Theology in the Raw - S8 Ep895: Asylum Seekers, Undocumented Immigrants, and the Gospel

Episode Date: August 23, 2021

"About 5% of what you see on the news reflects the reality of what’s going on at the border,” says pastor John Garland, who’s been living out the gospel at the border. In this fascinating conversation, Dr. Poe Hays and John Garland walk us through what it means to be a Christian and live out the kingdom of God toward a marginalized and misunderstood group of fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. And how the Psalms are a Spirit-inspired guide to trauma therapy. 

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I have on the show today two special guests. I know I rarely do two guests at the same time. And as you will hear, having two guests at the same time did present a few challenges to the internet connection. There's a lot of data coming through, but we worked out most of the kinks, so you should be able to get 98% of what we talked about. It was such an invigorating conversation about immigration, about asylum seekers, about the deep chasm that exists between the narratives being retold on mainstream news outlets and actually what's happening on the ground around the border between America and Mexico. This is a fascinating

conversation. You're going to be challenged. You're going to hear stuff you probably never even thought about before, and I'm excited for you to engage this conversation. I'm still just reeling from our scintillating talk that we had. Dr. Rebecca Poe Hayes is Assistant Professor of Christian Scriptures at Truett Seminary, which is part of Baylor University. She has a PhD from Baylor University, and that's where she teaches biblical Hebrew Old Testament and the Psalms. She's also the author of the recently released academic book called The Function of Story in the Hebrew Psalter. John Garland is the pastor of the San Antonio Mennonite Church and chaplain of

the Interfaith Welcome Coalition. He became a pastor of this church in 2016 during an immigration crisis that has dramatically shaped the church and its ministry. John's currently doing doctoral work on communal trauma, spiritual resilience, and the Psalms, which is a lot of what we talk about in this conversation. So I'm excited for you to engage it. Yeah, I'm just going to leave it at that. I'm excited for you to hear their perspective on what's going on down at the border. If you would like to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology

in the raw, support the show for as little as five bucks a month. Also save the date next spring, March 31st through April 2nd is the first ever theology in the raw conference here in Boise, Idaho. The information is coming very, very soon. We've got loads of amazing speakers that are lined up, including Jackie Hill Perry, John Tyson, Thabiti Anyubwale, Derwin Gray, Sandy Richter, and many, many others who are going to be at the Theology in the Royal Conference. We'd love to see you there. It's going to be live streamed, but I would also encourage you, if at all possible, to come join us live here in Boise next spring.

Also, a few other events on the faith, sexuality, and gender conversation. October 7th, I'll be in Texas, Plano, Texas at the Revoice Pre-Conference talking about the transgender conversation. Then October 20th and 21st here in Boise, we have a faith, sexuality, and gender conference. All the information on those events, or at least the last three that I just mentioned are on centerforfaith.com forward slash events. You can check out all the information and find out how to register. Okay, without further ado, let's get to know Dr. Poe Hayes and Pastor Garland. Hello, friends, and welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw.

I'm here with two new friends of mine, Rebecca Poe Hayes, a professor at Baylor University, and Pastor John Garland, a pastor of a Mennonite church in San Antonio. So thank you both for being on the show. I think this is the first time I've had like two people Skyping in at the same time. So hopefully this doesn't destroy my internet as there's so much data coming through my Idaho system here, which is pretty backwoods and needs to be updated. But anyway, thanks so much for being on Theology in Raw. Thanks. Glad to be here. But anyway, thanks so much for being on Theology in Raw. Thanks. Glad to be here.

Why don't we start? Yeah, Rebecca, tell us just a brief snapshot of who you are and the general category that we're talking about is immigration. And I know John's got a lot of hands-on kind of work that he's doing right now, but who are you, Rebecca? And how'd you get interested in this topic? Yeah. so I teach at Truett Seminary, which is the seminary at Baylor University. So it's a Baptist seminary, but we have a Wesley House, and it's a nice sort of diverse place. And I come out of the Baptist world. So both of my parents are Baptist pastors and my mom is a social worker as well. And so always these kinds of justice issues and loving our neighbor has very much been part of my whole upbringing.

whole upbringing. And as I felt called to ministry and called to, ultimately, called to equip others for ministry here at Truett, these questions have continued to really be at the heart of the kind of work that I want to do. And so, I don't really write on immigration exactly, but I have sort of through a chain of events, I've gotten into where I'm doing a lot of work on trauma and on resilience and how scripture, the scripture that God has given us provides tremendous resources for both trauma healing and resilience building. And my major area of focus is the Psalms. And so I've been working a lot with that. So you're an Old Testament scholar, right?

