The Apprenticeship Way with Marc Alan Schelske

Episode 063 – How Would Jesus Spend? (With Dr. Marlena Graves)

It seems that there is a separation for many Christians between their faithful lives and social or economic justice. Why is this? How does the question of economic justice impact the priorities and wallets of Jesus’ followers?

Show Notes

In this interview, I ask Dr. Marlena Graves why spiritual formation and justice are often treated as separate concerns, and we often limit spiritual discipline to things like prayer, Bible study, and other spiritual practices, while treating money, status, and security as unrelated areas of life. Dr. Graves makes the case that spiritual practices are meant to move us toward God in ways that deepen love for neighbors and enemies, and that the way we hold and use our money is a key indicator of our conversion.

Key takeaways

Spiritual formation is not just private devotion; it is meant to produce concrete love.

Righteousness is personal faithfulness, and justice is public action.

Slaveholder theology helped separate faith from justice in American Christianity.

Money often becomes a stand-in for control, security, and predictability.

The rich young ruler is a warning about being too attached to wealth.

Jesus’ ministry was funded by women and other supporters; money itself is not the issue.

The real question is whether money serves God or becomes an idol.

Christian responsibility extends beyond biological family to neighbors, strangers, and enemies.

The means matter just as much as the ends.

Open-handed generosity is a Christian posture, not just a financial strategy.

A conscience shaped by Jesus may cost you financially.

“How much money can I give away?” is the better question.

References and links

The Way Up Is Down: Becoming Yourself by Forgetting Yourself, Graves

Bearing God: Living A Christ-Formed Life in Uncharted Waters, Graves

The Gospel of Peace in a Violent World: Christian Nonviolence for Communal Flourishing, Graves & Graves, ed.

Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.

You can also watch and share the video version on YouTube.

More about My Conversation Partner

Dr. Marlena Graves

Dr. Marlena Graves is a professor of spiritual formation, speaker, and author who teaches and writes from a deeply justice-centered Christian perspective. Her work connects prayer, contemplation, Bible study, and the classical disciplines with advocacy for the poor and the immigrant, insisting that spiritual formation is meant to shape how we live in the world. Dr. Graves is presently an Assistant Professor of Spiritual Formation at Northeastern Seminary, Rochester, New York, and a writer whose work sits at the vital intersection of faith, culture, and justice. Marlena is the author of five books.

Find Dr. Graves Here

Website: https://marlenagraves.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marlena.propergraves

Threads: https://www.threads.com/@aseminaryeducation

Today’s Sponsor

The Apprenticeship Lap Patronship – Support My work! www.MarcOptIn.com

Transcription

Marc Schelske 0:00
Hey friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske. This is the Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 63. How would Jesus spend?

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INTRODUCTION TO OUR CONVERSATION

Other-centered co-suffering love — that’s the phrase I’ve been using to describe the way of Jesus. Some theologians call this kenosis. It’s the pouring out of self for others. And if Jesus is our example, then it seems like in some way the life of a Christian is meant to be like this — poured out for others. When it comes to service or kindness, to a welcoming attitude towards other people, that all makes sense, right? If the way of Jesus is love, then his followers will treat others with respect and dignity, and will speak up for those on the margins. Many Christians nod their heads when I say stuff like this, but things get sticky when we start talking about how this applies to our money.

If I’m supposed to give myself away in service towards others, what does that mean for the way that I handle my finances? Pretty quickly, we fall into this binary thinking that there’s what’s practical and wise. There’s the way of Jesus, but when it comes to such practical things as college funds and retirement accounts and home equity, well, we need to be practical. Honestly, this is one of the areas that is the biggest struggle for me personally in my life of faith.

Now, some years back, I ran into the writing of Dr. Marlena Graves. Marlena is one of those rare good gifts the internet has brought me. Her gentle but pointed questions about the church and advocating for those at the bottom and on the edges challenged and taught me. That led me to her book, The Way Up Is Down: Becoming Yourself by Forgetting Yourself. In this book, Marlena, in her pointed and gentle way, invites the church to a life that is more about others. And I love the whole book except for chapter seven, which she titled “Rich Toward God.” The epigraph of this chapter was a verse from my favorite hymn, Be Thou My Vision. If you know the song, you could probably guess the verse: “Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise. Thou mine inheritance, now and always, thou and thou only, first in my heart, high King of Heaven, my treasure thou art.” I love singing that verse, but on the stark page, what are we really talking about? Riches I heed not, really? How is that possible? Riches, the little I have, pay for my groceries, my mortgage, my bills-they give me some sense of security. Can we really heed not that stuff?

This tension is worth digging into. If we are committed to the way of Jesus, what does that really mean for this most practical part of our lives? Marlena is presently an assistant professor of spiritual formation at Northeastern Seminary in Rochester, New York. She’s a writer whose work sits at the vital intersection of faith, culture, and justice. Marlene is the author of five books, including two award-winning titles. She publishes frequently in outlets like Christianity Today, Sojourners, and The Christian Century. Her PhD research explored how cultural forces shape evangelical views on immigration, race, and poverty. From her time laboring alongside migrant farmworkers to her current role in the academy, Marlena has remained a passionate advocate for the belief that spiritual formation and justice are inseparable. A self-described dweller of the borderlands, she joins us to discuss bridging the gap between the faith we profess and the way we live in the world.

So I started this conversation by asking Marlena about the link between spiritual formation and social justice.

INTERVIEW

All right, you’re a professor of spiritual formation. That brings up things like prayer and contemplation, Bible study, the classical disciplines, stuff like that, and yet your personal area of focus includes social justice, advocacy for the poor, the immigrant. Help me deconstruct a little bit right now. Why do you think that I and many others have not always connected the dots between spiritual formation and social justice?

Dr. Marlena Graves 6:14
Thank you, Marc. From knowing you personally now, I would not say that is the case with you, but you give your own honest self-assessment. I’m not going to argue with your assessment of yourself. Prayer and Bible study and silence and solitude for what? Why are we doing that? In my mind, it is so that we become closer to God, right? Communion with God, or like the Eastern Orthodox say, theosis, becoming more like God, and then the more we become like God, the more we love our neighbors and our enemies. It is not sufficient just to pray and read our Bibles for self-actualization in the Christian life, whatever that looks like, because you cannot call yourself a devout Christian and not love the poor and your enemies in concrete ways.

So, what do I mean by that? When we’re thinking about righteousness and justice, the word justice in the Bible is mishpat, and the word — and I’m not a Greek scholar and Hebrew scholar, but I know these things — is Tsadakah, is righteousness. This is how God calls us to act. Righteousness is right relationship with God and other people, and it means we’re generous and we’re socially responsible. However, here’s the key: justice, mishpat, means we actively take steps to correct injustices. So we’re generous. You know, we might give to the poor because we’re righteous people, but justice, mishpat, requires that we go a step further to correct injustices, and we see this throughout Scripture. Now, you may argue with me on this point, Marc, but I think I got receipts on this.

I believe they were separated in American culture: righteousness and justice, because of slaveholder theology. They would tell the enslaved people to obey their masters, to be good, upright people, while many of the enslavers were raping them and not being good, upright people. “Do as I say, not as I do.” So they would tell their slaves, read your Bible, but don’t get too caught up in the Exodus and being set free. You’ve got to think of the by-and-by after your misery. Be a good slave here, because then you’ll get to heaven. There were certain verses in Scripture that the enslavers did not want their slaves to read. So I think that was one of the foundational reasons that in the American, let’s say, white evangelical psyche, that way of teaching and being was ingrained not only in the South. You could be a Christian and say you love God, but commit genocide against the indigenous, be an enslaver, and any number of things. There was no cognitive dissonance about going to church and teaching Sunday school and committing genocide. There should have been great cognitive dissonance.

I had another student who recently brought something up. We were talking about, I believe, J.D. Rockefeller with the railroads. He was a Baptist Sunday school teacher, and he gave millions and millions of dollars away. He was very generous that way, but the acquisition of his money came through hook and crook and manipulation and extortion of smaller businesses. I’m glad that he gave money away; we have many scholarships. The Rockefellers, all the Carnegies, all these very rich tycoons back in the day, but how did they gain their riches? Through corrupt means. And so I’m wondering about their character and their formation, also that of the enslaver, where you could do great harm to other people. Still, you know, give money and do things for the infrastructure in towns and be lauded, and you could teach Sunday school while being very corrupt and making billions off of it. I think in our day the money would be billions. But they were still considered good Christians.

Cornel West has a very famous saying that he actually got from Reinhold Niebuhr that justice is what love looks like in public. Let me repeat: justice is what love looks like in public. So there’s personal righteousness. We want to obey the Lord, pray, do the spiritual practices, try to be an apprentice in that way so that we can become closer to Christ, and that we should better love our neighbor and our enemies. But again, Mishpat justice, it’s taking actions to correct injustices. So I tell my students if we think of righteousness as maybe personal piety, becoming like Christ, and justice is public piety to correct wrongs. Does that make sense?

Marc Schelske 11:16
Yeah, yeah, I think so. And I think the two scenarios you talk about — American antebellum slavery, chattel slavery, and then the train tycoons — both of those are really good examples of compartmentalization. There’s an impenetrable wall between things in my life that have to do with finances, power, position. All of those things are associated with where I find myself on the pyramid, right? So Rockefeller can give millions of dollars for libraries and scholarships and all of that because he’s at the top of the pyramid, and those are sort of a hand-down kind of service, not like I’m serving someone out of love that’s next to me. I certainly don’t think of the compartmentalization in my life as so dire as justifying slavery or exploitation. However, I still have that compartmentalization in my life at the scale of my finances. It’s very easy to feel like there’s this wall between my life of faith and even stuff that has to do with… I don’t know… I kind of… I’m kind of feeling right now it has to do with a kind of sovereignty or control that money and what money affords me feels like a kind of security.

Dr. Marlena Graves 12:32
Listen, when Jesus talked to the rich young ruler, the rich young ruler said I’ve kept all the commandments, the personal piety. I’ve done everything, everything, everything. Jesus says, “One thing you lack: go sell everything and follow me.” Jesus was telling him that you are too married to your money and the benefits it brings. That doesn’t mean that would be Jesus’s word to me or you. It doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be. The young man wanted to have his cake and eat it too. You know, how may I take salvation? What should I do? One thing you lack: go sell everything and follow me. And at the time, he went away sad because he knew what would happen if he sold everything he had and followed Jesus. Loss of status, loss of control, loss of comfort, loss of predictability, all the things that come with following Jesus, anyways.

But I also tell people: Jesus depended on women in Herod’s household to fund his ministry. Joanna and other members of Herod’s household would provide the financial means for Jesus and his disciples to go around and be itinerant preachers and teachers. How are they going to feed themselves while they’re out and about? Well, they had people that gave to them, and also Joseph of Arimathea with Nicodemus. He must have had some kind of street credibility, some kind of high status, that he could go to Pilate and ask for Jesus’s body with Nicodemus without fear. It makes sense.

It’s not that God necessarily tells us all to take a vow of poverty, but He does say you either serve God or money. You either serve God, money, status, or yourself. He said God or money. There are two things. That’s because a lot is wrapped up with money, and we often depend on money instead of God. We make it an idol, and so the question for you and me, and I think it has to be an ongoing question in our life, is this: Is money calling the shots? Am I making this decision because of money or because of God? But we have to hold our money and our status very loosely, and I am preaching to myself. I am preaching to myself. So I did talk about it in The Way Up is Down. My friends who were going to give their house away instead of selling their house because they felt they had to do that.

Marc Schelske 14:54
This is in The Way Up is Down, and it’s just such a jarring, compelling story, considering the kind of social standards that we kind of expect, certainly, in the way I was raised. I was raised that there was a sort of railroad track for how to secure your life that you get on. I was raised white middle class, raised in Ohio, with conservative values, and part of that trajectory for securing your own life (but really, it’s always framed like providing for your family, taking care of your children, being responsible). That path leads ultimately toward home ownership. Everything in your early financial life is so that you can ultimately be a homeowner. That is the stake in the ground, the basis of your family security going forward. If you ask an economist that’s not having this spiritual conversation, they would probably say, “Yeah, that is how you build generational wealth.” So, that’s kind of the mindset I was inculturated in, and so then you tell the story that sort of rattles that.

Dr. Marlena Graves 15:55
Yeah, these friends were thinking about not selling their house but giving it away. The catch was they weren’t wealthy friends. They had a modest house in a good place. The price of the house rose. I’m not going to talk about the end of the story and what happened, but my point is that to even bring that up in American culture seems crazy, right? Like who does that or even thinks about doing that? And I could honestly say these friends really depend on God for their provision, and I think that’s why they could do that.

Marc Schelske 16:28
They weren’t giving their house as an asset to a ministry that they loved or something like that. It was a situation where they had a relationship with people they knew who were in need.

Dr. Marlena Graves 16:38
Yeah, they were considering giving it away, and it wasn’t like they had another house somewhere. That was all they had, right? This wasn’t their second home. So, I think what could be a good guide for us is the teaching of the early church. Saint Basil says this. Saint Chrysostom says this. Saint Macrina said this — who was Basil and Gregory’s sister. They said, “If you have a bunch of shoes in your closet, aren’t you robbing the poor?” You know, that belongs to them; are you hoarding goods in this life? That’s Antichrist. You don’t hoard your wealth; you give it to God. Jesus even talked about the rich fool who wanted to build bigger barns. We don’t understand bigger barns today, but I think it would be building a bigger bank account. You could have security for tomorrow — and I’m wading into territory now that could start to be very convicting for all of us.

But here’s what I want to say: When Paul, when the apostles ordained Paul, they told him something very important. They said, “Remember the poor.” They could have told him a lot of other stuff, but they said, “Remember the poor.” And then Paul turns around in Ephesians 4:28 and says, “Who used to steal should instead work hard with their hands to have something to share with those in need.” And I am not about being legalistic and saying you can only drive a Honda. Or if you have a luxury car, you are not following Jesus because that could be legalistic the other way. But I think the gist of it comes to this: our mentality isn’t “How can I save up what’s best for me?” It’s “I need to work and gain wealth to share with people in need.” John Wesley said, “Make all you can, save all you can, and give all you can.” Paul captures it when he says, work so that you have something to share with those in need.

Some people make way more money than I do, and they fund a lot of good efforts. They’re Christians. They love God, and they’re very generous and kind people. And they don’t usually make a splash about it. They fund ministries and churches. I’m not saying that all of us should take a vow of poverty. I haven’t taken a vow of poverty. But what I want to communicate is that, one, you can’t say you’re a devout follower of Jesus if you are not working to correct injustices in public, and that our attitude towards money should be with open hands. This is basic Christianity 101.

Whatever I have is not mine alone, and so I often think about it like this, Marc. I have a job, so I can generate money eventually to either replace or buy something for me that I need. Let’s say I just give it away or give an amount of money away, but they don’t have the same ability to generate income or money, right? They can’t do it because they’re poor, they’re they’re sick, whatever their state in life is. I think it’s more of a posture: when the woman broke the jar over Jesus’s feet, the expensive jar of oil, and wiped Jesus’s feet. Judas was like, she could have given her money to the poor, right? He was stealing, and Jesus let her do what she did. “She’s anointing me for my burial.” That was an expensive amount of money that she threw away, seemingly gratuitously, to show honor.

I think as Christians, the point of this podcast, as we’ve been talking, is that spiritual formation has been bifurcated, especially, I think, the DNA goes back to enslavers and later on the Gilded Age, where you could teach Sunday school and be an enslaver. You know, personal formation was separated from public piety. It’s not that way in Scripture. Read the Psalms, not just the prophets. Read Jesus. It was never that way, never, never, never. Justice is called woke by some people, then called Jesus woke because he thought that injustices should be corrected, and he did that in his public ministry.

Marc Schelske 20:54
Why do we need to make money, period? Like, just what is the basic purpose of our work? Most of us are not farmers or hunters. We’re not doing our labor every day that directly results in food for our families. So we work in order to earn the money in order to provide for our physical needs and the needs of our family, right? So that’s the starting point. But maybe one of the shifts for us is that as a follower of Jesus, the circle of who counts as family is infinitely expanded. For me to go about my life thinking I’m earning in order to protect my family — well, okay, there’s a seed of goodness in that motive, but the problem is your vision of who your family is is too small.

Dr. Marlena Graves 21:43
Brilliant. Yes, you put it really well. Let me say, I think the U.S. church loves money, and this is why I say that a lot of decisions are made about what churches will or won’t do, not necessarily because of what is right, but because of money. So, money calls the shots. Maybe we can’t do things because we don’t have enough money, but money is consulted first. How much do we have or don’t have? And we like to have big, big, big, big, big everything, right? Big sanctuaries, big churches, and we’re like, oh, we need them. Well, you could break your church up into smaller ones, right? It doesn’t have to be huge churches. I may be offending some people, but I think we love money. I think we have a problem loving money. I think Christians in this country have always loved money. That’s why we didn’t have problems with slavery. That’s why we can let injustices go. It doesn’t matter that the data centers are polluting the environment; it doesn’t matter because we get what we want. I have blood on my hands. I’m complicit in many things. I have a smartphone. How many people were mistreated and were paid small wages for my phone? It’s hard not to be complicit, but we do what we can.

So I think our perspective needs to be this: not how much money can I acquire for myself, but how much money — and I’m going to use your words — how much money can I give away, and how am I to expand my definition of family? Because it’s more than just the people you know that are biological family members, or adopted, or you know the people under our roof or our family ties. It’s more than that. It’s our neighbor. It’s our enemies. That’s where Jesus says, “You go ahead, go put more money instead of a barn. Think of your bank account. Go ahead and put more money in your bank account. You fool! Tonight you will die.” That money’s not meant just to be stored for us. It’s meant on behalf of our expanded circles of family. It’s not meant for ourselves. Doesn’t mean you don’t go on vacation. Doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy things. But if you see a persistent kind of posture and attitude in your life, where it’s more self-centered around you, then you’ve got to check yourself.

Marc Schelske 24:06
I think this is the deep waters. I think this is really where conversion happens. It’s so easy to say, you know, “I believe that Jesus died for my sins. Thank God that that’s taken care of,” and so much harder to think that I’ve been called into the family of all of God’s children, and I am a responsible part of that community, invited to care, to love, to live in just relationship, to ensure just relationship. That’s a lot harder, and there’s a lot of our modern Christian culture that doesn’t seem to even want to have that conversation.

