John Crowder Talks Deconstructing Toxic Theology And Rediscovering A Christlike God - Ep. 3

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Now on to the episode. All right. Welcome to another episode of Merging Wisdom. My name is Dan Heroy. I'm joined with my co-host here, Joel Hubbard. And today our special guest, very special guest is John Crowder, who is an author, speaker, theologian, prophetic voice of a generation. Probably could say much more, but John is all that and a good friend of mine.

In fact, I might call him my best friend. John is my best friend. John, am I your best friend? Wow. That's that's strong language, Dan. I mean, we're at least, I don't know, a good acquaintances. Okay, I can edit that part out. But anyways, John is a friend. I think he has been historically for me and. Friend of sinners. Yeah.

Looking forward to having this conversation. Hopefully not go completely off the rails. There's a reason me and John have never done a podcast together before, because it just wouldn't work. It'd be just complete chaos and we might think it's funny. And 17 people we know might think it's funny and that's about it. We've done one thing together before, which was kind of completely off the rails.

John was doing a series fairly serious. I mean, John's a very funny guy, but somewhat serious series interviewing church leaders like pastors, worship leaders, different various church members, you know, and we decided I would be the announcement person interviewee for that YouTube video, which turned out to be like 23 minutes. The guy who does announcements in church, the announcement guy.

The announcement guy at church. Because why not interview that guy? He's a key integral part of every service. But we were just clowning around. But we posted like a 23 minute in-character video. That's why we don't do podcasts together. But the interview was the interview was completely dry and we weren't laughing. It was. It was dry delivery humor and people really thought it was serious.

They were like, I'm glad you're you're really interviewing the salt of the earth people that really make you my gosh. Yeah. Like, wow, this is so this is so profound. I never thought of announcements in that way. I thought my character was over the top enough to be an obvious tell. But that's my social experiment in life is joking.

And seeing how many people take what I think is an obvious joke serious. So that will happen repeatedly. Joel, on this podcast, the more I talk, the more that's going to happen, especially with somebody like John Crowder here who is a great friend and I love joking with and love talking to you. So Joel, keep us on track.

If it gets too off the rails, fine. I'm an Enneagram seven. Joel's an Enneagram seven John doesn't believe in the Enneagram, but I think he's an Enneagram seven if that. I'm an Enneagram 6.82 A. Like I said. You say that's not a real number and I say none of it's real. Do you know your Enneagram type? John.

I think I'm an INFJ. Okay. Yeah. That's all. Yeah. Help! Help us here, Joel. Anything? Reel us in. Reel us in Joel. Because your sidekick is getting off track. I'll do my best. I have, I have my interests. I'll pursue those things. And I think that's what we're trying to do here on this podcast, is follow the things that are interesting to us and have these conversations that are not happening in many circles.

They are happening. It seems like it's growing. More people are wanting to have conversations about controversial subjects, and I'm really excited about that. We're going to have a few more on our podcast. And, John, you've written on a seen some, you know, your posts on on Facebook, I follow them and I actually read them. It's interesting to me that you've, you have a large following and I watched the feedback.

Sometimes I'll read through, I look for the one that does it, like what you just said, and those are the ones I, I usually the good stuff is like. Yeah, yeah, but then I want to get to the one that has a contrary view to yours. And it's sort of my own social experiment to see where's the world at the world of faith at when it comes to all of this stuff.

You know, I think deeply about epistemology. I think deeply about, you know, the ways of knowing, you know, propositional truths or versus perspectival or participatory knowing. And it's like, you know, those things matter to me because there's such an emphasis on propositional knowing in our world. It's not just in the world of faith, it's in the world everywhere.

And so I think what you're talking about and what you're what I took from some of the stuff you're putting out there, a picture of, of God that's different, a picture of God that's that's more loving, more expansive. And so but one of my curiosity, since I don't know you like Dan does, is to know, you know, what compelled you.

I mean, origin stories are almost impossible to to kind of define. But but what compelled you to start to move in this direction of, of seeing God differently than perhaps, you know, I don't know the way you were raised, but it's maybe you're quite familiar with the evangelical world enough to have had something push you towards wanting something different.

Yeah. And unfortunately, I'm, I'm very entrenched, have been very entrenched in that world, which is, you know, sort of made me probably the product that I am. You know, I often tell people like, you know, that have spent years and maybe some toxic sort of transactional evangelical ideas that they feel like they've wasted a lot of time.

And I'm like, well, at least you learned what God is not like, you know, speaking Epistemologically, I think there's two things. I think the positive and the negative for me would be, well, I'll start with the negative. And on a high note, I think the negative is, you know, a lot of these sort of dark views that we inherited about God.

They caused a lot of pain or theology has consequences and, you know, separation mentality, these dualism and really just a, a doctrine of God that doesn't look Christlike is very damaging. And so I, you know, I grew up in the Bible Belt of all places, and not just a not just an evangelical church, but and not just a Pentecostal church, but a Church of God Holiness church, where we were never actually told what holiness is.

We were just told explicitly what it wasn't. And what it wasn't was everything. Nothing was. And so so that was the negative side. But then the positive side is, you know, as I as I did have these experiences and was exposed to more, you know, better Christology and a higher, again, Christlike view of God. I mean, it's that beauty that really draws, you know, so that's the it it's more of a, it's more of the beauty, you know, you taste and see the Lord is good.

