In Part Two of our conversation with John Dominic Crossan and Michael Okinczyc-Cruz, we move from historical foundations to present-day consequences.
Once Jesus is understood within the realities of Roman imperial power, the implications become unavoidable — especially in a moment when Christianity in the United States is increasingly entangled with political authority, violence, and domination.
In this episode, we explore:
- The meaning of the “Kingdom of God” in contrast to imperial power
- Nonviolence, resistance, and the cost of discipleship
- How Christianity shifted from challenging empire to aligning with it
- The difference between domination systems and distributive justice
- Why these ancient tensions feel so familiar today
This isn’t about telling listeners what to believe politically.
It’s about asking whether Christianity still resembles the movement it began as — or whether comfort and power have rewritten the story.
Why This Conversation Matters Now
The questions raised in this episode aren’t abstract or theoretical. They echo loudly in today’s debates about nationalism, violence, faith, and identity in the United States.
By grounding the conversation in history, Crossan and Okinczyc-Cruz offer listeners tools — not talking points — to think critically about how faith operates in the real world.
Continue the Conversation
If this episode resonated with you, we encourage you to explore the works linked above and join us for ongoing discussions at www.thedeconstructionsts.org where you can join our Patreon, read our blog, and listen to our entire back catalogue of over 200 episodes!
Special music provide by: Forrest Clay from his Recover EP.
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00:00 --> 00:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Jesus was a follower of John.
00:02 --> 00:04 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't say he was his number one follower.
00:04 --> 00:06 [SPEAKER_00]: I just say he was one of the crowd.
00:06 --> 00:10 [SPEAKER_00]: But he was one of the crowd to accept that vision from John.
00:10 --> 00:13 [SPEAKER_00]: We will reenact the Exodus and the exile and God will come.
00:14 --> 00:21 [SPEAKER_00]: I think the conversion of Jesus is that Jesus realized, had to realize where was God when John was executed.
00:21 --> 00:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Couldn't he have moved up the data week or two?
00:23 --> 00:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think Jesus is great.
00:30 --> 00:32 [SPEAKER_00]: We're waiting for God to do it for us.
00:33 --> 00:36 [SPEAKER_00]: We repent, we wait, we pray, then God to come.
00:36 --> 00:37 [SPEAKER_00]: And take care of the Romans.
00:37 --> 00:38 [SPEAKER_00]: What if God is waiting for us?
00:39 --> 00:42 [SPEAKER_00]: That means we're bored waiting for each other and nothing's gonna ever happen.
00:42 --> 00:45 [SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus would say, what do you think has not been happening?
00:45 --> 00:47 [SPEAKER_00]: But that I was in years.
00:47 --> 00:49 [SPEAKER_00]: You're waiting for God, God's waiting for use.
00:56 --> 00:58 [SPEAKER_04]: Welcome to the deconstructionist podcast.
00:58 --> 01:01 [SPEAKER_04]: I'm your host John Williams in and thank you for coming back.
01:01 --> 01:04 [SPEAKER_04]: If you listen to part one last week, then this is part two.
01:04 --> 01:10 [SPEAKER_04]: If you haven't listened to part one yet, I would recommend pausing go back listen to part one, so that part two makes sense.
01:11 --> 01:19 [SPEAKER_04]: But again, part one, we set the stage, the world of the Roman Empire, the historical Jesus and the conditions that shaped the earliest Christian movement.
01:19 --> 01:36 [SPEAKER_04]: In the second part, the conversation moves from history to consequence, because once you take Jesus seriously as a first century Jewish figure, living under Imperial Occupation, certain questions stop being abstract, especially in a moment like the one we're living through in the United States.
01:36 --> 01:46 [SPEAKER_04]: In this episode, John Dominic Crossen, and again, I am so sorry if I screwed this name up but Michael, Akinshik, Cruz, help us trace that tension from the earliest Jesus movements.
01:46 --> 02:03 [SPEAKER_04]: To the patterns we can still recognize today, we talk about violence, non-violence and resistance, domination systems versus distributive justice, pathology can either expose empire or sanctify it and why these ancient conversations feel so uncomfortably relevant right now.
02:03 --> 02:05 [SPEAKER_04]: This isn't about telling listeners what to think politically.
02:05 --> 02:09 [SPEAKER_04]: It's about asking whether we've confused faithfulness with power.
02:10 --> 02:13 [SPEAKER_04]: And whether the story we've inherited still resembles the one that started it all.
02:14 --> 02:27 [SPEAKER_04]: Here's part two, of my interview with John Dominic Crossen and Michael Kinschik Cruz.
02:28 --> 02:39 [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that flows really well into to my next question, which I want to start with with Dom on this one from the perspective of the history piece of it.
02:39 --> 02:45 [SPEAKER_04]: So you frame Jesus life within what you call a matrix of time, place, and power.
02:46 --> 02:59 [SPEAKER_04]: and this is why I love having folks who have spent lifetime studying the history of it, how why is historical context not something that's optional when reading the gospels, but essential.