Dr. Marlena Graves 24:46
Yeah, because it’ll cost us if we have the conversation, Marc. It means we might have to sell a building and give it away to make sure that other people in our city have a home.

MARC’S REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 24:57
Okay, I’m convicted. I don’t have an easy answer for this stuff. Most of the folks who will hear this conversation live in a capitalist system where individuals are thrown onto their own efforts for all their basic needs, and where there is very little margin of mercy or provision for folks who are in a crisis. That’s the world most of us live in, and I think most of us with Christian backgrounds have read the Acts 2 accounts of the early church, and we see the way they took care of each other, and we think how nice that would be. And then shortly after, most of us think, “That’s not really that practical, is it?”

I don’t know all the reasons we do this, but I can speak for myself. I know that for me, my resistance is about fear — fear that I won’t be able to take care of my family. Fear that I won’t have enough saved up for the next crisis. Fear that I can’t provide to my kids the standard of living that was given to me. Fear of sickness — not because of the illness itself, but because every serious illness in this country comes with the specter of bankruptcy. And then, because this is the system that formed us. Many of us have a finely honed sense of suspicion toward people in need. We don’t want to be taken advantage of. We don’t want to be conned, and so we ought to protect ourselves.

What do we do? How do we do it? Do we become stingy as an act of self-protection? Do we only help through organizations so that we can offload the burden of vetting folks and finding out if the needy people are really telling the truth? What should we do if not that? There are no easy answers to this conundrum, or maybe, maybe it’s more accurate to say there are easy answers that are scary to implement.

The easy answer is that we’re called to be generous. Real generosity-generosity that isn’t an ego move-is always a posture of vulnerability, and that’s what we’re called to: abundant, open-handed generosity, just like how God is generous with us, in actual ways that show up on the calendar and in the to-do list and impact our wallet, but that stuff’s easy to say, and for many of us, it’s painful to do. Part of my regular prayer practice is to pray for the Spirit of Christ to continue the work of conversion in me. Maybe the Spirit is inviting me to let that conversion extend even to my wallet and my financial plans. How about you?

Thanks for listening. May you have the courage to entrust your wallet to the Spirit so that you can join God in the work of reconciliation and restoration in this broken world.

Notes for today’s episode and any links mentioned can be found at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW063

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Until next time, remember: in this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Episode 062 – The Justice of Jesus (With Joash P. Thomas)

Some Christians think Justice means that the guilty get their due. Other Christians think Justice is when everyone gets what they need. In a world that feels so unjust, why are we so divided on what Justice is? What would it mean for us to do justice Jesus’ way?

Show Notes

In this conversation, I get to chat with Joash Thomas about his new book, The Justice of Jesus: Reimagining Your Church’s Life Together To Pursue Liberation and Wholeness. When I saw that title, I knew I had to talk with him. We discuss the multifaceted nature of justice, particularly from the perspective of the Global South. Joash contrasts this with Western interpretations of justice, emphasizing the importance of understanding historical contexts, such as colonization, and the implications of privilege. We talk about the role of the church in advocating for justice, the need for community engagement, and the cost associated with pursuing true justice.

Takeaways

Justice is defined by the good news it brings to the poor.

The Global South offers a different perspective on justice than the West.

Christian justice involves restoration and accountability for all.

Colonization has deeply affected the understanding of justice in the church.

Privilege must be acknowledged in discussions of justice.

The church has a responsibility to engage with marginalized communities.

Justice should not be a cheap pursuit; it requires sacrifice.

The church’s budget should reflect a commitment to justice.

We must recognize our interconnectedness in systems of oppression.

The gospel message includes both spiritual and physical liberation.

Recommended Resources

The Justice of Jesus: Reimagining Your Church’s Life Together to Pursue Liberation and Wholeness

Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.

You can also watch and share the video version on YouTube.

More about My Conversation Partner

Fr. Joash P. Thomas

Joash Thomas was born and raised in India and has served as a U.S. political consultant and lobbyist before moving into global human rights advocacy. He holds multiple degrees and serves in local church ministry as an ordained Priest (a new development since the recording of this podcast) in the Diocese of St. Anthony in Toronto, Canada. Drawing from his St. Thomas Christian roots and a decolonized, justice-centered understanding of Scripture, he works to help Christian folks imagine a faith that unites rather than divides— and that stands firmly with neighbors on the margins.

Find Joash Here

Website: https://www.joashpthomas.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joash.thomas

Threads: https://www.threads.com/@joashpthomas

Today’s Sponsor

The Apprenticeship Lap Patronship – Support Marc’s work! www.MarcOptIn.com

Transcription

Marc Schelske 0:00
Hey, friends. I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 62. “The Justice of Jesus.”

SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is made possible by, well… me and all the work that I do. You might not realize it, but most of the time, the sponsors of this podcast are just other things I make and sell: My writers retreat, my books, all my work to help people have a healthy inner life and spiritual journey following the other-centered, co-suffering way of Jesus. The reason that I list these as sponsors is that the truth is that making a podcast takes time and money, and the reason that I can do it at all is that people like you buy the things that I make.

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INTRODUCING THE CONVERSATION

Not too long ago, the President of the United States declared Portland, my home city, “war ravaged.” Not long after that, in October, there was a massive protest march through downtown called the No Kings Rally. It was actually the second one in the city, massive, maybe 50 or 60,000 people. There have been ongoing protests in downtown across from the main ice facility for months now. There are signs all over the city protesting ICE’s presence. Churches have started joining with community organizations to host immigrant rights training events. The President was wrong to say that Portland is “war ravaged,” but it definitely is in a heightened state, and people are not happy on all sides.

In personal conversations and social media interactions that I’ve had, I’ve seen a lot of people reacting against these circumstances. I have heard people frustrated with how protests are slowing down traffic and impeding business. I’ve heard folks talk about how all of this behavior is disorderly, and it shouldn’t be tolerated. I even heard one person threaten violence against demonstrators, like, I saw this happen in real life. When the first No Kings March was scheduled, an influential politician called it the I hate America March, which, frankly, couldn’t be more wrong.

I know it’s wrong because I participated in both No Kings Marches, the one last June and then the one last October. At those events, I talked with people all day long, probably 100 or more each time. I read countless signs. What I learned was that every person there was concerned in one way or another with justice. For some, the injustice that they were protesting had to do with health care access. For others, for many, the injustice was the way that brown-skinned immigrants are being treated. For other people, it’s a matter of how the courts seem to only favor the rich and powerful. And there were certainly some who were there feeling that the issue was how our current political regime seems to just disregard any law it doesn’t like now. Some of the protesters at these marches had perspectives I disagree with. Some of them I thought were extreme. There was a lot of anger, but universally, everyone I talked to was concerned with justice, or at least how they envisioned a just society.

I’ve also been watching and listening to folks in my extended Christian community, both in person and online, respond to all of this. Increasingly, I see two diverging groups. Some Christians, quoting the apostle Paul, say that it is the right thing for the church to obey the government, that God is a God of order, and that law enforcement officers and immigration officers are just doing their jobs. It would be anti-Christian to get in the way. And those people, they think they’re on the side of justice.

Then there are other Christians quoting the Hebrew prophets about welcoming and caring for the foreigner and the immigrant, who see that law and order position as deeply unjust. They quote scriptures about immoral kings who exploit the poor. They want to see health care and mental health care access for everyone. They want the US government to stop funding violence worldwide. And those people think they’re on the side of justice. So how is it that in a time that feels so unjust, we are so conflicted when it comes to justice.

Several years ago, I ran into Joash P. Thomas online. Back then, he was talking about the ways the church was asking him to surrender his heritage, expecting him to prioritize white European theologians in his study. He’s Canadian, but he was born and raised in India. He talked about how he experienced church people reacting negatively to him when he was a guest speaker and wore non-Western clothes to preach. I was intrigued by this guy, and so I followed him. And over the years, I’ve learned a lot from his social media posts. And so my ears perked up when I heard him talking about his new book. The book is called The Justice of Jesus: Reimagining Your Church’s Life Together to Pursue Liberation and Wholeness. When I read it, right off the bat, Joash said this, “Justice is not the natural disposition of the contemporary western church.”

Wait, what? How can that be? I grew up in middle America in a conservative Christian community. My dad was a pastor. I went to church school. I could not imagine a group that talked more about how God is just and how we need to support the government’s role in maintaining justice. But then I read these words. “Instead of being shaped by the liberating Spirit of God that anointed Jesus to bring good news to the people in poverty and oppression (Luke 4:18) much of the Western Church was shaped by a theology that prioritizes the salvation of souls at the cost of the dignity and liberation of human bodies.” I had to admit, that was a summary of my church experience growing up, a concise explanation of the gospel I was taught, and as a young pastor, that I was taught to preach. My heart agreed with him, so I asked Joash to come talk about a broader vision of justice.

Joash P Thomas was born and raised in India, has served as a US political consultant and a lobbyist, before moving into global human rights advocacy. He holds multiple degrees and serves in local church ministry as a deacon in the Diocese of st Anthony in Toronto, Canada. Drawing from his St Thomas Christian roots and a decolonized justice-centered understanding of Scripture, he works to help Christian folk imagine a faith that unites rather than divides, and that stands firmly with neighbors on the margins.

So I started our conversation by asking Joash to take us right to the heart of the matter. What is wrong with our definitions of justice?

THE CONVERSATION

Joash Thomas 10:53
So the definition of justice that I was taught comes from the Global South Church, and the definition for justice there was really centered on Jesus’s definition of the gospel that we see in Luke chapter four, verse 18, where Jesus says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news to the poor, to set the captive free, to set the oppressed free.” From a very young age in the global south Evangelical Church, the Indian evangelical church, I was taught that if it’s not good news to our poor and oppressed neighbors, then it’s not the good news of Jesus Christ.

It was interesting for me then to come to the Western church and hear almost a different gospel being presented, a gospel that was more spiritual in nature. I’d seen this in the global south as well, but it was a bit more overt in the US church, specifically, where any Christian activity prioritizing justice was seen as in danger of being Marxist and not actually being historically Christian, the way it is.

We find this in studying church history. So, I think the definition of justice that I use throughout the book is an ancient Christian definition of justice. It’s Augustine’s definition of justice, which is that justice is giving to each person their due, where justice is giving to each person the good things that God intended for them. And so for someone who has survived violence, that’s healing and restoration. For someone who has perpetrated violence, that is accountability with the ultimate goal of restoration. So justice is for everyone who’s made in the image of God.

Marc Schelske 12:45
There are a couple of things that I’d like to have you define, and then this quote from Augustine feels like a really important mirror. The folks that I grew up around would hear you say Justice is giving to each person their due. They would nod their head and say, absolutely right. But the mental picture that goes along with that absolutely is a courtroom. A criminal has been brought–that’s a phrase we use–they’ve been brought to justice, and that’s what that means. When you talked about this ancient definition of justice, you’re not talking specifically about that. When folks react against the idea that the church would be involved in justice, and they say, “oh, that’s Marxist,” they’re not saying the judicial system is Marxist, right? They’re saying something else is.

So push further into that, and as you do, you used a phrase at the beginning that you learned about justice from the church in the Global South. I don’t know that everybody is going to understand immediately what you mean by the Global South and why that identification is important. So, can you talk about that just briefly for context, and then help us understand how this statement from Augustine is broader than “Law and Order justice”?

Joash Thomas 14:06
Yeah. So let me start by defining what I mean by the Global South. So the Global South is basically a part of the world where a majority of the world’s population lives. So typically, the world is split into two hemispheres, right? The northern and southern hemispheres. And if you look at wealth and equality across the world, you’ll see a large concentration of wealth in the Global North. That’s basically North America, the US, Canada, and the European countries. And you see a lot of wealth that has historically been extracted from the world South places like the country I grew up in, India, and also Latin America, Asia, and Africa. There are some exceptions, obviously, to that, like Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. But largely speaking, the church in the Global South is one that has existed in many parts of the world for longer than it has existed in the Global North.

So, for example, my family has been worshiping Jesus for 2000 years. It was the Apostle Thomas who brought the Gospel to my ancestors. Jesus, who was also in the Global South, by the way… Christianity came from the Global South to the Global North. And unfortunately, because of the way history then played out with the empires and the history of colonization, we have a church in the Global South that looks very different from a church in the Global North. So, for example, I am a part of global evangelical forums like Lausanne, which is a collection of churches from all over the world who identify as evangelicals, and I am very involved in their justice and freedom network. And there’s this tension that you can feel between churches in the Global South who are evangelical and churches in the US right now who have very different definitions of justice, like the one you pointed out. A big part of my ministry and book is trying to highlight why those differences exist.

To jump into a little bit of those different understandings of justice that have been shaped by history. You know, I would say to people who think of justice as only courtroom justice, that that is absolutely a valid form of justice. In fact, I’ve spent the last 10 years of my career working in the international human rights space, where I’ve worked with lawyers all over the world who have helped arrest people who have trafficked people, or participated in intimate partner violence or violence against women and children, or police who have abused their power and authority and who have brought these criminals to justice in a courtroom setting. But what I have also learned in doing that work is that that is just one part of justice. Justice is delivered then to the survivor of violence, and it’s delivered to the perpetrator in the form of accountability. But really, Christian justice is so much more than that.

Christian justice is the ultimate restoration and shalom of all things. An idea of Christian justice that’s shaped by the global church would say that that isn’t the end of the story, then for the perpetrator too. Now, of course, you prioritize the oppressed, because God stands with people who are poor and oppressed, so we stand with them as the church. You prioritize them and their well-being and safety, which is why you want to make sure that there’s perpetrator accountability. But we, at the same time, don’t want to discount the image of God and the perpetrator, too. We don’t want to seek to end their lives. We don’t want to take the chance away from them for their restoration, because, okay, right? The bad things that they’re doing, the trafficking that they’re doing, is not good for them either, and that’s not the life that God intended for them to live either. So the church has a role in standing in the gap between people who are oppressed and people who oppress them, and to take the side of the oppressed and, at the same time, work toward the restoration of all things.

Marc Schelske 18:34
All right, so when you say that ultimately, what’s just is working toward the restoration of all things, that feels exciting and easy to get on board with, but feels like there’s a little bit of a poison pill for some of us. Early in the book you wrote, “The work of decolonization will always be a threat to the beneficiaries of colonization, especially those who have not wrestled much with how they’ve benefited from colonization.” So this, to me, connects with what you just said, because if justice means not just maintaining law and order, if justice means accountability for perpetrators, then part of that accountability is thinking about historical violence and how historical violence has shaped the world today.

That’s where we get to this word that many people don’t understand or are uncomfortable with, decolonization. When you describe the Global South, one of the ways that you identified it was that many of these countries are countries that served as resource extraction points for various empires historically, and so some of the struggles that they face today, they face because they don’t have resources that they would naturally have, had they not been exploited through colonization.

So, the poison pill: I’m a nice Christian guy who lives in middle America. I’m white, I’m middle class. I got to go to a private school growing up. It’s easy for me to look at my life through this lens that I’ve worked hard and I’ve been a good guy who’s observed the law. What I have is probably the result of my hard work — You know, my merit. I have benefited from this stuff, right? What I’m hearing you say is I can’t really get on board with the broader vision of justice if I’m not willing to think about stuff like that. Does that feel true?

Joash Thomas 20:47
Yeah, yeah, I would say, as Christians, we’re called to wrestle with the uncomfortable so that we can create great beauty from it. This is what Jesus does for us. He stepped into our messy world. This is the Gospel story, right? He steps into our messy world, becomes incarnational, becomes one of us, takes on marginalized human flesh. Not just human flesh, but a poor, Middle Eastern, colonized, occupied, homeless teacher. He’s ultimately crucified because he was a threat to the Roman Empire, right? And so he was crucified by them, but was victorious against them, right? This is the gospel message: there’s beauty that comes from drawing closer to the discomfort and the mess that’s in the world. This is why, as a people of truth, I think it’s important for us to wrestle with history, both the good and the bad, but especially the bad.

One of the unfortunate things that is in the history of the Western Church is this thing called colonization. That is a historical event. Now I say throughout the book, and even in conversations like this, that colonization, for me, isn’t a political buzzword; it isn’t an academic theory only. It’s actually a lived experience for my family. My family comes from India, a country that was once 20% of the world’s GDP. After the Brits left in 1947, it was 1% of the world’s GDP. So clearly, something happened when colonial powers from the West came, supported by the Western Church. And it wasn’t just the Catholic Church supporting the Portuguese colonial powers. It was also the Church of England, the Anglicans. It was the Dutch Reformed Church, the Southern Baptist Church, and the Southern Presbyterian Church that supported the transatlantic slave trade. Colonization wasn’t just an extraction of material wealth and resources from the Global South; it was also an extraction of human resources. This is why we have the transatlantic slave trade, right?

It’s all kind of connected. What I say throughout my book, The Justice of Jesus, is that colonization wasn’t just bad for the Global South; it was also bad for the Western Church because we participated in this. I give examples of that throughout the book. Because of our participation in it, it shaped us to resist justice for all our marginalized neighbors, for all our neighbors in need of it. It narrowed our understanding of the gospel to take away the physical good news and just keep, in its place, a spiritual good news. This whole idea that Jesus cares more about the salvation of my soul than the freedom of my human body actually comes from colonization, because Christians who participated in it, Christians who participated in slavery, found it beneficial to tell people they enslaved and oppressed and colonized, “Hey, don’t worry about your physical suffering right now. Jesus cares more about the salvation of your soul than the freedom and well being of your human body. So just put your faith in Jesus. It’ll all be okay in the afterlife.” And many did, because there was still some semblance of good news in that, but it wasn’t proclaimed faithfully in the fullness of the good news of Jesus.

Marc Schelske 24:21
It does seem odd, right? If I’m a follower of Jesus, and I say to another person that is in that same social location that I am, “Don’t worry. This is terrible, but we can trust God’s faithfulness,” that has a different tone than a slave owner saying to an enslaved person, “Don’t worry about the way I’m oppressing your body. God will be faithful and reward you in eternity.” The message may be the same thing, but the social location changes what it means. It makes me think immediately of the Slave Bible. You know? “We’re going to do this really wonderful thing of printing and providing Bibles to our enslaved people, but we’re just going to excise the Exodus story so that they don’t have a vision that God wants their liberation, that at some point in history, God led enslaved people to freedom.” We don’t want them to have that part of Scripture. It feels so incredibly, obviously, self-contradictory. How could the Christian person providing those Bibles think, “I’m doing the Lord’s work?” They’re so blinded by their investment in the structure, the hierarchical structure that is benefiting them, that it justifies them to do what is a horrible thing!

