Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1153: The Truth of Fiction and the Limits of My World: Dr. Greg Coles

Episode Date: February 15, 2024

Gregory Coles is the author of Single, Gay, Christian, No Longer Strangers, and the recently released dystopian-ish novel, The Limits of My World. He holds a PhD in English from Penn State and lives in Boise, Idaho, where he works as a writer and speaker. Greg is a Senior Research Fellow at The Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender.  In this podcast conversation, we talk about his book The Limits of My World, which includes themes around the philosophy of language, anthropology, gender, and the nature of reality. This leads to a broader conversation around fiction vs. nonfiction literature (including the Bible), the role of genre for determining meaning, and the possibility that fiction helps us see the truth more than non-fiction.  Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

Hey friends, the Exiles in Babylon conference is right around the corner, April 18th through the 20th in Boise, Idaho. All the information is at theologyintherod.com. If you do want to attend live, and I would highly recommend if you can afford it, if you have the time to come out to Boise, Idaho, attend the conference live. Space is filling up, so you want to register ASAP. We are tackling loads of really important and very controversial topics. We're talking about deconstruction and the gospel. We're going to hear from people who have had a journey of deconstruction, tell us why they did so. We're going to hear from women, talking about women, power, and abuse in the church.

We're going to talk about LGBTQ people and the church. We're talking about different Christian views of politics. That should be loads of fun, if not really intense. And we just added a very important pre-conference symposium on the theology and politics of Israel-Palestine. And we're going to have different viewpoints represented. Various discussions are going to be engaged in with that really important conversation. So come to Boise. You can ask questions. You can engage the speakers, engage other people who are at the conference. It is loads of fun. It really is, I would say, the highlight of my year. So again, April 18th to the 20th at Boise, Idaho. Check out all the information at theologyintheraw.com.

Hey, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is my very good friend, Dr. Gregory Coles. Greg works with me at the Center for Face, Sexuality, and Gender. He's also a speaker and writer, the author of several books, including Single Gay Christian, No Longer Strangers, and his recently released fiction novel, which is the topic of this conversation called The Limits of My World. It is a fascinating book. It is blowing my mind. I'm almost done with it. And I want to have Greg on to talk about it because he is just really messing with my categories. So yeah, we talk about the novel quite a bit on this episode. We try not to

spoil it too much. We avoid giving details because I want you to get this book, read it, have your mind and heart messed with as well. Greg has a PhD in English from Penn State and is just a master when it comes to understanding language and reality and kind of the philosophical relationship between the two. So please welcome back to the show for, I don't know, this is the umpteenth time, maybe fourth or fifth time Greg's been on the show. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only Dr. Gregory Riekels. Greg, how is the other side of Boise feeling for you right now? Let me tell you, it's so nice and sunny here in Boise.

I'm really appreciating it this morning. We've had a weird warm stretch, but it will not stay this. I'm tempted to think, oh, but it will not stay this. I, you know, I'm tempted to think, oh, we're moving out of winter. It's still January right now at the time of recording, so we are not moving out of winter. Normally, I would love to have you in the studio, but it's not really set up for, I don't know, it just wouldn't really work the way it's set up. So that's why you're tuning in from about three miles away from my basement. It is ironic that I feel like all the times we've done joint podcasts,

well, most of them was when I didn't live in Boise, but somehow we would always do podcasts from wherever you were. And now I finally live here and we're like, yeah, let's do a podcast from across town. I need to get my setup to where I could have a live guest. It's just people that do that. They have got like two or three cameras.

It's set, it's just, and here I feel like it just wouldn two or three cameras. It's set. It's just, yeah. And here, I feel like it just wouldn't look well, but it's not that I don't want to hang out with you. I would love for you to be in my basement here with me. I understand. I feel the love. So this book you wrote, bro, I, yeah, it's making my head spin. I told you offline.

I, um, I'm two thirds of the way done. And, um, so I, I, for for me i don't want too many spoilers like i don't want the rest of the book to be spoiled because it's it's one of those books where every chapter ends with like wait what and i have to go back and read did i read that right like i cannot put it down it's so incredibly good and i love the combination of just good storytelling, the sci-fi element, but then just these linguistic moral conversations about language and reality and humanity. It's just, it's profound. So I don't want to give too many spoilers to the audience because I want them to read your book. So we need to figure out how to handle that. But why don't we start with this?

I mean, you've written nonfiction books about sexuality and your story and inclusion and so on. Do you find that you're primarily a fiction writer? Do you feel like you live in both worlds, nonfiction and fiction? Because when I read this, this is like, this is a fiction writer. This isn't like some nonfiction person trying to dabble in fiction. You know, it's interesting that my entry into writing was really much more an interest in fiction. And really, I think an interest in storytelling broadly. But I didn't conceive of my life as one that was particularly worth telling stories about. And I mean, the things I wrote memoirs about, like, you know, experiences of sexuality, for instance,