02:59 --> 03:04 [SPEAKER_04]: And I think that's an important question to ask now, especially because we see
03:04 --> 03:19 [SPEAKER_04]: as Michael just said, the whole streams of Christianity who are finding some way of mental gymnastics to not only not follow a pretty clear teachings in the Bible in terms of how to treat the immigrant, how to treat the poor and so on.
03:20 --> 03:26 [SPEAKER_04]: But find a way to justify mistreatment of those vulnerable groups.
03:27 --> 03:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it takes a marvelous sense of perversion to read it like that when in Leviticus, for example, it says quite clearly a couple of verses apart, love your neighbor as yourself and be all quote that one, keep going, keep going, love the rest of the daily and has yourself.
03:45 --> 03:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Oops.
03:46 --> 03:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, so with that one in there.
03:48 --> 03:51 [SPEAKER_00]: So yes, the more history you know,
03:52 --> 03:56 [SPEAKER_00]: the more you're in pale, if you're be honest, it's perfectly all right for me.
03:56 --> 03:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Somebody say, okay, I understand Jesus.
03:58 --> 03:58 [SPEAKER_00]: I got him all down.
03:59 --> 04:00 [SPEAKER_00]: I think he's wrong.
04:01 --> 04:02 [SPEAKER_00]: All right.
04:02 --> 04:02 [SPEAKER_00]: That's honest.
04:04 --> 04:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Somebody says to me, when I think you're right, he's a novel nonviolent revolutionary, but I don't believe in that stuff.
04:10 --> 04:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Joseph said that, you know, I don't believe in this nonviolent stuff.
04:14 --> 04:15 [SPEAKER_00]: So, okay, fine.
04:15 --> 04:17 [SPEAKER_00]: That's honest, at least.
04:17 --> 04:18 [SPEAKER_00]: You're admitting it exists.
04:19 --> 04:22 [SPEAKER_00]: You're
04:22 --> 04:23 [SPEAKER_00]: We got a little honesty in there.
04:24 --> 04:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And of course, always you have to have evidence.
04:27 --> 04:30 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not enough to say when this happened, where's your evidence?
04:31 --> 04:37 [SPEAKER_00]: So for example, Michael was just saying, there was a fortress overlooking the temple.
04:37 --> 04:41 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a, it's there, it's the fortress and Tony is called after Mark Anthony.
04:41 --> 04:44 [SPEAKER_00]: It's there to watch what you guys are doing down there.
04:45 --> 04:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Now imagine what Michael just said,
04:48 --> 04:54 [SPEAKER_00]: You're celebrating Passover, which is deliverance from Egyptian oppression and maybe genocide.
04:55 --> 04:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Where are we doing it?
04:57 --> 05:03 [SPEAKER_00]: When all we got to do is look up there and we can see Roman occupation.
05:04 --> 05:08 [SPEAKER_00]: All of what take is somebody, I'm going to say, the cough too loud.
05:10 --> 05:14 [SPEAKER_00]: and Pilisex, the troops who come down, they're up there poised.
05:14 --> 05:19 [SPEAKER_00]: And if they come down into the temple, it's not so much still slaughtered people, which they will.
05:19 --> 05:21 [SPEAKER_00]: All they have to do is create a riot.
05:22 --> 05:27 [SPEAKER_00]: The riot will press hard to the southern gates and people will be squashed alive.
05:28 --> 05:30 [SPEAKER_00]: You might even have to kill somebody with your sword.
05:30 --> 05:32 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's 10 year box atmosphere.
05:33 --> 05:39 [SPEAKER_00]: And that has huge importance there when you move from the history of Jesus and Galilee to what happened in Jerusalem.
05:40 --> 05:41 [SPEAKER_00]: You have to imagine that situation.
05:42 --> 05:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Zero toleration, as I said, for coughing too loud, zero toleration, because standing orders from pilot, anyone who does anything, I have 600 extra troops here, at least, from Caesar react.
05:57 --> 05:58 [SPEAKER_00]: We're ready.
05:59 --> 06:01 [SPEAKER_00]: We're not going to have any trouble this past over.
06:02 --> 06:04 [SPEAKER_00]: I could get reported the wrong of the Ziti trouble.
06:05 --> 06:08 [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to say, care, my problems.
06:09 --> 06:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's the maelstrom into which Jesus moves.
06:13 --> 06:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Many covers from Galilee to Jerusalem.
06:17 --> 06:23 [SPEAKER_04]: Michael, I think the response from you, I would love to hear is a dumb just referred to to sort of this Tim Tenderbox atmosphere.
06:23 --> 06:41 [SPEAKER_04]: We can see parallels, for example, in Minneapolis where it's kind of widely believed that, you know, the administration may or may not be waiting for some active violence on behalf of a protester to use as justification to implement something like
06:42 --> 06:50 [SPEAKER_04]: It seems to be the case where we've got all of these nine violent protesters out there, and yet we've seen deaths recently.
06:50 --> 06:58 [SPEAKER_04]: We've seen abuse at the hands of these federal officials, talk about a little bit about the parallel there.