Like that's your specialty, you teach Hebrew and everything? Yeah, I'm an Old Testament. Yeah, Old Testament, Hebrew Bible. And my initial sort of research area was on, and still is, because I sort of see them, I see them very related, was on story and storytelling and poetry in the Psalms. And seeing what, you know, why tell the stories these ways, right? Or why tell a story here in the Psalms, which tend to be sort of non-narrative kind of things, but stories pop up. And so why are they popping up where they do and how does that help? And that's

sort of, that's actually what set me on this journey towards trauma studies because trauma and narrative are actually really, or the lack of narrative are actually really closely related. Do you have a favorite Psalm? No, I mean, it depends on what's going on. Yeah. It's, you know, that's one of the things that I love about the Psalms, right? Is that they are all so different. I tell my students, you know, that for a long time, I didn't like the Psalms because I sort of had this notion that, you know, they're all the same and it's all a bunch of hallelujahs, praise the Lord, you know, and they get really boring. But they're really not. I mean, they're really radically different and they fit every aspect of

our experience. And there's so much there there and, you know, no matter how many times you read them, um, they speak to you in different ways. Um, so I don't know. I, I, I don't know. I, I'm really attached to Psalm 107 right now. Um, so that's, so it's got all these different, um, short little stories, right? Little vignettes, little parables that get woven together into this larger narrative about what the life of faith is. Is that the one that's connected to Psalm 108, Psalm 107, 108? Do they kind of go together or am I thinking of something else? Maybe that's a bit... Well, Psalm 106 and 107 get paired a lot together sometimes, but they're all, I mean, that's part of what John and

I've, I've worked on is they're all sort of connected, right? They weren't just all thrown together randomly. They're arranged. Yeah. I, when I first got saved, Psalm 63 was a big one for me. Then I did a research paper on Psalm 110. And not only is the Hebrew of that pretty disastrous or just difficult, but it's a powerful Psalm and obviously a favorite among New Testament writers. Psalm 2, Psalm 16. Yeah. 63 was really important for me when I was in college. That was sort of like my Psalm that got me through a lot. So good. Well, John, tell us about yourself. You're a pastor down in San Antonio of a Mennonite church. Is that right? Yeah. We're right in the middle of downtown San

Antonio. San Antonio is in the middle of the immigration routes and we're surrounded by immigration prisons. And we, about seven years, our church got caught up in this immigration crisis and it has dramatically shaped our church. We run a hospitality, you know, in our backyard. So we've been hosting in our hospitality house, maybe eight bedrooms, and in our own homes, thousands and thousands of asylum seekers over these last seven years. seven years. And it has dramatically shaped our church because we've been, you know, hearing, not just providing, you know, a safe place to eat and rest, but also hearing the stories from Central America and from Haiti and from Central Africa as people are fleeing, you know, horrors and horrific trauma. And what happened after hearing these stories and folks wanted to

pray with us and share and they wanted to sing and they wanted to come into our church and worship with us. And so we've had to multiply the languages that we're worshiping in. But there's this astounding moment where you walk in after a really hard week and you step into the sanctuary, and you see up at the front of the church is this cross, and you suddenly realize, I remember this moment, I was like, oh my gosh, we have in the middle of our church a public lynching tool, and it's been used to traumatize communities, and we have it up in the middle of our church as a symbol of God's victory. And God is transforming this communal trauma. And there's a sudden realization years ago, it's like what we're participating in is a faith movement that transforms trauma.

This is what Christianity is, is like trauma transforming movement of faith. And then I realized to join our church, one of the things you have to do is you have to practice drowning. You have to say okay to someone like holding you underwater and going into death and dying in the water and then coming up in a new life. And the symbol of God transforming the trap and God transforming the drowning in the deep into a place of of becoming part of family. And then how do you live into that as church leadership and how do you live into that as a church family? And then and then we now do it every Sunday at our church, but we'll go up front at the end of worship service and we take what is supposed to be a body, and we rip it apart.

And then we pretend to pour blood all over the place, and then we tell people to come up and eat it and drink of it. stories that we're hearing from our asylum-seeking brothers and sisters who are telling of the horrors of their lives being ripped apart, actually seeing horrible deaths and murder and holding that in their hearts and then being invited up to the front of the church with one another to participate in God saying, I'm transforming even this horrific trauma into communion, being one with you and y'all being one with one another. It's an astounding and audacious symbology that we have of trauma transformation. And so as a pastor, we have been pushing ourselves and listening and walking in this sort of trauma-transforming movement. What does it mean to actually take these symbols, these rituals, and then these scriptures seriously? So, we turned up, you know, teachers like Dr. Poe Hayes as a counselor to

bring us back into reading scripture from these eyes of God is really serious about hearing and seeing and bearing witness to our trauma and then inviting us into transformation. And how are we going to do that as a church in such a time as this? And I've really, I mean, you know, I said John was in my class, or I can't remember if I said that or not. But that was one of the things, I mean, this perspective is one that so many Christians in the West, in the privileged white Anglo West anyway, we forget this side of our faith. And we forget the context out of which our scripture emerged, right? And we read it from position of power. We read it from position of privilege. And we forget how traumatic so much of this is. And so we lose, I think, some of the joy. So I really appreciated learning from John and watching the other students in the class get to learn from John and from the stories

that he has brought and shared. Real quick, just for our audience, if there's some glitchiness, we're going to try and clean it up. Hopefully we can clean most of it up. But I apologize, the bandwidth here is getting stressed out a little bit, but I hope you can get the bulk of what they're talking about because this is so important. I mean, both of you are saying, I mean, it's almost like we've really sanitized our liturgies as a church and we've had the privilege to do so. One of my favorite books that kind of blew me away right a few years ago is James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, where the lynchings that were very widespread, very public. I mean, it's so disturbing to read the history of the lynchings

in the early 20th century, especially, but how the black community understood. They had a symbol, the cross, through which they were able to kind of almost make sense of what was going on and even have this horrific yet very real identity with Jesus in a way that the majority didn't have. And it sounds like something very similar, that we have these available symbols and rhythms in Christianity that are right there, that we've kind of ignored that make more sense to somebody like an asylum seeker than people on the other side of the fence. I'm curious, John,

I know I ask you this offline, but obviously once you mentioned immigration and asylum and undocumented immigrants and the border crisis and walls and all this stuff, we're obviously tapping into some volatile political conversations. How much of what we see or hear on the news is actually – how much of that is accurately portraying what's actually going on? Because you're in the what's going on. You're right there. You're there. When you watch the news, how much of that does that accurately portray what's going on on the ground?