I had every intention of keeping those stuffed down for life. So I was like, if I'm going to tell some good stories, they're going to need to be made up or they're going to need to be other people's stories. So I was really sold on writing fiction as a primary mode of communication. That was how I got an agent initially. And that was kind of where a lot of my effort was placed. a lot of my effort was placed. And it was actually when I wrote the manuscript that became my first memoir, Single Gay Christian, the way that I got to writing it was that I was trying to work on a novel, was having terrible writer's block, had written my agent and been like, Mike, I have this terrible writer's block. What should I do? And Mike was like, here's the solution, Coles. You just sit down in front of a blank Word document and you write whatever comes

out of you and no one ever has to see it. So, I did and then wound up writing Single Gay Christian. So, that book and really my whole entry into like Christian nonfiction, into memoir, all a grand accident. I just wanted to tell an interesting story that made people think deep thoughts that perhaps inspired them to be better followers of Jesus. All right. That makes sense. I mean, even your nonfiction writing is so good. You can tell you're an actual writer, not just a Christian who happens to write a book or whatever. So it's not surprising, but it still is a very different genre though. Like it's, I feel like it's the same author when I read your nonfiction stuff. And then this one, because I know, but I, but I know, I know it is, but if I really remove myself from knowing the author, I was like, this, this feel, this is different. I mean, writing fiction,

do you feel like you have to put on a different part of your brain or for you, is it all the same? Maybe, maybe writing fiction is as close as I get to acting. I feel like when you write, you're kind of trying to inhabit the space of the world that you're writing about. And so if you're writing nonfiction, and especially if you're writing nonfiction that includes narratives of your own life, you're just inhabiting the space of your own life, which is really easy to do. But when you write nonfiction, I think there's more inhabiting a space that involves these people you've never actually met, but you start to feel like you know them and you start to

kind of inhabit their world. And so you try to write in a way that feels true to that world and true to our world, even if it's not a thing that you've actually experienced. Even if it's not factually correct, you still want it to have the resonance of the deep truths of the world. Can you give us a summary of the story without spoiling too much? I will try. It's so funny. Preston was telling me offline before we started recording. He was like, now that I'm partway through the book, I can understand why you were so vague in trying to tell me what this book is about, because it does kind of keep evolving as you go. Maybe I'll give this prefatory background, and that'll maybe help make sense of the way you experience the story. So the idea for the book came when, several years ago, I was having a conversation with a grad school

friend of mine. We were both in the English department at Penn State. We were both studying rhetorical theory, which is kind of like the philosophy of how language works in the world. We both love Jesus. We were both part of evangelical Christian church communities. And so we both had this really interesting experience of thinking deeply about language while simultaneously being part of a fairly progressive humanities department that tended to use words in certain kinds of ways. And we understood and appreciated and knew how to speak that language. And then at the same time, we were part of these evangelical Christian communities that use language in very different ways. And we understood that and we knew how to speak that language, but we found both of us found that it was really

difficult to negotiate those two communities. Um, and so as we were kind of wrestling through that and thinking, you know, thinking rhetorical thoughts with one another about that tension, I was like, gosh, you could almost put this into a novel where like, and I sort of described it. Basically I've described the scene that is the very end of the novel. So I won't tell you because I don't want to spoil it for you, Preston, or for anyone else who, you know, may choose to read it. And hopefully, you know, my friend then subsequently forgot it also so that he can be surprised when he reads it. But because of that, the idea of the novel is that it begins with these characters who use language in a very particular and very limited way that shapes how they perceive the world around them. And it's a way that's unfamiliar to you

as a reader. And so you as a reader are experiencing what they say about the world and thinking, well, this can't be right. That doesn't sound like the world should be. But as the story evolves and as the character's sense of language evolves, the reader's sense of the world sort of evolves with it. And so part of the mystery of the book, if you will, is just this constantly unfolding, this constantly disentangling sense of, oh, what are these words being used for? And how do we know that the way words change over time can really shift and shape and even to some degree control the way we then come to perceive and interact with and respond to the things that are around us? So I've described this book as being kind of like a science

fictional retelling of the Tower of Babel narrative. I told one person, I was like, it's like a fan fiction of Genesis chapter 11. But it does that in hopes of exploring, in the same way that the Tower of Babel offers to us really early on in the narrative of scripture, this sense that God's self recognizes the power that language has to bring people together or to split them apart. And God sort of makes this decision like, actually, let's split these people apart because they're up to some things I don't really want them to be up to. And so to explore what has that capacity of language both to bring us together and to split us apart in the ways that we speak or fail to speak one another's language, how does that shape who we become as people?

And how does maybe even God, you know, God himself interact with the words that we speak? It's a profound illustration of how language shapes our view of reality. I mean, in such a thorough sense, because you have, and I'll give some details, I'll try to keep them somewhat vague. But I mean, you have, you know, people living in these different worlds, and their language, and these worlds are very, they're similar, but they're very different, too. And their distinct use of language reflects the differences in the world. And when they come, when they, when they start interacting with each other, they're just like offending each other. And what I didn't mean it like that. I saw what this word means in my language. I mean, it's just,

it's, it's beautiful. It's profound, man. It really, it messes with you. It really does mess with you. One of the, I mean, the most brilliant part of the book, and this is something that is page one. So we're pre, you know, pre page one that right away I was like, oh and this is something that is page one, so we're pre-page one, that right away I was like, oh, this is going to be good, is you have this translator's note where you explain that, I mean, as part of the fictional story, you know, one of these worlds has been translated from some language. What was the language that you refer to it as? Oh, I call them Luga and Tal, which are the, oh shoot, what is it? One of them is the Afrikaans word for language. And then the other is the, why can I not think of the name of the language? The most common language spoken in Africa, I believe that's not imported from Europe.