06:58 --> 07:06 [SPEAKER_04]: And I think the other question people asked to is, you know, I think a lot of us are all from nine violence, but in the face of violence,
07:07 --> 07:08 [SPEAKER_04]: How do you navigate that?
07:08 --> 07:13 [SPEAKER_04]: You know, how do you not react to someone who is clearly using violence as a tactic?
07:16 --> 07:22 [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I'm glad you brought this question up, John, because Minneapolis is on everybody's mind.
07:25 --> 07:27 [SPEAKER_05]: For many places across the world.
07:28 --> 07:52 [SPEAKER_05]: I think what we're seeing is border patrol agents, ice agents increasingly demonstrated that they're becoming a personal paramilitary force of this president, that this president can deploy these agents to democratically run cities and states and that these agents increasingly feel that they can act with impunity.
07:53 --> 07:58 [SPEAKER_05]: basically that they are free to do what they will and what they want.
07:59 --> 08:09 [SPEAKER_05]: And so we're seeing communities rising up to meet the challenge and overwhelmingly responding with nonviolence.
08:10 --> 08:22 [SPEAKER_05]: Something I've thought about is that, you know, Jesus during his lifetime, although he
08:23 --> 08:27 [SPEAKER_05]: under Roman occupation he was a non-Roman citizen.
08:28 --> 08:32 [SPEAKER_05]: So he had no legal rights, he had no rights whatsoever.
08:32 --> 08:37 [SPEAKER_05]: Despite being able to claim, I'm from here.
08:38 --> 08:41 [SPEAKER_05]: I am from this land my ancestors are from here.
08:42 --> 08:49 [SPEAKER_05]: And this struggle in Minneapolis, it's particularly painful and dangerous for immigrants.
08:49 --> 09:11 [SPEAKER_05]: But what we are seeing is that not only immigrants who don't have American citizenship, there are many immigrants who have legal status in this country or a pending legal case, whose rights are being stripped away, but even we've been saying that American citizens are now being targeted.
09:11 --> 09:21 [SPEAKER_05]: and whose rights are being vastly violated in two cases whose lives have been taken by Border Patrol and ICE agents.
09:22 --> 09:37 [SPEAKER_05]: And thank goodness, thank God for the people who had the wear with all in the training to publicly record those inhumane and horrifying acts because if we
09:38 --> 09:44 [SPEAKER_05]: The narrative that this White House and DHS in Border Patrol and Ise would be spinning.
09:45 --> 10:06 [SPEAKER_05]: Unfortunately, there would be no evidence to counteract those perpetual lies that are being told about the conduct of agents in real time and the actions of the people who were killed, which their actions demonstrate that they did nothing to warrant being publicly executed.
10:07 --> 10:11 [SPEAKER_05]: And in this last case, this man was publicly executed.
10:11 --> 10:14 [SPEAKER_05]: It's hard to see the video into argue otherwise.
10:14 --> 10:18 [SPEAKER_05]: You know, he was on the ground surrounded by a group of agents.
10:19 --> 10:22 [SPEAKER_05]: And he was shot several times, 10 times, I believe.
10:24 --> 10:32 [SPEAKER_05]: It was a public execution, and it was horrific to watch, and many, many people witnessed it, and Minneapolis that day.
10:32 --> 10:38 [SPEAKER_05]: And so I think, you know, we're seeing an increasing authoritarianism.
10:39 --> 10:59 [SPEAKER_05]: Although there was an initial reaction and a bit of a retreat from the White House, we're seeing that they're going to continue these operations and not only in Minnesota which continues, but in other cities across the country, you know, in Maine, they launched recently Operation Catchup the Day.
11:00 --> 11:11 [SPEAKER_05]: to really highlight their efforts to detain and deport members of the Somali population and other immigrant populations there in Maine.
11:12 --> 11:25 [SPEAKER_05]: This language is so profoundly dehumanizing and with, as we know, dehumanizing language comes the process of increasing acts of dehumanization and treating people as non-human beings.
11:25 --> 11:37 [SPEAKER_05]: And we're at a real tipping point in this country with regards to how agents are acting with impunity and lawlessness and in cities across the United States.
11:38 --> 11:39 [SPEAKER_05]: I would say that in
11:39 --> 11:55 [SPEAKER_05]: response to your question about nonviolence, this is the challenge of nonviolence, that truly being nonviolent and this is what Jesus modeled, that to be truly nonviolent means that you are willing to make the greatest sacrifice, which is your life.
11:56 --> 12:01 [SPEAKER_05]: in the service of a greater cause, that you're willing to assume suffering in violence upon your own self.
12:02 --> 12:08 [SPEAKER_05]: And that was a result of Jesus' own direct public actions and demonstrations.
12:08 --> 12:19 [SPEAKER_05]: And people in embracing nonviolence have to recognize that in embracing nonviolence, you're committing to be nonviolent in the face of violence.
12:19 --> 12:21 [SPEAKER_05]: And this is what civil rights leaders
12:21 --> 12:26 [SPEAKER_05]: Dr. Martin Luther King, Ella Baker, Bainard Rust, and others.
