service where we sung carols and the, the auditorium, the, the congregation was louder than the musicians. The congregation was louder than the musicians. And because of that, I was literally encouraged. And it was like the first time, I think, in my life where I had experienced what Paul was talking about. And I was like, oh, we all are rejoicing over the coming of Christ, the incarnation. Wow, I feel nourished by this. I feel nourished by this. I feel encouraged. But in any event, you know, that sense of encouragement can really only happen if our services are not highly individualistic, if it's actually part of a community. So, you know, and, you know, the sermons are about me and what I think about the

sermon and God and so on and so forth. And I do think that our churches can be spaces that... So that's the negative side. The positive side is our churches can be spaces that challenge these assumptions, where our liturgies can actually push back against this idea that we are our own and belong to ourselves. But we've just got to be intentional about that. So you didn't grow up Presbyterian? You grew up non-denominational? Yeah. Yep. Well, wait, you're in a Baptist school and you're not Baptist.

Is that not a big deal? Oh, shh. Keep it down. That's so loud. They find out I'm in trouble. No, no. Yeah. I mean, I don't teach in the theology department, so I'm good.

Oh, is that the theology department has to go to a baptist yeah i mean i'm not preaching i'm not teaching on infant baptism over here you know i'm teaching how to read poetry and literature and theology gets mixed into that but yeah i'm not yeah the theology and doctrine stuff for the baptist seems like a secular sacred divide we had the same issue at cedarville when i was there um on on i Cedarville, what was it? I think it was like women in leadership was a big... Yeah, we had on the Bible department, we had one female professor who taught spiritual formation. or, you know, and the argument was, but she can't teach theology. I'm like, what do you think spiritual formation is? What do you think theology is?

Like, oh yeah, she can't teach Old Testament survey. She can just, you know, teach people the practices and the ways of Jesus. I'm like, does she open the gospels to learn? Well, yeah, but it's not theology. It's just, you know, like, it was on it. And I think a lot of us were like, yeah, this is kind of inconsistent, but maybe it's different now. Probably not. When were you there? I was there 0 It was on. And I think a lot of us were like, yeah, this is kind of inconsistent. Maybe it's different now. Probably not.

When were you there? I was there 07, 09. A really short, short time. It was, I mean, Cedarville's been through a lot. And I was there kind of between two storms. I had come in right on the heels of, and I don't know, I think it's all public. But I mean, there was just some professors that got let go or fired, maybe. I don't know the, I think it's all public, but I mean, like there was just some professors that got let go or fired. Maybe, I don't know the language. I don't know the language that they actually use. You know, usually it's like, yeah, we moved them on to better fields or something.

And there's a severance and don't, you know, say anything or whatever. What, how are they? I don't, I don't know how Cedarville did it, but that's, and it was a great two years. And then after I left, um, I heard like a lot of my friends that were there ended up leaving. Cause they're like, yeah, this, the direction's not, doesn't resonate maybe with, with where they wanted to go. But, um, still have friends that teach there and they really love it. And the students as always were amazing. Love, loved my time with the students. Still keep up with some students here and there. So, um, yeah,

I miss it, man. I miss why I miss part. There's aspects of college teaching that I, that I, that I miss, you know, so fun being in a classroom where you just can engage ideas and, and, and force people to think critically. And you have the freedom to just kind of open up categories that like, you know, I do a lot more preaching now in churches and, you know, it does seem, and I love that too, that space, but it's, um, there's something about that classroom where you get to really engage students and, um, yeah, don't miss the grading. Don't miss the schedules. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, it's the classroom that gives you life, uh, when you're a teacher that you feed off of that. And

it's, it's a powerful, it's a powerful thing being able to be part of a student' lives in that way. Your forthcoming book, let me, uh, on getting out of bed, the burden and gift of living. Uh, this doesn't have a table of contents, does it? No. So I just, it's on Amazon already. That's early. Cause it comes out in April. Um, what's this, what's, what's this one all about? So this is an experiment. So I wrote this essay, uh, called on living, um, a couple of years ago about mental health, uh, and suffering. And, uh, at the time I was just revising, uh, you are not your own. And I kept getting emails from people, um, months later, actually months after the, emails from people, um, months later, actually months after the, after the fact, uh, emailing me saying how much this essay helped them and how important it was to them. And it has somebody who I, who I know fairly well said, this is the best thing I've written. And so, and you, you know,

