Theology in the Raw - Should Christians Be Patriotic? Shane Claiborne

Episode Date: July 4, 2024

Shane Claiborne is a best-selling author, renowned activist, sought-after speaker, and self-proclaimed “recovering sinner.” Shane writes and speaks around the world about peacemaking, social justice, and Jesus, and is the author of several books, including "The Irresistible Revolution," "Jesus for President," "Executing Grace," "Beating Guns," and his newest book, "Rethinking Life (released in Feb 2023)." He is the visionary leader of The Simple Way in Philadelphia and co-director of Red Letter Christians. His work has been featured in Fox News, Esquire, SPIN, TIME, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, and CNN. In this podcast episode (which was recorded on May 1st), we talk about the conflict in Israel-Palestine, student protests on U.S. university campuses, and various things related to patriotism, nationalism, and the gospel. Get a FREE one year supply of vitamin D plus 5 travel packs! https://www.drinkag1.com/TITR Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Attention all soccer fans! From Orlando to Los Angeles, take to the fields of the USA for your next vacation. Ready to kick off? Discover exciting games and events. Plus, find amazing hidden gems in cities full of adventures, delicious food, and diverse cultures. You'll love it so much you'll want to extend your stay beyond the matches. Get the ball rolling on your soccer getaway. Head to visit the USA.com. Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of theology and to raw. I have a special guest today. The one and only Shane clayborne for this special 4th of July episode. Shane is

a prominent speaker, activist, best-selling author. His book, the irresistible revolution played, I would say in irresistible revolution in my own heart. When I read it shortly after it came out back in the late 2000s, 2007, eight, something like that. But yeah, Shane has been a massive influence in my life. I just love, love, love his heart, his spirit, his speaking ability, and just his courage in so many areas. So this episode is going to be tailored to today. We do talk about the 4th of July. We talk about patriotism. We talk about the national anthem, pledging allegiance. And we do begin by talking quite a bit about the conflict

in Israel, Palestine. We are recording this episode a couple of months before the 4th of July. So we discuss some current events from our timestamp, and then we jump into talking about the 4th of July, which is happening today. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only Shane Claymore. Shane Claiborne. All right. I am here with Shane Claiborne. Happy. Can I say happy 4th of July, everybody? Yeah. We can be an unpacked that statement. Should we even be? Yeah. I

want to come back to that, but I do want to let my audience know that Shane and I are recording this on May 1st. Okay. So y'all are listening to July 4th. This is May 1st. I don't even know what the world's going to be like in July 4th. I don't know the world, you know, as you're listening, yo, the Rapture might've come up and we're still in the air. Well, I mean, I'm going to be gone. I don't know. Shane will be left behind. I think, but I will be out of here. I'm down here cleaning up the mess. So to give context for people listening that might not know what the world is, what's happening in the world may first. I mean, right now there's a lot of protests happening across college campuses that spilled over around the world

and I don't know in France and other countries. I was just watching videos on your, on your Twitter feed that you've reposted. There's two narratives here, right? Pete people peacefully protesting a genocide. And then the other narrative is a bunch of criminals rioting and, and, and breaking into the buildings and, and praising Hamas. You know, that's always hard for me. You know, it's like, and, and you have this, everything gets to, it gets immediately politicized to narratives lined up and then everybody kind of decides which side they want to fall on. Well, what do you, you've, you've followed these riots. Do you have, what are your thoughts on a rep? Let's just say protests. Not that they've been completely peaceful. I have seen some footage where they're

not. And I would, and you would condemn any act of violence, but I've also seen some peaceful protests happening. What's your take on the whole thing? Oh, I am so grateful for the courage of students around the country that are doing all sorts of different demonstrations to voice their pain and anger and their hopes and dreams. And I think that without a doubt, I believe that nonviolent direct action, nonviolent protest is, one, the most faithful to Jesus, but also that it is the most effective means of protesting. And every action that we've been a part of and we've been a part of many, many, many protests, we have a statement that really grounds us in our principles and in the discipline of nonviolence that we know ourselves well enough to know that we've got to say those aloud over and over and put them on paper.

In fact, we have people sign them, right, just to make sure that you are on board with what we're saying. And it's for our own integrity too, that if something happens outside the parameters of that, that we can clearly say that was not a part of our action because these are the core principles of what we're doing. Having said that, I do believe that what often happens is people, you know, the old journalism, if it bleeds, it leads, you know, so people love the volatile combustible actions. And so even though these are often on the peripheral of the main student protests, you

know, one student that's saying, we are all Hamas or, you know, someone saying something that's violent, that I haven't found that that represents the organizers well. So I think we've got to be true, you know, in what we're saying. And we've got to be true to say, that's messed up. Our enemy is not Jewish people. If we can't speak out against anti-Semitism, something's wrong with our heart. Also, our enemy is not the people of Gaza. Collective punishment is evil and wrong. And if we're not outraged and heartbroken right now, then we're not paying attention. This is happening in real, and if we're not outraged and heartbroken right now, then we're not paying attention.

This is happening in real time, and we've got tools right now to where we cannot just bury our head in the sand, but we know what's happening in Gaza, and it is absolutely indefensible. So I think that's why we say, you know, love is not a limited resource. We should love all the families who have their loved ones held hostage and who lost loved ones or lost limbs, have surviving family members that live through the horror of October 7th. And we can have compassion on the folks that are living through the horror right now that's happened because of October 7th and every day since. So I think that's what's so important is to say hatred is the enemy, violence is the enemy.