Well, I'll say I'm often interviewed by the press. They'll call me for particular stories. And almost every time they call me, they ask me to provide them with the story that they're going to tell. They say, could you put me in contact with a mother who and they'll tick off the things that they want to tell or or alternatively, if they're coming from a different, so they've already told the story. So you're going to, you can believe about five to 10% of what you're hearing, sort of prefabricated, I think, narratives. But really what is going on, I think, is a story of the church in this immigration crisis. This is, these are Christians, brothers and sisters, and 85% of them over these last seven years that we received are evangelical Christians.

85% of asylum seekers. Yeah, and that's us counting, and the number of the folks, the way that they pray, the way they sing, they're singing the same songs as we are. Their favorite psalm is scripture. They pray with one another. Every evening at our hospitality house, we're gathered in prayer together. This is a story. It's not a political story, really. That's happening on the news.

The story is it's a story of the pilgrim church and how we as a church in America are receiving the pilgrim church, the persecuted pilgrim church. I've spent a lot of time also in Central America with some of the churches there watching their leaders being driven out by the violence, by the persecution. And we're receiving pastors and we're receiving social workers and community leaders and folks who desperately want to pray and worship and heal. And it's a huge gift. It's a huge gift. That's a difficult story to tell because it doesn't fit into any of the prescribed political narratives that you're generally going to get from the news. to get from the news. Do you get frustrated when Christians try to make sense of the quote-unquote border crisis through the lens of their favorite news channel? Is that hard to hear?

No, I mean, we do that with everything. It's not so frustrating as just predictable. There's really three questions that people are always asking me over and over and over again, and they're three fear-based questions. The first question is, it's like a legal question, like, are you breaking the law? Are you, like, is this legal? Are they actually Christians if they break the law? And so, wonderful reflections on legality and the law in the New Testament that lends itself to a lot of, I think, spiritual growth. The second question is always about resources. Why don't they take care of themselves? Why don't they fix their own problem? Why should we help them? Why should we have to pay for all of this? It's a basic fear of limitations, and it's that general fear question. And of course, we've been given these marvelous multiplication stories and Jesus loving us being in that place of limitation and dependence on God.

So that question, that fear-based question lends itself to, I think, a lot of spiritual growth, too. And then the last question is always a change question, a fear of change. Is this going to change our economy? Is it going to change our culture? Is it going to change our food? Is it going to change our health system? Is it going to change our culture? Is it going to change our food? Is it going to change our health system? Is it going to change our whatever? Because I feel like I'm doing pretty well now, and I don't want change. And is it going to change the way we worship? Is it going to change the way we read Scripture,

heaven forbid? And this change question also lends itself to a lot of spiritual growth. Jesus loves change and demands change. And so, when you see sort of the root of the questions, you know, I'm afraid that this is not legal. I'm afraid that we don't have enough resources. I'm afraid that we're going to change. You can just say, well, hallelujah. This sounds like kingdom of God place. Like you said, I mean, the second two questions do not... I want to be really careful. I don't want to overstate my observation, but they don't reflect a Christian worldview.

I mean, I want to meet people where they're at and appreciate where their difficulties are. But the way you worded the second, third question, it's like, I almost want to say, well, what are Christians asking? Because those aren't Christian questions. Like, well, how come we have to take care of the other? How come we have to love our neighbor? You know, it's like, I don't know. Where's that even coming from? The first one, the legal question, I could understand, you know, you have scriptural precedent for that kind of wrestling with God's law and the, you know, Babylon's law and when the exiles violate Babylon's law or whatever.

Can we go there actually? I mean, either one of you, I mean. Yeah, go ahead, Rebecca. I mean, they're human questions, right? Right. There are questions that the people of God, the human people of God ask, and you can track God responding to them all throughout Scripture, Old and New Testament. I mean, John was mentioning about, you know, Jesus loved these questions about resources and Jesus loved these questions about, you know, are we going to have to change? We see that all Old Testament, too. of the Old Testament, too. I mean, one of the themes I ask my students to track when I teach, I teach a class on the prophets and their writings, and we track, you know, what is this book? What is this prophet? What is this whatever story teaching us about what it means to be the people of God?

And it's always coming in times of change, right? When change or when resources are short until you're trying to figure out all these things. I mean, I'd say maybe they're not Christian questions, ideally, but they are very human questions. That's good. And I guess it depends on if the questions are more combative or if they're genuine. If they're genuine questions, then I feel like I'm like, oh, I totally get it. Those are great questions. But sometimes Christians ask questions that are more like confrontive or like they're kind of betraying a certain committed worldview already. And that's where it's – I get it though. I mean, I was raised in that kind of context and that way of thinking.