Oh, not Swahili? Oh yes, Swahili. Thank you so much. Yeah, so it's the Swahili and Afrikaans words for language. So it's just two different ways of saying this is the only language. This is language. And okay, so let's, right away, I was like, oh, this is so Coles. Is that in these fictional languages that this book has allegedly been translated from, those languages use the pronouns he and she interchangeably. And to be true to the original, and make sure I'm summarizing this right, to be true to the original, you will also use he and she interchangeably. And I love that, you know, I'm like, oh, here goes Coles, you know he and she interchangeably and i love that you know i'm like

oh here goes coles you know with his gender stuff um but you immediately say this is don't don't and don't think in categories of you know your your western this is has nothing to do with like non-binary you know gender fluidity or whatever this is just you know that would be to import your western modern ideas on on this ancient language um so I'm like, okay, so maybe he doesn't have a provocative agenda. But then as I'm reading, I'm like, no, I think he does. And I will say, so this is as far as spoiler as I'll get. Should I even go? I mean, so throughout the book, you're telling the story through the perspective of kind

of three different main characters, at least as far as I am. You have Kanan, Tai, and Lily. Is it Tai or tay yeah uh tay kanan tay and lily kanan tay and lily and kanan and tay are from one world lily is from another and i'm not so you may say well it's more complicated than that but i um so kanan and tay live in the world where pronouns, they're just used interchangeably. He and she mean the same thing. Now, you will use he in one chapter of Canaan, and then Tay, he, and Lily. You know, Lily's a she. Because that's how English is, he, she.

But then the next time you talk about Canaan, all of a sudden you're using she. licious he she but then the next time you talk about canaan all of a sudden you're using she now in my pronoun oriented brain i'm thinking when i bring the story i'm thinking i'm picturing a male canaan and then in the next time you reach to talk about canaan the pronoun she is there and i automatically go to you know you're telling she i'm like oh it's a female but then i'm like well no it's not it's not that's not the point the pronouns are just they're not gendered in this language but i can't my mind doesn't work like that. So I'm constantly flip-flopping to where almost by the third or fourth or fifth chapter on each of these characters, my mind is, is you've de-gendered my view of Kanan and,

and Tay because I keep flip-flopping back and forth. And now I'm on my mind. I just, it's like a genderless person or whatever. Anyway, I'm just, this is my experience in reading the book. And some people might be upset at that, or they might be like, it's fiction. You're creating a world. You're messing with people's view of language. So I'm not reading into it any more than that.

Some people will say, you're smuggling in some pronoun debate. I don't know. Tell us the story behind that. Like, am I, is my response, was that what you intended for the reader? Um, or what were your intentions behind that beyond just your, what you explained in your translator's note? Yeah. Yeah. It, uh, I'll be honest, your, your vexation delights me. Um, and I feel like I, I maybe I, maybe, you know, um, yeah. Yeah. So, so as I was, as I was conceiving of this,

this book, and for reasons that again, Preston will understand to some degree, maybe he'll understand better when he finishes the book. And those of you who have not started it, I won't explain why this is the case, but I knew that the, the world that Kanan and Tay live in is a world where I knew that it wouldn't make sense for them to have a linguistic conception of separated gender. And some of you are like, how could they not have male and female bodies? I'm not talking, for the moment, I'm not talking for the moment. I'm not talking about, you know, embodiment at all. I'm talking about linguistic conceptions of things. And we as English speakers tend to feel like the idea of gendering in language is just intrinsic.

It has to be intrinsic. But that's not necessarily the case. I mean, even in the use of pronouns. So I grew up speaking the Indonesian language, Bahasa Indonesia, as well as English. And in Indonesian, we only have one third person personal pronoun, which is dia, which means he or she. So we have a separate word for it, itu. But if you're talking about a person in the third person, you don't have a he or she. There's no way of distinguishing with that pronoun whether the person you're talking about is male or female. You simply say dia.

And so pronoun use doesn't bring in a conception of gender in the same way that English naturally brings in a conception of gender. So anyway, so as I was conceiving of the world that Kanan and Tay lived in, I was like, I was trying to be true to how language tends to actually reflect the world and then, you know, inform the world in turn. And I thought, okay, this is going to be a world where they wouldn't really use separate he and she. So I started playing with like, what are my options as an author writing in English? Like I could just write this book in Indonesian, but my Indonesian is not good enough anymore to do anything remotely like that. And so I started, I was like, I could just call everybody he or everybody she, but then

people will be envisioning everyone as male or everyone as female. And I was like, that's not the point, nor is that accurate to the world that they live in. I thought about inventing a new word or even borrowing a word like dia from a different language and using that in place of he or she. But that felt like it would make reading really, really difficult.

I thought about trying to write it in such a way that I just never, ever used pronouns at all. And I was like, that would be miserable. That would be so hard as a writer. And so, yeah, so in the end, what I decided to do is say, and I think there's a passing line in the translator's note where I say, you know, most people who speak this language simply choose one pronoun, he or she, and use it about everybody. And so the way the book is written, every chapter that's sort of primarily written from Canaan's perspective, everyone is called she.

And every chapter that's written primarily from Tay's perspective, everyone is called he, even though some people show up in both of those chapters. You know, Canaan and Tay both show up in each other's stories. And so you see these people getting variously assigned different pronouns. But again, as I say in the translator's note, like you pointed out, like the point is not some sort of like direct commentary on gender fluidity in the 21st century. Like imposing a concept like that onto the text would be anachronistic at best and colonizing at worst, I think is what I say. Yeah, I love that. But in a secondhand, I mean, everything is welcome to be a commentary

on the world we live in now in a secondhand kind of way, but it's not an attempt to directly address any of those questions. It's more broadly an attempt to kind of try to disentangle what we think we know to be true about language from the way language actually functions in the world and how it really works on the ground. So all that makes sense. And you explained that the translators know it would be anachronistic to impose. At the same time, you are writing to 21st century English speakers where these questions are live and well. And did you, okay. And you don't need to, it's kind of like asking an artist, you know, what does this actually mean?