Joash Thomas 25:47
Yeah. No doubt. And in many ways, we’re encouraged by the empires of this earth to distract ourselves with a spiritual version of the gospel that does not have any good news for people in poverty and oppression, because it benefits these powers and authorities to stay in place. But as Christians, we’re also told that the gospel can be bad news to powers and systems that oppress our neighbors. This is why you see Jesus engaging with rich people in his context, people with wealth, privilege, status in the Roman Empire. And what does he do? He loves them. He meets them where he is, but he invites them then to sell everything they have and to follow Him and to give to the poor, right? We don’t want to teach much about that. In the Western Church, we find all the ways to discount that.

But, the reality is that the invitation for people with wealth and power and privilege from Jesus is to reckon with what we have and draw connections: “Oh, my goodness, I’ve ripped others off (or someone else ripped someone else off and gave it to me, and this is what I’ve inherited), and now what am I going to do with it, now that my life has been transformed by this encounter with Jesus?

This is true for me too. I come from privilege myself. When I’m speaking at a church, sometimes I have people raise their hands just to show how privileged I am myself. So I tell people, “Hey, if you grew up with a maid, raise your hand. If you grew up with a cook, raise your hand. If you grew up with a driver, raise your hand. At the end. I say, “If you grew up with a maid, cook, and driver, altogether, raise your hand.” Very few people do actually. And I say, “Well, that was me. I grew up with a maid, cook, and driver in India.” I know what it’s like to have privilege status in the Empire, and at the same time, I also have this history in my family of being shaped by colonization. I say that I am both a survivor of colonization and a beneficiary of colonization.

At the same time, these things aren’t neat categories. I became a beneficiary of colonization the day I moved to America, and then to Canada after that, and I started living on stolen land with stolen wealth and stolen resources. You just read my bio at the top of the episode, and sure, I have three master’s degrees. I’ve had a very successful career in international human rights, working in leadership, and of course, I’m very hardworking. But I also have to recognize how my humanity and my privilege and resources are connected with the world around me, because we don’t exist in a vacuum. We need each other. We live in this ecosystem.

So when I see an unhoused person today as I leave church, the thought that comes into my mind now compared to before, which was different, the thought that comes into my mind now is that this person’s poverty is an indictment on my privilege. My savings account, in some ways, is an indictment of the circumstances that cause this person’s poverty, because they’re interconnected. I have resources that this person should also have, but they don’t, because of unjust systems in place. And of course, personal sin can come in too, but we see the personal sin without the context of the systemic and societal injustices and sin.

Marc Schelske 29:30
I think that’s a really interesting point. A lot of folks who maybe are new to this conversation would hear you say that you see that homeless person’s lack in some way as an indictment on you and the resources you have, and would react to that. right? Like, “I’m a good person, I’m a nice person, I tithe, I give to nonprofit organizations. That person’s homelessness has nothing to do with me.” But I think what you’re pointing out is the way that that indictment happens is because when you identify yourself as having some level of privilege, that is speaking to a hierarchy that exists. You used the language of “system,” and that can be hard language for people, because it seems abstract, but really, “the system” is that there is a hierarchy. Objectively, it’s probably not Joash’s bank account that’s causing that guy to be homeless, but Joash is at a certain place on that pyramid. And up the pyramid from Joash, there is a developer who owns 40% of all of the low-income properties in that town. And up the ladder from him are tech billionaires who are extracting value from the personal health data of entire groups of people. We don’t immediately look at those people at the top of the pyramid and think, “Oh my God, what a mental illness to hoard wealth like that!” We don’t think that, and the reason we don’t is that the pyramid itself provides the justification, and I’m on it somewhere.

Joash Thomas 31:10
Yeah.

Marc Schelske 31:11
So, if I begin to say that the guy who owns all of the low income properties, he’s the he’s the reason that there’s homeless people. Well, I’m a few notches down the ladder, and I also own one rental property. So, I’m part of the ladder. I’m part of the pyramid. If I look up the pyramid and say, “It’s all those people’s fault,” then I can disown any kind of responsibility that might fall to me, right? There is a system in place that invites people to climb a ladder where we give value to people who are higher up the ladder. The inverse of that is also true. People who are lower down the ladder are seen as less worthy. This is just in the air. It’s the way that we think. So, talk a little bit about how hierarchy fits into this whole discussion of justice and injustice and the church’s role.

Joash Thomas 32:18
To build on what you just said, “I am my brother’s keeper,” right? This is the opposite of what Cain tells God after murdering Abel. He says, “I’m not My Brother’s Keeper. I don’t know where he is.” I’m just trying to live my life here and all that. But the reality is, we are our brother’s keepers. We are our sisters and siblings’ keepers. Our humanity is interconnected with theirs, whether we realize it or not. If someone else is at the bottom of the hierarchy here, I am complicit by just participating in a structure that oppresses and marginalizes them. We need to recognize that we, ultimately, as human beings, even unknowingly, participate in systems and structures that oppress our marginalized neighbors.

One example of this right now is our taxpayer dollars. I live in Canada, but I’m a US citizen, so I pay taxes in two countries. My tax dollars, both in the US and Canada right now, actively go towards funding children being bombed and starved to death in Gaza. I am complicit in that system. Now I don’t agree with it, but what else am I going to do? I have to pay my taxes. I have to give to Caesar what’s Caesar’s.

In my book, The Justice of Jesus, I walk us through a few tenets of the colonizer’s gospel, one of those tenets–and this is literally what colonizers told their enslaved and colonized people–is that social hierarchies are good and that they’re ordained by God. Many of us in the church have probably heard this with the verse that’s often used to subjugate women in Ephesians. It’s twisted completely out of context, but essentially from that passage, you derive a picture: “It’s man at the top, then women, then children, and slaves.” That’s what the verses say, “Slaves obey your masters.” This is what the colonizers took and exported around the world. So, it was white men at the top, white women, children, then slaves. This is what we saw in the antebellum South in the US.

And we get all kinds of weird, heretical theology from this, too, like the eternal subordination of the Son. Historically, the churches believe that Jesus is coequal and coeternal with the Father. The Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit all live in triune community as equals with each other. But within evangelicalism, to defend these social hierarchies, we’ve also changed the order of the Trinity now to say that the Son is subordinate to the Father, and this is heresy. There’s a deep connection between how we understand God and how we understand neighbor. And if we want to understand neighbors in these dualistic ways of hierarchy and society, then we’re also going to project the same onto our understanding of God.

Sometimes I tell people who are so frustrated with conversations they’re having with family members right now who don’t seem to care about justice for our marginalized neighbors, I tell them that we just need to recognize that we’re worshiping two different Jesuses at the end of the day. We’re worshiping a Jesus who’s coequal and coeternal with the Father, who came to set us free from our sin, physically and spiritually. They’re worshiping a version of Jesus that they were taught by people who enslaved and colonized people, and that version of Jesus doesn’t care about our physical suffering in the world. That version of Jesus isn’t coequal to the Father at the creation of the world. That version of Jesus just came to get us a get-out-of-hell-free card. That’s the reality. We worship two different Jesuses in America right now.

Marc Schelske 36:27
Right. If that image of God — where what God is most concerned about is the soul — is accurate, then I am licensed to not care about anything in your life that’s not your soul. And if God is just (in not caring about anything but your soul), then it must be just for me to do that. That must be what justice is. You started talking about Jesus’ mission statement in Luke four. It seems like we either as a church have to say that is also our calling, or we have to say in some way that was uniquely Jesus work and not ours.

Joash Thomas 37:13
That is what a lot of Christians say. But that is not what the majority of Christians have said throughout church history around the world, even if that is what a lot of Christians in the West today say, but it’s such a disembodied theology. If we’re the body of Christ on earth, which we say we are, if we’re the hands and feet of Christ, then shouldn’t we also have the mind of Christ, as Paul reminds us in Colossians? Shouldn’t we also do what Jesus did on Earth himself, until his physical body returns? But we have a very disembodied theology, where we think Jesus is gone, and we only care about the spiritual. So we look past the physical bodies, the physical suffering bodies of our neighbors, to get to their souls. In doing so, we actually do more harm than good without acknowledging the physical suffering of their bodies.

Marc Schelske 38:11
Right! That leads us to things like the soup kitchen, where you get served soup after you sit through a 45-minute sermon. Or, when I was a youth pastor, 20 years ago, everybody wanted their churches to have youth mission trips. This was us taking a bunch of our kids, raising a bunch of our money to fly our kids somewhere to do a bad job building a cinderblock building, and do gospel puppet shows. Why did we celebrate that? Well, because our kids are learning to preach the gospel. They’re learning to tell the story, which is the story of souls getting saved.

Joash Thomas 38:48
100%. Instead of taking the posture of engaging with leaders in these communities, the church that’s already present there, being faithful, instead of asking them, “Hey, what do you really need?” We assume, of course, they want the salvation of souls, and of course, they need us, right? And so we then do all sorts of weird things, but there’s a better way, and this is what I call us to throughout the book.

We don’t have to settle for the world that is right now, because the spirit is always doing something new, if we can keep up with the Spirit, right? Times like this in history are challenging, for sure, but there are also opportunities for us to learn and grow and do better than what was handed to us, and bring healing, hope, and liberation in this world, something that the world so desperately needs. But we can’t bring that good news, that hope, and that healing to this world if we look past the physical suffering of the human bodies of our neighbors and creation.

Marc Schelske 39:58
I think that’s true. So, the subtitle of your book is “Reimagining your church’s life together to pursue liberation and wholeness.” That is a little bit pointed, because you’re not saying in the abstract that the capital C church should be different (which I think you believe), but your subtitle is essentially, “You think differently about your local congregation) So, let’s talk about that. I’m a pastor of a very small church here in Portland. So, let’s say everybody’s like, “Yes, Marc, this makes sense. We want to reimagine our community in alignment with this.” So what does that look like? Apart from learning a new mindset, which is so essential, what are the ways that we participate in this?

Joash Thomas 40:46
So I’ve got a chapter on prayer where I give tangible, specific recommendations to spark the imagination. There’s a chapter on advocacy and one on partnerships. I also draw us in a bit closer to three particular aspects of how we do local church, which are our budget, our pulpits, and our posture as a community–our theology. I talk a lot about church budgets–individual budgets, too, for sure–but church budgets as well. How are we spending our money? Of course, this is for every church to discern for its own context, but I want us not to neglect the physical suffering and oppression of our neighbors around us as we plan our church budgets. I don’t want our church budgets to be overly spiritual and look past the suffering of the human bodies of people in our neighborhoods and our communities.

One of the things that I mentioned in this book is that I did a survey of evangelical churches across Canada and saw that most Canadian evangelical churches spent the vast majority of their budget on themselves. Every church community has its needs. You have your operational needs. I also say don’t underpay your staff. That’s the form of modern slavery. It’s important for us to honor our staff and our volunteers and take care of that. But then, in addition to that, there’s about 10% margin that churches sometimes have for missions budget or whatnot, and most of that is actually spent towards spiritual ministry, and not any forms of physical ministry.

I had this conversation with a friend at one of Canada’s largest churches, who is a missions pastor. I leave the bad examples anonymous. I mentioned the good examples by name in the book. But, this friend of mine just got coffee with me, and he said,, “It blows my mind, because my lead pastor will tell you that justice is a big part of the gospel, and that the gospel is both physical and spiritual good news,” but then he told me about the situation twhere they had a surplus in their budget of about $30,000. That would be quite nice for you as a local church pastor, I’d imagine! Here’s a large church having a $30,000 surplus in its budget, and it had two options presented before it. We can either support our local and global anti-human trafficking partners, or we can support this one long-time missionary partner that air drops Christian radios into parts of Europe by parachuting those radios in. Lo and behold, they go with the latter, because if there’s a chance that we can even save some souls, we will take that over caring for the physical needs of children being trafficked.

That says a lot, because Jesus said, where your money is, there your heart will also be. I hold a mirror up, and I say, “Hey, don’t assume your church would make a different decision here.” We need to examine our postures, our theologies, and our budgets. The hope behind this book is to get us to reflect more, wrestle more, and discern with the Spirit in our context. It’ll look different for every local church, but I hope it presents enough ideas to at least spark the imagination on prayer, giving, and advocacy.

Marc Schelske 44:18
You said in the book that we should expect — No, that’s my word. You didn’t say that — you said, “The justice of Jesus is expensive.” What did you mean when you said that?

Joash Thomas 44:30
So, I ground that in the parable of the Good Samaritan. We see the Good Samaritan do something that cost him. It cost him two days’ wages. This is something that Christians, both in the conservative and the progressive, exvangelical side, are guilty of. We prefer what I call cheap justice. We prefer the kind of pursuit of justice that has no cost to us or very little cost to us. When, in reality, the justice of Jesus should cost us something, and it might even cost us everything. And this is why I think it’s helpful to have the examples of the saints in the church or the prophets, people who stood up for justice. People like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was literally killed for standing up for justice. People like Bishop Oscar Romero who, in El Salvador, stood up to the American empire and was killed by the local military of his government for standing up for justice. People like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was killed by the Nazi Empire for standing up for justice. You see Christians throughout history, leaders in the church even, stand up for justice and pay the cost for it. You see the Old Testament prophets do that. You see John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul, do that.

So why do we think, in the West, that Justice won’t have a cost to us? Are we ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of our marginalized neighbors, to give up our lives the way Jesus did for us, if called upon and if needed? I don’t think we think of justice in those ways, generally speaking. And I want to invite us to a posture where we hold everything loosely and we recognize that if we really believe that the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it belongs to the Lord, and everything I have is also the Lord’s, and if there are people around me in need of me, standing in the gap, throwing my body in between them and their oppressors, if needed, I will do that, because that is what the justice of Jesus looks like in an unjust, cruel world today,

MARC’S REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 45:15
Christians are fond of saying, “Our God is a God of order,” but what kind of order do you mean? If you think that order is limited to decorum, to church services being well-planned, or to folks obeying the law, then you are missing something crucial about the way of Jesus. God is a God who orders the world and who is inviting us to participate in a righteous and just ordering of the world. God’s order is liberative. It is gracious. It is not an order that privileges the elite or the powerful or the wealthy. It is an order where the last shall be first, and the first shall be last. So yeah, God is a God of order. But is God’s order an order you want to be part of?

Joash’s vision of justice is another way to talk about God’s order. The Hebrew prophets called this order Shalom. That means peace, but not the kind of peace that is just no disruption, no war. Shalom means peace in the sense that everyone gets what they need, which was exactly St. Augustine’s definition of justice. This conversation with Joash has given me a lot to think about. I hope you will too pick up his book, The Justice of Jesus: Reimagining Your Church’s Life Together to Pursue Liberation and Wholeness, and start thinking about how you and your church could be more part of God’s order in this way.

I’ll end with Joash’s words. “Times like this in history are challenging, for sure, but there are also opportunities for us to learn and grow and do better than what was handed to us and bring healing, hope and liberation in this world, something the world so desperately needs, but we can’t bring that good news and the hope and healing that goes with it if we look past the physical suffering of our neighbors.”

May you have the courage to make the shift from a faith that is only about spiritual salvation to one that includes physical liberation. And may the Spirit inspire you to see how you can be part of God’s righteous and just ordering of the world.

Thanks for listening. Notes for today’s episode can be found at MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW062. Did you like this? Well, there’s more. I gave you my whole pitch to subscribe at the beginning of the podcast today. So no need to say anything here. You can opt in at www.MarcOptIn.com, and if you want to choose one of those tiers to support, that’s where you’ll do it.

Until next time, remember: In this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Episode 061 – Six Weeks to Grow? Yes, Please!

Journaling for Spiritual Growth, my book that teaches you a sustainable practice for spiritual and emotional growth, comes out this week. This is the 2nd edition, published with Whitaker House. Let’s browse through the book together!

Show Notes

In this episode, Marc discusses his new book, Journaling for Spiritual Growth (2nd ed.), exploring its themes, structure, and the transformative power of journaling. He pages through the book, pointing out key features, so you can sort out if this is the right book for you.

Takeaways

Journaling is a transformative practice that can lead to personal and spiritual growth.

The book is structured into six weeks, each focusing on different aspects of journaling.

Perspective is crucial for a sustainable journaling practice.

Templates can help guide your journaling and make it more effective.

Grace is the only safe environment for spiritual growth.

The appendices provide valuable resources and insights for journaling.

Creating a habit of journaling requires understanding competing habits.

Silence is an essential part of the journaling process.

Inward and Godward reflections are key ingredients for effective journaling.

Faithfulness in journaling means returning to the practice consistently.

Recommended Resources

www.JournalingForSpiritualGrowth.com

Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.

You can also watch and share the video version on YouTube.

More about My Conversation Partner

It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem, it’s me.

Marc Alan Schelske is a happily recovering fundamentalist praying for the restoration of all things. He writes and teaches about spiritual maturity, emotional growth, and the other-centered, co-suffering way of Jesus. His books, including Walking Otherward, Journaling for Spiritual Growth, and The Wisdom of Your Heart, can be found at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com. Marc serves as the teaching elder at Bridge City Community Church in Milwaukie, Oregon, a suburb of Portland, where we work to keep all things, even Christianity, a bit weird.

Find Marc Here

Website: www.MarcAlanSchelske.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarcAlanSchelske

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marcalanscherlske/

Threads: https://www.threads.com/@marcalanschelske

Today’s Sponsor

Journaling for Spiritual Growth – Brand new 2nd edition. Available in all the book places.

Transcription

Marc Schelske 0:00
Hey, friends. I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 61: Six weeks to grow? Yes, please!

SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is brought to you by my brand-new hot-off-the-presses book, Journaling for Spiritual Growth. Second Edition. Launch day is always exciting for an author, and this is my sixth launch. I’m starting to feel like I’m actually an author, maybe. The rest of this podcast is going to have to do with this book in some way, what it’s about. So that’s all I’ll say for now.

Marc Schelske 0:32
I spent a lot of time in bookstores when I was a kid. It’s a special kind of joyful piece to sit on the carpeted floor of a bookstore aisle, slowly browsing through books you might want to read. Most of us buy our books online now, so we don’t get to do that much anymore. I thought I would take some time to do that with you today. I recorded this Page Flip video of my new book a week ago, and it’s posted on my website, but I wanted to share it here with you, dear podcast listener, for two reasons.