So I understand the logic of it all, but it does seem to rely on national American values more than Christian values and not recognize some of the conflict there. When you say asylum seeker, can you explain the difference between, for those who don't know, an asylum seeker and an undocumented immigrant or what some people might call a legal alien or whatever? Yeah. It's a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum are people who are trafficking humans and trafficking drugs. They are really scary. I've talked to a lot of them, and they are horrifying. And they have threatened On the other far end of the spectrum are refugees, and they have been recognized by the government, given support by the government, welcomed by the government. If you help refugees, you are given support by the government, financial support. They're the other end of the spectrum. Also down at that end of the spectrum are people with green cards and people with, you know, have been granted citizenship. In the middle of the spectrum is

the law, this big black line. It moves around a little bit, but it's a big black line. If you're on one side, you're here legally. If you're on the other side, you're here illegally. And there are millions of people who are here without documents. They're on the wrong side of the law, but they are doing everything they possibly can to follow the law. They're, they're paying for car insurance. They're following the speed limit. They're paying their rent and their taxes and all that. They're doing everything that law they possibly can follow. They're following. Um, and they're not benefiting at all from being here without documents. In fact, it's, it's a huge burden on them, but there's no law for them to follow to get over that line, uh, that legal line. There's no possible law for them to follow to get over that line, that legal line.

There's no possible way for them to do that. Now, asylum seekers are different. They have come here fleeing. It's legal to ask for asylum. So they have come here to our country and they have crossed the river and immediately asked the Border Patrol for asylum. And then they're given paperwork that says you are here legally. You have permission to be here legally as you pursue your asylum case. But it's this weird gray zone where even though you're here legally, you cannot rent. You cannot drive. You can't legally open a bank account. You can't legally work. You can't do anything except be here while you

work out your asylum case. So that puts people completely dependent on their sponsors. It puts single women in horrifically vulnerable places and children and families in really, really difficult places. And so then it's very easy, that spectrum, that immigration spectrum is on a slant. It's really easy for them to slide down onto the other side of the law, and it's really, really difficult for them to progress up the spectrum to being here legally. You have to have minimum $5,000 to pay a lawyer and probably seven months to argue your legal case, all the while you're not legally allowed to work or rent or do any of these things. So our church finds our place working with this vulnerable population, the asylum seekers. They're here legally, but they're in this strange gray zone

where they have no support. No one is given support to help them. We get no reimbursement at all for any of the support we give. And in fact, there are a lot of barriers put up. Sometimes they're given GPS monitors on their ankle. They're told to check in with ICE a certain number of times, and they're given all number of threats that they'll be deported if they do anything whatsoever wrong. So if somebody's an undocumented immigrant and not an asylum seeker, why can't they just be an asylum seeker and therefore have some level of legal covering? It's really, really hard to become an asylum seeker. You ask for asylum and then you are

interviewed. And it's about a three-hour interview where an ICE officer will – an immigration and customs enforcement will interview you and say, do you have a credible fear of returning to your country? And the percentage of people who pass that credible fear interview is not very high. They have to demonstrate, yes, if I go back to my country, I will die. And if they cannot demonstrate that, then they're deported almost immediately. So all all of that before a judge if they're going to progress in their asylum case. And what we're talking about, we're talking about parents who are saving their children's lives. I mean, yesterday we received a family, their little girl's dying of cancer, and they were constantly under threat and being extorted for every extra dollar. They're business owners. They're cheese makers,

and they are making cheese in their little town. And every time they had any extra money was taken by the street gangs as a quote unquote tax. And so they knew their child is dying. They know little precious Emma is dying of this cancer, and they have no way to provide for her. So imagine that, holding your little girl every night as a dad, uh, and you want to, um, you want to bring her to safety. You're going to, you're going to step across borders, uh, to get her there. And there's no, there's nothing that will prevent you from doing that. And the same way a dad is going to pick up his child and run from floodwaters to the highest house in the neighborhood. Even if that house has a fence around it, you're going to get there. Uh, and you're going to do everything you can to get your little girl to the other side of that fence.

And so these are the brothers and sisters that we're receiving. Another mama, she came here, her little boy fell off one of the trains. She didn't have any money to get here, but her little boy was being pushed into the gangs. They were forcing him to join the gang, and so she took him in the night, and they walked. They walked through the jungle. They crossed the Guatemalan border. They hitched rides. They got to Mexico. They got on freight trains coming north without any resources. Little boy fell off, and he lost his leg under the train, miraculously survived. She got him here by the grace of God, by the grace of God, holding this little boy, missing his leg, and saying, I want asylum. My little boy, I'm going to do whatever it takes to save my little boy from the gangs

and to save my little boy's life. To call her a criminal, and she's charged with a misdemeanor. It's similar as like speeding in a school zone, I think, crossing the border illegally. We charge her with a misdemeanor, we call her a criminal. And we lock her up. She spent time in jail, and her little boy was locked up as well. To call her a criminal, doesn't that make us criminal in some way? And for the church to say, to turn a blind eye to that, I think it's damning to us. But it's also transformative for our community to say, here's a bed. And here are some meals for you. Here's a place for you to heal.