You know, it's like, well, what do you think it means? You know, like, I mean, you do break down gender binaries by flip-flopping and I can't even picture, is this a he or a she and is well that's it's not even there's it's like it did that the the effect it had on me as a reader is I had to envision a person without the lens of a specific sex biological sex um and in my mind the characters at least tay and kanan became more and more for lack of better terms non-binary or just not non-gendered you know so that you're saying that wasn't necessarily your that wasn't your intention you were really just trying to kind of alert people to how different languages are less gender than others and that's you know

i don't know because it had that effect on me, dude. And I'm not, yeah. And I, okay, theologically, I could disagree, whatever. But like, I enjoyed, it's fixed. I enjoyed just my mind being messed with. So I loved it, actually. Even if I was like, I don't know if this is, you know, I wouldn't assign this in the theological anthropology class necessarily.

Or maybe I would just to like throw a curveball at people. I was going to say, maybe you should. Well, I'll say this about, I think one of the ways in which I would hope that this book could be illuminating to some of the impasses we find ourselves in, in conversations about gender, about faith, about human embodiment, about what we believe theologically about human anthropology and human embodiment. One of the ideas that I think the messing with pronouns, if you will, in this book is meant to illustrate is that often people come at the same language with very, very different intentions for that language. And so sometimes people are coming at a certain

aspect of language and their intention is to communicate a very particular kind of thing with it. And then the hearer or the person using the same language in a very different way or using very different language to try to express a similar idea, because of those differences in language, we often find ourselves either talking past one another or enacting these moments of really grand crisis, really massive disagreement. grand crisis, really massive disagreement, when at least in some cases, if we boiled it down to really basic questions like, what does it mean for us to be human beings? And what relationship do we believe the body itself has to our humanness? And that question of the nature of the body itself and how present with or absent from our human bodies we are as creatures is also a thing that I'm exploring, I think, in The Limits of My World. about, for instance, the experience of folks with gender dysphoria, or when we think about folks who, for various reasons, want to push against what they see as really restrictive gender boundaries in society, some of that conflict plays out on linguistic ground. And maybe there's opportunity at times to push pause on the linguistic conversation long enough to say,

okay, but when we get to the bare question of human embodiment, and when we bring that bare question of human embodiment in front of the person of Jesus and say, what would it mean for us to be embodied human creatures in company with and in pursuit of this Jesus guy, it may be that we waste less time having the conversation where the conversation doesn't really matter and we can get a little more quickly to the heart of the matter. Yeah, that's good.

And to be clear for the audience, I mean, because we're spending a decent amount of time on it. This is, I would say, it's a subtle thread in this story. It's not like the main part. It's not like this is all about gender and and messing with our category it's just kind of lingering there in the background a little bit but there's so many other things that you explore

just the intersection between kind of reality and language and how much language shapes and determines reality sometimes and and reflects reality and and beyond that, honestly, aside from just the, aside from the kind of philosophical profundity woven throughout the book, it's just a really engaging story. Like somebody could have no interest in kind of philosophy or even language. They might find some of the extended dialogues a little tedious if they have no kind of

bent in that direction. But the story itself you spend you spend several chapters really just developing a developing the characters very well and then keep keep flipping it around like you think you know them all of a sudden you don't and then the story just keeps taking these weird twists and turns and um did you intentionally so right now so i'm on i'm almost page 200 it's's about – it's a 300-page book. I would say for the first 100 pages or so, you were just really developing the story so well. But now in the last 50 pages or so, you're having these more extended philosophical dialogues.

Is it Kyrie? K-Y-R-I-E? Oh, yeah. Kyrie or Kyrie. Kyrie, Kyrie. K-Y-R-I-E. Oh, yeah. Kyrie or Kyrie.

Kyrie, Kyrie. I just got done with one where it reminded me of, what's that famous chapter in The Brothers Karamazov with Ivan, the Grand Inquisitor? The Grand Inquisitor, yeah. So it's a famous extended dialogue. I like the chapter before that where it's just profound. It takes you, rubs your face in the problem of evil, makes you squirm and does not let you have any easy answers. That's Ivan the atheist, you know, where he's exploring the problem of evil. So the chapter right before the grand inquisitor to me was, I remember my, I was just, my head was spinning. My, my, uh, you know, I felt like I might've lost my faith a

couple of times, you know, and then got it back, you know, sort of, you know, you're, you're, you start doing that a bit in the book. Is that, am I right to say that you, you, you wanted to establish the characters and stories, the story well, and then started to have these more extended dialogues? I haven't finished a book, so maybe this is just. Yeah. I think there's, there's always a balance in, in any kind of narrative writing, but I think this is especially true in fiction. You want to let the story be a story and you don't want the authors philosophizing or the characters philosophizing to get in the way of just letting the story happen. And yet, I think, honestly, writing is so much dang work that I feel like I'm not going to bother to do the work of writing

unless there's something that seems like deeply true and significant about the writing. And so I'm always trying to balance that as a writer, the question of like, okay, I want to make sure that we're just doing a lot of like, we told a really interesting story and I hope it's compelling and I hope it keeps you reading. But also I don't want you, I don't want a reader to keep reading a book and at the end be like, well, that was a nice diversion from reality. And then just like, well, on with life. I feel like really good fiction should leave us meditating on it because it hasn't felt