And so for me, I've, you know, a lot of people just think I'm a, a provocateur and there's an aspect of that. But but it's never just been to prod the the hornet's nest for the sake of a laugh. Although, you know, we sometimes laugh. You have to laugh. But but it's always been to to lift people's vision to and bring a real liberation and a healing and wholeness.

And that's I mean, for me, that's that's the driving force, even even behind the snarky. And it has to be, I think, if we're going to really do service to the church because it's not just about bashing the church, but but seeing her heal. Yeah, yeah. John, I told you Joel was the smart one. There was several words I'm going to have to look up later that he mentioned, but it was a great question.

So, John, I know you're allergic to the personality type thing, but I'm going to keep going with it for a second here. How much of your personality do you think was is kind of innate to you as a provocateur, and how much of what you do do you find yourself as like a reaction? Maybe within just that your personality type is to react to things.

And I think that's natural and normal. But, you know, it's not like I'm just trying to be a clown, although I have fun in that when, you know, that's that's part of it. But again, I really think, you know, the, the reformatory aspect is, is deep to my heart. And, you know, the downside of that, obviously that you see in any anybody just about and minister your politics is the, the narcissism and the ego and all that kind of stuff and that and I just despise that within what I, what I see, and probably because I see it in others so clearly in ministry is because it's inside.

And so at least I've been graced with like an awareness to like, pay attention to that, you know. And so I think, yeah. What was the question again? Well, I mean, were you a provocateur as a kid in school? You were a journalist back in the day, right? Were you always that. I was a nerdy. I was a nerdy introvert.

And then when I hit high school, I kind of blossomed. And then I became class clown. So I, you know, I really enjoyed the just the fun of making people laugh. And it was, you know, there's a there's a height of that, you know, that you love comedy. No, there's a, there's I mean, joy is a fruit of the spirit.

I think that's a very important thing. But yeah. What was the question? Like? I don't know, for sometimes for me, I don't know if I'm being honest with myself, but sometimes I feel like I don't like to just go against. I feel like in the church circles that I find myself in, I'm usually a bit provocative or seemingly butting up against the whatever the common ideas are and prevailing sentiments are, I don't feel like I want to always have, you know, an alternate take or, you know, a divergent view.

But maybe I do. Maybe that's just who I am. Like, do you find yourself not wanting to to always but up against like the mainstream or whatever the the masses are doing, or do you find like you actually like to lean into that? Well, I mean, I would diagnose you more as a people pleaser, Dan but yeah, I think.

Also the editor of this podcast. So go for whatever you want to say. I can edit anything out. Yeah. I keep saying no, I yeah, it's not that I've always like just wanted to, but I think there's something on me that's like I often say like like the way I do theology is I'm, I'm more of a truffle pig.

It's like I'm like, I don't feel like I've ever done an honest day of theological work for me. I'm just sniffing around and finding these gyms, and it's addictive. And and I'll be bouncing from one thing to another. And I'm not locked into one ecclesial denominational perspective on things. You know, if I see Jesus over here, if I see him over there, eat the meat, spit out the bones kind of thing.

But but sometimes I see a bone is really lodged in the throat of a particular narrative. And so I do tend to lock on like a pit bull. It's like, and maybe I'm a little OCD with that. I get a little perfectionist with that. It's like this, this has to go, guys. This is this is choking us.

And so it's not that I want to see that, but when I do it's just it's hard not to address it. So and I've never had a problem with addressing it. But yeah it's like I just want to go against the grain. I don't think I always go against the grain, really. I think patristic, early church. I'm really I see a lot of that as the grain and we've already gone against it.

So maybe that's the kind of reformed desire that I have anyway. And I would agree with that's what you're doing is going to more of a centrally located place within the Christian realm, but that's against the grain, because we've gone to such fringes within our evangelicalism. And, you know, the the extremes of Carey's mania and Christian nationalism.

So you being grounded in something that I think is rooted in, in something very, you know, stable that ends up being that. And you're right, I do feel like I am more of a people pleaser, but I feel like I'm afflicted with this thing that somehow just has this other view that does seem to go against the grain, but I don't know what that is.

We can we can talk about that off the record. Yeah. No, that's a that's fine. And I'm glad you bring that up because I think part of the anytime we do any sort of big word again here exegesis of the of anything, you know, you do it of yourself as well. You have to look at you know, what are what are my motivations.

How you know, what are my in what ways am I blind? You know, I think the work of seeing and the way the, the many different ways that we self deceive, I mean, I think it's just like people always say, you know, what's what the Scripture says, or, you know, it's like I always retort with like, no, it's what you say.

The scripture say. It's like it's it's not always that black and white that clear. Some things are for sure. And, and we those are, those are clear things. But then there's so much of it that has a lot to do with how we perceive and the awareness of like, yeah, I tend to be more and I've always been a freethinker, so I know that that's a predisposition of mine.

It's a bias of mine. I have to watch out for that because it makes it difficult sometimes to kind of go along with other people. If my starting point is to be kind of more, you know, against or pulling back in away from that. But I think to what I hear in what you're saying, John, is you're also drawn by something beautiful.

And I'm so happy you brought that in as part of the dialog, because I think that, you know, Plato's the good, the true and the beautiful. It's like it gets where's the beautiful in a lot of this theology. And that's been troubling to me. You know, listening to some of these church leaders over the years, it's been like, wow, that is just an ugly theology.