First, because if you follow this podcast, you’re interested in the kinds of things I’m up to when it comes to spiritual practice, and the other-centered, co-suffering way of Jesus. So there’s a pretty good chance this book might be up your alley, but unless you know what’s in it, how will you know if it’s a book for you?

Second, I want to share this video with you, because along the way in the video, you’ll learn some interesting tidbits, like the meaning that’s built into the cover art and why journaling is so important to me. I’ll share my favorite endorsement. I’ll also share what I think about AI. I’ll talk about why the book has two introductions and why the appendices might be the most important part. I’ll explain the biggest hurdle to any spiritual practice being effective. I’ll talk about why I use footnotes in a book that’s not academic. I’ll tell you about the only safe environment for spiritual growth and the four crucial elements for a sustainable and impactful drilling practice. I mean, honestly, this video that I made, which is about 20 minutes long, is packed with great stuff.

Now, if you want to see the video version, which you might because it’s full of screenshots and pictures of the pages and everything that I’m describing, you can find that in two places. You can look for this podcast episode on YouTube, on my YouTube channel, or you can go to the book page on my website, for just the video itself. I know this is different than the normal kind of podcast episode that I create, but it’s important stuff to me, and I think it might be interesting to you because you follow me, so that’s why I’m sharing this today.

PAGING THROUGH THE BOOK TOGETHER

Marc Schelske 2:42
Back in the olden times, we bought books in brick-and-mortar bookstores. I know some of you still do, but most people don’t. Most books today are bought online, and in those olden times, when we went to the bookstore, one of the best experiences was being able to pick up a book off the shelf and spend some time flipping through it, reading the cover, looking through the table of contents, browsing through the chapters, reading a paragraph here or there, so that you can get a real sense of what this book was about and if it was the right book for you. Well, that’s what we’re going to do right now together. So if you want to know a little bit more about this book and what’s in it, come along for the journey.

So we pick up the book off the bookshelf, and the first thing that we see, of course, is the cover. So this beautiful cover is actually a riff on the original cover of the first edition by my inspired cover illustrator, Tamara. Whitaker House kept that as the basis for their inspiration for their cover. I’m grateful they were willing to do that, and we ended up with this cover.

So we’ve got the tree of life growing out of the journals, so you get that sense that the journals are this seedbed for growth. We’ve got the iconography of the fish and the grain, which, for me, brings to mind growth and nurturing, and nutrients. We’ve got the iconography of the sun and the doves of the Spirit, so that we’re not alone in this. We are in this process with God becoming who we were meant to be.

And then, of course, on the back, you’ve got this quick marketing blurb, what the book is about. If you only have thirty seconds to figure out if this is the book for you, this is the place to start. And then we’ve got a few blurbs that I’m grateful for from people that I respect. So, the marketing blurb on the back: “Journaling will change you.” That is absolutely my experience. That is not an exaggeration. It’s absolutely true of me.

“Spiritual and personal growth is possible. Over the centuries, journaling has emerged as one of the most consistently transformative practices recommended by leaders across spiritual traditions, therapists, coaches and others. Why then, are so many people intimidated by journaling today while others try it, only to give it up?” Maybe you’re one of those people who’s tried to journal and you’ve bounced off of it? Well, we’re going to talk about that.

“Incorporating both ancient spiritual wisdom and current neurobiology. Journaling For Spiritual Growth teaches you how to be present to your life and hear what the Spirit is doing within you. Over six weeks, you’ll learn why diaries and goal tracking can’t transform us, what expectations undermine journalism effectiveness, what mindsets and questions are most helpful for lasting growth, how structure can be a gentle friend, how to create sustainable habits for your life and temperament.” Does that sound good? That’s what we’re up to.

And then some of the endorsements. You can read those yourself. When we open the book, the very first thing are those endorsements in full as well, and–this is the most important endorsement–a page of endorsements from actual readers who read the first edition, real people who got the book, who read the book, who were impacted by the book, and wrote about it.

So we hear Lani Kent say, “Marc reveals compassionate and beautifully nuanced layers to consider in developing a sustainable practice of journaling.” Thank you so much. Sam Elie: “Journaling for spiritual growth is an accessible guide for building a reliable and deepening self reflective practice.” That’s exactly what I was hoping for. Thank you, Sam. And then this one, which really hit me hard. “I wish this book had been around during a pivotal time in my life, when I was at the start of my deconstructing process, trying to form a new connection to my last shred of spiritual practice. I found this book clear, focused and transparent in all of its intentions.” Oh, this is what I want to give to people

I’ll let you read the endorsements by the well-known people. I will just share one, just because it cracks me up. This is from Wm. Paul Young, the guy who wrote The Shack and other things. I remember getting this endorsement in my email. I read it, and I just burst out laughing. This is what he wrote. “I kept waiting for this book to disappoint.” We’re off to a good start, aren’t we? “I kept waiting for this book to disappoint, for it to turn into something harsh rather than kind rigid, rather than flexible, even more harmful than helpful, it did not and for that, I am grateful.”

I love that so much because it captures this experience so many of us have had, where spiritual writing so often comes from this perspective of legalism or obligation or performance, where you’re being told to accomplish something. This is not what I’m up to. I’m just so thrilled to hear those words that he was expecting it to be rigid, when, in fact, it turned out not to be.

The next interesting thing is that we turn to this boring page that’s in all of your books. It’s the copyright page. It’s got all the legal information, but there’s something on it that I want you to see. This badge right here. If you look closely, it says, “Human Authored, the Authors Guild.” And then there’s a registration number. I’m a member of the Authors Guild. They’ve created a registry for books that are certified human-created. So you’re not allowed to use AI in your ideation. You’re not allowed to use AI in your writing. You can use limited AI and spell check, and grammar check, but that’s it, nowhere else. That’s really important to me. Creating is, I think, when we are the most like God. It’s when we are living out our identity, when we make things. Outsourcing that to an algorithm undermines our humanity. I’m just never going to do it. I’m never going to use AI to write, and I want you to know that. And so I’ve registered this book with the Human Authored Registry with the Authors Guild, and I think you’ll see that in all my books going forward.

The next thing that you’ll find is the table of contents. So you’re going to see the structure of the book. You’ll notice the book is divided into six weeks. Each week has five entries. So, that gives you some margin. If you’re trying to follow the book every day, you can miss a day or take weekends off. The main content of the book is those six weeks. And then you’ll notice there’s a whole selection of appendices. We’re going to talk about those because they’re really important, even though they’re often skipped. Don’t skip these. And if you’re looking at the ebook version, these are going to be linked, of course, so that you can jump right to the sections.

There are two introductions to this book. Crazy. That’s two too many, right? Most people don’t read all this stuff at the beginning of books. We’ve got a word for it in publishing. It’s called the front matter, as if it’s not even the book yet, and many people treat it that way. But here’s something I want you to know: Most writers spend as much time and focus on the introduction as they do on other parts of their book. It matters.

The introduction matters to me because it’s an act of hospitality. You’ve come to my house, you’re walking in the front door, and this is my opportunity to say, “Hey, here’s where you hang your coat. Here’s where the bathroom is, here’s what’s on the menu for dinner tonight. Do you want to stick around? Is there anything I can do to help you feel more comfortable?” That’s what the introduction is for. So that we can be on the same page, and so that you’re not wasting your time–I do not want you to spend your limited time reading this book if it’s not the right book for you. In the introduction, I provide everything you need to know to make that decision.

Why are there two? Well, because this is the second edition. So we’ve got the introduction to the second edition, which talks a little bit about lessons learned since the book was originally published. The second introduction was actually called “How to Use This Book.” Crazy, right? You’re a grown person. You’ve read books before. You don’t need instructions on the technology of book reading. See, that’s the point. This isn’t about reading a book straight through. This book is designed to guide you in establishing a practice. This introduction will guide you through using this book most effectively. It’s going to tell you who I am and where I’m coming from, which ought to be a really important question that you’re asking. If you come to a book that’s purporting to say something about God and the spiritual life, you really ought to wonder, “Who is writing this book? What’s their viewpoint?” Well, I’m going to give you that right up front, so you’re not guessing. You can decide right off the bat if you want to spend time with me. Am I the kind of person you want to learn from? Because if I’m not, I don’t want you to waste your time. So I’m going to give you that information right up front.

Then we shift into the weeks. Each week starts with a one or two-page introduction that sets the theme for that week. Every week has a particular theme. So Week One is “Choosing the Right Perspective.” In my life of journaling since I was a teenager, and in my teaching of journaling as a pastor, I’ve discovered that really the biggest hurdle to a sustainable journaling practice is unrealistic expectations. There are a lot of pictures people have of what journaling ought to be, what it ought to look like, what it ought to feel like, and most of those expectations are completely unhelpful. So we’re going to start talking about the perspectives that will allow your journaling to be long-term term sustainable, and effective.

After that introduction, we get to Day One of that week. Every day is going to have the same format. There’s going to be a short reflection that is going to basically give you one principle that I want you to understand, and then there’s going to be a section called “Practice” where you’re given something to do. You know, by the time we get a couple of weeks into the book, the To Do is journaling. You’ll be journaling, and I’ll guide you through what to journal about and how to do it. But every day will have something you do to help you engage with the idea of that day.

The reading is not going to take long. Most people will read the reflection in five maybe eight minutes. The practice can take as long as you want it to take. I think most people will be able to do most of these things in fifteen or twenty minutes. Obviously, you could go deeper, and it could take longer; that’s up to you. Then, you finish that and move on to the next day.

One thing you’ll also notice is that there are footnotes. Now this is not an academic book. The footnotes are not primarily to connect you to original sources, although I do some of that because there are topics that you might be interested in. I’ll say, “Hey, here’s a great book on that topic.” But I also use the footnotes to do two other things to expand on potential off-ramps. You come to some claim I’m making, and you’re like, “huh, I don’t think that’s true.” Through the course of my own writing, through the process with beta readers and others who helped me with the book, some of those off ramps have surfaced, and I’ve tried to address them in the footnotes where I’ll say something like, “Hey, if you’re concerned about this, or if your experience is different, here’s a way for you to think about that.” And I move those things to the footnotes because they don’t apply to everyone, and they get in the way of the flow of the reading. And so I want them there for you, but I also don’t want them to get in the way. So you can skip the footnotes if you want. You can read them if you want. Some of the footnotes are going to be interesting. Some of them may have snide remarks that don’t feel like they should be in the body text, but I still want to make the comment so that it’s in footnotes.

Each day includes a “Read and Reflect” section for reading and a “Practice” section to start your journaling process. Now. You can take these one day at a time, or if you find that one particular entry is challenging and you want to think about it more, you can take as long as you need before you proceed. That’s up to you and what feels best for you and your process. Don’t move on to the next reading just because it’s the next reading; move on when you’re ready. Move on when you’ve done the work that’s involved.

Week Two addresses your tools, like the physical tools that you use to do the practice. Are you a pen and paper journaler? Are you a keyboard and computer journaler? The pros and cons of both, the lessons I’ve learned that apply to both, and how to make them work for you. We’re also going to talk about things like when you choose to do your journaling during the day and how often you choose to do it. And I’m going to suggest that the most important tool of all for a sustainable long-term journaling practice is actually not a physical tool at all. It’s an attitude, the attitude of gracious flexibility. So here’s the thing: the only safe environment for spiritual growth is the environment of grace. If you feel driven to accomplish something, if you feel like you have to prove yourself or accomplish spirituality, your journal will just become a burden. You will miss days, because that’s how life works. And eventually, you’re going to feel like the journal is just not working for you, and you’re going to set it aside. So if you want this to be a long-term habit that helps you mature as a person, you have to hold the whole thing with this attitude of generous, gracious flexibility. So we’re going to talk about that, what that means, and how it works.

Week Three is about understanding the essential ingredients. There are lots of ways to journal, and I’ve done many of them. There are many books on journaling. There are many processes for journaling. There’s journaling in coaching, there’s journaling in therapy. There’s spiritual journaling, and there’s journaling that goes along with Bible study. There are emotional journals, all different kinds. What I have discovered along the way is that if your journal is going to help you grow, there are really four things that have to be a part of your journaling practice. And so I teach these four things. I call them “The Spine” because they’re what gives structure and stability to your journaling practice. There are lots of different elements you can include in your journaling, but if you don’t have these four elements, if you don’t have the Spine, then your journaling is going to slump, and eventually it’s going to feel less effective. And because of that, eventually you’re going to quit.

So I teach the Spine: these four essential ingredients that hold the whole thing together. First, there’s silence. We need to enter into this process in a state of reflection, rather than a state of being rushed, which is the way most of us live, and silence helps us do that. Second, there’s some kind of focused, inward reflection. Third, there’s Godward reflection. I’m going to talk about what both of those things mean and why we do them in that order. And then the last thing, the fourth thing, is prayer. This isn’t the typical grocery list style of prayers, where you say “God be with…” and name off everyone from your family all the way up to the President or whoever. This is the kind of prayer that is about connection, union, and the intention for your life. If you’re not a particularly religious person, I’ll show you how this can still be a tool for you. These four elements–silence, inward reflection, Godward reflection, prayer–form the structure that you can adjust, that you can add to, but that Spine has to be there for the process to stay ongoing, sustainable, and helping you grow as a person.

In Week Four, I present an idea that, in all the years that I’ve taught journaling, I have found many people resist at first. I suggest that if you want a long-term, sustainable journaling practice, you should stick with a template. By that, I mean that you need to have a predetermined order that defines what you’ll journal about. Now I know that that sounds limiting. Creative people always hate this idea. But here’s the thing: if you pick up your pen or keyboard and open your journal to a blank page, and you have no sense of direction, then what will happen is you will spend all of your reflective energy deciding what to write about. That can certainly be an interesting exercise, but it’s not a sustainable journaling practice for most people. In Week Four, I’ll provide several examples of templates and show you how to select one that works for you.

These templates are adjustable. You can add elements that work for your life, but you need that structure so that your mind is freed from the task of figuring out what to write about. The template provides a set of boundaries, allowing you to enter the process easily. So during Week Four, you’re going to practice four different templates that range from short to long and that have different elements in them, so that you can kind of see what a template is like from the inside. Because ultimately, you’re going to be developing your own template. But I want to give you a starting place so that you can get rolling and have a feeling for what this is like and how it’s helpful.

Then we come to Week Five. Now, by Week Five, you’re journaling, right? We’ve already had conversations about whether you’re going to journal analog, pen and paper, or on a computer. We’ve talked about when and where, and now you’ve started to use a template. You’re journaling at this point. And so in Week Five, I don’t add any new instruction for how to journal. So instead, Week Five focuses on empowering your habit, because that’s the goal. We want journaling to be a long-term, sustainable tool in your life that helps you grow as a person. Well, if it’s going to be long-term and sustainable, it has to become a habit. So how does that work?

We are going to address competing habits and how to notice them in your life. We’re going to talk about how to anchor a chain trigger. This is one of the most powerful tools that I’ve learned in habit building. So, I’m going to teach you how to anchor a chain trigger, which makes keeping a habit much easier. We’re going to talk about the reward process for habits. We’re going to talk about lessons that you can learn from your negative, unhealthy habits and how you can leverage those to keep this habit strong and sustainable.

So, we come to the last week, Week Six. You’re already journaling, so now we’re going to focus on the future. We’re going to talk about how you maintain a long-term practice, how you make adjustments to it as the seasons of your life change, so that it becomes flexible enough to grow with you as you grow. The last day, Week Six, Day Five, is called “Choosing Faithfulness.” Now I grew up in a fairly rigorous fundamentalist religious community. In that community, faithfulness meant really perfection. It meant always doing what you were supposed to do. What I’ve found is that’s a very unhelpful way to think about faithfulness. Faithfulness, in the context of a spiritual discipline, is always coming back. Recognizing that life is what life is–which means it’s unpredictable. It’s largely out of your control. You have obligations to other people that you have to fulfill. This all means any spiritual practice that’s going to last in your life has to be a spiritual practice that is flexible and can accommodate the realities of your life. And so, we end this journey talking about faithfulness, coming back, coming back again, and coming back again.

But, you’ll notice at this point the book’s not done. We’re on page 151 and there’s 60 more pages! So what is in those 60 pages? Ah, my friend, let me tell you the appendices. I know most people skip appendices. They never look at them. This isn’t an academic book, so it doesn’t have tables and charts at the end. Why on earth are there appendices? Well, because there’s other stuff that I want to give you that will be helpful to you. So what are those appendices?

The first appendix is an essay called “What is Spiritual Growth?” That phrase–spiritual growth–is so vague, and so many people use it. Because I’m talking about spiritual growth, I thought maybe you should know what I mean by spiritual growth. So that’s what that essay is. If you are trying to figure out if this is the right book for you, reading that appendix alone will give you a really good sense of whether you want to have this conversation with me.

Then there’s Appendix Two. This is a brand new essay that is in this edition only, and it’s called “Silence for the Children of Noise.” I teach the beginning of the journaling process as sitting in silence. The feedback I’ve received since this book came out two years ago is that it’s the single hardest part of this process. People really struggle with sitting in silence. They don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like. They don’t know how to do it. They’re not sure if they’re being successful when they do it. So, I’ve gotten lots of questions about sitting in silence. What is it like? How does it work? So I wrote an essay about that. What are some of the reasons why silence is so hard for us, and what might we do about it?

Then, Appendix Three. Now we’re getting to appendices that are tools to help you in your process as you journal. Appendix Three is all about building and evaluating your template. So when I teach about templates in week four, ultimately, I don’t want you to use my template. I want you to use a template that works best for you, for your temperament, and your life. So, I’m going to show you how to build that, what things to think about, and what questions to ask yourself. And then, when is it time to change your template, because your template should evolve with you as your life changes.

Appendix Four is recommended tools and tips for journaling. This is a lot of really practical stuff. If you journal analog, what are the best kinds of journals to use? What are the best kinds of pens to use? What are concerns that you might have about keeping your journal safe? If you journal digitally, what’s the best software to use? What are the best ways to structure a digital journal so that doesn’t get in the way? How do you deal with all of the notifications? It’s loads of practical stuff that’s come from years and years of experience.

Then, Appendix Five. This is a gold mine. Honestly, if nothing else in this book speaks to you, Appendix Five is probably worth the price of admission. It’s called “Ways to Practice.” In this appendix, I go through each of those four elements–silence, inward focus, Godward focus, and prayer–and I recommend practices and resources for each of those things. I think there are probably 50 or 60 links out to other books and resources that will help you in your journey.