12:26 --> 12:40 [SPEAKER_05]: They trained many, many people, many young people, many elders in the civil rights movement on how to act non-violently in the face of violent acts, and we need to continue to nurture
12:40 --> 12:58 [SPEAKER_05]: There's nonviolent philosophy and approach because one thing it does is it reduces what Dom has talked about, which is the eschatotori nature of violence that violence confronting another force with violence only leads to more violence.
12:58 --> 13:16 [SPEAKER_05]: But non-violent organized action can dramatize the pervasive evil that's at play and it can help conscientious size and stir the conscience of the country and it can help move.
13:16 --> 13:23 [SPEAKER_05]: the country to further resist the authoritarianism that's at play and it's growing in our country.
13:24 --> 13:30 [SPEAKER_05]: I don't think that violence in response to ice and border patrol agents is going to produce much good.
13:30 --> 13:35 [SPEAKER_05]: In fact, I think it only serves the interest of this current government federal government.
13:37 --> 13:53 [SPEAKER_00]: And for me, too, there's like a huge almost, if I could use the word evolutionary background to this, that we, the human race, so I could elevate it to that for a moment, has consistently escalated violence.
13:53 --> 13:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, maybe it's just so we get better at everything, so we're getting better at killing.
13:57 --> 14:02 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, okay, maybe you get better computer, so we get better bomb with, okay.
14:02 --> 14:09 [SPEAKER_00]: But if we were still having Roman legions with swords, we wouldn't have to worry about the world.
14:09 --> 14:11 [SPEAKER_00]: You just have to worry about the legions.
14:11 --> 14:13 [SPEAKER_00]: That's be enough, but the world would be safe.
14:15 --> 14:21 [SPEAKER_00]: At the Roman legion, on its worst day, do you take a sword to an olive tree, the olive tree will win?
14:21 --> 14:25 [SPEAKER_00]: So, but now, what we watch is an escalatory nature of...
14:26 --> 14:30 [SPEAKER_00]: At least the escalarity fact that we put it that way of violence.
14:30 --> 14:32 [SPEAKER_00]: We never get a weapon we didn't use.
14:32 --> 14:34 [SPEAKER_00]: We never get one wasn't worse than the one before.
14:34 --> 14:38 [SPEAKER_00]: We come at you with guns for example your boss and ours okay we win.
14:38 --> 14:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Then you learn guns and okay you I mean it it's history.
14:43 --> 14:48 [SPEAKER_00]: So what makes us think that we will we are a sustainable species.
14:48 --> 14:53 [SPEAKER_00]: If that's a question for me I'm sorry maybe I'm just getting the end of my life which I am.
14:54 --> 15:01 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not, I am asking by the sustainability of the human race based on trajectory, not based on prophecy.
15:02 --> 15:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Why should we be doing since the Bible tells us in chapter 4 of Genesis the first sin was murder after Sideless Drive, that's the first sin, watch our pattern and ask yourself
15:24 --> 15:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's really the ultimate question for me, and maybe it's overblown, but I cannot see it, sorry.
15:33 --> 15:40 [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not seeing it not because of any prophetic desire, but because I can't see the trajectory stopping.
15:41 --> 15:43 [SPEAKER_00]: That's my problem.
15:43 --> 15:50 [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, it does seem like we don't do a very good job of learning from our historical mistakes.
15:50 --> 15:54 [SPEAKER_04]: We just kind of carry on the same path,
15:54 --> 16:07 [SPEAKER_04]: building the next great latest, you know, weapon of some kind and we're always trying to find ways to utilize new technology to build better weapons as opposed to building machines that would help human thriving.
16:08 --> 16:22 [SPEAKER_04]: And that sense it does feel like we haven't really evolved
16:24 --> 16:31 [SPEAKER_04]: You claim that Jesus experienced a genuine conversion after a very violent act and that is John's execution.
16:32 --> 16:37 [SPEAKER_04]: Why is that moment so theological and important and why do churches often avoid it?
16:39 --> 16:42 [SPEAKER_00]: You have to take a shot of Darwin starting from the history.
16:43 --> 16:50 [SPEAKER_00]: The first thing you have to figure out is what was John doing before Jesus ever arrived and if Jesus never arrived.
16:50 --> 16:54 [SPEAKER_00]: You'll see if his head is by John, never bothered, because of the Baptist, by the way.
16:55 --> 16:57 [SPEAKER_00]: But he never says because he baptized Jesus.
16:57 --> 16:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Jesus didn't mention that contact.
16:59 --> 17:01 [SPEAKER_00]: So John had his own vision.
17:01 --> 17:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Leave Jesus out of it for the moment.
17:03 --> 17:07 [SPEAKER_00]: John's vision was that God is coming soon.
17:07 --> 17:10 [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to go across the Jordan.
17:10 --> 17:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And we're going to come from the desert, crossing the Jordan.
17:13 --> 17:17 [SPEAKER_00]: And as the waters, wash our bodies, it propends to wash our souls.
17:17 --> 17:19 [SPEAKER_00]: We come into the Promised Land.