Let's pray together. Rebecca, help us to think through this theologically. I mean, you're hearing these stories from John. I'm sure you got a lot more that you've engaged with. You know, a Christian hearing this, what should be the Christian theological response to some of these tensions as you've thought through this? I mean, love, right? That's the first and greatest commandment. And I think, I mean, it's, that's the call, right? Love that is self-sacrificing, love that is hard, love that makes no sense to our communities, to our government. I think that's the most simple answer. our government. I think that's the most simple answer. One of the things that I've really,

I mean, this is some of what John and I have been trying to do together is thinking about how, you know, reading the Psalms together. So he hasn't talked about this yet, I don't think, but reading the Psalms together is a huge part of what he's been doing with his church and with their guests. And when I read the Psalms with my students here, right, or with the churches that I teach in or preach in or wherever, I think the language of the Psalms and the stories that the Psalms tell and the anger and the cursing that the Psalms articulate, I mean, I see that as an invitation to tremendous empathy and tremendous compassion, recognizing that these are our brothers and sisters, the ones that voiced these Psalms 2000, 3000 years ago, and the ones that are on the border of this country and the borders around the world. So I think love and then figuring out how to do that in practice, right? Because we're supposed

to act and not just say, oh, that's so sad. It is. The Psalms make less sense or maybe have less of a impact when you, for lack of better terms, are reading it from a position of privilege and power or lack of trauma, or you're not going through stuff that John's talking about. How have you grown even spiritually watching people encounter the Psalms after having gone through some of the stuff they've done? Has that been pretty, I don't know, encouraging and impacting, convicting? I mean, I'm trying to avoid that kind of language, but how in integrating, engaging the Psalms with some, some level of trauma therapy, have you seen it have a positive impact on people's lives? Yeah, absolutely. And I'll, maybe I'll start out sort of where I started thinking about this and then I'll pitch it to

John cause he's actually been implementing some of this in some really amazing ways. But I mean, so broad strokes of trauma healing, right? You've got to start dealing with those who have been traumatized by helping them to feel safe, right? Like physically, mentally, biologically, you cannot deal with what is going on if you are still under threat, right? Like you have to be able to calm your breathing down. You have to be able to bring your heart rate down. You have to be able to feel like you're not going to get killed in this moment, right? And so you have to establish some kind of place of safety and security and trust with the person or people that you're with. And I think we definitely see the Psalms doing that.

But then you have to see what's going on, right? You have to acknowledge. You have to mourn. You have to get angry and to voice that hurt. And we certainly see the Psalms doing that and giving language to us when we don't have it ourselves. And I think this is really important, even in some of the Psalms that are really, really challenging for us to read. You know, those those imprecations, those curse, be the ones who are little babies on the rocks. Right. I mean, that's really harsh. What do you do with that as Christians?

That's really harsh. What do we do with that as Christians? But if you're reading it with this experience in mind, it sort of changes how you see it. And so you've got to acknowledge and name and mourn and grieve and do all of that. And you don't do it all at once, right? But then you have to figure out how to begin to live again. And seeing, that's that transformation that John's talking about, right? Transforming the trauma of the cross, the trauma of death, the trauma of suffering and separation into community, into relationship. And so you see all of those things happening in the Psalms over and over and over again in lots of different ways, which is fitting because people are different. Our situations are all different.

Well, would you say, I mean, as you're talking, it sounds like I'm not an expert in this at all, but like the path to healing from trauma, like there's a lot of psychological work that's done on the steps of grieving and how you can best heal from trauma. It sounds like what you're saying is, and I don't want to be too anachronistic or make the Psalms out to be more modern than they are, but it sounds like the Psalms are kind of doing a lot of what we now know through modern psychology is a healthy way to heal. Would that be an accurate way of saying it? I mean, to have all these different emotions, lament and anger and safety and God's presence and all these things, the same categories that you're kind of talking about. Yeah. I mean, absolutely. I would say that. Certainly as a

pastor, I would say that. As a biblical scholar writing for SBL and things like that, you have to be sort of nuanced and come at it different ways. But I mean, I would absolutely say that. For either of you. Oh, I was going to transition to the undocumented immigrant. What is the Christian response? Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Before you do that, I don't know. John has applied some of these songs with the asylum seekers that he's worked with and some really important ways that have taught me a lot. So I didn't know, John, if you want to share some of that. Yeah, I would just reiterate, pastorally, I mean, the psalms are extremely powerful communal trauma. extremely powerful communal trauma. It is the creation of a safe place and temple place for the healing of an entire community that's been traumatized. And it's, I mean, we have to pray them every single day as a church. We get up every morning early and we pray the Psalms, we pray for one another. And it's absolutely critical for dealing with traumatized victims, Um, and it's absolutely critical for dealing with traumatized, uh, victims, trauma survivors and dealing with secondary trauma.

Um, and, and part, what, one of the, that really important thing is like the Psalms do this thing called what now psychologists, they have a name for it. They call it, um, titrated pendulation where you give someone a place of safety and then you introduce them to their really strong emotions, and then you swing them back to the place of safety. And you titrated, and very specifically, swing them back into their huge emotions, and then swing them back into this experience of felt safety. And that's where you have this transformation of trauma. And you just see this pattern is all over the Psalms, if you read them straight through as they were originally organized.