Appendix Six, finally, is literature on habit building. There are some great books that I’ve read on habit building and some academic studies. I’ve shared with you as well if you’re interested in those things.

So that’s the whole book. That’s what you would find if you picked this up on a shelf in a bookstore and browsed through it to decide, “Is this the right book for me?” If it sounds interesting to you, if it sounds like it might be helpful to you, as a person, to begin building a practice where you are reflecting on the experience of being yourself, listening for the voice of the Spirit in the midst of that reflection, so that you can grow and deepen emotionally and spiritually as a person, then I’d like to share that journey with you.

So there you go. That’s the book. The last thing I want to do is waste your time. So this whole podcast is meant to help you decide if this book is the right book for you or perhaps someone that you love. Next month, we’ll come back to our regularly scheduled spiritual life content with a great conversation with somebody that I think is going to benefit you. We’ll see you then.

May you find the right path for your own growth and healing. Thanks for listening.

CLOSING

Notes for today’s episode and any links mentioned, you’ll find at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW061

Did you like this? Well, there’s more. Usually it’s better than this. Subscribe to Apprenticeship Notes. That’s my email newsletter. It’s monthly-ish, about eight to ten times a year. It will include an exclusive essay about the spiritual life that you won’t find anywhere else, insider commentary on my podcasts and blog posts, books that I recommend, and more. You’ll also get a free little book when you subscribe. It’s called “The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World.” In it, I teach a spiritual practice that has been so helpful to me as I face the anxiety and uncertainty of our time. So, subscribe to the email newsletter. Get that free book. Find it all at www.MarcOptIn.com.

Until next time, remember: In this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Episode 060 – Navigating Toward LGBTQ Affirmation (or How I became an Affirming Pastor)

My journey from the Traditionalist view to becoming a fully Affirming pastor, with a perspective on a Gospel path to full Inclusion. This is a recorded version of the same presentation I gave at the Open Table Conference School of Theology in Sunriver in June of 2025.

Show Notes

In this episode, Marc Alan Schelske explores the complex relationship between faith and LGBTQ affirmation. Through personal stories, theological reflection, and the teachings of Jesus, he explains his own journey from the Traditionalist position to a position of full welcome, inclusion, and affirmation.

Takeaways

Marc, like many of us, had never really investigated the claims of the Traditionalist position that justified exclusion.

The resources for in-depth study on this topic, including all the relevant scriptures, are provided in a downloadable resource for free.

The Gospel, which is the narrative of Jesus’ life, acts, teaching, death, and resurrection, is meant to show us the true face of the Father so that we can set aside the false images we project onto God.

Jesus’ life shows us over and over that God’s nature is to include those on the margins, rather than protect hard lines of exclusion.

Recommended Resources

Blog Version of my School of Theology presentation on John 13, The Foot Washing.

Downloadable 11-page PDF Resource: Navigating LGBTQ Inclusion

The Open Table Conference

Information and Registration for Fall Class: A Gospel Path to LGBTQ Affirmation

Email Marc at Marc@MarcAlanSchelske.com to get on his invite list for the weekly writing sessions at Slow Pour or the twice-monthly virtual co-writing sessions.

Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.

You can also watch and share the video version on YouTube.

More about My Conversation Partner

It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem, it’s me.

Marc Alan Schelske is a happily recovering fundamentalist praying for the restoration of all things. He writes and teaches about spiritual maturity, emotional growth, and the other-centered, co-suffering way of Jesus. His books, including Walking Otherward, Journaling for Spiritual Growth, and The Wisdom of Your Heart, can be found at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com. Marc serves as the teaching elder at Bridge City Community Church in Milwaukie, Oregon, a suburb of Portland, where we work to keep all things, even Christianity, a bit weird.

Find Marc Here

Website: www.MarcAlanSchelske.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarcAlanSchelske

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marcalanscherlske/

Threads: https://www.threads.com/@marcalanschelske

Today’s Sponsor

The Writers Advance – A weekend to help writers write. November 13-16, 2025. For more information, see: www.TheWritersAdvance.com

Transcription

Marc Schelske 0:03
Hey, friends. I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth, following the way of Jesus. This is episode 60: Navigating Toward LGBTQ Affirmation (Or How I became an Affirming Pastor.)

SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is brought to you by The Writers Advance. I’m a writer (You probably know that) and I’m a big nerd about the writing process. That’s probably just a function of me being a big nerd about most everything I’m excited about. Part of that nerdery is that I’ve read all the best books about writing. I’ve taken a number of courses, and back in the day, I went to writers’ conferences regularly. In that time, I learned something that I’m going to offer you right now for free.

By far the best way to learn to write is just to write. All those great resources don’t make writing happen. Reading books about writing isn’t writing. Sitting in giant conference centers listening to experts talk about their process isn’t writing. The only thing that really moves the needle is writing a lot of words. That’s why I host three ways for writers to build their skills by spending time writing. Most every Saturday morning, I head down to Slow Pour, a great coffee shop in Sellwood, Oregon, and I write for three or four hours, and I invite anyone in the area to join me. Then, twice a month, I host a virtual co-writing group where other writers and I gather by Zoom. We check in briefly, then we turn off our mics and we write for two hours. If either of those sounds up your alley, let me know, and I can include you on the invite list.

However, the event that I host every year that makes the most difference is The Writers Advance. This is an annual four-day writers’ weekend that I have crafted to be exactly what writers need to push forward on their current project. It’s not about networking, or listening to experts speak, or desperately trying to get an agent or an editor to notice you. Nope. It’s about writing and reconnecting with why writing matters to you. I provide a creative and inspiring venue with great food and comfortable accommodations. We do readings. I bring coaches in who can help writers get over their current hurdles. I teach a couple of sessions about how to build a writing workflow that means you’ll keep writing for the long haul. But none of that is required. The only thing that’s required is that the folks who gather there write.

You get hours and hours of uninterrupted time for just that. I’ve got regular attendees who come to this event, and they will write more over this weekend than they do in two or three months of their normal life. There are presently eight spots left for this year’s writer’s advance. It takes place November 13 to 16th. If you’re a writer longing to give your words your full attention, or if you love a writer and want to give them the most incredible gift ever. Then head over to the website, www.TheWritersAdvance.com, for more details about this event and to reserve a spot.

INTRODUCTION

I had an incredible opportunity in early June. At the very last minute, I was invited to fill an open faculty position at the Open Table Conference Summer School of Theology in Sun River, Oregon. They had a last-minute cancellation, and one very kind and thorough recommendation got me the invite. So, I got to spend the whole week with incredible people, spending each morning hearing great thinkers talk about a more beautiful gospel, and then spending each afternoon in rich conversation while enjoying restful, beautiful central Oregon. It really was a high point for me. I loved it.

I taught two sessions. The first session was a dialogical group Bible study process through the foot washing scene in John 13. When Jesus stood to wash the disciples’ feet, he was doing something that the disciples and their whole culture considered shameful. He was acting beneath his station. That’s why Peter reacted so violently. He didn’t want to participate in Jesus’ shame. But Jesus didn’t consider it shameful. He considered it an example of who God is and how God relates to us. Now, I tell you that because that session is the foundation for what I’m about to share with you. I’m going to refer to that session at the beginning of what I share now, and if you want to dig into that conversation and understand a little bit more, I wrote that up and posted it on my blog. There’ll be a link on the screen, and there’ll be a link in the show notes. You can just go read that blog. Press pause now, go do that, and then come back. All right, so here we go.

THE PRESENTATION

I’d like you to hold in your mind our conversation about the foot washing scene in John 13, Jesus loving to the fullest by subverting the expectations of what it meant for him to be the Messiah, by serving and entering into the place of shame in order to do so, and then inviting us to follow his example. This is an understanding that has a wide, reaching application for our lives, in the way that we relate to the people around us, and now we’re going to talk about one particular application, how this perspective might apply to the church’s relationship to the LGBTQ community.

Now, as I say this, I want to acknowledge that there may be some limbic system noise that starts to clang and gong for some of us. This is a fraught conversation, and I want to acknowledge the possibility of anxiety. Maybe someone listening is part of the LGBTQ community. If that’s you, you surely bear scars caused by Christians, and you aren’t here to have your life talked about like a problem to solve. It would make sense for you to feel anxious about hearing one more Christian pastor talk about this.

Maybe someone else listening is fully resolved on the subject. Maybe you’re already fully affirming. It just seems obvious to you that Christ’s love is fully inclusive. And frankly, you get frustrated with Christians who just don’t agree with you. Certainly, someone else listening is fully committed to a traditional view of gender and sexuality. And it seems obvious to you that this is what Scripture says, and frankly, you get frustrated with Christians who just don’t get that. And so to both of you, so certain in your convictions, perhaps you’re feeling rising anxiety about whether this pastor is going to say the things you think need to be said.

Then, there’s a good chance that someone else listening is unresolved on the question. You want to love like Jesus, and you suspect that includes loving gay and trans people. You also want to honor God, and you don’t want to abandon scripture in order to do that. So you’re feeling caught,

if you’re feeling anxious for these reasons or any other reasons, I want to give you my commitment that I’m going to do my best in this presentation to use my words in a way that is at the very least respectful and hopefully, hopefully even life-giving. My commitment (for me) and my invitation (to you) is to hold this time and this conversation with respect, mutual care, and curiosity. Is that something we can commit to doing together?

Before I jump in, I want to pray.

God who knows us all intimately, Jesus, who walks with us in the complexity of our human nature, Spirit who convicts, comforts and transforms, we ask for the clear fire of your love to burn away in us everything that is the fruit of our self centered ego defending certainty so that we can more easily practice your way. Amen.

I’ll start with two experiences.

I was a 22-year-old theology major at a conservative Christian university when I met Brian. I was a guitarist. Brian was a singer–one of the best I’d ever met. He was one of the first call vocalists for worship on campus or any special event with music. He was in all kinds of ensembles. We did a lot of music together, and we became friends. Then, he came out, and I watched the campus that had embraced him turn on him. Lost opportunities. Articles in the school newspaper about him that were so cruel. Violent threats. Vandalized property. And all at a Christian university.

I didn’t know what to make of the situation. I grew up in Ohio in the 80s, in a world that was conservative and a religion that was fundamentalist. Being gay in that world was a dangerous social stigma. It was considered shameful in the highest degree, it was a terrible, unforgivable sin. I cannot explain to you how much emotional energy was spent by my male peers trying to constantly prove that we weren’t gay. That was my default state.

But I knew Brian’s heart. He loved Jesus so much. He was more faithful with his spiritual practices than almost anyone I knew–and I was a theology major, a God Squad guy. He was generous and gentle, compassionate. He was a servant-hearted minister. As I learned more about his experience, it was hard to get my head around. He’d known that he was gay since childhood. He’d been forced into conversion therapy. He’d been abused by people who were supposed to be helping him. He’d been praying since childhood for God to fix him or change him or kill him. Then he came out in this conservative Christian environment, because the only way that he could live–literally avoid killing himself–was just to choose to believe that God loved him as he was, and to start living as if that were true, regardless of what all the Christians around him thought.

Now, at that point in my life, I was pretty sure being gay was a sin, but I also remember thinking I had never met anyone so brave. The question that emerged as I processed this was if God considered Brian’s orientation a sin, and Brian had prayed in good faith for healing or deliverance for so long, and God hadn’t healed or delivered, and maybe God didn’t intend to heal or deliver. That was when I began to suspect that maybe God wasn’t as concerned about Brian’s orientation as my faith community was – which is honestly a dangerous thought for a theology major preparing to be a conservative pastor.

Fast forward about 20 years. I was the newly appointed senior pastor of a vibrant church in Portland. We were a church that prided ourselves on our openness and our welcome to anyone. We were a church that really understood the gospel of grace (not like those legalists). Dan and Julio had been attending most weeks for about three months. They were attentive during the sermon. They were engaged during worship. I noticed several times that Julio would cry during the singing.

Dan had asked to meet with me. So, we were sitting in my brand-new senior pastor’s office that had been nicely remodeled. I was sitting at my shiny new senior pastor’s desk. Dan told me, “We love this church. It feels like home. We want to get more involved.” (Great, I thought, the system’s working!) But there’s just one thing… and that’s when he came out to me. He and Julio were partners. They had been for years. He’d heard us say that anyone was welcome, and he wanted to know what that meant. Could they attend now that I knew that they were gay? Yes. Could they volunteer? Um, of course. Could they lead? I was getting uncomfortable. If gay marriage became legal, which was a conversation happening in Oregon at the time, could they get married in our sanctuary, if this was their home church? Would I officiate? Now, I was really uncomfortable.

During this conversation. I had what I can only think of as an out-of-body experience. I could see the whole scene like I was above it. I could hear the words we were saying to each other. I could see the tension in my body. There was this side of me that already cared for these guys, who wanted them to feel safe and at home, and who believed that regardless of what I thought about them being gay, God was big enough to welcome, to include, to forgive (if that was necessary), to heal (If that was necessary). I didn’t know.

But then there was the side of me that only had one script. This isn’t God’s will for you. You’re welcome and loved. Of course, we just trust that God, in God’s timing, is going to lead you to something that is more in alignment with God’s will, something that’s more life-giving. Well, yes, you can participate, of course. Yes, you can volunteer… just not with the kids. You can’t lead or speak, and I can’t marry you, but we love you, and we want you to feel at home. I could feel the incongruity in my words. I could see myself saying things that were half-truths, trying to bridge this tension. And before the conversation was over, I knew that we would never see Dan and Julio again. The question that emerged for me was this: If what I was saying was right and true and biblical, why did I feel in my gut that I had violated the work of the Spirit in the lives of these two men?

That prompted me to do some thinking. You see, when I preached or taught, I took great pride in having done all my own homework. I didn’t just preach the party line. I didn’t crib my notes from the approved commentaries. I studied for myself. I tried to read original sources wherever I could. I prayed. This was really important to me as a pastor, and I realized that I had never given this level of attention to this topic. I’d only repeated what I’d been told was right. Why? I wasn’t like that about any other topic.

That initiated a process of studying that ended up becoming far more wide-reaching than I intended. See, this is how it works. You start with the seven passages of Scripture that have any connection at all to this conversation. To responsibly make sense of those verses, you have to study the history of their interpretation, the hermeneutics surrounding them, and the historical context. As soon as you begin to contemplate alternative translations, you have to think about your understanding of inspiration and biblical authority. And once the door is open to the possibility of minority-view readings, you have to start asking questions about church tradition and the impact of cultural influences on the church, cultural influences like patriarchy and misogyny, and Western colonial empire.

Now, let me just relieve a little stress by saying that we are not going to cover all of that in this hour. It’s just too much. But you are in luck. I’m going to give you a resource that you can walk yourself through that talks about all of these things. This resource is an eleven-page PDF. It’s got the best books you can read that will help you on all of these subjects – books that have been chosen for accuracy and the way that they handle the topic with respect; videos and documentaries you can watch that will help you understand the experience of LGBTQ people in the church; as well as a few other key resources that I’ve discovered are very helpful in this conversation, like the history of the translation of the word “homosexual” in Scripture. And (this one is big), how the prohibition on male same-sex behavior in the first century is self-evidently rooted in the shame of being a woman. When you read first-century sources on this, it’s plain as day. This resource will also give you a list of questions for you to work through yourself so that you can locate yourself in the conversation. There’s lots of good stuff in here. It’s practically a whole college course on the subject for free for you. But that also means that I’m going to skip all of that and take you right to the point.

Not that those things don’t matter. They do. And some of you listening need that part of the conversation. Some of you are in relationships with people who will ask you those questions. Some of you are pastors, and your people are going to say, “Well, have you read this verse in First Corinthians? Have you read this verse in Leviticus?” You need to know how to respond to that intelligently. Those lines of thought matter, and that’s why I put this resource guide together. But as I did this work over the course of several years, I came to see that there was something much more fundamental. That’s what I want to sketch out for you in the rest of our time.

So take a deep breath, relax, just be, notice what you notice. The next part I’m going to share with you is going to sound like it has nothing to do with how Christians relate to LGBTQ people, but I assure you, it does. Keep your hands and arms inside the ride until the ride comes to a complete stop, okay?

The heart of my understanding of the incarnation is simple. Jesus came to show us the Father. That’s John 14:8-9, right? “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” This revelation of the Father was necessary because the greatest human sin is idolatry. Now I know that may sound like a strange claim. How could worshiping a golden statue be worse than, say, the Holocaust? Well, we feel that way because we’ve trivialized what idolatry means. Idolatry is not worshiping a golden statue. Idolatry is projecting unworthy, unholy, ungodly ways onto our image of God. Baxter Kruger says that we tar the father’s face with the brush of our own angst and alienation.

You see, what we do–what idolatry is–is that we project onto God human things that are alien to God’s nature. These false ideas that we project onto God separate us from our source, they corrupt our worship, and they serve to justify every other sin. Idolatry gives divine sanction to our self-centered, ego-defending ways. So, back to that Holocaust question. How can idolatry be worse than the Holocaust? Well, because we project onto God the hatred of our enemies, we find (conveniently) that we have sacred justification for our prejudices and violence. You see, the Holocaust could only happen because it was compatible with the vision of God held by a whole lot of Christians around the world.

So, given that idolatry changes the way that we see God, it was necessary for God to reveal God’s character to us in a tangible way. Our image of God was so tarred with sin and alienation that we needed the love of God to infiltrate our spiritual imagination so that we could see the truth we were otherwise incapable of seeing. So, if that’s the case, then what specifically did Jesus reveal about the nature of God?

Well, this is the question of the gospel. Why is the gospel good news? Now, ask almost any modern Christian what the gospel is, and you are almost certain to be told one or another atonement theory. The gospel is this particular formula for how God deals with sin and how you can gain the benefit of that now and in eternity. How to get saved. But that is not what the earliest Christians meant when they used the word the gospel. That way of talking about the gospel–that the gospel is an atonement theory, a plan that demonstrates how God deals with sin and saves people–that way of talking about the gospel is a development that largely came into being during the medieval church period, particularly after Anselm.

So what did the early Christians mean? The early Christians, from the post-apostolic era into the patristic era. What did they mean when they used the word gospel? Well, when those Christians used that word, what they meant was the things Jesus did and taught. Literally, the stuff in the books that we call gospels. That’s the gospel. The stories of the witnesses that have been handed down. Jesus’ life, acts, teaching, death, and resurrection. That’s the gospel, and it’s good news, because it reveals the character of God.