17:19 --> 17:23 [SPEAKER_00]: We're reenacting the exit from Egypt and it returned from exile.
17:24 --> 17:25 [SPEAKER_00]: And then surely God will come.
17:25 --> 17:27 [SPEAKER_00]: It's my deficit vision.
17:27 --> 17:34 [SPEAKER_00]: But unfortunately, God didn't come, but came with antipassus cavalry, and John died.
17:35 --> 17:41 [SPEAKER_00]: In long the exile, as far south as far away from Galilee, as antipassus could get him.
17:41 --> 17:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, Jesus was the follower of John.
17:45 --> 17:47 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't see he was his number one follower.
17:48 --> 17:49 [SPEAKER_00]: I just see he was one of the crowd.
17:50 --> 17:54 [SPEAKER_00]: But he was one of the crowd to accept that vision from John.
17:54 --> 17:58 [SPEAKER_00]: We will reenact the Exodus and the Exodus and God will come.
18:00 --> 18:10 [SPEAKER_00]: I think the conversion of Jesus is that Jesus realized, had to realize where was God when John was executed, couldn't he have moved up the data weaker to?
18:12 --> 18:23 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think Jesus's great conversion, I have no other term, is that God doesn't work
18:24 --> 18:29 [SPEAKER_00]: We repent, we wait, we pray, then God will come and take care of the Romans.
18:29 --> 18:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Why have God is waiting for us?
18:31 --> 18:34 [SPEAKER_00]: That means they're bored waiting for each other, nothing's going to ever happen.
18:35 --> 18:39 [SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus would say, why do you say, it has not been happening for the last thousand years?
18:41 --> 18:43 [SPEAKER_00]: You are waiting for God, God is waiting for you.
18:43 --> 18:53 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think, but now, the final part, of course, somebody was saying, Jesus, this is some kind of a cruel joke.
18:56 --> 18:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Tiberius is on his throne, and he puts it up there.
19:00 --> 19:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Ciphus, what do you mean God is here?
19:02 --> 19:06 [SPEAKER_00]: And the only way, now this is my interpretation.
19:07 --> 19:14 [SPEAKER_00]: The only way I can imagine Jesus responding to that is your waiting for intervention, God is waiting for collaboration.
19:15 --> 19:16 [SPEAKER_00]: That's the only way I can see it.
19:16 --> 19:18 [SPEAKER_00]: If God is here, why isn't God doing it?
19:18 --> 19:24 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't see any difference when we would say, looks, the fish should just go it out to tire or the not coming into the market.
19:24 --> 19:26 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think Jesus is visioned.
19:26 --> 19:30 [SPEAKER_00]: I can only explain it as a conversion after his baptism, my John.
19:32 --> 19:36 [SPEAKER_00]: If I'm honest, is it God is here awaiting for us?
19:36 --> 19:38 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a collaboration, it's a participation.
19:40 --> 19:42 [SPEAKER_00]: And nothing will happen if you don't collaborate.
19:43 --> 19:47 [SPEAKER_00]: And you can imagine something you say, you mean God won't do it first?
19:47 --> 19:51 [SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus might have said, what do you think the prophets have been saying for 700 years?
19:52 --> 19:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Where did any prophet ever say that God would beat your swords in the plow shares?
19:59 --> 20:00 [SPEAKER_00]: God said that you will do it.
20:02 --> 20:03 [SPEAKER_00]: You ain't doing it.
20:03 --> 20:05 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think what do you think?
20:05 --> 20:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Wait a minute, that's why he's never said God will beat our swords in the plow shares.
20:10 --> 20:11 [SPEAKER_00]: and God will make sure that it will be peace.
20:12 --> 20:14 [SPEAKER_00]: We must be able to do it with God.
20:15 --> 20:23 [SPEAKER_00]: So anyway, that's what I call the great conversion and it pales, I think, before that of Paul.
20:25 --> 20:26 [SPEAKER_04]: That's perfectly.
20:26 --> 20:39 [SPEAKER_04]: That flows perfectly, by the way, and you know my next question for Michael, which is the fact that in the book you're very directed about the dangers of passive theology, like meeting waiting on God while justice persists, so it flows very nicely.
20:40 --> 20:41 [SPEAKER_04]: How does that theology show up today?
20:41 --> 20:48 [SPEAKER_04]: And church is especially around politics and economics, and we could probably even take it further based off of what we were just talking about.
20:50 --> 20:57 [SPEAKER_05]: Well, you know, this has come up recently in Chicago, the work that we do specifically with churches.
20:58 --> 21:07 [SPEAKER_05]: And I remember hearing a story from a church girl, a parishioner, from a predominantly Mexican community in Chicago.
21:08 --> 21:15 [SPEAKER_05]: When I was talking to this person, she was sharing me that she's been struggling with how to respond as a Catholic.
21:15 --> 21:26 [SPEAKER_05]: She herself at one time was an immigrant without papers, went through the very long, arduous, two-decade-long process of becoming an American citizen.