We're not going to build a peaceful world by killing other people's children. And we've got to like, only love can drive out hatred, as Dr. King said. So Dr. King said, I've seen too much hate to hate. I choose love because hate's too big a burden to bear. And when you read that, you think, I think he was tempted to hate. I think many of us are tempted to hate. That's why the temptations are alluring things because they entice us, you know? We want to have an enemy. So it's much harder to try to love our enemies than it is to try to take them out.

I mean, every, so you last three or four minutes, this is basic Christianity. You're not even saying like, all right, let's be pro Palestinian, anti Israel. Or like, you're just saying let's, let's stand for people that are harmed by this. There were matter of their ethics, ethnicity, no matter what side of the wall they're on, no matter what, like there's a loads of innocent people that are caught up in this and are suffering and Christians, we should care about that. This is basic Christianity. But w so why, why is this perspective that you're sharing in your opinion largely lost on the, the tree, even now people are probably angry. Christians are probably angry,

even hearing us in our first few minutes of this podcast. Well, this isn't a football game, you know, where we've just got to cheer for one team or something. I think this is where Christians of all people should be the ones that are saying, be the ones that are saying every single human being is made in the image of God, no matter what side of that wall you live on. Every single life in Gaza is just as precious, equally made in the image of God as every life in Jerusalem or Israel. And that's why it's very interesting, isn't it, that the response to like Black Lives Matter was all lives matter. And you go, there's a point where we actually need to be particular about injustice and who is being harmed. In fact, I'd go straight to the scripture in Corinthians, Preston, where it

talks about how we're all one body with many parts, but it says, when one part of the body suffers, we all suffer. And we also see that same scripture say, the parts of the body that have been dishonored are given special honor. Our friend Alexia Salvatierra calls that God's affirmative action. God's affirming what we have been very slow to affirm or we have denied even, right? And so, it's so important that anti-Semitism is real. Jewish people have been harmed and are being harmed by targeted hatred and discrimination. And it's centuries old. I mean, in this new book I did, Rethinking Life, I've got a whole section on how we theologized hate. One of the original sins of Christianity was when we blamed Jews was when we blame Jews for killing Jesus. And there's all kind of like terrible, violent spillout from that, even paving the way for Hitler, right, to say just as Jesus cleansed

the temple of Jews, I'm cleansing the world of them. That was what Hitler said with the Bible in his hand, right? So, anti-Semitism is real. And that's part of what's so dangerous in all of this is it's as if we forget that pain can be transmitted, fear can be transmitted into real violence. People that have been harmed can also do great harm. And in this case, I think the backdrop of anti-Semitism has actually paved the way for a blank check, a moral immunity for the state of Israel that they can do no wrong. And that's so, so dangerous because we actually see them mirroring the very harm that has been done to them. We see some of the same violence that would be inexcusable

for Hamas or any other nation in the world to do it. I mean, it is wrong to kill children, no matter what flag you wrap it in. It's wrong to bomb hospitals or refugee camps to force people to starve and to refuse to let in aid. Our scripture says, if your enemy is hungry, feed them. If your enemy is thirsty, give them something to drink. Not even just our enemy. These are children. Half of guys are children.

That's where any person really needs to be able to say, collective punishment is wrong, and two wrongs don't make a right. What was done on October 7th was wrong, and we all stood without hesitation against the act of terror by Hamas and called it out. And yet, what we've seen since then is also so important to name as evil and wrong. And some people are hesitating, not only hesitating, but they're actually creating theological constructs that try to defend the violence of Israel. So I think that's what's so dangerous about this present moment.

Well, so why is that though? I mean, I, why are Christians, it really is limited largely to Christians and the American. I don't, I can't speak for Canada, so I'll just keep it United States of America, Christians. Is it because we we've had such a, for lack of better terms, a one-sided narrative? Is it because of nationalism? Is it, does it have maybe, you know, biblical support for Israel versus that talk about Israel in a positive way? You know, is it all of the above or why is there such hesitancy to say 35 plus at the time of this recording people, even if you say, well, some of them are her aunt Hamas. Okay. Let's let's, let's even say 10,000 or

lawyers, which I thought would be on the high end of reality. Can we, can we not condemn I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, like just because somebody grabbed the, let's just say the human shields one jar drove me crazy. I just can be erased that from our ethical framework that if somebody grabs your kid and say it's an enemy, it's a bad guy grabs your kid and holds them up as a human shield, you're saying your moral framework is to say, therefore you're justified and shooting through the kid to get to the enemy. And it's the enemy's fault for holding up your kid. Like that just doesn't

on no planet. Do we use that as a, as a, as a, as an ethical framework of view in the world, even if we believe in like some kind of like just, well, I'm talking as a nonviolent, I'm just talking just like, well, let's revisit like our moral compass and our brains right now. we visit our moral compass and our brains right now? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, especially when we think of Jesus, right? I mean, let's just think about Jesus for a minute. And you read the Sermon on the Mount, you read this call to love our enemies, you look at the Beatitudes, and you think, what does that mean for us? And I would hope that Christians would be the biggest enemies of death and violence, rather than the defenders, the biggest champions of life.