So if that’s the gospel, what does the gospel show? If we look at the life, the acts, the teaching, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus. What do we see revealed about the nature of God? Well, what I’d really like to do is just read all four gospels to you in their entirety, but we don’t have time for that, so I’m just going to remind you of some key events in a whirlwind tour and ask you to consider what they mean, if these events are a revelation of the nature of God. Once again, all this may seem to you like it has nothing to do with how Christians relate to the LGBTQ community, but I assure you, it does.

Mark 5:25-34. Jesus heals and affirms the woman with the flow of blood. Treats her with dignity. He calls her daughter despite the social taboos that exclude her because of a medical condition. Matthew 8 and Luke 17. Jesus touches and heals lepers, violating the religious and cultural boundaries that kept them excluded from the community, keeping them untouchable because of fear around their disease. Matthew 8 (the Centurion) and John 4 (the Samaritan woman). Jesus affirms the dignity and the spiritual journey of folks who were on the outside. They were the wrong ethnicity, the wrong religion, the wrong kind of person. And yet Jesus engages them like they have a real relationship with God. Matthew 9 and Luke 5. Jesus offers table fellowship (with everything that meant in the ancient Near East) to tax collectors (enemies) and sinners (people judged unworthy and on the outside). And he did this even though it directly caused the people around him to question his judgment and reputation.

Jesus told stories that explicitly challenge the normal human tendency to draw hard lines on who is in and who is out, on who is acceptable to God. Luke 10. The Good Samaritan, where Jesus takes the enemy and turns the enemy into the faithful hero. Luke 14. The great banquet, where those who ultimately got to attend were all the excluded and the cast off. Luke 15. Lost coin, lost sheep, lost son–showing God’s intent to find and reconcile all outsiders. And then John 13, in the upper room, the conversation we had around washing feet. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. He modeled humble boundary-breaking service, even when that service was considered shameful by the people around him.

There are so many other examples: the Syrophoenician woman, Zacchaeus, Matthew the tax collector, healing the man born blind, restoring the demoniac, welcoming the children, and protecting the woman who washed his feet with her hair. Listen, friends, listen! If Jesus intended to reveal to us that God’s nature is to police hard lines of inclusion and exclusion based on holiness, then Jesus went about his life and ministry entirely the wrong way.

How about this? Instead of us defining what we think the Incarnation reveals, let’s just ask Jesus. He tells us directly. It’s in the last line of his high priestly prayer in the upper room. John 17:25-26. “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made Your name known to them, and I will make it known now…” (Remember, in Hebrew thinking someone’s name is an expression of their character, right? It’s not, “This is Paul,” but, “This is Paul who’s really good at being fully present with you, and the moment that you experience His presence, you’re going to feel seen and loved.” That’s the difference. That’s what revealing the name is. It’s not just saying, “Oh, here’s God’s name, and you need to believe it.” It’s saying, “This is who God is.” That’s what that phrase means in Semitic thinking. And then we get to the reason. This is what Jesus says that he’s been revealing. Are you ready? “…So I made Your name known to them, and I will make it known so that the love with which You have loved Me may be in them and I in them.”

See, Jesus is revealing the true nature of the Father, and that nature is imminent love. This is what Jesus came to make known, because this is the thing we did not know already. You see, human history shows that we can imagine a god with expectations of holiness. We can imagine a god who knows the heart and can discern righteousness and unrighteousness. We can imagine a god who has a holy law and imposes consequences on the people who break that law. Further, we can imagine a god who favors those people who obey and excludes those people who don’t. Jesus did not need to reveal any of that because that was how humanity already envisioned its gods. Jesus came to reveal what we could not see on our own: that God’s love is exceedingly greater than anything our human minds will tolerate.

In fact, that’s the very point of the often misquoted line in Isaiah 55 about God’s ways and thoughts being higher than our ways and thoughts. That verse is not saying that God is exceedingly smarter than humans. That’s obvious. That verse explicitly tells us what it is about God that is higher than our ways. Go read it. The verse right before tells you. It’s God’s mercy and pardon. God’s mercy and pardon are so generous that it goes beyond human comprehension. That is what is higher than our ways and thoughts. That’s what Jesus reveals in the Gospel through his acts, his teaching, his life, his death, and his resurrection.

This is what the Apostle Paul is summarizing in Philippians 2: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness and being found in appearance as a human. He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Now, you probably know that this passage is where we get the word kenosis, the pouring out, the self-emptying, or in the words of Simone Weil, the voiding of self. But this is not a self-emptying for its own sake. No, no, no.

The whole point is that this is what God’s love is. This is what God’s love is like. This is the thing about God that is higher than your thoughts. In this hymn, Paul tells us that this is the pattern of the Incarnation: Releasing privilege, not grasping for glory, emptying the ego, entering fully into the plight of those in trouble, even though the cost is shame and death. Further, Paul’s language makes it clear that he’s not telling us this in order to define some abstract theological thing that happened in eternity somewhere. Paul is giving this picture explicitly as an ethical injunction. That’s the introduction of the hymn. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility, regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others. Let this same mind be in you…” and then we get the Christ hymn.

Okay, deep breath. So, how does this relate to gay people? When I was processing all that information about the seven texts against homosexuality and the biblical model of marriage and the history of the translation of the text – all that stuff – what I saw was that those questions are, at best, secondary to the Gospel itself.

Jesus came to reveal God’s nature. God’s nature is other-centered, co-suffering, love. So when Jesus explained his express purpose–”…so that the love with which You have loved Me may be in them and I in them.” – that also applies to gay and trans people. That means that when Jesus’ followers wonder how it is that they ought to relate to gay and trans people – when Jesus followers get all tangled up trying to sort out, “Why are people gay?” and is it a choice, or is it biological? And if it’s a choice, then there’s a moral aspect to it. If it’s biological, maybe there’s not, and can gay marriage really count as marriage, especially since they can’t make children and all the other brain-twisting shenanigans that we get up to when we get into those deep weeds–we forget that we have very clear guidance about how to relate to other people. “Let this mind be in you…” “Regard others as better than yourselves.” “Look not to your own interests but to the interests of others.” This is our ethical injunction.

So, how then are we to relate to the queer community? The same way we’re called to relate to everyone in the world, through other-centered, self-poured-out, co-suffering love. Wash their feet. Invite them to the table. Seek them out like lost coins and lost sheep. Run to them like the lost son. Let them worship like the woman washing Jesus’ feet with her hair. Let them use their gifts in the body, like Matthew, the tax collector, and every other sinner who’s part of the church. Bless them when they want to enter into loving covenant relationships, because that’s one way we experience and practice the love of God, even though every single marriage falls short of that.

See, we get so preoccupied trying to parse whether being gay or trans is a willful choice or a matter of DNA and what that might mean for salvation. I know! I’ve done that homework. What I found at the end of the project was Jesus standing on the temple steps, thundering these words to me, “Woe to you, you hypocrite, for you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who want to enter to go in.”

“Wait,” you say, “Marc, you’re saying that Jesus came to show us God’s love. (Yeah) but the Bible also tells us to avoid sin. (Yes, it does,) and it seems to explicitly call homosexuality a sin. So aren’t you compromising what real Godly love is? “Great question. Thanks for asking. My answer is no, here’s why.

Let’s assume, for the sake of the next sixty seconds, that being gay or trans is a violation of God’s will and a grievous sin. Now, if you work through the resources that I provide to you, I think you will see that there are solid, credible biblical arguments why being gay is not sinful. That’s my current position. But for right now, for the sake of the question you asked, for the next 60 seconds, let’s assume that being gay or trans is a sin in the eyes of God.

Okay, Jesus shows us exactly how to relate to sinners, because Jesus shows us exactly how God related to sinners. What do the Gospels show? Jesus touches sinners even when his own religion says they’re untouchable. Jesus invites sinners to his table, even when this makes religious people accuse him of being immoral. Jesus tells us that the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to go and find the one. Oh, and also, Jesus dies on the cross for sinners, so that they can know about their union with the Father.

“But wait,” you say, “but wait, (because you’re good at interrupting) Are you saying that gay people can just go on being gay and God doesn’t care? Are you saying that everyone who is gay or trans is gay or trans by God’s design?” No, I’m saying that question is above my pay grade, and it’s also above yours. I’m not an expert on human sexuality. I am only a passionate and well-read amateur, but what I know is that the stew of human sexuality and gender is way more complicated than anyone wants to admit. The reasons that people experience same-sex attraction (or any attraction), the reasons that people experience gender dysphoria, are a complex weave of tangled threads that we may never be able to fully understand.

Maybe there are some people that God wants to heal, and in healing them, they will no longer experience those things. Maybe? I’m not ruling it out; I’ve just never seen it in real life. But I will tell you this: if that’s something God wants to do, God will do it in a way that is loving, which means it will not be coercive. It will not be manipulative. And, it will not be abusive. What I am saying is that my role, and I think the church’s role, is not to be the healer, if healing is even necessary, but to be the ones who hold open the seat at the table. We who follow Jesus are called to follow his example of other-centered, co-suffering love, to enfold people, to welcome them, to include them, to walk with them as they seek God, and to trust that the Spirit will do whatever the Spirit wants to do. As the Spirit works to help them align their way of being with the truth of their being, it is our job to love like Jesus and to join Jesus in his work, revealing the true face of the Father.

One final story from my journey. In January 2015, I was deeply in the middle of this course of study, this transition in my thinking. I was already sure that some of the views I had held were not only unbiblical, but they were actively counter to the way of Jesus. But I was still unresolved, and I was very conscious of the costs ahead of me as a pastor in a church that, while loving and kind, largely held the traditional view. Then I got an email from a pastor friend.

An organization called the Gay Christian Network was hosting a worship conference in Portland at the convention center, and word had gotten out that the Westboro Baptist Church was planning to come to that event and protest. Now, I don’t know if you remember Westboro, but for several years, they made it a point to show up at gay events and actively broadcast hate. They picketed the funerals of men who died from AIDS. They engineered social media campaigns against inclusive churches and pastors. They would show up at these events with signs and speakers and a crowd, and they would shout and sing the most horrific kinds of things at the people who were there. So this email that I received was organizing a counter-protest. They called it a “Love Wall.” This pastor was inviting Christians in the Portland area to come to the convention center and provide a barrier between the Westboro Baptist people and the folks entering the convention center who were just trying to gather to worship.

Well, as soon as I read this email, I knew that I needed to go. That morning, I was gearing up because it was a chilly, drizzly day, and my daughter asked where I was going. She was eight at the time. So, trying to explain things in a way that might make sense to her, I said that some folks were coming to Portland because they wanted to worship God with their friends (which she understood. That was something she did) and some other folks were coming to Portland to get in the way and keep them from worshiping God and to bully them. And I was going to go try to stop the bullies. Immediately, she asked if she could come along.

So, that’s how my daughter, Emerson, and I found ourselves standing as part of a crowd of about a hundred and fifty people lining the sidewalk between the light rail station and the convention center. The Westboro Baptist people showed up, and they started doing their thing. Shouting, singing songs that had familiar hymn tunes that you’d recognize at first, but when you actually keyed into the words, they were just filled with violent and threatening imagery. They were shouting condemnation. They were screaming Scriptures with rage. These people, the Westboro Baptist people, proudly Christian, were explicitly proclaiming not only eternal damnation on the conference goers in the next life, but every form of heinous pain and death in this one.

As the Westboro Baptist people rained down this condemnation, the folks in the Love Wall spoke their blessings. “Welcome to Portland. We’re glad you’re here. You’re loved. You’re not alone.” Then the Westboro Baptist people pushed toward the entry to try and get closer, and the Love Wall gently moved and blocked their way. Then the Westboro people turned up their speakers, and the Love Wall started singing to drown out the sounds of this sanctified hate.

Standing there in the rain, holding my daughter’s hand, singing worship songs so that hate could not be heard, I started crying. The words of Amazing Grace seemed to form a protective shield against the condemning invective that was raining down. In that moment, the tectonic plates of my past experience, my upbringing, my own homophobia, my study, and my desire to follow Jesus all ground together, and what was forced to the surface were the words of scripture that I had memorized as a child.

“What does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

“Learn to do right, seek justice, defend the oppressed.”

“Truly, I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

By that point, I’d been part of… I don’t know, maybe 3000 church services in my life, and I had never experienced something that felt as sacred as that morning in the cold rain, standing between vile Christian hate and vulnerable people who just wanted to worship in a place they felt safe.

I know there are many layers to this conversation. There are questions about what a faithful queer Christian life would look like, questions about monogamy, questions about the impact of trauma and healing, questions about the shadow side. All of these things that become obstacles when the stark fact is this: If we believe that God loves all and that the work of the Spirit is reconciliation, and if we believe that God will ultimately be all in all, then all those other questions fade into secondary status, and only one thing remains. Jesus came to show us the true face of God, that this God, who is a mutuality of other-centered, co-suffering love, is our source, and that the closer we come to this God, the more our lives reflect this path. That’s why I finally accepted the full gospel that applies to everyone and became affirming, because it is not my job to condemn.

There’s one last challenge I often hear. “Marc, Marc, I hear you. Those are powerful experiences. But Mark, what if you’re wrong? What if you’re reading scripture wrong?” Well, I might be, but I’m challenged by the witness of two heroes of our faith, Moses and Paul, both of whom prayed what I think is the most completely kenotic prayer in all of Scripture. Moses, in Exodus 32, after the chaos of the golden calf incident, begs God in prayer, “But now, O Lord, please forgive their sin. But if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.” Paul echoes that prayer in Romans 9:3, when he says, “For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people.”

Both Paul and Moses were willing to give up their own eternal salvation as they understood it, if only that meant that the people they loved could be in the presence of God. I think those two prayers are perhaps the closest that people in Scripture have ever gotten to living out Philippians Two kenosis. Moses and Paul were doing what I think Jesus was doing. They were saying, “I will bear the shame, if that means they can be saved. I will bear the alienation, if that means they can be included.”

So maybe I am wrong. I’m certain that I’m wrong about a lot of my theology, but I have come to rest in my conviction that I’m willing to bear the shame of being wrong if that means my queer siblings can find sanctuary and know that they are fully loved, and perhaps in being loved will come to know the light of Christ, which will work its way in them in exactly the same way that I trust it to work in me.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Well, that’s the presentation I did at the School of Theology, and now you’ve got it. If you’d like to dig into this on your own, the reference guide that I mentioned is going to be available on my website. You can get it from that link on the screen or from the show notes.

Now, if you’d like to go through this material, not by yourself, with some guidance, I’m going to be teaching a 10-week course this fall that will offer a thoughtful, in-depth exploration of a Jesus-centered path to respectful and loving inclusion of LGBTQ people, as well as biblically-aligned support for full affirmation. We’ll tackle all the aspects of this: our own expectations and personal stories, and how to handle this conversation with empathy and respect. We’ll look at the key arguments for the traditionalist perspective, including an in-depth study of the Scriptures used to justify exclusion, including the historical, linguistic, and cultural context of those scriptures. And the course will conclude with a gospel-centered argument for full inclusion and affirmation.

I’m going to be teaching this class at my church in hybrid mode, so we’ll be in person here in Milwaukie, Oregon (South Portland) with Zoom access for people who want to be remote. The class is going to be on Thursdays from 7 – 8:30 pm. That’s Pacific time. It’s going to last ten weeks, starting September 4 and going through November 5. Now, to make sure that there’s space for discussion, space for this class is limited.

You can learn more, you can register at the link that’s on the screen, or that’s in the show notes. You can find more information there, but you don’t need me for any of this. All the books, all the resources that can help guide you through this process, are in the resource document that I mentioned earlier. The link will be on the screen, and in the show notes, you can download that for free. I’m just making that available to you so that you can go through this conversation on your own time when you’re ready to work through it.

Thanks for listening.

May you say no to the demands of ego. May you comfort those in mourning. May you stand with the meek. May you hunger more for right and just living. May you be merciful, even as your Father in heaven is merciful. May you grow in purity and have the courage to be a peacemaker. May you bear up under persecution and be willing to do what is right even when it costs you. May you be salt and light. Amen.

Notes for today’s episode, including that download and all other links that I mentioned, can be found at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW060.

Well, this is an episode that’s a little bit out of the ordinary, but it’s also my last episode for the summer. The next episode will be in August or September. But in the meantime, if you like this, there’s more stuff. Subscribe to Apprenticeship Notes, my email newsletter. It comes out monthly-ish (about 8 to 10 times a year). That newsletter includes an exclusive essay about the spiritual life that you won’t find anywhere else, insider commentary on my podcast and blog posts, books I recommend and more, and when you subscribe, you’ll get a free little book that I wrote called, The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. In that little book, I teach a spiritual practice that has been so helpful to me as I face the anxiety and uncertainty of our time, and I want to offer it to you. So subscribe to my email list; Get that book. You can get all that at www.MarcOptIn.com

Until next time, remember: in this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Episode 059 – How the Beatitudes Could Save the World and Us. (With Dr. Bradley Jersak)

An offhand comment by Dr. Jersak prompted this conversation. “We’re pushing back against the construction of a Christianity that’s the opposite of the Beatitudes. For those who don’t want to be susceptible to the lure of power-over Christianity, I recommend praying the Beatitudes every day . . . it is a furnace of discernment like none other.” Woah…

In a world where Christian leaders and many of their followers are increasingly espousing structures of power-over, saying empathy is a sin, and even co-opting the language of “Godly Hate,”1 For instance, “Christians must recover the lost virtue of Hatred. If not, Christianity will survive, but the West will be finished.” – Pastor Joel Webbon, Twitter message, May 19, 2025. there is a real urgency to re-center our practice on Jesus’ teaching in the Beatitudes.

Show Notes

In this conversation, Dr. Bradley Jersak and I explore the urgent need for Christians to re-center themselves in the Beatitudes as a guide for spiritual growth, ethical living, and community engagement. The need for this has only increased with the rise of Power-over ideologies such as Christian Nationalism, and forms of Christianity that are denying the way of Jesus in their actions.

Takeaways

Praying the Beatitudes can lead to personal transformation.

Kenosis, or self-emptying, is a key aspect of living out the Beatitudes.

Christian nationalism and all forms of power-over ideology contradict the teachings of Jesus, and this can be most clearly seen in the Beatitudes.

The Beatitudes call for a radical rethinking of patriotism and can counteract misguided theology.

A commitment to praying the Beatitudes regularly will serve as a “furnace of discernment” for wise discernment of what is truly “the word of the Lord” in our lives.