this, that when you're, when you're editing a book, um, it's hard to least for me, it's hard to feel like it's any good. Like you're just like, I wrote this stupid thing. I just want to fix the grammar and any obvious mistakes, and I just need to let go because this is – so here I am feeling really insecure about this book. It's about to go out into the world, and I'm getting other people telling me, well, this is over here is the best thing you wrote. And so I decided, you know, I'm going to take this essay. I pitched it to my editor and write about life, about suffering. And so it's kind of an experiment. It's not a memoir. It's not a self-help book. It's not a professional, you know, here's how to deal with mental health.

Cause I'm not a mental health professional. Um, I've described it as, is sort of like a letter from a friend, uh, who loves you and is concerned about you. And the, the central, really the central premise is that, uh, everybody needs to have, uh, well, a couple of things. One is that, uh, all of us are going to experience deep mental suffering at one point or another in life, because that's what is, that's part of life. Um, and when those times come, especially we need to have an understanding of why it's worth

getting out of bed each day. Um, because when those times come, we'll not be in a position to really make those judgment calls. So we need to have an answer ready. And I try to talk about the fact that, you know, some people think it's sort of, might think it's kind of morbid to, because I'm using that language of getting out of bed literally and figuratively. It's literally why get out of bed when you are suffering? Why is it worth getting out of bed literally and figuratively. It's literally why get out of bed when you are suffering? Why is it worth getting out of bed and continuing to go? But also getting

out of bed becomes this metaphor for choosing to live when you're experiencing suffering, because when the suffering gets bad enough, you start to think maybe life itself isn't worth it. you start to think maybe life itself isn't worth it. That's the topic of the book. And part of my response to that is this idea that, first of all, our lives are gifts, even when we don't feel that they're gifts, and that there's a great beauty in the struggle to survive. And one of the things that I stress is that when we choose each day to get out of bed, despite great suffering, we're communicating to everybody around us that their lives are also worth living. Their lives are also valuable, even when they go through great suffering. And that's a witness that we didn't ask for. You didn't ask to be this great, you didn't, you didn't

ask to be this great example to other people. You just are. And that's part of your obligation to love your neighbor is to, to carry on when it feels impossible to carry on. So it's a heavy book. It's an interesting, I don't, I don't know what's going to happen. It's an experiment. It's very different from the cultural analysis that I've been doing in my first few books. So you'll see. I mean, you have high praise from Kurt Thompson, who is an expert in this stuff. Catherine Green, McCray, Todd Hall. I mean, so you have people who are experts in this field. Wait, Kurt Thompson. Really?

No, I mean, for real. Is it? Kurt Thompson, MD, author of soul and desire, soul of shame. Yeah. Is that, I don't know. It, Soul of Shame. Yeah. Is that? It's on the end. Did you know Rick Warren endorsed it too? I do know that. I do know that. I didn't know.

How did I? I'm sorry. That's hilarious. I didn't know all of these. Oh my gosh. I didn't know. Oh wow. These are all psychologists.

I got to go read these. I was not told. I need to talk to my i gotta talk to my publisher professor of psychology at fuller uh sing yang tan i'm not pronouncing that right um yeah these are high-powered experts so for someone who's not writing with an area of expertise in this area it sounds like you're're right on. I've often heard people that are suffering, depressed, one of the best things you can do is serve others. Is that kind of cliche? But is that not just a cliche that if you start getting out of bed and serving other people, is that kind of an anecdote to depression? I'm sure it's more complicated than that.

Is that kind of an anecdote to depression or is it more, I'm sure it's more complicated than that, but. Yeah. I mean, it can. Yeah. I mean, I think for some people it can be, I guess what I'm going to try to, what I try to argue and I can't believe that I had all those things. I didn't know. Anyway, sorry.

Check out your book. I heard it. I know I should. Now I think it's, you know, anyway, uh, is that, you know, that idea of serving isn't just the sort of formal way of serving, but, you know, literally just getting out of bed itself can become this way of serving other people. Because sometimes you're at this place in life where imagining going and feeding the hungry or something like this seems like I can't do that. And what I want to say is, okay, even just getting out of bed, even just doing your basic jobs, those basic things, when you're under tremendous suffering, that's a powerful testimony. You're testifying with your life itself, that life is good even when it is filled with suffering. And that's beautiful. That's beautiful. So yes, I think so. But I want to expand our understanding of how we're serving others.