21:26 --> 21:35 [SPEAKER_05]: And on one Sunday, she was in church, and the pastor was offering a sermon, and he talked about
21:35 --> 21:45 [SPEAKER_05]: everything that was going on in the community, all the videos that were circulating on on people's Facebook pages and feeds of Ice Agents up using their neighbors.
21:45 --> 21:54 [SPEAKER_05]: We have to remember people in these communities in Chicago, just like in it, in Minneapolis, right now, were routinely being tier-gast?
21:55 --> 22:08 [SPEAKER_05]: pepper balled, pepper sprayed, you would drive down the street a street that you normally commute down each and every day and you're accustomed to having a peaceful drive home or to the grocery store or to church.
22:09 --> 22:11 [SPEAKER_05]: And now you feel like you're driving through a war sum.
22:12 --> 22:13 [SPEAKER_05]: There's tear gas deployed.
22:14 --> 22:16 [SPEAKER_05]: There's agents running up and down the street.
22:17 --> 22:27 [SPEAKER_05]: There's, you know, forward explorers with missing license plates that are being driven by ice agents going 80 miles an hour down a 20 mile an hour street.
22:29 --> 22:31 [SPEAKER_05]: It felt like a war sum.
22:31 --> 22:32 [SPEAKER_05]: at this time.
22:32 --> 22:48 [SPEAKER_05]: And the pastor of the church on a particular Sunday advised his church goers, his parishioners, to just simply not pay attention to the news, to not worry about these things, to not give them much attention.
22:48 --> 22:54 [SPEAKER_05]: You know, as if ignoring them was what God was inviting them to do in this moment.
22:54 --> 22:56 [SPEAKER_05]: That was the response to help them use their fears.
22:56 --> 23:01 [SPEAKER_05]: It was just about watching these videos that are going to cause more trauma, more pain, more suffering.
23:02 --> 23:05 [SPEAKER_05]: Rather than saying, this is a parent.
23:06 --> 23:17 [SPEAKER_05]: Our neighbors, our family members, our friends, are being indiscriminately oppressed, racially profiled children are being traumatized.
23:17 --> 23:37 [SPEAKER_05]: beyond the leaf that even children of parents who are citizens who are afraid for the parents to leave and walk out the doors each morning because these kids were afraid that ice agents, the big bad bogey men were going to pick their parents up and they would never see the parents again, that the pastor's response to this was just ignore at all.
23:37 --> 24:03 [SPEAKER_05]: demonstrates the dangers of passivity, and this is something that Dr. King talked about during the heights of the civil rights movement, that in the face of Jim Crow segregation, that lynchings, things that were causing profound suffering and pain that had been going on for generations within the African American community, that we could do longer ignore the suffering.
24:03 --> 24:15 [SPEAKER_05]: that the church had a moral role to play in this movement that was imperative and that the church's silence was a betrayal of their faithfulness to God.
24:16 --> 24:16 [SPEAKER_05]: And it really is.
24:17 --> 24:19 [SPEAKER_05]: It's a betrayal to our faithfulness to God.
24:20 --> 24:42 [SPEAKER_05]: You know, imagine if Moses, despite all the pushing and prodding that God, that Yahweh had had, you know, was clearly demonstrating, you know, Yahweh was frustrated with Moses because Moses was clearly in the beginning unwilling to listen to God and did not want to obey God's, God's nudges and prodding.
24:42 --> 24:46 [SPEAKER_05]: Imagine if Moses just at the end of the day said, you know, I'm just not going to do this.
24:46 --> 24:48 [SPEAKER_05]: Sorry, God, do you found the wrong person?
24:48 --> 24:50 [SPEAKER_05]: I'm going to just go back to doing what I've been doing.
24:51 --> 24:59 [SPEAKER_05]: You know, the whole history of Judaism, Christianity, Christianity would look vastly different.
25:01 --> 25:05 [SPEAKER_05]: There's a great danger in religious and spiritual passivity.
25:06 --> 25:12 [SPEAKER_05]: we are made to be collaborating with God, and there's something beautiful and divine about that.
25:13 --> 25:16 [SPEAKER_05]: When we work with our members in Chicago, we're working with many, many people.
25:17 --> 25:22 [SPEAKER_05]: Many of whom are immigrants and documented, people who've been in prison,
25:22 --> 25:40 [SPEAKER_05]: Folks that we as a society just simply discard and say they're not valuable because they don't have a PhD or they're not a bank or they're not a doctor They're not making millions of dollars and many ways God is looking directly at these people and saying I need you, Media
25:40 --> 25:48 [SPEAKER_05]: or I need you, one, or I need you, Nick or Simon to be deeply engaged in the liberation of your people.
25:49 --> 25:56 [SPEAKER_05]: And this is what God is waiting for for all of us to be deeply engaged in a work of building God's kingdom, the reign of God.
25:57 --> 26:10 [SPEAKER_05]: Here and now, not 50 years from now because we may not have a 50 years from not given the state of things
26:11 --> 26:17 [SPEAKER_05]: And so we have to respond to the immediacy of this moment that God is calling us to.