Recommended Resources

The Ladder of the Beatitudes, by Jim Forest.

Beatitudes: When Mountain Meets Valley, by Ron Dart.

Are We Done Fighting: Building Understanding in a World of Hate and Division, by Matthew Legge.

Downloadable “Furnace of Discernment” Beatitute Prayer PDF

Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.

You can also watch and share the video version on YouTube.

More about My Conversation Partner

Dr. Bradley Jersak

Bradley is an author and teacher based in Abbotsford, BC. He currently serves as the Principal of St. Stephen’s University in New Brunswick, where he continues as the Dean and faculty member of SSU’s School of Theology & Culture. He also teaches peace studies courses with the Jim Forrest Institute. Through his books and seminars, Brad shares the good news that God is Love, perfectly revealed in Jesus Christ, and that God’s love heals wounded hearts and empowers us to heal this broken world.

Find Bradley Here

Website: https://bradjersak.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bradley.jersak

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradley.jersak/

Threads: https://www.threads.net/@bradley.jersak

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Transcription

Marc Schelske 0:05
Hey, friends. I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth, following the way of Jesus. This is episode 59: “How the Beatitudes Could Save Us and The World.”

SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is made possible by, well, me. It’s me, hi. I’m the problem. It’s me. Most of the time, the sponsors of this podcast are just other things that I make and sell–my books, my writer’s retreat, events I’m doing, stuff like that. The reason why I list these as sponsors is because the truth is that making a podcast like this takes time and money, and the only reason I can do it is because people like you buy things that I make. Well, increasingly, there have been folks out there in my extended community who’ve asked me about how to support my writing when there isn’t a new book to buy. Frankly, I’ve avoided answering that question because of my own insecurities and fears. Who am I to ask for support for my work? But a few of you have leaned hard on me. So here we go.

The sponsor today is me, my writing, all of my work to help people have a healthy inner life and spiritual journey following the other-centered, co-suffering way of Jesus. For many of you, maybe most, the best way to support me is to hang around, right? To watch the podcast, to read the essays on my website, and to buy a book when one comes out. Don’t worry, a new one’s coming out in September. You’ll hear more about that soon. You’ll have a chance to get it. But if you’ve wanted to support my work outside of that, well, here’s your chance.

I am opening up an invitation to patron support. Now, you may have encountered this through the website Patreon, which lots of creative people use. Well, Patreon, that service, they take between 8-12% of what people give, plus merchant processing fees, which is about 3%, so that’s a lot. When someone is giving you $20 to support you, giving 15% of that to the service that provides the connection, that’s a lot, and it doesn’t feel like good stewardship. So I’ve built something similar to Patreon, but on a system that takes only the merchant fees, the 3%. So what does this mean, especially if you don’t know what Patreon is?

Well, simply put, you subscribe to support my work for a monthly or annual recurring fee. I get a donation from you that goes to basically buy time for me to do more of this work. And what do you get? Well, mostly, you get the satisfaction of knowing that your gift is allowing me more hours to write, where I don’t have to take side gigs to support my family. But also, there are some cool benefits. So here’s the tiers of my support system, then you can pick one that seems to make sense for you.

The first is the Listener Tier. This level is free–no cost. You get my monthly (monthly-ish) email newsletter, Apprenticeship Notes, and you give me permission to email you when I have new things for sale, like a book. This is perfect for anyone who wants to keep up with my writing but isn’t in a place to commit to a monthly subscription fee. If you’re here right now listening to this podcast and you like what you’re hearing, you’re finding it helpful–that means you should be a Listener level subscriber at least.

Now, if you want to support me financially, there are three options. The second tier is the Reader Tier. This level is $5 a month or $50 a year. You get my monthly-ish newsletter, just like the free tier, but you’ll also be invited to this new thing that I’m doing just for financial supporters.

I’m hosting a monthly-ish Spiritual Life Virtual Round Table. So, monthly-ish again, about nine times a year, because I scale back in the summer, I’ll host a virtual gathering where I will present, or I’ll lead a discussion on a topic related to healthy inner life, spiritual life, or theology. The topics for these conversations will be drawn from the interest shown by suggestions made by supporters like you. So people who back at this level will get to suggest topics they’d like to discuss, and then I will do the work to prepare, and I’ll also try my best to find subject matter experts to join the conversation that may include professors, theologians, and authors of books, who can be in this conversation with us, guide us, answer our questions. Now, this event is intended to be small. Only supporters are going to be invited. That means everyone’s going to have the opportunity to be seen, to be heard, to ask their questions. This isn’t going to be available to the general public. It’s not going to be recorded or streamed to the public. It’s going to be a private conversation, which means it will be a great place for asking questions, tackling difficult issues, and maybe even getting in the room with an author or someone else that I invite to be a subject matter expert.

So, the first one of these is coming up soon, June 20, and the topic will be Mammon. Mammon, that biblical word for the spiritual power of money. How can followers of Jesus deal with the spiritual power of money that seems to run our nation? The Reverend Matt Tebbe will be our special guest, walking us through that topic. He hosts the Gravity Commons podcast, along with some of his friends, and he is really interested in this topic. He’s working on a book on it. How can we deal with this spiritual Power and Principality of money and the desire for money that seems to run our lives? If you want to be in that conversation, then you need to be a paid subscriber at this tier or above.

The third tier is the Sponsor tier. This level is $12 a month, or $120 a year. You get the newsletter. You get an invite to those Spiritual Life Round Tables, and you also get a free book from me every single year that you remain a subscriber. It could be my newest book, It could be one of my older books. Or if you already have all my books, then I will have a conversation with you about what’s going on in your spiritual life, and I will pick out a recommended read just for you and send it to you–ebook or paperback, whichever you prefer.

Then the last tier–and this is just for the crazy people who believe in me more than I believe in myself– this is the Benefactor tier. It’s $40 a month, or $400 a year, or any higher amount that you want to commit. So you get all the previous benefits, the newsletter, the Virtual Roundtable, the annual free book, but you will also be part of my Shareholder Team. You’ll be a part of an annual Marc-Schelske-The-Writer shareholder meeting. At that meeting, I will update you on my writing year, my goals for the next year, and what my current projects are. I’ll ask for your input on new projects. I’ll share some of the most inspiring results of my writing journey. You will have truly insider access to my writing life and where that is headed. So that’s the scoop. Now you can always get my newsletter, listen to my podcast, read my online essays, that’s all free, that’s all available for anyone, but if you want to help me expand my capacity to write, then now you’ve got a way to do that. And if you do… man, blessings upon you.

INTRODUCTION

The last podcast episode, about two months ago, was a panel discussion that I hosted as part of launching my new book, Walking Otherward. I wanted to have a discussion about how Jesus’ way of Other-centered, Co-suffering love might serve us in the current climate of division, antagonism, and lust for power. And so I invited three friends that I respect to discuss this question with me, Pastor Brian Zahnd, Dr Bradley Jersak, and Susan Carson. I titled that discussion “Following Jesus in the Face of Political Panic, Christian Supremacy and Creeping Fascism.” Now, if you haven’t listened to it yet, I recommend it to you. It seems like the conversation becomes more urgent and more relevant every passing day.

But about halfway through that conversation, Bradley, my friend and conversation partner today, made this comment. He said, “It seems to me that the thing we’re pushing back against is the construction of a Christianity that’s the opposite of the Beatitudes. For those who don’t want to be susceptible to the lure of Power-over Christianity, a Christianity built out of the desire to have power over others, I recommend praying the Beatitudes every day. It is a furnace of discernment like none other. There is no power-over theology or prophecy that can get through those first three Beatitudes. They will be fried before you get there. It is such an amazing shield of faith.” Well, we just moved right on from that and went on to discuss other things, but Bradley’s words rang like a tuning fork in my spirit.

I committed right then in that conversation to start praying the Beatitudes regularly. I wrote a responsive prayer based on the Beatitudes that our little church prayed at the close of every gathering through this entire season of Lent. I’ve included the Beatitudes in my own daily prayer liturgy. In the confusion and uncertainty of the moment we find ourselves in, Bradley’s suggestion felt to me like a needed anchor, and so I asked if he would come back to the podcast and have a conversation with me about the Beatitudes as a practice to anchor us in this present moment.

Dr. Bradley Jersak is the principal of St Stephen’s University, Director of St Stephen’s University School of Theology and Culture, and professor of religious studies with the Jim Forest Institute. He lives in Abbotsford, British Columbia, with his wife, Eden, who co-pastors the Bridge Church. He’s written over 20 books, including academic works, theology, and philosophy, and his must-read More Christlike trilogy, which I highly recommend to you.

Bradley’s a smart guy, and some of the vocabulary terms that pop up in this conversation are $64 words. Just to make sure we’re all on the same page, here are some definitions to keep in mind. You’ll hear the idea of kenosis or kenotic theology mentioned. So these words come from a Greek word that Paul uses in Philippians 2 to describe Jesus’ Incarnation–kenao. That word means “to pour out” or “to empty.” So, kenosis is the kind of love that is pouring-out love, the self-sacrificial love. Kenotic theology is the theological framework that sees self-sacrificial love as the decisive quality of God. Just a side note. This is the big theological word that is used for the same thing I’m talking about when you hear me use the phrase, other-centered, co-suffering love. Bradley will also use the term kenarchy. This word derives from kenosis, and it refers to a form of government or a form of human organization that is governed by relationship and love. We’ll also talk about hegemony, but Bradley stops and defines it quite well, so I’ll just flag that and make sure you pay attention to the definition when it comes. All right. I started our conversation by asking Bradley how the Beatitudes have come to be so important to him.

THE CONVERSATION

Dr. Bradley Jersak 11:59
Well, thanks, Marc. I appreciate the question, How did these become so important to me? I do suppose that some of that was when I married into a Mennonite Church. They had a very gospel-centered theology, in a way that contrasted with the more Pauline emphasis when I was growing up. And I don’t mean that to say that they’re in competition. However, what I learned in the first twenty years about the Sermon on the Mount was that it was to lead us to almost despair, so that we would not actually obey it, but cast ourselves on Grace. Luther, or one of his disciples, had said that they were not really expected or invited to obey the Sermon on the Mount. In fact, to do so is sort of a denial of grace. This was Bonhoeffer’s critique as a Lutheran of a certain way of setting aside the practice of the Sermon on the Mount.

When I joined the Mennonites, and I was a pastor there for ten years, I saw how week after week after week, this was the ethical center of what they regarded following Jesus looks like. Within the Sermon on the Mount itself, we have what some would call the constitution of the kingdom of God. From Jesus’ own words: Who’s the wise person who builds their house on the rock? It’s the one who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice. That is not an invitation to cast myself onto grace because they’re impracticable. It is a call to follow Jesus, and that will look like these three chapters.

Now, I began to have that permeate my heart and life in a way that actually transformed me into, for example, someone who who had justified militarism and had my own kind of Just War Theory, into seeing that this was incompatible with what Jesus had called us to in the Sermon on the Mount. Then I began going on mountain hikes with Ron Dart. He’s a mentor of mine. He was the fellow who taught me mountain climbing. He also ended up supervising my PhD dissertation. A huge center of his teaching is the mountain and valleys of the Beatitudes that begin the Sermon on the Mount. He talked about going up hills and down hills and also used the analogy of respiration. There’s an inhale and an exhale to this. There’s a rhythm in these words of Jesus that, if we pay attention to them, will be transformed into blessed peacemakers who hunger and thirst for justice, who exude the mercy of God. And it just hooked my heart.

Then I discovered that in the Eastern Orthodox Church, it’s supposed to be a part of our daily prayer practice. So I’m like, well… then I’ll do that. I do think it’s the most important part of my prayer life. Actually, may I just cite them to you?

Marc Schelske 14:59
Yeah.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 14:59
I want to do it how I would do it when I pray, which is I introduce them from the perspective of the thief on the cross, who says to Jesus, when He has nothing to offer, “Jesus Christ, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And then, I begin to pray the Beatitudes, but the first one then is like Jesus’ answer to me. “Remember me when You come into Your come into your kingdom,” and he looks at me, that good thief, and he says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek. They will inherit the land or the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice or righteousness (same word in Greek), they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they will obtain mercy.” Not just get it back, but it will become part of their character. Blessed are the pure in heart. They will see God, and it’s only when you’ve had your heart cleansed then you can actually go into “Blessed are the peacemakers,” otherwise you’re a red-eyed, angry activist. The peacemakers will be called children of God. Not the Christians! Peacemakers will be called children of God.

And of course, once you do that, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness or justice. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” And then he kind of departs from the rhythm. But we’ll add it because it’s another blessed there. “Blessed are those–you–who are persecuted, maligned, those who speak lies about you and evil about you for my sake. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for so they treated the prophets who came before you.” Then he goes into, and I pray this part too, “You’re the salt of the world, and you’re the light of the world, and let your light so shine.” Well, what would that look like? Oh, he’s just told us, right? The Beatitudes. This is what salt looks like. This is what light looks like. This is what Jesus’ version of the Fruit of the Spirit looks like. I commend that for daily prayer. It’s not so hard to add it to your phone as a daily reminder, and to take the one minute of your day to fill your hearts with something that actually looks like Jesus.

Marc Schelske 17:08
It seems such a different place to root your prayer. I wasn’t in a liturgical tradition, if you don’t count childhood liturgy, you know, “Now I lay me down to sleep” sorts of things. I didn’t have any liturgical prayers in my repertoire. I think my dad preached a sermon on the ACTS model of prayer. So Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and then at the end, once you’ve done that, then you can have your grocery list of prayer requests. Or, if you’re more elevated than that, it’s all the different people you’re praying for. You know, families and the pastor and missionaries and the president. God be with all those folks. All of those prayers are really, with the exception of “Jesus, forgive me for my sins,” all those prayers are really about a desire for God to make a change in the world, to change circumstances for somebody that I love, or to change circumstances in my life, or to change circumstances in the world. There wasn’t very much in the way I was taught to pray that had to do with formation. The formation was that you should pray. Christians should pray. This is what you should do. But praying the Beatitudes is pretty explicitly a formational process. You’re asking for the change in you.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 18:23
Yeah, it’s strange because you’re using Jesus’ words, but the way you’re doing this, you’re taking his words and you’re praying them into the soil of your own heart. “Oh, he said this. Plant that there. He said this. Plant that there.” So it’s an interesting kind of praying. It’s not the only praying I do, but there’s this real sense that I’m installing something.

So we’ve talked about a furnace. I love your analogy of the tuning fork. That’s just brilliant to me. It’s like, “Ding!” What has the resonance of truth to it? What harmonizes with the life of Christ? One thing I’ll say about it is that when Ron took me up the mountain, he really wanted me to know that the first half of each Beatitude–Blessed are the, you know, poor in spirit, mourning, meek… He went further than people like Dallas Willard, who sort of treated the first half as “Blessed are the losers.” Dallas Willard was in touch with this idea that these Beatitudes are for the outcasts, are for the outsiders, are for those outside the threshold of the In Crowd. But what Ron wanted to say is that there’s something deeper going on here besides being marginalized.

We do get pushback. There will be people who say, “Well, these aren’t virtues or something. This is like your need.” Well, that’s one level of reading it. But as you climb the mountain of the Beatitudes, you realize these are aspects of the life of Christ. So Benedict XVI called it “A veiled Autobiography of the life of Christ.” He’s telling you in words, and then will fulfill it with his life every day, and then ultimately. In His death and resurrection, what the Blessed One looks like. The Blessed One dies and rises again. But it’s not just the day of my actual death or martyrdom. What Pope Benedict said was that the Beatitudes transpose the death and resurrection of Jesus into the daily life of a Christian disciple. So he would say the first half of each Beatitude, Jesus fulfilled this in his way of living, which was dying, and his way of dying, which is his passion. He fulfilled the first half of each of those as his death, and then the second half of each Beatitude is the resurrection life of Jesus.

So, yours is the kingdom of heaven, right? You lay down your life and you receive the Kingdom, but then Benedict is saying, “What would that look like for someone who’s dying daily?” What would someone look like who is living in the resurrection power of Christ daily? So it’s the daily deaths and resurrections. It’s all there in the first one. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” those kenotic…

Marc Schelske 20:50
Right? Yeah!

Dr. Bradley Jersak 20:51
Emptying oneself–the way Ron Dart would put it is learning to say no to the demands of the ego, or even bankrupting the ego. So when Simone Weil talks about the first Beatitude, she compares it to Philippians 2. She says, in the first Beatitude, “Blessed are those (in French, she goes) who voided themselves—voided themselves! Then Philippians 2, she said, be like Jesus. Instead of grasping at privilege, he voided himself. So she makes a direct connection to that self-emptying.

Marc Schelske 21:51
Right, Okay.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 21:52
Self-will is just emptied in Jesus, and especially, you see it in the Garden of Gethsemane. And so she says, “This is what Jesus means by ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit,'” Bankrupted egos, saying no to the demands of my cravings.

Marc Schelske 22:07
That’s so good. So I have never, before this moment, thought of the Beatitudes applying to Jesus, which is sort of weird to me. I had a very, very significant theophany moment with First Corinthians 13, going, “Hey, what if this is describing how God loves?” And, even the Fruit of the Spirit. What if this is describing the nature that we see in Christ? The faith of my childhood implicitly said that there is a way of being that Jesus was, which is special and holy, and elevated. He’s the sinless one, and like your narration earlier on, we can’t even aspire to that. That’s not for us. Jesus did what we couldn’t do, and therefore our only avenue is resting in the grace that God offers us, and our access to that is through what happens with Penal Substitutionary Atonement, and aren’t you glad?

Dr. Bradley Jersak 23:01
Imputed righteousness, instead of walking in it.

Marc Schelske 23:04
Right, exactly. So the Beatitudes have always been this sort of annoying enigma. You read them and you’re like, “This is really hard. It doesn’t seem practical. The only people who could really do this have to be retired saintly grandmas and monks, because they live in an environment where other people deal with all the hard stuff.” Kind of dismissed, really. Obviously, they’re words of Jesus; We can’t dismiss them, but dismissed in the sense that there is any direct sort of application. And yet, my heritage also has a very strong move toward the Imitation of Christ. We want to grow up to be like Jesus. We take on Paul’s language of maturing in the image. That is something we should be attempting, aspiring to, in grace, through the power of the Spirit.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 23:53
In grace, through the power of the Spirit, yeah. There can be a sense in which these are just another set of new laws. I mean, they should be what we’re fighting to have in the schools as over against the Ten Commandments. But no one ever does that. Why is that?