And I think that that's also part of what's we're looking at, like, how do we evaluate things, you know, what are the sort of ecology of practices and of diagnostic ways of understanding truth? Like you have to include beauty and that I think. Yeah. And and something that moves us in the heart center and not just, you know, propositional arguments between, you know, one denomination versus another belief versus another belief.

And so, yeah, really appreciate you bringing the beauty part into that. And not just the beauty but the the goodness as well. You know, you mentioned the three the beauty, goodness and truth. And so often it's you know, well his goodness is a higher goodness. We can't say something is is good. Just that's evil. We call it good just because God did it.

You know, George MacDonald was really big on that. He's like, either say God didn't do it or you misunderstood it, but don't attribute evil to him. What your selves would, would, would recognize as something good. So I think the goodness aspect of it, we have these honestly, ethically depraved views of God quite often. And but that's what the Bible says.

Again, that's your exegetical take on it. And I think the biggest thing, and this goes back to the epistemological question as well, which Dan wouldn't understand. And the and exegetical. I know Play-doh, my kids play with Play-doh. It's all going to be subjective because God is God is ineffable. And there's this, this be honest in this divine, wholly unknowing and this inexhaustible of of of who he is.

And it's always going to be subjective because we're always making our own God contraptions and our own God apparatus based on our. It's always going to be that way unless we root the epistemology, we root the exegesis. In a Christological hermeneutic, Jesus is not our our own human assent to God. It's God's own self-revelation. It's his own self-disclosure. Right?

Like like our futile human minds can't project themselves into God's unapproachable being. Right? If God's going to be known he's not discovered, he's self revealing. And that's, you know, Jesus says, or John says no one knows God except the one who comes from and from within the father's bosom. He has made him known. And so and so.

That's where I think the going back to the early church is so important is because for them, Christology, who Jesus is was always the lens for everything. He is God knowledge. He is epistemology. He is our exegesis. You know Jesus, as you study the scriptures, as if by them you get eternal life. They all point to me.

He he is the ultimate text. And so, yeah, I think part of this whole atomization of the scripture, I just believe what the Bible says, just me and my Bible, really that that was this sort of post-Reformation hermeneutical turn from from Jesus as being the logos to the Bible being the logos. We jumped to solar scripture instead of solar, Christos and or solar.

Christos has just added in there, right? Yeah. And and it's not to say that we, you know, dismiss the scripture. You know, the early church, they had a much higher view of scriptures is very mystical. And so when they would read, say, like an Old Testament violence passage, they would say, look, that clearly is not how Jesus rolls, because we read the sermon on the Mount and we see the cross.

And so how do we view this in a way that that that is Christological? And so they would, they would, they would see allegory, but not just make it up as you go allegory. It all points to Christ in some way. And even though you had this crazy like, say, violent text, they would see that the beauty and the mystery of Scripture was such that it was doing more than its surface meaning.

Yeah, we would, we would be that as Marcy and I or dismissing Scripture. But that's exactly how Origin attacked Marcionism. He's like Marcionites are more like, you know, David Bentley Hart says they're more like modern fundamentalists? They're just taking everything super literally. But scriptures divine it's doing something more than that. Jesus is the great Joshua who's taking the Promised Land, right?

Yeah. Hold down it's principality. So yeah, we have to have that Christological hermeneutic anyway. But that's the thing. That's the deeper wisdom that underlies things. Like, I can now read Scripture and read some of these texts that that I used to have difficulty with, because they seem so violent and find the wisdom that is underneath. That was a that was guiding people through having to do real time theology.

Like, what else did they have? You know, they had to use what they had. And so, you know, for us to try to cut, copy and paste to, you know, well that that's like the Mormon tablets, it's like perfect it to send it or it's like, no, it isn't. It's a culture. It's a way of seeing. It's a way of understanding.

And you see them wrestling with all of that and trying to make sense of how do you do this in a way that really does move us towards loving God and loving our neighbor, you know? And that's a very, very difficult thing to do. And so part of it is, you know, there is the self revealing of the divine to us.

But then there's also our filter. It's like, you know, you can't get away with that. That filter is always going to be there. And that's part of the frustrating work of going, oh, I thought I understood. And now through deeper self-reflection, I realized that was my freaking ego stepping in and hijacking some of my seeing, you know, and then it opens us up.

And when that happens, then the transcendence and imminence polarities are in their proper tension within us. So it's like both the transcendent but also the immanence experience of the divine within us. And I think that's what that's what. That's what it causes to have a deeper knowing of the divine, as opposed to that superficial, like literal, you know, just cut, copy, paste from, you know, no shellfish. No.

She's like, whatever it is that you just drag from the Old Testament into today. So. Yeah, I think what you said about the subjective, we're viewing God through a subjective lens. We're doing an objective thing subjectively, which is always going to mess us up. Right. And but understanding that and realizing that, I think is part of the it's that's the help me.

That's kind of part of the solution to wrestling through that and getting landing somewhere more positive because almost like a confirmation bias, like just knowing you have confirmation bias or knowing you might have cognitive dissonance somewhere, or view things subjectively. Just being aware of that kind of stuff can help, you know, you get past that now that you shed it completely.

But just knowing that we're the ones that have the subjectivity on our end, it's not God. So, John, I know you have a new book that's coming out, not released yet, but what do you what are you working on and what can we expect with this upcoming book? Yeah, it's the title is The Silence of the word.