like a diversion from reality, but it's felt like an exploration of reality. And in some ways, I think you can ask some of the most difficult human questions and some of the most difficult theological questions from the fictional space because you have the opportunity to tell this story that clearly doesn't map directly on anyone's life and therefore has the artistic capacity to map onto so many of our lives in various ways, right? Like we can see

ourselves in fiction often in ways that are a lot harder to do in nonfiction. And that power of fiction, the permission that it has to be exploratory, to ask questions without necessarily providing all the answers. I think that's part of why, I mean, Madeleine L'Engle used to say, if it's great art, then it's Christian, no matter how mundane the subject matter might be. Because really great art asks really honest questions about the world. And the asking of really honest questions about the world is fundamentally a Christian inquiry. That's good. I had a buddy of mine, a Christian buddy who said he thinks fiction is more true than nonfiction. And he likes to say things that are just backwards and upside down, you know, or like, you know, kind of like, who's

that guy that says I'm a Christian atheist? And sometimes I'm like, all right, you're a little, a little, a little too much. Like I get what you're doing, you know, the, but I, you know, he, I think he really meant that, you know, that like fiction and, you know, he's a huge, this guy's a huge fan of like, uh, what's the space trilogy. C.S. Lewis says that he thinks that's the most theologically moral, profound story, you profound story that shaped his worldview more than nonfiction. It sounds similar to what you're saying. I mean, fiction does allow you to explore reality and truth in ways that nonfiction is a little more constraining. I don't know. And I've read probably like 15 fiction books in my life. So in no way am I an expert.

And that's to my shame. Like I do think reading fiction is good and good for you and good for your theology, good for your worldview. And people should do it more, not less. And I just, yeah, I don't take my own advice. I find my, I often have a book stack, you know, of like nonfiction books that I feel like I want to get through and need to get through that's just ever growing. So for me to sit down and read fiction is, you know, I often

don't choose to do that to my shame, to my shame. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to valorize all fiction because number one, a lot of fiction, like I said, I think is just written for the sake of diversion, um, or for the sake of other, you know, I don't know, people probably write romance novels for the sake of titillation, like whatever the purpose of the narrative is, or the purposelessness of the narrative, fiction is not immune from those capacities. entered into as an opportunity to sort of boldly inquire about the nature of the human experience, I think there's a lot of power within that bold inquiry. Fiction, Kenneth Burke once referred to literature as equipment for living, by which he meant that like fiction, by providing people with an opportunity to explore ideas and to sort of see those ideas lived out can then become the tools that people bring into, uh, their own life

circumstances when they find themselves inhabiting like, oh, I didn't, I didn't have a clue, uh, that human beings could think in this way or could approach a situation like this in this way until I read about it. I saw it in action. And now that I've seen it, I know something more about what it would be like to live it. Like a really simple example of this would be, and I don't think she would mind me sharing this. So recently, about a week ago, I had the joy of being with some family on the East Coast and then in a wedding.

I think I'm over like 50 weddings at this point in my life. So I'm really, really feeling it, but delightful times all around. Anyway, I got to spend some quality time with my sister-in-law, Heather, who I absolutely love. And she was talking about how there were certain kinds of books that she hadn't read when she was younger because she wasn't super into reading, but is now reading with her kids as they're young, but growing into enjoying stories. And she said, as I'm reading these stories, including stories about kids in the Holocaust, kids in World War II doing really remarkable things.

She's like, it's amazing to me how I think because I wasn't hearing those stories when I was growing up, I think I had a smaller sense of what kids were capable of. And she was like, and now, you know, my almost seven-year-olds are reading these stories and they're like, yeah, of course a kid could like be super brave and save some people's lives from the Nazis. Like that's obviously things that kids do. Cause we read it in this story. Um, and so it was just fascinating reflecting with her on the question of like, how does the presence or absence of certain kind of narrative possibility give us right. What Kenneth Burke would call the equipment for living, like give us the tool to then approach the world around us and conceive of it through the eyes of having seen it in story.

And how much more so if that story bears the kind of truth telling that is reflective of being a follower of Jesus to be able to grapple really deeply with the things that are most difficult, most challenging, most mysterious about our experience of the world. And to be able to emerge from that and say, like, there's something true about who Jesus is in the midst of all of that, that makes me more able to then go forth and live like a person deeply confident in the goodness of Jesus. go forth and live like a person deeply confident in the goodness of Jesus. I mean, I often think about how much fiction there is in the Bible. Between, I mean, parables and even I take, I think Job's like an extended parable. And that can freak people out because they're like, well, no, it must be historical reality,

literal. Otherwise, it's not true. I'm like, well, the parable of the Good Samaritan is true, but it's not historically real. And it's like, what do you mean by true? Like, is that kind of just a very post-enlightenment modern kind of assumption that if it's not a factual documentation of a historical event, therefore we just don't know what to do with it? Yeah. I mean the uh the idea of reading text and saying the primary thing i'm supposed to get from this text is a discrete set of facts about past occurrence uh that i think is a is a somewhat newer mode of reading um i mean even if you think