And we have to have that. We have to have a guide. You know, you sit in a group, you need somebody to say, let's be vulnerable, and then model that vulnerability. You need someone to model the safety and model the vulnerability. And the Psalms do that. If you say, all right, let's pray, And the Psalms do that. If you say, all right, let's pray, and then you get into some of these Psalms that are furious and hateful and saying, God, take this rage. I want you to take this all the time. A young woman who lived with us for a long time, she was a victim of multiple rapes and sexual abuse. And she would just say, straight face, like, así es la vida. Like, this is what life is. This is what life is like. But then she's watching a Disney movie and bawling her eyes out, just like weeping at the slightest little set. She needs someone to give her permission to say, I am furious at my abuser. I'm furious at my rapist. I want God, I want you to do this, this, this, and this to this person who hurt me and took my childhood

and took my life and took my brother. I want you to do all these things. And the Psalms give us permission to say that and to do that in rage. But then, but then they swing us back. They swing us back with this, this, this pendulation back into that place of safety. So Dr. Pohase was mentioning that Psalm 137, like dashing your babies on the rock, like that's a real emotion, like this violent, raging emotion that says, you did this to us. God, I want you to do this to them. I want you to make them suffer. But Psalm 137, we don't get there. Psalm 136. And it is this mantra psalm. And it's the mantra where 26 times we have the line repeated, your hesed love forever.

Your love forever. You know, leolam hazdau, or however you pronounce the Hebrew. forever. You know, Leolam Hasdau, or however you pronounce the Hebrew, it's like 26 times this mantra of your love forever, your love forever. And then out of that place of safety is about our rage. Let's talk about how we sometimes can't speak, and we can't sing, and we're going to have to hang up our harps, and we are being mocked, and our hands don't work, and our voice, we have no home, and we've lost everything. And you know what I want to do, God? I want to kill somebody. I want to destroy life. And then the next Psalm, Psalm, you know, 138, swings us back into an answer, word for word, those emotions. Like it provides an image of home,

an image of singing with that broken heart and that broken tongue. And then most powerfully, it has this never letting go of the beauty of creation. So he's like, I want you to fling this baby, and God in Psalm 138 will never let go of that child. And then we're in Psalm 138, not a single place you can go to flee from my spirit. I knit you together in your mama's womb, and I know all the hairs on your head, and then it ends, your chesed love forever. Let's go back into that mantra. And the Psalms provide us that tool, doing that as a group of brokenhearted, furious, completely disempowered, hopeless folks to find that safety, to release our rage into God's hands,

to hear God's voice in response, I think it's so church, you know? Like, that is what we're called to be as the body of Christ. And then we're praying that along with the enslaved folks in Babylon, and we're praying that along with Jesus, His prayer book. And then we're praying that along with the enslaved folks in Babylon. And we're praying that along with Jesus, his prayer book. And then we're praying it along with all of our brothers and sisters over these last generations. And then right now that we don't even know, we haven't even met them yet. So the sense of community and relationship is really powerful reading. I think that's one of the things over the past few years that has been, you asked Preston about what's been spiritually formative. I mean, that's been one of the biggest things is just realizing that I'm not alone, right? And when I

read the Psalms, when I pray the Psalms, I'm praying them with a whole world and eternity of brothers and sisters, including the incarnate Christ, who prayed these, even the really angry Psalms, the Psalms that curse. And that's made the incarnation really powerful for me. So you guys are both saying that like the imprecatory Psalms, because I've often been troubled by those, you know, and especially I'm an advocate for nonviolence. I have Mennonite leanings, John, I'd fit within your tradition well, even though I wasn't raised that way. Yeah, you read the Psalms.

I'm like, ugh. I think even Lewis, C.S. Lewis has a whole chapter talking about how he's really troubled, disturbed by these images. So what you're saying is these cry outs to God to dash their children against the rocks are just more

capturing the righteous indignation over evil and oppression. It's more of that than it is reflecting like God's ethical heart or whatever, or even necessarily what the person is going to act on. It's just, it's an expression of what's going on deep down. And these are the only images and words that can capture the deep rooted pain and oppression that I've gone through. Is that, would that be a good way of explaining it? Remember, I mean, this is back to that. You got to read scripture not from a position of privilege and power, right?

Like these are the voices of people that are exiled. These are the voices of refugees and asylum seekers and enslaved peoples. They can't go and dash anybody against the rocks, but they certainly wish they could. And that's a real emotion. And actually, you know, talk about nonviolence. Is it, I think Miroslav Volf talks about to have a nonviolent, to have a pacifist theology, violent, to have a pacifist theology, you have to have a really robust understanding of a God of justice that you can give over those feelings to. And I think that's what you see here. And that's the critical thing, because how dare we pretend we're not angry, and how dare we pretend

we don't experience hatred. I love Eugene Peterson in his book, wonderful book on the Psalms. He points out that hatred is our experience of evil. And if we pretend that we can deal with that alone, then we're going to be in serious trouble. I mean, that's my understanding of what he's saying. And so we have to hand that over. There's nowhere in the Psalms that I've found where it says, I am going to do this. I'm going to kill and suffer and make you suffer. It's more like, God, you do this.

And so it is this release of that anger. And I'll tell you what, I do that. When I'm in a really rough place and I'm furious at our immigration policy and I'm going to have to go sit in an office waiting for some official to make a pronouncement about a family that I love. I'm going to go and pray, and I'm going to pray Psalm 10 through 18, and I'm going to do them straight through. And I'm going to give all of that. I'm not going to pretend that I can handle that on my own as a pacifist. I'm going to release that. And then the problem with giving stuff over to God is then you have to listen for the response.