It's it's sort of somewhere between Chicken Soup for the Soul and The Prayer of Jabez, if I were to put it in a category. Both of those are bestsellers. So yeah. But no, in all honesty, it's it's it really does touch on all of this because it's just where we are today. But it's also just the human experience.

It's, it's a, it's a book on Christology and contemplation, which are two topics that the evangelical world today hardly knows anything about, unfortunately. I mean, I've met pastors who cannot pronounce Christology seriously. And contemplation, you know, we don't we don't really have a grid for that. And this was the bread and butter of the early church of the mystical tradition.

And I'm trying to do something new. I'm trying to do something constructive in the book where I'm showing how these two things fit together and are necessarily integral. But you have I have to kind of, you know, do some explanatory work for, you know, defining both of these and showing the relevance of this because it's like the most relevant thing to us, but we don't realize it.

So, you know, it touches again what we're saying about the, the subjectivity. Because for the early church fathers and mothers, you couldn't be a theologian unless you were a mystic. They they understood that we don't just approach God through these positional, sort of objective concepts. But but God is known not just with our 4 pound brain, but he's known experientially.

And so I think with like, these discussions about epistemology or how we know God and how do we know what is true, ultimately, truth is a person and this is about knowledge was not just, you know, logic chopping as important as theology is. And contrary to popular opinion, the mystics of the church were not anti theology. It's just a dogma.

Wasn't just something to believe, but something to participate in. That's right. It's relational. It's it's a the Greek word. It's participation. It's it's a it's it's an intimate knowledge as Adam new Eve. Right. As I know Dan. Okay, okay. There's this. Where are you going with this? No, but there's. But even how we we seriously though and all honestly how we know one another is not just through propositional ideas.

I could sit and explain on paper, Joel, but unless I've encountered Joel, I mean with one with one expression of the face, you know, it's I was having a discussion the other day. This is really off topic, but you know how just different languages don't fit together like Lego blocks, which is part of our problem with biblical translation here in the modern world.

We read these English commentaries that we call the Bible. But but Greek just doesn't fit to English that way. Well, what about these these tribes in Africa you've seen on your your feed before? They speak in like the clicks and the the vocabulary is not extremely dense or as nuanced or grammatically complex, but so much is communicated through expression.

It's, it's it's sort of known. It's, you know, when you're having a conversation with somebody, sometimes you just get the vibe of of what they're trying to communicate. Yeah. If you're married to someone, you know what your wife or your husband is thinking, before they even say anything. Right. And I think there's this deeper knowledge, this, this intimate knowing of God that, that we're we're at peace with some of those unknowns.

But the goal is not just to lasso him down with our minds. Our mind is illuminated. Our mind is a vital part of how we participate. But it's not the only thing. And here in the Western Church, we kind of break apart mind and heart. We say, oh, you got to get out of your head and get into your heart or my, my mind is just in the way or whatever.

But but for the Eastern Church and the Greeks, mind and heart were essentially one thing that the new set, that spiritual intellect, that spiritual apprehension, it involves the intellect. But it's so much more and and I think that's part of the importance of the the contemplative aspect is contemplation. Yes. It's silence. Yes, it's letting go of concepts.

But it's not just the method, it's this, this reception of him beyond all of our subjective ideas, beyond all of my, you know, fluttering thoughts. I'm not the accumulation of my own thoughts. God is definitely not the accumulation of my own thoughts. And as we just sort of have practice where we engage in some silence, it helps sort of reorient our mind and experientially more tune into his love to his actual presence.

God is real. He's not just an idea and and sort of get behind those God contraptions that I've, that I've built up and, and a sort of noetic intuition begins to build up. When we do hear toxic theology, something kind of goes off. It's like, I don't know about that. Or we do hear something that's true, good, beautiful.

It resonates with us. And so I think that participation aspect is so important when it comes to this. I wonder, you probably have undoubtedly run across this is the divorce of the of the physical, you know, of of God's inhabiting the physical thing. You know, that has been a big problem. I mean, there's there's a movement back to Orthodox Eastern Orthodoxy and to Catholicism.

I mean, and some of the people that I've talked to about that, they won't put it in these words, but they're essentially saying, you know, I'm kind of just it's the experience. It's like I'm coming in. You know, one of my siblings literally said this to me. So it's like I've been going, Joel, and you know, why is I feel peace, you know, and there's something in the participation of the Eucharist.

It's something in the participation of the physical domain. And I think part of the thing with contemplation, the way you're describing it emerging from, you know, even as far back, I mean, certainly it has made a little bit of a revival in in our world, but its origins had to do with a more like, you're describing a more a deeper knowing and knowing that goes through what we call the three centers.

So you've got your prefrontal cortex, the amygdala, the brainstem, and the knowing through all of that was something expected of people doing theology. But I wonder somewhere along the way, we sort of went, maybe it's the Industrial Revolution, maybe it's the Reformation, but the movement away from the physical and like not knowing God through the emotions, through the eye.

And I've been practicing this now for several years of just having my body experience God, having my body experience the elements and, and, and and I've had some profound experiences that way that I wouldn't have had had I overleveraged my knowing center, my or my prefrontal cortex was really just the, you know, kind of that left brain that Ian McGilchrist in his book, the, you know, the The Master and His Emissary, kind of describes that kind of knowing that's grasping, that's attempting to lock things down in absolutes in black and white and structures and like, and the right side of the brain is more embodied, you know, it just is.