Sometimes it's just those mundane things of serving my family by helping my wife get the kids ready for school in the morning when I feel like I can't get out of bed. Yeah. Wait, do you struggle with depression or have you in the past? Or is this like written to you? I've got issues. Yeah, I don't know how to answer that. I've got, you know, there are things that I struggle with and that comes through.

I don't make them quite public. I have an interesting, some, my position on, you know, I feel like so many people, um, overshare with their, not so many people, but I, I, I think some people overshare, uh, uh, with, with their, their mental afflictions and, um, that there could be a temptation for me to turn my suffering into a thing, you know, like an identity, like we're talking about, like an identity. I mean, yeah, like this is part of who I am out. Oh, you know, Alan, he's the one with this thing, you know, this disorder or whatever it is. And, um, so my position is, and I don't know, you know, it's whatever is, um, I'm not afraid. I'm not concerned about people who know what's going on, but I don't want it to, but I'm not going to be publicly

advertising it. So it's this kind of fine line, to guard myself against those kinds of identical things, I guess. Is it true – I've heard this too and maybe – I don't know if you know or not. But like that people in like more majority world or poorer countries do not suffer from the same levels of depression, anxiety and suicidality that that people in the majority or in wealthier regions is that, and what does that say? I, you know, I don't know that I have not looked into that. I know Emile Durkheim, sort of the father of sociology, he wrote this book, kind of thick book called suicide. this book, kind of thick book called suicide. Um, what a title, right? Anyway. Uh, and, and he's, he, uh, looked at, this is, I can't remember the dates here, but we're, but he looked at, um, suicide rates and, uh, wealth and, you know, sort of debunked the idea that it's just the poor people or the poor countries or the poor areas where suicide is high, just exactly like you're talking about.

And it actually shows, well, actually, when a country starts doing really well, we have more problems. And his thesis is that wealth creates instability. People's lives are unstable because there's no longer this clear social order that they know. So, for example, like if there was a clear social order and there was more economic stability, you could know, all right, if I'm living a successful life, I should have one car and a TV and I should be able to rent a house. Right. But when economies are rapidly expanding, you never know when you've arrived. You never know when you're doing enough or have done enough. And so that's that's his theory. My thought is, you know, when you're poor and struggling to survive each day, you really don't have the time to be in your head as much.

time to be in your head as much and that the modern world wealthy world allows for kinds of suffering that are i don't want to call it a privilege but but it it creates different problems yeah it's hard to think called like suffering a privilege but i think it could be could be maybe accurate we don't need to look at the data that people who are privileged might suffer more for reasons you're saying. Anecdotally, it does make sense. I mean, I just, yeah. The more free time I have to be in my own head or whatever, or even just like when you have more and more wealth, you try to stuff your life full of more and more things. And we all know just basic theology that that's not going to bring, you know, fulfillment and happiness. And I look back at my wife and I,

some of the poorest times in our life were some of the more, you know, times when I felt like it was just happy. And I was waking up at four in the morning to prepare to teach and work in extra and doing this and like, just couldn't afford things to fill our lives. So we just play cards for hours on end or just, I don't know. There was just like some basic rhythms of life that were just more stripped down, you know? Um, and we look back like, man, those are, those are at the time we're like, Oh, I wish I had a, you know, a second car or something, but like, those are great times, you know? Um, I don't know. I don't want to be, I don't, I don't want to over

overly simplify, you know, um simplify something that I know nothing about. I mean, what causes depression and anxiety and stuff. But yeah. Well, Alan, thank you so much for being on Theology in a Raw. Let me just read your book. So your first book was Disruptive Witness, Speaking Truth in a Distracted Age. We didn't really get into that too much. The one that came out a year ago, You Are Not Your Own, Belonging to God in an Inhuman World.

And then your fourth book is going to be a book on Getting Out of getting out of bed the burden and gift of living which is a really short book it's 120 pages or something so yeah um for those of you who like short books uh this this uh would be worth checking out so thank you really appreciate you bro and one of these times you can hang out face to face i'm sure that'd be awesome This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.