That we would be the first people to rise up on October 7 against the violence of Hamas, and we would be the first people to stand against the violence that's killing the folks in Gaza. The fact is that there's a great, the early church witness, their commitment to non-violence is stunning. And I think it inspires you, it certainly inspires me. And it can feel so long ago that we kind of romanticize this, you know, that we kind of like, we kind of romanticize this, you know, all they just love Jesus and died, you know, you got your

martyrs book and you're like, I mean, this was brutal. And the fact that people would say like, nonviolent people that believe in peace are sort of idealistic out of touch with the real world. Like these folks, folks, their bodies were twisted and hung naked on crosses, sometimes upside down, fed to beasts. They knew evil. When you say, what about Hamas? Look, they started this. I think the question is, who is our moral compass?

I don't lower my standard of morality to accommodate someone who's done something terrible, right? Like that's why it's just baffling to me that, and I think Munther Isik is right when he says that, that Gaza has become the moral compass of the world. This is not about who Hamas is, this is about who we are and who we want to be. So if we can't say that it is wrong to kill children, you know, some of these things that are just really basic things, like something's really gotten wrong with us. And I think what happens sometimes, Preston, is we've created a mythology and even a theological entitlement. This is what I would call it,

theological entitlement that justifies things that are really indefensible. Like that we say, well, somehow this is just a part of end times, the last days. Thousands of people have to die before Jesus returns. And it makes a real monster out of God. And that's what I believe is at stake in some of this, is that just as Islam has been distorted by people who want to use it to justify their violence and hatred, Christianity can do the same. Like people can try to twist it to justify real violence. And when I look at Israel, there's a way of reading scripture that conflates the ancient Israelites with the current state of

Israel and says that this is God's blessed people, they can do no wrong. And yet, what's so interesting is, even in Scripture, the Israelites do wrong. And God rebukes them and even disciplines them, right? And the Scripture is very clear that you can be the descendants of Abraham, but that doesn't make you the children of Abraham. You've got to live into this vocation, and you exist to show the world what a society of love looks like. So that's why it's so wonderful to see Jewish folks all over the world that are standing against the state of Israel, that are even naming the fact that Netanyahu isn't even really practicing Jewish. Like he's not practicing Jewish.

There's this kind of state religion ideology that he'll use a text of scripture in order to try to, you know, justify some of the things that he's doing. But that's when it becomes so dangerous, right? That's when religion can be one of the greatest forces for good and for peace and for love, and it can also be one of the most horrific, scary things in the world. No one kills with more passion than someone who believes that God's got their back. And that's what we're up against. And we've seen that so, I mean, the history of America is just biblical rhetoric, use of justify, all kinds of stuff, right? And yeah, I agree. That's like, just an added level of evil. Once you

start integrating religious biblical principles into justified violence. Okay. So I love feeling energetic, but the older I get and the more pizza I eat, the less energy I tend to have. Imagine that, uh, this is why AG one has been an absolute game changer for me. While I do try to eat healthy, except on Taco Tuesday and Wing Wednesdays, you know, even healthy eaters, like me, sort of, need to take a supplement in order to meet our body's health needs. And this is why I've been taking AG1 now

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What if we told you you're already off to a great start with so many ways to squeeze the most out of summer right here? From our largest shrimp skewers ever to a Vietnamese start with so many ways to squeeze the most out of summer right here from our largest shrimp skewers ever to a Vietnamese inspired dish ready in minutes. PC makes any culinary adventure and on budget breeze. I'm curious, Shane, let's, can we go back? Like when did you become interested in this kind of historic conflict for lack of better terms. Like, has this been something for you? I've never heard you talk about it until recently. I mean, maybe you have, I just, I haven't, you know, but then I hear like you've been over there and you've been in this conversation for a long time. But when did that start for you?

Do you have a story behind that? Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you what, just to, to make it plain. I mean, I grew up in the Bible belt, as you know, in East Tennessee, and my dad was in the military. He was in Vietnam. So, I didn't grow up in a peace church like the Quakers or Mennonites or something. I grew up very comfortable with defending militarism and war and still being a Christian. A number of things happened, man. I mean, one of them is I just kept falling deeper and deeper in love with Jesus. And there's a point where for me, it became impossible to reconcile violence with Jesus, with what I see on the

cross, with what I see Jesus embodying and teaching. But with the current situation in Israel, one of the things that happened is after 9-11, I saw a response that mirrored the same thing that we're seeing now, which was state vengeance, right? It was revenge on a national level. Literally what happened in Philly, bro, is someone dropped a banner from City Hall that said, let's kill them all and let God sort them out. So people didn't even care who died. Like somebody needed to die because someone killed 3000 of our people. And this is why I think it's, you know, I do a lot of teaching, you probably do too, on the eye for an eye law, right? Like where we get the notion of retaliation, the law

of retaliation, lex talionis, the eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And yet we've distorted it and we've used it as a license for revenge. They killed us, we're going to kill them back. And it was actually just the opposite. It was meant to stop the spiral of violence and to set a limit. So we might think of it like an eye for an eye, no more. Right? So like if someone killed, watch this, 1,200 of your people, you can't go kill 30,000 of them. Your response has to be proportionate. So, 3,000 people died on 9-11. And then our response was anything but proportionate.