And we have both within us. So we're not saying to people out there like, you need to do something that's not natural to you. It's like, no, it's actually natural to you. It's such a right hemisphere. And the left hemisphere, coupled by the, you know, the corpus callosum, the bottom of the brain that's connecting this, that's natural to us.

We should be able to experience God in those ways. And like, for instance, with the grasping thing that's important. I mean, you look at in the beginning of the book and Genesis, the grasping at something, you know, yeah, even Adam grasping at the divinity when when in reality we're already in the image of God and and yet the grasping tries to, in all of our theological endeavors, we can we can become apathetic if we just.

Okay, I've got that, got that principle, got that principle. And it sort of denies the ongoing exploration of theology. It's not that there's no absolute truth. Jesus is that truth. And he's living. He's alive. It's not just a static concept. And and yes, so it gets kind of lazy. And I'm not saying like theology this big work, but it's, it's a, it's a, it's a thing that we're constantly unpacking.

The one who's beyond all articulation, who's another who's, you know, that's that's the beauty of mystery. A lot of times in evangelicalism or whatever, we, we sort of want this remote control God that operates at our, you know, press this button, pull this lever, all things will go right for you. And we get scared of mystery. But when we realize that God's never going to, like, pull the rug out from under us and then he doesn't look like Jesus, there's some other dark side behind Jesus's back which we get from like penal substitution or whatever, where the father's this way angry and Jesus is the good guy.

But when we realize mysteries really about this infinite exploration of the beauty and the goodness that we're talking about, it's like the Disneyland that never ends. And there's always more. Going from glory to glory means a greater and a greater and a greater. A clear vision of that and dropping all my, my, my blinders that have just been not healthy.

What is the resistance then to. Can I, can I tag on that? Joel. Because I was going to say the same thing, and I was also going to say all that sciency pre-frontal stuff. I was also going to say that, but you took the words right out of my mouth. So I just needed to clarify. So I've been following John and his work for a long time, and it pains me to say this, but he's a very great, smart theologian, and he's a his material is very, very good.

So for these like 20 years, I've been following his stuff. I've always wondered, why is there such a resistance to some of the stuff that is beautiful? I resonate with it. People that I know, so many people that do resonate with it, and it's it's not a niche thought. Again, it's going back to the simplicity of the gospel and the simplicity and the powerful nature of of all these things we're talking about.

John, do you have any theories as to why, like the church in general, just to be, you know, kind of broad like the evangelical church seems to have a resistance in an allergy where you could beautifully describe the contents of this book and your other work and other people that traffic in this kind of stuff that have these profound nuggets of wisdom, but that yet they're like, oh, well, I don't even care about that.

Like I just bought Apostle So-and-so's Seven Steps to a Closer Relationship with God through some transactional thing, and it seems like the church is just so way off in this other place that they just don't have space for some of these things that I think are truly powerful and obviously foundational. Like, do you have theories as to why it seems like the masses just don't relate and respond to that like you would expect?

Yeah, I think on the one hand, I mean, you could push it all the way back to like origin of evil stuff like, like why, why this evil? And I think evil on the one hand is, is not logical. It's illogical. So I don't know that there's always a logical answer to some of this, but yeah, but I do think two important things, you know, in John one, we see that the light is coming to the world and the darkness has not comprehended it.

So I think a lot of it is ignorance. It's just we're not we're and we're afraid of what we're not familiar with, even though what's being presented is infinitely better than what we think we've already figured out. So I think there's a there's there's ignorance and there's militant ignorance that you see. Right. Or people will defend it to the death, just like they defended it to the death of the very Messiah.

Right. And then and then you push it on to about John three and we see another thing about the darkness. You know, he says, men love darkness because their their deeds were evil. So there's it's not just an ignorance, but it's a, it's a love of darkness. But I think that a very important thing we need to realize.

And David Bentley Hart is good on breaking this down. And he's it's not his idea. This is Maximus and it's the early church is that, you know, Maximus says we're designed by God. Our our human nature is designed for the good to desire the good. And everybody actually desires the good and only the good. The problem is with the fall.

And we don't need to get into all the mechanics there. But what Maximus says is introduced is something called the gnomic will. Gnomic like knowing knowledge like deliberative like, did God say where we question what is good? So in our ignorance, what happens is we think, oh, maybe, you know, maybe it's good to even if it's just good for me, good to, you know, hook up with my neighbor's wife or good to eliminate 6 million Jews for the good of Germany, right?

Like it's still even in our most depraved evil, there's still this, this thing in us. That's the divine image that we can't escape. Is the chasing after the good, but we pervert it. We missed. It gets misdirected. It gets twisted to the wrong way. So. So the fathers would talk about like our passions are being disordered desires, right?

Disordered things that that are God given desires. But the river has cut a perverted path because it wasn't given its proper course. And so, like for Maximus, he says that what ultimately we're being brought to is, is where the desires ultimately find their true, you know, the desire of all nations that they're designed for. Jesus Christ is the infinite.

You know, the the scratch to our infinite itch. He's the only one that can satisfy the, quote, God shaped hole or whatever. And then that's when we come to perfect rest, because so often our anxieties, our fears, our insecurities, all these things are just fruits of of seeking pleasure in the wrong spot, you know, divine. You know, the problem is not that we desire pleasure too much.

We see us as we desire it too little. And that's why we settle for sex, fentanyl and rock and roll or whatever. So? So the thing is, where we ultimately come to this rest and that's what the gospel brings, is rest. And that's where Maximus says at the at the end of all things is the contemplation of God, because contemplation is this rest.