And you can then let God say, okay, thank you for that. This is how I'm going to transform it. And this is going to be this next step. But how dare we try and keep it, that hatred and that anger, on our hearts? Well, because if we do, then it will manifest in actual violence or lashing out or anger. But if you have a communal, and the communal piece I keep coming back to in my mind, just you guys keep emphasizing that, that if communally traumatized people are releasing this kind of anger, directing it towards God, I can just imagine the power that that is for healing. That community piece, I mean, we've seen, that's one of the biggest predictors,

or I don't know what the right word is, but people who are resilient, who are able to handle all of the horrible things that life throws at us, are people that have community, that have relationship, that have secure attachment, right? I mean, that's one of the reasons that this pandemic has been so devastating on so many people is because it has forced us to isolate, right? And that's destructive. And so, again, that's somewhere I turned to during the pandemic, right, is the Psalms,

because I could pray them and not be alone, right? And that really embracing that community and that relationship with other people, with God, that's really key. Yeah, that's great. I want to try to get in the minds of some, my audience and the questions they might have. And one has to do with undocumented immigrants, AKA illegal aliens, as some people call them. And I, yeah, just so people make sure they know where I'm at. I mean, every Christian would say, we're supposed to obey the state unless the state is telling you to do something that goes against your Christian values. To me, loving your undocumented neighbor in need, as you've said, is a Christian value that trumps what Babylon is saying is legal or illegal.

So that's where I'm at. I would say I have, like King, you like King used to say that we have a moral obligation to break unjust laws, or we have a moral obligation to live out of Christian faith, even if it conflicts with the laws of Babylon. But what do you say, how do you process for either of you, undocumented immigrant, why don't they go through the legal means of, of getting citizenship? Or even I've heard from some people who have gone through the process of getting legal citizenship, gotten their green card that even some people who've gone through that are the ones who are most discouraged about, uh about undocumented immigrants because they're doing it the easy way or whatever.

What do you say? I mean, John, does this come up in your church context where people raise questions about whether we should be doing this? And is this really following Jesus or are we disobeying the state and is Jesus displeased at what we're doing or have you wrestled with that? Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. I would say, first off, we worked really closely with the state, actually. I get called by ICE agents all the time saying, hey, will you take this family out of this detention center because they need to go out and they don't have anyone. I get calls from Border Patrol. We work really closely. I was in the military hospital the other day where they had medevaced out someone from a drowning. She'd lost her child

in the river. So we work really closely, and we don't want to endanger that by being felons. So we have to be really careful. Some churches really embrace the sanctuary movement, where they'll pick one family and do sort of really intentional disobeying of the law, which they see as unjust. We have to be careful with that because, I mean, we're working hand in hand with officials who are working, you know, against human traffickers and trying to keep family. I mean, they're saving lives in a lot of instances. But I mean, there is this reality that first and foremost, I'm a Christian. I'm obeying laws that are a lot older than the 300-year-old country that we live in here with these borders that have been shifted so many times. And I think there is the, there is the, you know, oftentimes my little girl,

my little middle school daughter is like, so dad, are you a felon? Is that really the case? And you have to be very gentle with the answer there because it's a question of fear. Are we in danger? And that is a really powerful question for children. It's a really powerful question for anybody. It was a powerful question for the disciples when they saw that leper walking toward Jesus. Like, he will, if we do anything with him, we will be unclean. We will be leprous. We will be felonious. You know, we will be unclean. And that is how the trajectory works. The unclean one makes all of us unclean. And Jesus completely reverses this in Mark chapter 1, and he reaches out and touches first the unclean one, and that trajectory is completely flipped around. and Jesus' love transforms, and also the leper's desire transforms, and faith

transforms that uncleanliness. And if I'm going to be so bold as to call myself a Christian, if I'm going to be that audacious, then I ought to be able to temper that fear of, like, will I become unclean because of this calling of love? And I don't want to pretend like I'm not afraid of that. I'm not going to pretend like I'm not afraid every time I get a call from a government official. And so we turn that into prayer. Dear Lord, you know, I'm afraid. I would like you to change all the laws of this country. I would like you to rip down every prison and every border. I would like you to make us all one, bring us all together at the table. And all the people who are being mean and saying horrific things about my brothers and sisters, the ones that I adore, my friends, these children that I've taught in school when I was a middle school science teacher, how – I want to do that imprecation, that curse. this, you know, bizarre lie that is perpetuating systems of power and wealth and xenophobia and all that.

Yeah, yeah, that's good. I mean, I could see, I mean, it's, so what's the solution? And this is where we dabble into kind of secular politics, which I don't think Christians have, I don't think that's our calling really, but I mean, a country has borders and citizenship and I don't know a single country we can just wander in without any kind of, you know, like I was, you know, you guys travel, I'm sure you travel the world. There's no, I've never been to a country where I can just walk on by without showing my passport, my visa three months. Now you got to get a two COVID test with it. Like it's countries have rules and regulations. There's no such thing as just no,

you know, borders or whatever. So I can see the logic of that. And yeah, as a Christian, like you said, my duty is not to, I don't know, my duty is to live out my Christian faith in the Babylonian context I am, not to tell Babylon, here's how you should run your secular vision of the kingdom on earth. It's always going to be a shadow and a charade. In that regard, I think it's very important for us, certainly as Anabaptists, but it's really important for us to have that separation of church and state. It is not our job to create the policies. It is our job, though, to speak truth about who these policies are about. It is our job to tell true stories about who these laws affect. And what we need to do as Christians is not just tell truth, but we need to also model good behavior. So I often get, oh, so you want to take care of all these people?