But I also want to say it is fruit. You know, it’s the Jesus version of the Fruit of the Spirit. “If you walk with me, these things will wear off on you. My character is going to transform you. You just walk with me.” And so it’s not an imitation apart from transformation; it’s from an inside-out living with Jesus. These things are going to begin to emerge.

Marc Schelske 24:33
Right.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 24:33
And I also like to normalize them. They can be for the super-spiritual, hyper monk or something, but then you just start thinking about each one, right? The poor in spirit, the one who puts others ahead of their own interests, the mother who will rock the baby when she just wants to sleep. That’s saying no to ego, right? And then, you know, mourning, Anyone can do that, but maybe, we could sit and mourn with others. It’s not just mourning for my sins. How about sitting with those who are mourning and learn to co-suffer with them. That’s not rocket science. There’s a hospice down the road where you can go to practice this. Meekness, that’s just gentleness, right? How can I be gentle with people? Well, that is hard. It takes transformation, takes grace, but it’s ultra practical, and it’s super normalized in real life.

Marc Schelske 24:34
Well, to even think of Jesus’ life through this sequence, right? You can just go down and go, “yes, of course, of course.” These are things he did, of course. And even the meek one, people react. Certainly, Americans react badly to the idea, thinking of it as sort of being a sacred call to being a doormat. Yet, Jesus is a great example of someone that we would not consider weak, but who is meek in his interactions with folks.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 25:59
Yeah, in fact, there’s this miscalculation where modern Christians and scholars have sometimes treated Greek as a very abstracted philosophical language as over against Hebrew. And it’s just simply not true. The Greek words used in this, regardless of what language Jesus spoke initially, are very pictorial. So the idea of meekness goes back to this: You take a wild horse with all of its rippling power in those giant muscles. It’s ready for war, but you domesticate it so beautifully that a child can feed it a sugar cube without being bitten or trampled. That’s meekness. What does that look like in the real world?

Well, in the real world, it looked like this. At Fresh Wind Church, when we were leading it, there was an ex-con there who was probably a participant in murder. He was a violent man, including violence against women. He’d been through prison, and he’d come out, and was overcoming his addictions. Eventually, a meekness had come over him that was only explainable by grace. Women would bring their crying children for him to hold. Okay, this is not doormat stuff. This is a powerful, violent man being transformed by the love of Jesus Christ into someone who wouldn’t harm a baby. He might still harm another gang member, but you know, that’s a start, right?

Marc Schelske 27:26
You have this experience of having this prayer be a daily, ongoing part of your life. You use the idea of sort of planting seeds in your own soul for this kind of transformation. So let’s talk about how this might be a resource for Christians today. A lot of folks are finding themselves in this place that feels very unmoored. Expectations that we have been used to having about what it means to be Christian are being toppled. We’re seeing Christian leaders who are making a shift in their language in a direction that feels very much like a pursuit of a kind of Christian hegemony, a pursuit of Christian authority in the political or social environment. For many of us, this feels antithetical to the way of Jesus. It feels like somehow this way of seeing Christianity, or this blending of Christian language and Christian practice with national patriotism, blending those things in a way where there’s this motive for a certain kind of Christianity to become dominant and in power in the country. Certainly, we know that it has been a temptation across church history. This is not new to us, but some of us are waking up to the fact that it feels present right now in a way that we have not been used to experiencing. Okay, so given that context, how might the practice of praying the Beatitudes be an anchor in that moment?

Dr. Bradley Jersak 28:59
I think we should start with a word you used, because the answer is right inside the word, and it’s a word not everyone recognizes, perhaps. You use the word hegemony. For those who don’t know that word, I want to give a basic definition. A hegemony is a kind of empire that accumulates resources to its center to increase its power over those on the outside. So this is what would happen. The British Empire, they would travel the seven seas. They would colonize these other nations, and they would take their resources back to England. Those resources then made England even more powerful. So, it is pulling resources into yourself to increase your power over the other. That’s a hegemony. What Jesus is describing as God’s kingdom and the character of those who practice Beatitude living, is the very opposite of that. Self-giving, kenosis, is a self-emptying of resources into the world, sowing what we have out there. And who knew? The kingdom of God advances and grows in the power of love, not through power-over but through service and foot washing and kissing the leper.

So when you use hegemony, that’s exactly the problem, anywhere a church has reverted from the kenarchy of Jesus, his self-giving kingdom, other-centered love, and become a hegemony. You’re not understating it. It is antithetical to Christ and His way. It is in direct opposition to God’s kingdom. And at that stage, I don’t know what the red line is for lamps being removed from the lampstand…

Marc Schelske 30:45
Right, right! Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 30:47
But we used to think about it in terms of a hypothetical. Now I think we’re probably seeing it in real time. That’s really dangerous. And so I’m just going to back up. This has now permeated the land to the point where it’s harder and harder to identify with the Christian brand, because it’s antithetical to Christ in great ways. But where I first ran into it would have been in the prophetic movement. I really believe that God speaks today. I believe and practice hearing his voice, and I believe that’s a ministry that our churches can participate in. What happened, and I can locate it in time, especially through the renewal movement. There was a lot of good stuff happening, but it inherited a kind of prophetic ministry that was grandiose. And it would say encouraging things, but like grandiose things like this, “Marc, the Lord would say to you, go get your passport, because he’s going to make you an apostle to the nations. And he’s going to make you a history maker. And he’s going to make you great, blah, blah, blah.” It was all very much around flattering your ego.

Marc Schelske 32:06
Yeah, bigness, big things, big accomplishments.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 32:08
I see big things for you, very big things. Marc, so I learned a few things the hard way. After resentment, grandiosity is the number two cause of relapse among addicts, because grandiosity makes you think you’re above the rules, so you feel a sense of entitlement to use and abuse. Well, guess what the prophets did? They entitled us to use and abuse. They were just describing how to have a hegemony.

We were also really into fire. Lord, come with your fire, the fire of the spirit, the fire. They love that stuff. I love that stuff. But then I read in Proverbs, “The word of the Lord is pure, like silver refined in the fire seven times.” So I’m like, “What is the fire that will refine the word of the Lord?” And I thought, if I install the beatitudes in my heart as a furnace, and I pass every one of these charismatic or renewal-based prophetic words through the fire of the Beatitudes, almost nothing gets through. Poverty of spirit, Mourning, and Meekness? Grandiosity will be ashes by the time it gets there, and therefore, that is not the pure word of the Lord.

So, I would go into renewal churches, and I’d say, “Oh, we really want to engage the prophetic this weekend, and we want to be accurate prophets, and we don’t want tobe deceived. I don’t want to be deceived. Come back Sunday, and I’ll give you the Seventh Fire.” And then I would just teach them the beatitudes. Then I realized, as I’m doing this, it was not only necessary for a reformation of that one little stream of prophetic movement, but now in our world, this is a problem everywhere. It’s so broad that every Christian in the world should be praying the Beatitudes every day. This may be the antidote to Christian nationalism, because Christian Nationalism is a hegemony.

Marc Schelske 34:04
There are certainly folks who haven’t spent time with the academic language. You know, they hear “Christian nationalism,” and they’re like, “Oh, I’m not allowed to love my country. Is that what you’re saying?” No, no, no, that’s not it. But then, instead of being vague, the Beatitudes would actually say, “here’s a practical vision.” What would it look like to love your country as a person who is poor in spirit? What would it look like to love your country in a way that is peacemaking? In a way that hungers and thirsts for righteous and just behavior? Right? That, right there, reveals the problem of Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism does not ultimately care about right and just behavior. It only cares about behavior that elevates itself, right?

Dr. Bradley Jersak 34:41
Yep.

Marc Schelske 34:41
So, if the Beatitudes call me to be a person who hungers for right and just behavior, then my loving my country is going to begin to look different. Maybe I’m going to become the kind of person who wants to hold my country accountable when my country behaves in ways that are neither right nor just. Maybe I will become the kind of person who wants to see my country invest its resources more in peace-making rather than in war-making. I may identify that I have a deep love of my country. I might use the word patriot, but the tone of what that means is gonna be different having passed through, in your language, this furnace.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 35:18
Totally. Just to help people with some definitions here, then. A patriot is somebody who loves their country. Even if you consider yourself a citizen of heaven in exile, we’re still called to bless the country we’re in all the ways we can. This is Jeremiah. He says, “The Lord says, you’re in exile. Go ahead. Buy Houses, marry wives, have businesses, and just make sure that you are a blessing to the land that I planted you.” And that’s not a problem. You could say I’m a patriot of Canada, in that sense. I care about what happens here, and I want to speak into it, because I want it to thrive, right?

But Christian Nationalism is another thing. First of all, it’s an -ism. An -ism is an ideology, and it’s not just Nationalism, but let’s start there. Nationalism is about the dominance of a people group. So German Nationalism is not patriotism of Germany. It is that the Germanic peoples would dominate all of the countries where they’re planted. So that’s why Germany needed to take over Austria and Czechoslovakia, and Poland. And it was a hegemony because it needed the resources to feed the German nationals, so they’re pulling in these resources. So Nationalism is about people groups. Christian nationalism, then, is about the dominance of a Christian nation, usually white, but it’s about dominance. It’s about power-over. Like Christians should have power over America or Canada. They should have power over the government. They should be in charge, to the exclusion of others. That’s not exactly patriotism in any way. It’s dominance versus kenosis.

Marc Schelske 36:57
That connection to kenosis is such a good one because it contextualizes the invitation of the Beatitudes in a way that makes kenosis–the pouring out from Philippians 2–so much more tangible. What does it mean for me to be a person living out this kind of kenotic love? What does that really look like?

Dr. Bradley Jersak 37:18
Yeah,

Marc Schelske 37:19
I’m presently not being invited to be crucified. So, what does that look like for me? And then the Beatitudes say, well, it might look like not being driven by ego. It might look like intentionally looking for ways to make peace. It might look like desiring, craving, coveting right and just behavior in your community and being part of that. Those are much more tangible. And then I think of ways we can begin in our own circumstances, thinking about how I make a difference where I find myself? Well, these are some very practical ways. Your offhand comment earlier was sort of mind-breaking. What would it be like if every Christian were praying this prayer every day? Because it seems like a lot would have to change about the nature of our way of engaging the world,

Dr. Bradley Jersak 38:05
Yeah, and even just to pray it mindlessly, because you never know what’ll grow down there, right? I do have people ask, “Are you saying then that there’s no place for participation in government?” Oh, no, but it’s a participation of civil servanthood. So my father was a civil servant in the government for 40 years, helping farmers who were going bankrupt not to hang themselves, helping small businesses with some funding so they could hire summer students who couldn’t find jobs otherwise, and helping little communities apply for grants so they could have their museum or their library or their smallest bridge in town upgraded. I mean, that’s quite practical. It’s not non-engagement. It’s just service-focused rather than power-focused.

Marc Schelske 38:51
It seems like even just the one Beatitude, you know, hungering and thirsting for righteousness–if we understand that dikaiosynē encompasses both what we think of as holy living and just living, equitable living towards those around you. Wouldn’t that open up a pretty constructive path if someone were like, “I want to be on city council.” Okay, great. Go be on the city council as a person who hungers and thirsts for righteousness. Yeah. I would love my school board, my city council, the guy who runs the water district, I would love all those to be people who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Seems like that would be a benefit to all of us.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 39:27
Yeah. So, for example, the mayor of my city right now really cares about homeless people. He ran a service station, and he just saw two blocks away the homeless camps, and then he got on the city council. He said “I don’t know what to do, but let’s talk about, let’s have a conversation.” And now we elected a mayor, and he’s making tangible efforts to care for the most vulnerable people in our community right now, and I love it. He’s using his space in self-giving service, rather than power-over dominance.

Marc Schelske 40:02
This is so intriguing to me. I think that in the formation of the kind of Christianity I grew up in, we certainly cared about people’s behavior. I mean, sometimes way too much, in ways that seem unhealthy now. But that formation was really more about becoming skilled in certain Christian practices, right? Like becoming good at studying the Bible in a certain way, becoming good at retaining Bible verses in your memory, and becoming good at participating in certain kinds of church events. And even then, when you had gifts–you know, I’m a musician, so what’s one of the best things you can do as a Christian musician? Well, you use it to help the church service. So, you become part of the church service. Even to the point that, I think, folks whose gifts weren’t the kind of gifts that show up on stage very well could sometimes feel like there really wasn’t a place for them to be Christian, to enact their gifts for the body. The Beatitudes present a formation that’s really not about any of that. The point here is not to become more skilled at your Christian practices. The point is, I mean, is this crazy to say–to become more like Jesus?

Dr. Bradley Jersak 41:22
Yeah, II Corinthians 3, towards the end, it says, anyone who turns to the Lord, they’re going to behold Him. And as they behold Him, the end of beholding is that they’ll be transformed, transfigured into the image of Christ. So, I behold Him, and that’s what changes me. Well, anybody can either read or hear the Jesus of the gospel. That’s a way to behold Him. It is about saying, “I’m gonna follow Jesus. I’m gonna watch how he did it. I’m going to let that rub off on me. I’m going to let him–his words and his actions–change how I see people.” What’ll happen is that you won’t read very far into the Sermon on the Mount until you’re like, “Well, wait a minute. But what about this? And I don’t know about that?”

So, one of the great griefs I have about our culture right now is how I can spout the very words of Jesus without commentary in a conversation, and the percentage of Christians who who reject what he says is assaulting So, for example… oh, I always try to quote the fellow who who did this study because it’s good to give credit, but his name has slipped my mind. He’s a Church Health Consultant who goes to churches all over. Hundreds of churches, and they range from conservative to progressive, and he always likes to put those words in front of them. He’ll say, you know, how do you feel about these words? Your enemies, bless them, pray for them, forgive them. The percentages, after thousands of surveys in churches where the people doing them were active. These are the people who show up for a Church Health Conference, not the Sunday or even Christmas Christians. 74% of conservatives said that it is compromising with unrighteousness, and 72% of progressives said that it is complicity with injustice. So these are active Christians across the spectrum, at almost three-quarters, who don’t like these words. Well, neither do I, but just stay there then and undergo them, and let them press on you. Argue with Jesus about it. Ask your whatabouts. But then let these words talk. This is the amazing thing. If we sit with the things that discomfort us rather than evade them or interpret them away, it might help us to change.

Marc Schelske 43:23
That feels really wise and helpful in this moment. I think that most of us would say, if I’m going to pray a passage from scripture, it would be a lot more comforting to pray the 23rd Psalm. There are passages like that that soothe my limbic system and help me visualize a better future, and I want to pray those because they feel more comforting. But the Beatitudes are inviting us to be part of the process of bringing comfort to the world.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 44:33
Yeah.

Marc Schelske 44:35
There’s a lot about the way the world is that’s uncomfortable. It’s a uniquely modern problem of people who look a lot like me, socially, economically, and ethnically, that we’ve been able to build lives where not a lot challenges our sense of comfort. And so then we’ve built churches like that. Don’t challenge our sense of comfort. We get bugged when the pastor preaches something that is pointed.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 45:06
Let’s use that as a segue for a moment, moving from an individualistic reading of the Beatitudes into a corporate reading. So this is not just what the Christian could look like if they imitate Christ, but it is what Jesus’ alternative society will look like. When Gandhi was reading this daily and putting it into practice, he said that if people took the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount seriously and really put them into practice, it would not only solve the problems of Christianity or of India, but of the whole world. It is a prophecy par excellence, if practiced. And I think that’s the proof of it.

So often we’re like, “Yeah, but what about this?” And we make a hypothetical that we don’t have to obey. But Jesus says it’s, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” That’s the children of God. And he says, (This is from Chapter 7) “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will unto the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” That’s a challenging thing, but it also smears the boundaries really badly. And it tells you that someone who may name the name of Jesus may not be following Jesus at all. It could just be an incantation they use. And then there is someone who would not think to claim the name of Jesus, and is unlikely to darken the door of a church, and yet they’re living this way. It’s very possible that they might have entered that sort of Kingdom reality.

That makes me ask this: if you have Christians who aren’t following Jesus, and if you have people who have other faiths or no faith, who aren’t claiming the Christian brand, how do you know which ones are following Jesus? Oh, I know! The Beatitudes. Turning to Christ will probably look like this at some point. From the perspective of the thief on the cross who has nothing left to offer, they can pray this and see what Jesus does by way of death and resurrection in them.

CLOSING REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 47:16
Bradley quoted the words of Pope Benedict the 16th: “The Beatitudes transpose the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ into the daily life of a Christian disciple.” I don’t know about you, but this is what I need. I grew up in a church with a very strict list of behaviors that were acceptable for Christians, and I inherited the legalistic heart to go along with it, but what Bradley is suggesting with the Beatitudes is something completely different. Rather than a new list of rules to obey, this scripture becomes a furnace of discernment. I love that.

As I face the struggles of my life or the struggles in my church, as I think about how to participate in the conversation and politics of my country. I need guidance. When I take my concerns, my questions, and I run them through the Beatitudes, I submit myself to the Beatitudes, I can start discerning more clearly where self-centered, ego-defending ambition is poisoning my perspective.

Ever since that book launch live-stream, when Bradley made his off-handed comment, I’ve been praying the Beatitudes. I try to pray them every day, and already, in just that short time, I’ve seen myself become more aware of my ego in my transactions, my interactions with others, more aware of the marginalized around me, and even have begun feeling more courage to stand with those that our society weighs down with unnecessary burdens. There have been a handful of situations where I wasn’t sure what to do, and by actually taking my concern through the furnace, I had clarity about what was the right next step. So, following Bradley, I just want to recommend this practice to you. We’re facing enormous difficulties in our world right now, so much division, so much pain, and even deep disagreements about what is true. In a moment like that, we need an anchor that is deeper than our own thoughts, and I think the Beatitudes offer us exactly that.

May you say no to the demands of ego, may you comfort those in mourning, may you stand with the meek, may you hunger more for right and just living. May you be merciful, even as your Father in heaven is merciful. May you grow in purity and have the courage to be a peacemaker. May you bear up under persecution and be willing to do what is right even when it costs you. May you be salt and light.

Thanks for listening.

The notes for today’s episode, and any links mentioned, can be found at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW059. Also, I mentioned that I wrote a responsive prayer version of the Beatitudes that our little church prayed at the close of every service during Lent. Well, I put that together for you in a nice PDF that you can get from my website. That’ll be linked in the show notes too.

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Until next time, remember in this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.