It's like letting go of all these misguided chases and realizing this is the satisfaction. It's a satisfaction that's beyond our articulation. Do you think that the industry of church, through good intentions, kind of like what you're saying? Church leaders intentions are good in general. They're not evil, but through good intentions have created this machine of transactional Christianity and kind of put that burden on people.

And we've just accepted it whole cloth for the most part. And that just is tough for people to break out of that transactional mindset. I don't feel like the people are longing for that. I don't know, it's kind of a chicken and egg kind of situation. But what keeps people in this transactional working mentality, as opposed to to some of the stuff that we're you're talking about?

Yeah, I think the transactional hits the nail on the head and that's, that's our is is transactional. You know, God offers this, but it's a, it's a deal. You know, deal brokering like a contract a legal thing. And you know, you supply the faith and then you get in. And so it goes to that whole thing which the Christology is the answer to that because it just dissolves any, any concept of separation begin with Jesus Christ is the rewiring of heaven and earth in his incarnation.

He is the union of God and humanity. He is our relationship with God. So you know, the gospel is not a contract transactional contract. It's a it's a covenant. It's a family thing. It's healing. It's relational, you know, and then with our, our disciplines, you know, and that's a disciplines is actually our beautiful word. But when you take those as transactional then they become really toxic.

Right, right. So like for instance contemplation is it really just blows the transactional ism out of the water. Because how performance orienting how how progressing is it to just sit there and do nothing. Right. It's an exercise in giving up and just letting go and just being right. And so but people will try to make a work out of that.

And so yeah, the transactional is just so cemented in. And I think it's like it's like the fully perfected theology of fallen Adam, this, this idea that you, you do to get or you do to become. And it's also very rooted in separation thinking, the idea, I mean, Adam, the first thing they do is hide in the bushes as if there's a bush that's not on fire with the glory of God.

He takes up all the space. Where are you going to go? Where are you going to hide. Right. David said, if I go to the depths of hell. Psalm one 9139. There you are, right he he's everywhere and so. But the separation mentality, we we partition parts of our lives off that God's not in. And we have this secular sacred divide and and we go nuts.

I mean, it's really it's really just insanity at the end of the day. But it's nothing new. This, this, our cross we're bearing now as a culture, nothing new. It's been there since the beginning. So, John, one thing I did want to have you bring up, just because I know about this chapter, we were talking there's a chapter in the upcoming book called Deconstructing into Christ.

Now, we're not going to get into the whole deconstruction realm right here, right now, but I wanted to know your particular take on that and what you're focusing on in that chapter, because that really piqued my interest. Yeah. I mean, I think it really ties into what we've already been talking about because it's a book on contemplation and Christology, but contemplation does, you know, deal in the, the resting in the in the questions and the unknowing and the, the mystery.

You know, the things that Joel was talking about are drawing people to different, more, you know, traditions like Wortham oxy or whatever is is there's there's an appreciation of mystery. Right. And so this is a chapter that I have in the book. There's a couple chapters. I do deal on this a little bit, but it's not just another insufferable book on deconstruction.

But but but our entire journey, our spiritual journey is a deconstruction from, you know, brutal, distorted gods of religious artifice. But none of this is really new. Like for the mystics of the church, they dealt a lot in what we would call apathetic theology, which is negative theology. They would say, sometimes it's more correct to say what God is not than what he is like.

We have and both both are good. You know, we need positive theology. God is love. God is good. God is the author of chick fil A. But then from the apathetic side, it's not that they would say God is not love. They would just say God is love beyond our highest ability to comprehend. And so even a lot of the words we use to quote describe God are really apathetic.

Negative words like God is. God is not the author of Jack in the box. Crappy apt. Okay, yeah. God is not the author of Dunkin Donuts, so you know God. God is in it. That will. Say that God is. That's incendiary to our. From New England and you need some reformation. But I know these words we use like God is infinite.

That means not finite. God is immortal. He's not mortal. Right. And so sometimes it's I think dynasty, Sierra Applegate said said, it's not that some things we say about God are more right than others, is that some things we say about him are less wrong than others. Okay. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that the mystics of the church actually have a lot to say to to affirm the deconstruction journey that a lot of people are going through, but they also negate it as well, because for them, it's not this endless negation spiral into just complete oblivion of, you know, nihilism.

We do have to say something positive about God. But but for them, the answer is not like like today, a lot of people are talking about reconstruction. Right? And I get I get the good, you know, behind that. But the temptation is just to construct another, more trendy progressive God contraption after we toss the first one. Right.

And so the issue is maybe just stop trying to build contraptions. But for the mystics, it was like, look, we can't figure him out. Let's stop this. You know, man made innovation. And again, take God at his own word, at his own self-declaration. So that's again, the Christological part is that God has revealed Himself in Christ. And yet that revelation is of a one who is nevertheless transcendent.

And so it's okay for us to. So how we apprehend him is, again, more of an intimate thing. So it really ties back into what we were already talking about. I mean, we don't need to go down that road, but I, I do think it would help people. I think, I think I say in there at some point, deconstruction has been kind of this polarizing term in these false binaries of conservative or liberal religion or whatever.

But in one sense it just describes life in God. Right? We're continually shedding distorted or immature ways of seeing him, but but just intellectual dismantling alone doesn't guarantee a clear vision of of Jesus. And Jesus is he's revealed to us deeper than than those, you know, those constructions that we make about him. Yeah. Anything else? Peak our interest in other chapters.