And I'll say, well, these are the people who are in my house right now. We need to be able to model that good behavior. We tell true stories, and we model good behavior. And we tell true stories, and we model good behavior. And we just have to be like Philip. You have the first racist comment in the New Testament is directed to Jesus. It's the first chapter of John like nothing good comes from that place. Nothing good will come from people, those people and that place. And Philip's response is not a political argument. He does not give an academic argument.

He just says, come and see. And so it's like, I want you to figure out the identity of Messiah by walking. Let's do some action and let's do some listening. So I think that's what the church needs to do in this particular context with immigration. We don't need to prescribe policies, but we need to talk about who the policies are about. And we need to tell true stories about our brothers and sisters. And we need to model good behavior in the use of our, you know, the giving over of our resources into God's hands so that we can see some multiplication and see this feast of life. Would you say it's almost distracting when Christians try to pick some political side, you know, like build a wall or don't build a wall or, you know, these people are destroying our country or economics or they're, I don't know. The secular partisan way of framing the whole conversation, it seems like that could be on both sides, really, a real distraction from the kingdom focus that Christians should have? It's idolatry is what it is.

It's a system of idolatry. Idolatry in the Hebrew Bible is always linked to the mistreatment of the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow. There's always a link to that idolatry and injustice of the poor and the hungry. And so idolatry, though, is always an invitation to the church to share good news and to share stories about the kingdom of God. And it's just as important to say, oh, yeah, that's idolatrous. I like your images. Very nice design. It's good idolatry. It's well done. That's a beautiful idol you got there. Very attractive. Nice gold. Spoken like a good Mennonite. Um, uh, Rebecca, we're going to round things out here. Uh, you've

been listening to me and John banter back and forth for a bit. Any kind of final words of reflection or encouragement or challenge to Christians listening? I would just encourage y'all to go and read the Psalms, not just the Psalms, but the Psalms are a good place, a nice accessible place to start, but read them with somebody that is really different than you, somebody that has a really different location, a really different past, a really different perspective, and just really hear how they are hearing scripture and experiencing God working through that. You know, I mean, like I said, so many of us have had really cushy lives as Christians, and we don't really understand why, you know, Psalm 137 ends the way it does, or why one Psalm 69 has that whole list of curses and ends essentially saying, you know, pardon the language, but it's what it's saying that, you know, God damn these

enemies to hell, these people that have mistreated me. You know, we have a hard time understanding that and we want to condemn it or we want to separate from it and say like, oh, well, this is Old Testament or, oh, only Jesus could, you know, can do this. And I just invite, I invite people, including myself, you know, to keep reading those. And when you hit those things that make you uncomfortable or that make you, yeah, that make you uncomfortable, take it as an opportunity to learn and to listen and to think about the people in the world that feel that, to

pray for those people. Not as a, oh, God, please help them not feel that way, you know, not be angry, but God, please help their situation and help me know how to help their situation. Anyway, that's sort of rambling, but I mean, just listen. And actually, I can't remember who it is. John, I don't know if you remember, but there's somebody, Ellen Davis or Walter Brueggemann or somebody talks about those psalms of imprecation, those curses as an opportunity for us to self-examine and see, is there anybody in the world that might be praying this about me? Oh, wow. And I think in America right now, that's something we can all question. So read the Bible and hear

the Bible and read the Bible with other people. That's a good word. Good word to end on. Thank you guys so much for being part of the podcast, giving us a ton to think about and a lot to feel about. Where can people find both of you and maybe your work or websites or books that people want to read up more? I'm not very good at the internet. I should be better at the internet. But we have Facebook, San Antonio Mennonite Church, and we have a website, sanantoniamennonite.org. Awesome. And I think we did something on Instagram last year.

And you did a Christianity Today article a couple years ago, right? That's really good. What's the title of that? I think it's Fleeing North in the Full Armor of God, I think. You know how in the full armor of God. I think, you know how magazines, they title it themselves. They always come up with their own titles. I will, I'll try to put a link in that, to the article in the show notes. And Rebecca, you got to, I know you're, I'm looking right now at your webpage for Truett Seminary.

Do you have another website or anything? No, I'm not good at internet either. But I think my email address is on my faculty page. And so you're welcome to email me. Oh my gosh, it is. You list your email publicly. That's... I know. I invite emails. There's books and articles. So... Yeah. I'm looking at your CV here. That's awesome. Well, cool. Thank you so much, you guys, for being on Theology in the Raw.

And yeah, keep up the great work. Seriously. If I remember, I'll be in Dallas in October. I was in San Antonio, gosh, a couple years ago. I wish we had connected before. That would have been fun to check out your church. But yeah, thanks so much for your faithfulness and your willingness to say unpopular things and do unpopular things in the kingdom of God.

Thank you for having us. It was an honor to talk to you. Cool. Take care. Thank you.