We declared war on two countries and killed tens of thousands of people in revenge for that, even though we now know the hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, where we still sell weapons to. Anyway, but literally, Jesus challenges that framework. He says, you've heard it said, and I've heard it too, but I tell you this, so that like, over and over, our reaction to violence by responding with violence is part of what I think Jesus challenges to his very core, even his dying words, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing, is putting violence on display and subverting it with love and forgiveness. So I went to Iraq to stand against the war

and a lot of the people we talk to now, they weren't alive in 2003, but at that time, the US was dropping 900 bombs a day on Baghdad and we lived there. So what we're seeing in Gaza was very similar in Iraq. And the one moment that I just wanted to remember with you Preston was when we were, as the bomb started falling, there was a gathering of Christians in Baghdad, hundreds and hundreds. It was such a powerful gathering, like the

Holy Spirit was there moving, the whole place started singing Amazing Grace. They declared their love for Muslim people. These were Christian bishops and leaders. One of the preachers pointed to the cross and said, this cross doesn't make any sense to the wisdom of the world or the smarts of smart bombs. But you know, and quoting the scripture, it's foolishness to the wisdom of this world, but it is the narrow way that leads to life. So powerful. And then I went up and talked to one of the bishops and I said, I had no idea. I said, this is so powerful. I had no idea that there are so many Christians in Iraq. And the bishop goes, yeah, this is where it started. And he goes, that's the Tigris River and the Euphrates. Have you heard of that? He goes, the Garden of Eden is right down the street. So that reshaped everything for me, right?

Like that these are the roots of our faith. Our ancestors are from this land. And in fact, in some ways, that same pastor said to me, Preston, he goes, you didn't invent Christianity in North America. You just domesticated it. You just colonized it, right? So I think that for me, my faith was brought to life by being in this land.

And when I'm in the West Bank, as I will, you know, I just, by the time folks are listening to this, I will have just gotten back from that trip. But I've gone over and over to Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, right? In the West Bank, to Hebron, Galilee, Nazareth, these holy sites, and yet you see what's happening right now, and it's anything but holy, right? And it's these Palestinian Christians like Munther Ezek and Mitri Reheb and Jeanzaru and Nomatik and I mean over and over Shireen, all these like that they have such powerful theology of nonviolence.

And it's a theology of love. It's a Jesus centered theology. And it is always celebrating the sacredness of the lives of people on the Israeli side of the wall, but it's also saying we need our sacredness to be recognized as well. They inspire me. My faith has become much more robust and much more, my theology of nonviolence has come both from being in proximity to the violence and seeing the dead end of it, right? Like literally, when Jesus said, you live by the sword, you die by the sword.

America, even on the 4th of July, like we have lived by the sword and died by the sword for hundreds of years. And it's time to consider that Jesus is offering us another way. So good. I, I just to piggyback on that. I mean, I think Christians in the West are starting to understand that there's a rich history of Christianity in among Palestinians. And there's Israeli Christians as well and rich history there too. But I think sometimes we take that for granted, but the Palestinian Christianity, we just don't, we don't realize rich, rich, but not just Christianity. As you mentioned, there's a robust theological tradition there. And when I read, I read me through his book faith in the face of empire, it was really

it. I mean, I'm reading this like, this is exactly what I think scripture teaches. The difference is I've had, it's taken me decades to separate my Christian faith from my identity in the empire. You know, like, and I'm trying to encourage other Christians to make that separation. I know it's hard being part of the empire and being, you know, like, and the empire wants your allegiance. And, and, you know, I understand like we're in a weird situation here in the heart of the empire, but they've been on the, they, like I'm reading Mitri and talking to other Palestinian theologians and they're living this stuff out.

Their entire existence as a Christian has been one where they've had to be nonviolent, not just because it's the way of Jesus, but because it's the only way, you know, they've seen violence not work time and time and time again, you know, to achieve liberation, as we saw again October 7th, you know. So I'm like, man, there's just, as a theologian myself, like, I'm just so enamored by how theologically sophisticated they are and how I think they just, they nail it when it comes to understanding the biblical narrative. So yeah, man, my head is spinning. I told you off-line, I was supposed to be at that Christ in the Checkpoint conference, so I hope I can go in the future.

Yeah. And folks, you know, hopefully many people will listen to Munther's sermon. I mean, he's given so many wonderful ones, but the one that went viral, I think it's like someone just told me it's had over 10 million people listen to it. Christ and the rubble, you know, at Christmas and your family listened to it, you said, and it's really, really moving. And you know, one of the things, there's an old saying, where we sit determines what we see. And I think that's what we're, like our hermeneutic, our way of looking at Scripture, we've got to recognize that we all have a social location as we're reading Scripture, and that part of what happened in Jesus, as you know, as

Munther points out in his Christ in the Rubble, when someone asked him, where is God in the midst of all this violence? And Munther said, God is under the rubble. God is with those who are suffering. That Jesus left all the comfort of heaven to be born as a brown-skinned, Palestinian Jewish refugee in the middle of a genocide, like born homeless because there was no room in the inn, coming from Nazareth where people said nothing good could come, you know, like I'm sure they thought of it. Like, you know, many people today try to think of Gaza or whatever. Like, we try to paint God out in a certain way, but we've got to listen to the voices of those who are crushed by the powers. And that's why I think Jesus is kind of coming into the rubble, being born into the struggle

is so important. And it also like raises the question today of like where we sit determines what we see. How we read scripture, our proximity to power can create a tunnel vision when it comes to the current crisis, you know, in the lives that are at stake in Gaza, if we can't really name that. Let's transition to just talking about patriotism, citizenship as a whole. I'm curious, and this might take me a bit to package my question, because it's one that I wrestle with. I'm not going to I love the, the, you go into

a culturally diverse area and that's just the smells, the food. I love the geography, the geographical diversity of America is stunning. I love many aspects about the culture and I enjoy living here at the same time. There's a lot of things I see there just like negative toward my faith, not just a comfort and luxury and all these things, but once you peek behind the curtain of the empire and you look at the military industrial complex, you look at, you know, 84 regime changes that the United States has been involved in election tampering and dozens and dozens of other countries.