Can you give us a few nuggets as to some other stuff you might cover? Because I'm interested. That alone, that one chapter alone sounds amazing, but what else? What else do you got for us? What can you give us? Yeah, well, I have I have two chapters where I. I basically give a thesis from a footnote out of the Purpose Driven life I have.

That's going to be good. Yeah. No, no, I will say this. I mean, there's there's a lot in the book, but but definitely showing, you know, I think I've already kind of touched on the main thesis of Christology, which again, Christology is not just Christo centrism. Putting Jesus first, keeping Jesus first, following Jesus. All Christians would agree with that to a degree.

But but Christo, centrism in itself often is a thing that gets thrown back on my lap. I'm the one who keeps Jesus first. I'm the one who follows Jesus, and it becomes very humanistic. Whereas Christology is the question of who is Jesus? Jesus is the not just the object of our faith when we worship, but he's the subject, the human subject who stepped in.

And it's his faith in the father. It's his obedience. It's his communion with the father that we've been brought into. And so that's it goes against the transactional of what I need to do to get closer, to get in. So so it is that really cuts against the transactional. But just to just to tie up the deconstruction thing, because I do think that's important is, is that I think what the deconstructionist ethos longs for is it longs for virtue that it doesn't see in the church.

And that's where you have a lot of virtue signaling right now. But but the thing is, just deconstruction ism alone can never generate virtue through negation. We could just, you know, it's not just about, you know. All these negative posts against megachurch pastors or whatever. At the end of the day, we're craving virtue, and Christ is virtue, right?

The fathers would talk about this. Maximus Clement. You know, Jesus Christ is virtue and the virtues are actually within us. They're not out there somewhere. Christ is the seed who's within humanity. And so one of the beautiful things about contemplation is, is we're just sort of letting go of, of a lot of the clutter and the psychological stuff that's going on inside.

And we just take these moments of, of, of quietude that actually we're Holy Spirit sort of waters those virtues. And there's this transformative aspect in that, not that we're becoming something we aren't, but we're actually it's it's being actualized who we actually are. And we're learning some emotional regulation and some sanity and to learning to become less reactive.

Right. Silence is sort of a way of waiting, watching, listening to what's happening within and around us. It's a way of interiority, sort of in the cellars of the heart. And it just, it actually prioritizes life amid the noise, in the clamor. I mean, we live in this world of just constant noise and social media, religious political debate, just constant, you know, monetized outrage.

And we're really scared of silence, I think, because when we sit down and quiet, all that interior content starts bubbling up. And that's why we, you know, just covered up with eight hours of Netflix a day, I'd recommend just. But and we're scared of. But silence is fullness. It's not emptiness. And silence is not an escape from life.

It's not like, oh, life is bad. And so God just wants me to hide in a cave because that's gnostic as well. Know what it is? It's actually a return to life. We sort of just get to to the depths of his presence that's beyond thought, but is still sensate, that is, still felt, that is still experiential.

And when we come out of those moments, it's like putting your oxygen mask on first before you help somebody else, as we sort of just drink him in for ourselves and just just saturating his acceptance, that's beyond words. We actually start to recognize him more in the world around us in a way that we didn't before. And it's really very holistic practice.

It's not just, you know, mowing your lawn is prayer. Our whole life is prayer, right? Everything is is filled with this glory. So but there's that that just sort of intentional getting and reoriented. That's that's very helpful for us. And again, it's not it's not climbing into God. That's not what contemplation is. It's an exercise of grace, a practice of grace actually experiencing and unpacking what we already have in Christ.

There's there's nothing to be added that he's given everything, but we don't take time with it. We just even think of that as a propositional. I've got it all. I'm a new creation. And then we wonder why we have all this fragmentation. Well, let's sit with that. Let's, let's drink this a saturate. Right. And yeah. Yeah. That's just why I think some of this new modalities like not new, but since the 80s internal family systems, I mean it touches on a lot of that.

I've had a lot of people actually say they're having deeper connections spiritually because of the having to sit with their different, discomforting parts. And, and then there's a harmonization that takes place. Then there's a deeper knowing as a result of that. To your point about deconstruction. And I know we're coming up on time here. I think that that's a lot of stuff that I resonate deeply with.

And one of the things that I think has been a problem with it is it's looking for as an energy, not talking about everybody in the field of deconstruction. I think there's a wide range of types of deconstructing that's happening out there, but there's an energy to bring something down. It's a destructive kind of I want to, which is not a bad thing, but that's the energy.

And and I think that while that's good initially, there's not the, the, the, the energy of but what is it that I'm, what is it that I'm submitting to, yielding to, what is it that I am finally releasing. Right. And including the need to destroy? And I think if done right, that's the part that really brings us to a place of of deeper knowing, of even God, of darkness, you know, the luminous darkness, it becomes a thing of yielding to that.

I think part of the problem in deconstruction is there's no willingness to yield to the work of that stage, that spiritual stage of life. And we're all going to construct views of God. That's impossible not to. That's how paradigms work. That's how our perspective perspective works. That's what relevance realization is. It's the left hemisphere that's trying to make sense of the world by constructs, but it's also the part that is why it's like, don't make a don't make an image after the divine.

That's, that's precisely hitting that, that need to create the thing, the image that we have of the divine, even if we don't know that we have one. And then to have to bring that down and then something more expansive develops from that and then, you know, but that's the. That's the. Process of journey. To. The more expansive experience of the divine.