about the way people thought of uh creation myths in the ancient world and various other kinds of mythologies, right, all of these things are told not necessarily with the primary intention of communicating, like, factually accurate material. right, you can ask the question like, well, did people believe it really happened? But to some degree, our current fixation on like, did it really happen in that way? Is just a fixation that's, that's new, like, it's not the same kind of fixation that those storytellers had at the time the stories were being told. And I love I mean, you even see, you see some tension, even in the way that as Jesus is telling stories, right? I love that the verse that says like, Jesus spoke many parables to them and without parables, he didn't speak to them. And I love how you have this Jesus walking around being like, let me tell you a fictional,

let me tell you a fictional story. Let me tell you another story, right? And then the Pharisees show up and they're like, Jesus, we have come with a very specific question and we would like a very specific answer. And Jesus is like, let me tell you another story. And they're like, Jesus, we have another very specific question. And he's like, I've got three more stories. And I just love how you, you even see Jesus himself, right. Embodying this tension where like some parts of the human condition are like, give me all the facts. I will have the right answers.

And then I will be, and Jesus is like, you think you need the right answers. And I'm not sure that's what you need. Like, I think what you need is the kind of story that functions as equipment for living. Maybe instead of needing all the answers, you need to ask better questions, which it seems like he's constantly challenging the very question itself. You know, it makes me think like, you know, you mentioned creation myths in the ancient world and, you know, then you look at Genesis 1 to 11 and you're kind of like, this feels similar to some of these myths, but different. And, you know, there's a big debate whether, you know,

is Genesis 2 and 3 is a literal Adam and Eve, the literal first human pair? And I don't know enough to have a super strong opinion. I would lean towards yes. At least I think the New Testament refers to them as literal characters. But I would also turn around and say, but if they weren't, I don't know if that would rattle my foundation too much. Because some people, like if they're not literal, the whole Bible is just like,

how can you trust anything? I just don't know if the ancients would have thought in those. I don't know if they would have been that disturbed by that. Or if Tower of Babel wasn't a little literal, or the flood. Or maybe it's drawing on, kind of like how I think Job is like, there's a core kernel historical truth. There was this righteous person named Job who suffered. But the retelling of the story with all

these poetic dialogues, you know, unless the three friends were walking around speaking in poetry, you know, there's, there's some kind of artistic, like refashioning of these dialogues, you know, maybe there were some friends and may, you know, but yeah, I just, I don't know. Like I I'm, I'm trying, I'm trying to understand the Bible as the ancients would have understood it. And I do think that our post-enlightenment view of literature and truth and facts and history is very different from the ancient world. Not completely. Not completely. I think there's a lot of history in the Bible.

But I think – I don't know. If we get to the resurrection and Jesus says, yeah, dude, I mean, Genesis 1 to 11 was totally like true mythology. You know, like, I wouldn't be like, oh, my word, I'm at the right place. You know, like, I don't know. Do you have any thoughts? Have you looked, I mean, from a literary perspective, do you have any? I didn't bring on the podcast to wax eloquent on the genre of Genesis 1 to 11, but it just, yeah. I'm always prepared for a little waxing eloquent, tragically.

Yeah, you know, I think one thing that I really respect and admire about people who, or some of the folks I've interacted with who believe it's really important, for instance, to read Genesis 1 to 11 as literal historical fact. One thing I appreciate about that is that their concern is I want to make sure that I like, I have this belief about the whole Bible as being authoritative, as being without error. And so because it's important to me, like the history of the historicity of the resurrection is important to me. And like, as soon as you start saying Genesis 1 to 11 isn't literal historical fact. Where's it going to end? Right.

And so there's a desire to read consistently. And I love and admire the desire to read consistently. For me, the lens of consistency that I want to bring to scripture is not my superimposed vision of here's how accurate texts work and here's the correct details that they deliver. But I want to let the text of scripture inform me about how it is asking to be read. And I think scripture is written in different genres and genres make different requests of us as readers. And so I believe that scripture is authoritative and without error in the sense that it is the thing that God meant for it to be. And it is the thing that the authors meant to communicate to us. But if for instance, the six days of creation are not six 24-hour days as we now understand them to be, that's not like, what? Grand crisis? Because I think there's so much deeply theological

truth, and the genre of those early chapters of Genesis doesn't strike me. Like when you read other ancient literature written in that genre, it doesn't strike me as the kind of literature that's meant primarily for the purveyance of discrete facts. And so to then take that one text and say, I'm going to read this the same way I read the Gospel of Luke, I don't know that putting the exact same interpretive lens on Genesis 2 as you do on the Gospel of Luke is really responsible readership because I don't know that the authors intend the same things of it, and I don't know that the genre of the texts asks for the same kind of reading. That's a big one for me, the genre. I mean, if people ask, do you think like Jonah is a literal historical story?

I'm like, well, if the author intended it to be, then yes. If the author intended it to be another extended parable, then no. We need to understand what was the author's inspired author's intention and are there clues in the genre that are signaling to us those intentions.

I haven't studied Jonah enough to know where I... My default is it's historical, factual. But after I looked into Job more in depth, I'm like, I think it's more beautifully complex than that. I haven't looked at Jonah. I could probably argue both sides of that. But to me, it doesn't really matter. Again, if the main question is,

what was the inspired author's intention, then figuring out that intention is an exciting journey. And of course, we could never, I mean, you'll probably criticize me for even having the hubris that I could even know what the author's intention. But I mean, there's got to be some kind of, you know, I know that your intention in this latest book is to write fiction because it's the genre of fiction. That's clear that it's fiction. It's clear you're not thinking that this was a literal account of some, you know. So there are like clues, right, in various genres and presentations that signal whether the author is trying to present a factual historical account or whether they're trying to explore something more mythological. Yeah. Just to pick up on, I love that you use the word hubris

because I think cultivating readerly humility, part of cultivating readerly humility is recognizing that the way that the text asks to be read is more important than the way you as a reader would prefer to read the text. So you being like, it makes me more comfortable to believe that this text is a purveyance of historical fact. That's nice for you, but that doesn't matter. The question is not what makes you feel good and cutesy while you read the Bible. The question is what the author is offering to you. So it's actually, yeah, it's actually a reflection of a more recent reading practice to sort of insist that our own readerly conception of how a text ought to be read should be prioritized over like the way the text itself invites reading.