26:17 --> 26:23 [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I want to go back a little bit to you something that we touched out earlier.
26:23 --> 26:29 [SPEAKER_04]: And because I do think it is largely at the heart of what we see happening in the country today.
26:30 --> 26:31 [SPEAKER_04]: I don't think that
26:31 --> 26:43 [SPEAKER_04]: this current state of authoritarianism could exist without the backing of Christian nationalism and your book is, you know, definitely critiques Christian nationalism without using soft language which I appreciate.
26:43 --> 26:46 [SPEAKER_04]: So, Dom, I want to start with you from your experience.
26:46 --> 26:54 [SPEAKER_04]: Why is it that Christian nationalism is so spiritually per, we'll say persuasive when it contradicts as we mentioned earlier, Jesus.
26:57 --> 27:00 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm afraid it's not Christian, that's the way to do it.
27:00 --> 27:06 [SPEAKER_00]: So one sense is a flight from Christianity, which tells me that these people in general have got it right.
27:07 --> 27:11 [SPEAKER_00]: If you were to say, well, Jesus is just a nice guy.
27:11 --> 27:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Looking right around patting little babies and telling lovely little stories.
27:16 --> 27:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And that these cruel people killed them.
27:19 --> 27:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the cruel people we want to talk about.
27:23 --> 27:27 [SPEAKER_00]: You honestly can't get away from Jesus, that's the trouble.
27:27 --> 27:37 [SPEAKER_00]: If nothing had been written down until consent time, say, just oral traditions, then consent created the first New Testament, we'd have a lovely New Testament.
27:37 --> 27:40 [SPEAKER_00]: It would be Christian, nice, Christian University, or maybe.
27:42 --> 27:48 [SPEAKER_00]: It would be, it would be rule, of course, by Jesus and heaven, consenting on earth, and everything would be love.
27:48 --> 27:50 [SPEAKER_00]: It would be no discrepancy.
27:50 --> 27:52 [SPEAKER_00]: The production of Jesus would be the support
27:54 --> 27:56 [SPEAKER_00]: So it could have worked.
27:56 --> 28:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Now the trouble is too much the stuff got down to early, even if you try to get rid of it in the New Testament, already the Old Testament itself.
28:05 --> 28:05 [SPEAKER_00]: It's there.
28:05 --> 28:10 [SPEAKER_00]: It's like something that you can't get rid of.
28:11 --> 28:20 [SPEAKER_00]: So you have to work really hard and almost, obviously to make it Christian Nationalism.
28:21 --> 28:22 [SPEAKER_00]: That's hard work.
28:23 --> 28:24 [SPEAKER_00]: really is.
28:25 --> 28:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And Putin is the leader and the accrued and has done a magnificent job.
28:31 --> 28:44 [SPEAKER_00]: To go into red square, for example, Stalin had a huge gap on the northeast corner, so the tanks could come in, wiped out all the churches, so the tanks could come in, go back there today, all the churches are rebuilt.
28:45 --> 28:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Tanks coming from the north west end.
28:49 --> 28:51 [SPEAKER_00]: That's Christian nationalism.
28:51 --> 28:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you want to see it really in full success?
28:55 --> 29:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Go to Russia and watch, watch, what's going on in Russia?
29:02 --> 29:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, we're still just catching up.
29:06 --> 29:08 [SPEAKER_00]: We're not good at it yet.
29:09 --> 29:11 [SPEAKER_00]: There is done quite magnificently.
29:12 --> 29:19 [SPEAKER_00]: There's part of the realize it's better to go up the church and it's easier to go up the church and to fight it.
29:21 --> 29:23 [SPEAKER_00]: That's the great situation of Putin.
29:24 --> 29:25 [SPEAKER_00]: You don't go up the church.
29:26 --> 29:29 [SPEAKER_00]: It'll join you if you build at the big enough churches.
29:29 --> 29:31 [SPEAKER_00]: literally churches.
29:31 --> 29:36 [SPEAKER_00]: So I see the huge temptation of Christian nationalism.
29:37 --> 29:40 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm even a sort of a Christian universalism, which is kind of imperial.
29:40 --> 29:45 [SPEAKER_00]: You could have a Christian universalism, there'd be more than Christian nationalism.
29:46 --> 29:53 [SPEAKER_00]: When people first came here from Europe, we had Christian universalism that didn't look very good either, slightly worse.
29:54 --> 29:57 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think Christianity is a challenge
29:58 --> 30:00 [SPEAKER_00]: to the future of the human race.
30:01 --> 30:03 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to make it, you have to be a Christian.
30:03 --> 30:11 [SPEAKER_00]: If you see, I'm not interested in God, Christ, Bible, all of this stuff, cross and, okay, I just ask you to watch what we're doing with the world.
30:13 --> 30:22 [SPEAKER_00]: It's the flight from that because Judaism, first, really, first, and then Christianity, said, here's a mirror, we're holding up to you guys.
30:23 --> 30:24 [SPEAKER_00]: How do you like yourselves?
30:26 --> 30:28 [SPEAKER_00]: and their response, of course, is to smash the mirror.