You look, I mean, just on and on it goes. And I'm preaching the choir here, but it's like, Oh, okay. So I mean, even though I say I love Mike, do I love my country? It's like, what do you mean by love? I mean, I love pizza. I love the Dodgers. I love snowboarding. I love surfing, you know, like, but I don't love those things the way I maybe love my wife, family, Jesus, you know, like, so what do you mean by love? All that to say there are aspects when I, the 4th of July, there's things I'm like, there's, there's some, there's some semblance of goodness here, celebration sort of with many, many, many footnotes. And yet there's a lot of things that the 4th of July should be a reminder. Kind of like

Llewyn Lecrae tweeted that famous picture, I think 10 years ago now picture of his bunch of slaves picking cotton and he says, here's my ancestors on the 4th of July. You know, and I think that's that's I think that's a good reminder. And I think 4th of July is a perfect day to post that contrary to the opinion of most white evangelical Christians. But anyway, you, so this is my… You heard the… There's a really, really powerful, iconic sermon of Frederick Douglass, right? What to the Slave is the Fourth of July that he delivered around the Fourth of July. And we've done a reading of it, but it's really, really incredible to hear his perspective because where you sit determines what you see. So he's reflecting actually very respectfully reflecting on the 4th of July from his own

social location. I've read that. It's really, really, really, what's your good. That's a good reading homework for everybody on the 4th of July. Frederick Douglas is a what to the slave is the 4th of July. Frederick Douglass's What to the Slave is the 4th of July. How about that? So where's your heart at 4th of July? What do you go eat hot dogs with? What do you do? And how do you navigate healthy, good citizenship, patriotism, all these things?

One of the truest things that Mother Teresa said, I love Mother Teresa. One of the quotes that I've really clung to of hers is she said, sometimes our biggest problem is the circle that we draw around our family is too small. The circle we draw around our family is too small. And I grew up thinking about Christianity and we had the language, you know, you got to be born again, which became a little bit cliché and got, I think, abused sometimes. But I've come back to really embrace it and to really believe that what Jesus is inviting us to is to be born again, is to have boundless compassion and love, to have a new definition of what it means to be family, to be related, to be children of God. I mean, this is a radical idea. And it's consistent in everything Jesus does, right? There's a point

where Jesus' biological family is there and they're like, your family just got here. And Jesus is like, who is my family? Right? And he's pushing back on that a little bit. He has some harsh things to do around when it comes to focus on the family, you know? He's like, you got to be ready to, like, you know, leave your own family in order to be my disciple, right?

Now, I think Jesus loved his mom when he's dying on the cross. He says to John, she's your mother now, right? He just had a new way of thinking about and inviting us to think about it. So now, Preston, this is what I would say, is that a love for our own people is a good thing. But love doesn't stop at the border. We've got to love as big as God loves. And to be born again, watch out, right? It means that if someone's suffering on the other side of the southern border,

it's as heart-wrenching as if that was my own mother, if that was my own child. If a child is dying in Gaza, it's as if that was my own kid. It's this invitation to reimagine and to have our hearts expanded. That's the problem, I think, with patriotism. People distinguish between healthy patriotism and nationalism and all that, Preston, but I'm going to say even just with a broad brush to say the problem with patriotism even is that it's too small. We began to believe that our people are more valuable than other people. That if someone is harmed in our country, then it warrants suffering somewhere else rather than a deep grief. So I think that's

where I've come to rethink how we think about patriotism. And we conflate these all the time and that's part of the problem. I think it's right now like 60% of churches have the American flag on the altar. You know, and like why would we have the, like, the Bible doesn't say for God so loved America, it says God so loved the world, right? Like, so that's where I think we should be reoriented to think beyond our national identity, even our biological identity, right? We're to love bigger than that. But this is a danger when we conflate those, right? Where America has always been a paradox from the very beginning. We said things like, all men are created equal, and yet the people who wrote that document owned black people, right? And sold them on

street corners. Like we called Native American savages in the same founding documents that we said, you know, that all people are created equal. So we have some noble aspirations, but I think we've got to name the fact that we have some deep sins that have not been repented of and healed from. And until we begin to deal with that, it's like an untreated festering wound. And that's why there's this battle over history, right? I believe that the truth sets us free and that we've got to face the truth though if we're going to build a better future.

And that's why there's a lot of people that would like to bury the truth. I think it was Eddie Glaude that says, America's not unique in her sins, but we're unique in the mythology that we've made up to ignore and cover up and excuse our sins, right? To say, oh, well, this was manifest destiny. You know, God divinely ordained the birth of America. And now we're doing the same thing, many folks, in Israel in trying to say that there's this sort of theological entitlement, right? That God allows Israel to do really evil things, but it's not evil when they do it. That's dangerous theology. I think for me, it's a simple mental exercise I do is when I think through any issue, any

highly politicized issue, whatever my starting point is I am a member of Christ's global multi-ethnic kingdom. That that's my starting point. So when I think about the border, it's not like I don't,, I've tried to erase the plural pronoun from my vocabulary to refer to my country. We don't, like when I say, like I never use a phrase, our troops or our border, because Chris, the, the kingdom of Christ doesn't have a border. It doesn't, we don't have troops unless you want to call it missionary's troops. Like, um, so the, the, and, but it's such a simple, basic thing, but I realized how many times