So yeah. Yeah. I mean, the deconstructionist movement, as you would say, I think is also sort of an engineered fad populated by wounded church kids trying to disentangle themselves from this evangelical whorehouse. If I and and yet, if we don't know where Christ stands in the wreckage. Right. And look, I speak as an insider. I'm in it, I empathize. Okay?

I mean, that sounds polemical, but but we we need real gospel. But the question is, how do we define that? Will Jesus himself, he's the only one. He is the gospel. And and so contemplation just kind of is this thing where we're able to just hold the questions open handedly. We don't settle for pat answers, and we need Christological depth and a proclivity towards that, letting go of silence, not not just clickbait and alternative anti-religious commercialism, which is just going to be another thing.

You're going to have to tear. Down another thing. Yeah. John, what can you say? Because I did want to ask you that. What can you say to people that are in deconstruction or have been trafficking in that movement that don't want to throw out the baby, baby Jesus with the bathwater? Can you just speak into that situation?

Because not everybody wants to deconstruct just to burn it all down. Some people want to hold on to something, but they're struggling to to do that for various reasons, you know? Yeah. And I think, I think so much of that is noble because really what it is, it's, it's, it's this internal resistance to idolatry that we have.

And when we, we see things that are that just discern that they're not right. And this sort of apathetic commitment, like we said, this negative theology, God is not this, God is not that. An apathetic commitment does not deny God's own ability to self disclose. It's just that it insists that this knowing of him again is participatory.

In approaching him, we discover him to be inexhaustible. And I think going back to what Joel says, we you know, we're always going to be wrestling through these these concepts we have of him. And one of the things as we settle into actual virtue, goodness, kindness, gentleness, fruits of the spirit, things that we desire for ourselves, we just don't like to give them to other people on social media.

As we as we settle into these things. This is this is where a real fulfillment is, and we're able to give patience and silence to others to recognize other people are also in process, and they may be in an in process way completely on the other side of the aisle. Then you find yourself at this moment. But as we give, give that grace to others, it also helps us to give that grace to ourselves.

And I think that's the really big thing. I think the, the biggest thing about contemplation is it hits Bernard Clairvaux sort of fourth stage of love where which is really loving ourselves not for a selfish end, but because God loves us. It's drinking and God's love for us, and we identified ourselves as the beloved because we tend to be our own worst enemy, and we're all just plagued with guilt and shame and self-hatred and self-deprecation.

And it's just it's just nature, nurture, whatever. It really helps us to be at peace with ourselves and at peace with other people. And and really, this thing is about love. And so in our, you know, disgust towards idolatry that we see we don't want to run over human beings in the middle of all that, but we want to be people who love.

We don't want to be part of the problem. But embodying the answer, which is that divine love? Yeah. Well thank you. This has been really good, John. I really enjoyed this very resonant conversation that we could have gone in so many different directions. I hope we can have further conversations with you about some of this stuff and unpack more.

You just skimmed over The Prayer of Jabez, which I did want to get into, but next time. Yeah, well, people, people will need to buy the book for that. Yeah, this this is actually The Hidden Prayer of Jabez. It's from something. Even better. Yeah. Newly discovered Syriac documents from a monastery that was guarding them against Nephilim from, oh, goodness, 8000 years ago.

So people would need to buy the book for that. They can get it at John Crowder. Net. Shameless. Plug the silence of the word. Anything else you want to plug? Any other materials? Books. Talks? Videos. What else you got? I call on. Net earthy. You guys do deep, deep thoughts on here. Is that true? I love deep thoughts.

You got a good one. You got a favorite. A deep thought. Yeah, yeah I pulled I pulled one up. You you told me that you guys have deep thoughts on here. Was that. Was that. Oh, I said that Joel has deep thoughts and I'm. I mostly think about Jack Handy's deep thoughts. I thought, yeah. So Jack handy.

So I pulled a couple up. Here's one. And this is, you know, copyright Jack handy. If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is God is crying. And if he ask why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is probably because of something you did. There's a lot of theology.

Within the fundamentalist evangelical world. Yeah. Almost too. Too close to home. Too true. Yeah, yeah. To close to home. Yeah. This has been awesome. Thank you so much John. And by the. We appreciate it. Yeah by the. Book I don't have a copy of John's book because he didn't send me a pre draft manuscript. But I do have John Turner's book who's either going to be our previous interview or the next one.

So I also wanted to plug this book go by John Turner's Joseph Smith biography, and I think it's the preeminent Joseph Smith biography. Any other books you want to plug? John. It doesn't have to be your own. The Bible read the Bible. Which which translation though? Oh, let's see. Say the one. No. The one. We're all thinking of that one. No. Okay.

I know which one you're thinking of. No. I appreciate you guys having me on. It's fun. Obviously. Yes. Dan and I are our friends. I was, you know. I'm anticipating emails telling me not to touch the Lord's anointed or something along those lines because of my, you know. Well. And, you know. All in good fun. God bless.

I know you guys are just launching the the podcast. Thanks for having me on, I appreciate it. Hopefully what this will do, since you guys are just getting started, having me on is a way to actively alienate people in order to define your audience from the very start. As long as they don't Google search you, I think we're okay.

Good. Yeah. No, John. Love you man. Thanks for coming on. It was a great time. Yeah. Love you too. Thanks, man. Merging Wisdom