I know why you're really excited that I used the word hubris, is that I actually pronounced it correctly. Do you remember you corrected me a couple of years ago on that? What did you, did you say hubris? I thought you said hubri or something. I thought it was like a silent S, which is so stupid. I hear that word all the time. I don't know why, but I remember you, I don't know if it was a phone.

I don't know. It was something you like texted me and said, you know, it's hubris, right? That is not abnormal for me. I love that you're telling that story i also love that we have this sort of relationship where i know that you not only like will allow but like actually appreciate corrected i invite your uh correction we could we could almost go down like the top 10 times when you have helped me to word things in a better way. Correction would be probably stronger than you would even word it. But where you have said, that's a good idea. Let me help you maybe present that in a better way.

Well, and one of the things, so many of your listeners may know that I frequently do a lot of editing for you. And I will often tell people, you're one of the most gratifying people to edit for because you're so responsive to feedback. Sometimes you offer editorial feedback and people begrudgingly are like, oh, and they're just arguing back with you. They're like, well, if I must. And I just love, yeah, I love responding to your work because you're just so thoughtful in the way you bring it into the final product. Most people don't know. Yeah. You, you've, uh, you've been my official editor for the last three books I've written, including the one coming out next month, Exiles. Embodied, I think was the

first one when you were like contracted, like the official that. I think that's right. And I, I, I, it's still, I don't know if it's trauma or, um, just, you know, you know, when I submitted the manuscript to you, I think right around the beginning of April, this would have been 2020. And I was thinking, all right, I'll get the edits back. I'll make a few corrections and turn in probably by May. It came back, you sent, I think it was such a big file because you sent back the first half of the book that I'm estimating had two to 300 critical comments. This isn't including just the corrections like this comma is in the wrong place and you misspelled this word and you misspelled hubris, but just like, let me push back on this. Let me push back and some of it was like you're you were like i don't necessarily disagree with you but here's another you know here's a counter argument to what you're

saying others were like i think you're totally wrong here and here's 15 reasons why it took me a month to wade through all those comments i probably accepted 90 to 95 there's a couple times where I'm like, eh, I'm going to roll the dice on this on Kohl's. So you just have to live with it. And then the second half of the book, same thing. I mean, it was, it was, it took me probably three months to get through all those edits. The other two books weren't as extensive, but that was such a, such a, I mean, gosh, obviously transgender identities is such a beautifully complex in, in,

in nuanced and, in, you know, topic that I'm, I can't imagine. I can't imagine people that write books without that kind of scrutiny though. Like I will,

I would feel naked if I wrote a book without passing it through you and getting all your critical comments. Like I just won't. I mean, you're a baked into my contracts. I mean, Kohl's comes with me so don't die on me i enjoy it keep keep bringing him on for us too do you have some favorite fiction

books or any any book what what what were your sources of inspiration for limits of my world your fiction book because as i'm reading i'm like oh he's kind of reflecting you know a little bit of hunger games over here a little bit of uh Games over here, a little bit of Matrix. And those are my superficial kind of – I know I've been using that description on social media. And you're probably like, that's not at all – yeah. Was there inspiration that went into this, like specific books or movies? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think the specific inspirations were less fictional and more non-fictional, which probably makes it sound like it's a real dull read. Some of my major inspirations, like the rhetorical work of Kenneth Burke, I think indirectly, you're right to say, oh, there's a bit of a hunger games vibe here. You

know, like aspects of the story are dystopian. And so if you've, if you've read some books or watched some movies in the last 20 years, like there's no way of writing dystopian work without sort of drawing intentionally or unintentionally from the ways those stories have been told in the past. Um, one comparison, uh, that a reader made that I think is particularly apropos in this case, uh, is Lois Lowry's book, The Giver. Um, which have you read that? No, no, I need to, I've heard of it. I keep hearing about it. It is delightful. And I mean, it's, it's, uh, written for younger readers, so it's an easy read, but it is deeply thoughtful. So deeply

thoughtful. And I, well, since you're going to read it, I won't spoil it for you, but I'll frame it this way, that in The Giver, we see a society that has a view of the world that they consider to be complete, that we discover over the course of the story has in various ways been purposefully limited and uh so the so the giver shows a character on a journey of discovery into a more complete world than the world he thought was complete and i think i think there's something i mean deeply deeply beautiful and deeply poetic about that. And in a sense, I mean, isn't that reflective of the entirety of experience is in fact this smaller and much more limited vision of the whole. I think there's a moment in No Longer Strangers where I compare dying and being with Jesus to the experience of coming out of the womb and being

born and being like, when you're in the womb, you're like, this is the whole thing. And then you come out of the womb and you're like, holy snot, it's so much larger than I thought. And like, in the same way, like, you know, we die and enter into like, holy crap, it's so much larger than I thought. And so I, yeah, I think the kinds of stories that provide us with opportunities to, to like walk that experience with a character or characters. I think there's something that can be really spiritually powerful about that narrative exploration. So yeah, The Giver is one that I would cite

as maybe a notable influence in that way. Was The Matrix not? Or is The Matrix so pervasive in just the cultural air we breathe that it's just almost unintentionally incorporated to some extent or, or my, I'm just, there's not may, there's just a couple of things I'm like, Oh, this sounds kind of matrix matrixy or I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I think, uh, whether or not I was, Oh, I actually know. I remember having a conversation with someone where the matrix specifically came up. So it was definitely a narrative that had similarities that I was familiar with. And one of the things that's so, like the Matrix was in some ways novel in the way it explored the power of digitization to stand in for reality. Right.