I catch myself where I don't even though I'm trying to have that fundamental identity as a starting place from which I'm thinking through it, anything I find myself so it's like a rubber band effect so quickly put it like my, it's like my body just wants to replaster the national identity on my lens to view things, you know, our economy, our border, our troops, our, us, them, you know, it's just so deeply embedded into us. But once you think through your main identity as a member of Christ global kingdom, it just, it's just kind of reshapes how you think about stuff. Now people, you know, swimming across the river for whatever reason, but some of those are family members. Maybe like at my own, you know, mom was swimming across

because a lot of them are actually, you know, even joke Christians, you know, fleeing some horrific situation and not, not all certainly, but yeah. And sometimes people say, you know, well, this is political. We should not get political, but I would say that actually these are deeply spiritual issues. And welcoming immigrants, for instance, it shouldn't be a Republican thing or a Democrat thing. This is a Jesus thing. Like when you welcome the stranger, you welcome me. As Scripture says, you know, true religion that God honors is to care for the widows and the orphans in their distress and to keep ourselves from being corrupted by the world. That we're to welcome the foreigner, even it says in the Hebrew scripture, right, as if they were our own flesh and blood because

we ourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt. So, I mean, this is fundamental holy work. And that's why we shouldn't try to discredit by saying it's political. I mean, like, literally, Jesus says that we will be judged, and a part of that is by how we show compassion on the stranger, the immigrant or refugee or the homeless person, you know, the folks that's in need of love and compassion. So, it's very holy work. And the other thing that is that some of this stuff is not, I have no fidelity, Preston. I think partisanship is dangerous. To put our loyalty in a person or a party, every time the early Christians said Jesus is Lord, they were saying Caesar is not. and to be politically honest about this is to say that some of our highest

numbers of asylum seekers and immigrants have come under Republican presidents. And some of our lowest numbers came under Trump and now under Biden. And so we've got to like transcend the partisanship and yet also say loving my neighbor means I care about policies, right? Like I want my neighbor to flourish and policies can either crush them or allow them opportunities to flourish. And so loving my neighbor as myself, I think means that I can't ignore policies that affect their lives. And Dr. Martin Luther King's a good teacher on this because he distinguished but celebrated both heart change and policy change, you know? And so, like, personal salvation, God healing sinful individuals is a real thing.

I believe in that. God is also healing a broken world and systems and structures that have hurt people and have come out of sinful constructs like racism. And so Dr. King would say, a law cannot make a man love me, but it can make it harder for a man to kill me. And you know, he would say like, no law can change a racist heart, but we still need to change laws so that black folks can vote and swim in the same swimming pools as white folks and that we can be treated with the same sacredness that we know each other are made in the image of God. So I think all of that, all that matters.

A fresh voice can speak to you and open your ears and your mind to new views and new perspectives. The call of the wild, a crescendo of culture. Listen, as a chorus of fresh voices moves you, taking you to greater heights, add your voice to the mix and let fresh answer back with perfect harmony in Pure Michigan. Keep it fresh at Michigan.org. All right. I got a few shotgun questions. Oh boy.

You like that? You like that? You got to turn my shotgun into a plow. I know, you know, as they say, you're going to, you're going to feed two birds with one scone or something like that these days. That's what you're shot. Got it, man. Shot. All right. Pledge of allegiance. You're at a baseball game. Actually they don't do pledge of allegiance. So you're at it. Yes. I'm public setting or everybody. Tractor pool. I was at a tractor in North Carolina and they did the pledge. Yeah. So what do you do? I say the Lord's prayer. Do you stand? Do you

stand and what do you do with your hands and hat? I would say like, I, I feel very conflicted and I think that's a good thing to feel. So I would probably try to stay centered around Jesus, say the Lord's Prayer. I prefer to not participate in the National Anthem and things like that. I mean, actually, if you read the lyrics of it and you read much about Francis Scott Key, like these become really problematic things. So I want to stay centered around Jesus and my faith. I don't sing the songs of empire. I don't celebrate the same holidays as empire.

I think we've got a different liturgy and these are not worship songs. So anyone, you know, it shouldn't actually offend anyone that you don't want to sing the songs of empire. So, so, so pledge allegiance. Yeah. That was so, so national anthem that happens. I bombs bursting in there. So do you like you got a baseball game? Do you, what do you, do you stand, do you sit or does it depend? I'm probably going to do my best not to stand. But I also, I think it's one of those things that I'm not also trying to make a scene, but I am trying to stay true. So I think there's sort of like shrewd as serpents, innocent as doves.

And I think that there are ways to do that, that create that, that I want to protect my heart, you know, and I also want to create a good conversation. So I, I, I find it very difficult to stand. That's why I think taking a knee was actually a really respectful way of protesting for Colin Kaepernick and others, you know, because it was a way of finding a third way, right? I'm not trying to like just put my, you know, like I am declaring something's not right. I feel conflicted in my soul. And you know, we had a camp that our young people were going to, this is not a very good shotgun, Preston, but, and they were asked, being asked to do the pledge of allegiance. And we asked

if they could say the Lord's prayer. Because I think sometimes we don't think about these things and that's actually part of the problem. It begins to reshape and colonize our imagination. Well, the pledge of allegiance too, is very liturgical. There's not a single American over five years old who couldn't automatically say the pledge of allegiance, but how many Christians could recite the apostle's creed Lord's prayer? Even that, even either probably a higher percentage there, or maybe in 10 commandments or you know, like, I think that that's, that's very, I think that we should at least say that that's kind of problematic.

And, you know, And these were true for the early Christians too. Like, do you just sprinkle a little incense to Caesar? You know, do you just do a little of these things out of respect to the empire that some people have worked so hard to keep safe and wealthy and all of these things. And so I think it's very easy to continue to celebrate the gifts of God while not glorifying violence and while not kind of ignoring the things that we've done wrong in the past. So, yeah, I see it as a great place to center around

Jesus. And you're right, like, the Empire has always had its own theology, its own worship songs, its own icons. And some of these things are things that you're willing to die for and kill for and sacrifice your children for. And certainly, patriotism can become a form of idolatry if we aren't careful. So, I think that's why we've got to learn from the great prophets of old and the ways that they interacted with empire and allow it to inform us in how we act today. Especially even when people try to Christianize the empire. So this is the, you know, when you put in God we trust on money, I think this is where it's literally taking the Lord's name in vain, right? And where it begins to inoculate us,

you know, and I use that word deliberately, like when you have a watered down version of the disease, it knocks it out of your system. And in some ways, American Christianity, the nationalistic kind of it, can cause us to reject the actual authentic version of our faith. I did the same thing. I, I, I typically stand out of respect for speed or to honor the emperor. Don't give her allegiance. Don't bow to them. Don't even participate in his liturgical things.

He's wanting to do, but there, there can be a sense of respect and, and, and honor. So I stand, I, and I do the same thing. I recite the Lord's prayer. I think I got that from you actually. I think you actually said that in one of your books, but, and then national anthem, which is, I rarely am in a context where I'm even asked to pledge allegiance, a national anthem, you know, quite frequently. And the same thing I stand, I don't put my hand over my heart. I think that's a symbolic gesture. I don't sing, but I will stand, you know, typically. But I was at a soccer game a couple of days ago, actually. So I did that. But then I think

it was at halftime, halftime, what's it called? Half a half time when they, they had some veterans there and they said, can we all give honor? And, and everybody, everybody started standing like, well, it wasn't, it was just kind of happened as wave of people standing, applauding. And I did, I just sat, I was in a sea of people because I, and again, I could, there's aspects of serving in the military, you know, that I could celebrate, you know, integrity and sacrifice and selflessness and all, all these things that I think that are misguided on a broad level, but an individual might have, have, you know, there, there might be some, some good things there, but I don't know who this person is. I don't know if he just dropped the bomb on a bunch of guys and kids. I don't know if he was a drone pilot. I just, so I, I, I don't

want to just be a sheep and just celebrate something that I don't know the details about, you know? So, and that was weird though, man. I felt like, gosh, are people going to, I'm the only one sitting my son was next to me. He didn't see. Yeah. I mean, I was speaking at a military academy and had a similar experience, dude. It was nuts. Like I, and I, I could not participate in the liturgy of war. And, uh, um, it was very awkward. Um, but you know, I, I think of one of the great, there's a really powerful idea that I've built on in some of my writing around revolutionary subordination, right? That there are different ways to be revolutionary.

And so, and especially for the early Christians, they had to be as shrewd as serpents, innocent as doves. And so, there was an old saying that when the emperor passes, the peasant bowels and farts. I've seen that before. So you lean over and fart. So the emperor thinks you're bowing, but you know what you're doing. So I think that that's exactly it though, is naming the shrewd as serpents, innocent as doves, like that kind of revolutionary subordination. Cause we don't want our hearts to grow cold to where we then are hating, you know, like in battling the

beast, we become the beast. So, you know, I think that's a danger too. So yeah, tender hearts, but a revolutionary subordination. All right. You're at a church it's veterans day and they say, can we all give, you know, can we celebrate our veterans? Everybody's stand and usually then most of the people are clapping half the church is standing. Do you same thing? Do you just kind of desit or do you stand or? Well, hopefully I'm preaching. So I get a chance to offer my thoughts. But I do think that, you know, when you were talking about courage and passion and a willingness to die, Gandhi, I actually had an interesting line at one point.

He said, if I have to choose between a soldier and a coward, give me the soldier every day, because that passion can be channeled into nonviolence, but you can't do anything with the coward. And I think it's why so many soldiers end up being incredible saints as conscientious objectors of war. Saint Francis, you know, I mean, there's just countless soldiers that become these forces for nonviolence. And even right now, bro, we're getting ready to, this will be, you know, folks are listening after this, but folks should go back and check out. We had a conversation on conscientious objector, because there's

young people right now in Israel that are given mandatory military service, and they're refusing to fight. And some of these are 19, 20-year-old kids that are going to jail for refusing to participate in the violence in Gaza. So, courage has a lot of different forms. And I think we have a rich tradition in the church of conscientious objectors. So, I would celebrate that courage. And I was in Iraq. When I went to Iraq, I was with one of the most decorated veterans in the country, Charlie Litke. He passed away. But when they made Forrest Gump, dude, they dubbed over Charlie to put Tom Hanks in to get the award in the movie.

That would have like black and white footage. But Charlie held a sign in Iraq that said, I hate war as only a veteran can. And he had seen it firsthand and was so convinced that violence cannot drive out violence. And so I think there's a lot of ways that we can celebrate the moral, or that we can remember the moral injury that war has done to soldiers and why, even right now, the largest cause of death of veterans and soldiers is not combat, but suicide. It's taking their own lives. So I think we grieve that. Right. And we remember the cost of war. And I think that should actually fuel us. I want to respect our troops by ending all war. Right. Some of the most anti-war people I know are veterans because they've seen it.