Right. And of course, in the matrix, you know, we see that in a like, whoa, like they thought they were in reality, but they weren't. They were in the matrix. Yeah. I guess now I've spoiled that. Well, I think the statute of limitations is definitely up for the matrix. But yeah, even though the way I may be toying with those ideas are different here, that

question of how much is our human embodiment substitutable with other things, right? Because that's a big question in the matrix. If you can just step into the code and be happy, is that enough? Or do you need to be with your actual body in the actual world, even though it sucks, because it's better than just being in a fake reality? I think that, too, is one of the questions that I did want to grapple with in The Limits of My World. If you have the opportunity to be in some ways separated from your physical embodiment, is that okay? Can you live like that and call it human? Is that okay? Can you live like that and call it human? Or is there something fundamentally about our humanity that requires us to be connected to the physiological nature of ourselves? That's good. Yeah. Yeah. And it wasn't like you, I just saw some subtle kind of matrix-y kind of themes, a little bit of Brave New World. I actually have not ever finished that book, but i remember when i started oh my gosh i know i know i know i'm not judging to be clear

i'm just the end of brave new world is so devastating um i think i know devastating in a wonderful way line enough just because i mean it's familiar, but yeah. What are there any, am I allowed to ask the artist? Are there any moral or theological philosophical responses that you are trying to instill in the reader? Or is that too enlightening? Is that not postmodern enough? Is it kind of like, yeah, I'll just let you wrestle with that question. Um, who do you want the reader to be after they finish your book? I am always, I'm always leery when,

when, when storytelling and maybe especially the fictional kind of storytelling. Um, I'm always leery of telling readers, like, here's how you should experience it. Here's what you should gain from it. Because, you know, that's between you and Jesus. That's exactly what I thought you'd say. One thing that was... Go ahead. One thing I will say that was significant for me in the writing, it was a thing I was grappling with as I wrote. And so if other Christ followers find themselves grappling with similar questions,

I would welcome their company in that grappling. There's a grappling in the story with, as we watch language changing around us, and as we watch competing definitions battling around us, and we feel ourselves forced to pick in some ways, like pick this language or this language and whichever language you pick, you will be perceived as picking a side. I believe there's a moment, I forget the exact phrasing, but there's a moment in The Limits of My World where one of the characters describing the past says, picking a word was the same as picking a side. Without picking a side, it became impossible to speak at all. And I think even though that tension plays out very differently in this novel than it does maybe in the world

around us, I think a lot of us find ourselves embroiled in various ways in that conflict. Like, hey, you want to pick a word? You want to open your mouth? Great, pick a side, and then you can decide which dictionary you should read, right? And because of that, I think, I mean, I hope that followers of Jesus who find ourselves called to be peacemakers grapple see these increasingly diverging silos of humankind sort of failing to speak to one another across really significant divides, in what ways does our peacemaking invite us to wrestle with how we then engage our language accordingly? And certainly this book is not meant to give sort of a categorical, like, here's what you do. Um, uh, it, it couldn't.

And, and perhaps even the ways some followers of Jesus are called to answer that question will look different from the ways other ones are. Maybe that's part of the genius of the body of Christ being body is that the right hand can reach in places that the left hand cannot reach. Um, like maybe that's part of the genius of the thing. And yet I think we would all be missing a really big opportunity as those who are called to be peacemakers if we fail to see the way our engagements or disengagements with language are a part of that invitation.

Yeah, that's good. I was going to say, well, something similar. I think all readers will probably leave with an appreciation of the complexity of language and how language interacts with, and in a sense, almost creates reality. Maybe creates reality might be too strong. I don't know. Does language create reality, or does it just bend how we perceive reality, or shape how we perceive reality, maybe? Or does it create reality? I don't know. we're getting into well some philosophical stuff i think in the sense that how you respond to the reality you perceive or the reality you think you perceive causes you to behave in various ways and those ways shape reality so in that sense maybe secondhand language is also shaping reality yeah that's good well uh man thanks

for your time. And I would encourage if somebody, if somebody really enjoys fiction, especially of the sci-fi ish dystopian novel ish genre, they will absolutely love this book. I guarantee it or your money back. Um, well,

I'll leave that between you and Amazon. Um, or if somebody likes to, uh, just explore some of the more philosophical themes of yeah all the stuff we've been talking about language and the complexity of that of language and reality and so on and just uh anthropology too what it means to be human is is a strong theme so um yeah i mean unless someone just like hates reading i i think anybody should

pick up this book i think you'll find it hard to put down as, as I did. So thanks, Greg, man. Appreciate your time. I'm looking forward to your next novel. Well, I got to finish this one.

Oh, thank you, my friend. Always a joy to chat with you. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.