They haven't just watched the cowboy movies. They haven't just seen, you know, top gun or whatever. Like they, they've, they've seen it firsthand. They've seen horror and even so powerful. Yeah. A friend of mine, he was a top guy. I was just real quick. One of the guys that just heard was a drone operator and you don't often think of this, but he was talking about the unique damage that's done when you're at a computer screen, right? And he's like, and we even created language, he called it a splat. That was the official language. When you killed someone on your screen, he's like, we did all these ways that we would

like try to cover up and sanitize the, the, what we were doing. And he said, at the end of the day, it's uniquely wicked to operate remote controlled war, then go by Starbucks and come back and then go have dinner with your family. Like it's a very different thing it does to your soul. So I think we got to really honor that. Cause you're so separated from it, right? Your humanity is so removed from what you're doing and it's, and it adds this really unhelpful. I mean, a helpful buffer in the sense that you don't go psychologically crazy after, you know, but, and really unhelpful buffer is that it's

just, just not, you don't feel it in your bones like you would if you're actually pulling the trigger. Yes. I had a buddy who's he was a top Navy Navy seal, buds sniper. I mean, training, trained thousands of hours, right? To, to, to be the best sniper he could. And he served in desert storm and you know, took, took some lives. And he says, it's like a piece of my humanity left me. And he's a pacifist now. He's like, there's nothing human about taking another life. And I don't, you know, even he would say there's complexity and that the nations will rage and there's, you know,

I don't have an easy answer to, okay, what do you do with a Hitler, whatever, you know, but like he says, there is something inhumane about taking a life as somebody else. And he says, it's not, and again, this is a guy who desensitized himself for thousands of hours to pull that trigger. And when he was squeezing that trigger to take out even a, even a quote, good kill a terrorist running into a crowd or something, he's like, it's, it's just, it's not, we're not created to do that. That's not what we're.

Yeah, that's exactly it, dude. You're just not made to kill. That's why we do try to create all of these layers to remove us from the, or insulate us, right? Even with executions, we do the same thing. There's even ways that people try to keep anonymous from, you know, in like all these different like layers that we execute people with the death penalty. But you know, at the end of the day, it does something to those who kill. And Timothy McVeigh, responsible for one of the worst acts of domestic terrorism in history, he said, it was war that taught me the logic of violence. And he talks about how he felt himself going from a human being into an animal and was

able to justify violence. And then, of course, he carries out this horrific act of violence in Oklahoma and then was executed, like the continued logic of that dead-end violence, you know. But then on the other hand, you have someone like Diana O'Strike, who I work with at Red Letter Christians. She was a veteran. She was a sharpshooter too, bro. You should have her on your show sometimes. She's incredible. She was sent to Iraq, was in active duty, and it was her conscience that called her to first take all the bullets out of her gun, because she didn't want to

be responsible for killing someone. But then when she was told you have to be ready to kill children, can you do that? And she said, no. And, and now she is a force for peace. And she's, she's written a book called waging peace. She's an incredible conscientious objector. So one of those, and she's shaped by Jesus. She loves Jesus and it changed everything. I'm going to reach out to her. I just put her name down. Um, okay. Last, uh, just in a couple of minutes we have. Okay. So most people listening are going to have some sort of celebration today. Uh, I think with my audience, it's pretty mixed, but most people are going to be sympathetic. I think everything we're saying and at least are, are navigating that tension of how do I be a good citizen? I like my country, but I see problems and I'm trying to navigate that.

What's your advice to them today? They're going, you know, uncle Bob is having a big fourth of July celebration. He's going to have tons of flags hanging everywhere. You go, you want to honor your uncle or whatever. Like how should Christians who are feeling this tension, how should they, how should they be today? There's a really wonderful spiritual resource that Christians have used called Examine, right? Where we kind of look at our, do a self-assessment and we sort of think through what it is. I mean, to break it down a little bit, in our community we called it Prouds and Sorrys. You know, things that we're proud of, things that we're sorry about. It's a moment of confession, but also celebration of the things that we're doing well. I think that's a good thing to do, a national examine, like to say, let's tell the truth

about history. What are some things that need healing, that need to be recognized? And it might even need repair, need to heal the harm that was done. And what are some things that we love and that we celebrate? So I think there's a way to do that well. I was thinking about the fireworks too, because we got, the irony gets to, this is so American, right?

Fireworks are illegal in Philadelphia, but firearms are legal. So like you can literally have an AK 47, but you can't have a cherry bomb because we're like, wow, they can be dangerous, but you can have an AR 15. So there you go, man. So it's like, we'll allow an 18 year old to go and serve and kill overseas, but they can't drink a beer. You know? I mean, yeah, there's all kinds of weird inconsistencies help us Lord. So yeah, thank you, Shane. You know, I think, yeah, it's always good to talk, bro. Keep in touch. Let's do it again, man. Yeah, man.

Really appreciate your voice and wish we could hang out more. But yeah, come out to Philly, man. Come on out. I will. I'll find a time to do that. I'm not, I don't have any plan. I was just in Boston just a couple of days ago. But yeah, I don't make it out East coast fair. My daughter's moving to New York city actually for film school. So yeah, that's not too far. You are without excuse. Yeah. I'll see you in Philly. All right, man. All right. Have a good one. Do okay, buddy. I'm so grateful for you. Thank you. See you. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.