30:31 --> 30:52 [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, Michael, I would love to get your thoughts on that as well because it does seem like for Christian nationalism to work specifically in this country, it's about sort of minimizing certain teachings while sort of shifting the focus on other things, and prioritizing other things within that sort of version of if we even want to call it Christianity, that version of it.
30:52 --> 30:55 [SPEAKER_04]: So, I would love to get your thoughts on that as well.
30:57 --> 31:06 [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I think in this country in the United States, Christians have done a very good job of rooting Christianity within the dominant culture.
31:07 --> 31:13 [SPEAKER_05]: What I mean by that is capitalism is part of our dominant culture.
31:13 --> 31:16 [SPEAKER_05]: whiteness is part of our dominant culture.
31:16 --> 31:20 [SPEAKER_05]: Individualism is part of our dominant culture.
31:20 --> 31:23 [SPEAKER_05]: Consumersum is part of our dominant culture.
31:24 --> 31:27 [SPEAKER_05]: War and patriotism is part of our dominant culture.
31:27 --> 31:31 [SPEAKER_05]: So we have all these aspects that represent the dominant culture.
31:33 --> 31:40 [SPEAKER_05]: Politically, ideologically, economically, militarily,
31:40 --> 31:46 [SPEAKER_05]: And we've said, how do we make Christianity essentially affirm all these things that we love?
31:48 --> 31:52 [SPEAKER_05]: And so we have a Christianity that reflects the dominant culture.
31:53 --> 32:08 [SPEAKER_05]: And this marriage between Christianity and whiteness and all these images of a white Jesus, which quite simply is not reflective of a first century Jesus who
32:09 --> 32:22 [SPEAKER_05]: who's Middle Eastern and grew up in this particular part of the world, or a Christianity that is fiercely individualistic, that is only preoccupied with our individual relationship with Jesus.
32:22 --> 32:24 [SPEAKER_05]: You know, Jesus is my friend.
32:24 --> 32:37 [SPEAKER_05]: We talk at night and there's no other concern aside from my own personal salvation, or Christianity that is somehow allied with the United
32:38 --> 32:55 [SPEAKER_05]: that what is good for the United States is good for Christianity, and vice versa, or a Christianity that endorses individualistic and unfuttered capitalism, that it's good to be abundantly wealthy.
32:55 --> 33:02 [SPEAKER_05]: This is where the prosperity gospel came from, that God wants us to be wealthy.
33:02 --> 33:09 [SPEAKER_05]: to buy plenty of things that our wealth is an indication of our favor in God's eyes.
33:09 --> 33:12 [SPEAKER_05]: You know, and we, as the human race, we do this.
33:12 --> 33:22 [SPEAKER_05]: We take the things that we want and need and desire in a very self-interested way, and we try to justify it morally spiritually and through religious language.
33:22 --> 33:31 [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, one of the most dangerous but effective places that the evil spirit can reside
33:31 --> 33:36 [SPEAKER_05]: because you couch all this stuff with more authority and religious authority.
33:37 --> 33:44 [SPEAKER_05]: And so when people hear it, they said, well, it must be God's word because it's coming from the pastor's mouth, or the institutional church.
33:45 --> 33:57 [SPEAKER_05]: And so governments will also always seek to co-op to
33:57 --> 34:05 [SPEAKER_05]: Biden institutional church, then it is to have a church that is resisting authoritarianism and oppression.
34:05 --> 34:31 [SPEAKER_05]: And none of this, I know we're in a moment in time where we're very attentive to the Trump administration, but I think the church is a moral authority has to always be an independent voice, never partisan, whether it's in the United States, partisan towards the Republican party or the Democratic party, because both of them, although the Republican party, is particularly dangerous.
34:31 --> 34:36 [SPEAKER_05]: for the multitude of reasons that we've touched upon in this in this podcast.
34:37 --> 34:55 [SPEAKER_05]: But the Democratic Party in many respects, many would criticize the Democratic Party today for abandoning the abandoning the working class for campaigning Wall Street for adopting policies that have led to vests and come into quality in our country as well.
34:55 --> 35:01 [SPEAKER_05]: that are also culpable in building the immigration industrial complex that today is producing suffering.
35:02 --> 35:13 [SPEAKER_05]: So the church must continue to be a moral authority and more a voice that challenges all political parties and that is not co-opted by any single one of them, but this is the challenge.
35:13 --> 35:33 [SPEAKER_05]: But the temptation of power for many religious leaders is very tempting to sit on the right side or the left side of the president is a very tempting proposition that many pastors fall prey to that and many institutional leaders of the church fall prey to, even today in various denominations in this country.
35:34 --> 36:04 [SPEAKER_00]: can I add something Michael and John this is something that is not mentioned in our book that has happened to me since the book now it it's a different thing than your experience on the streets in Chicago but I have noticed there's a new tsunami coming that'll make Christian nationalism I don't have a drill it's AI if you ask it a question like I'm my experiences mostly with
36:04 --> 36:08 [SPEAKER_00]: If you ask a question like, why did Jesus die for my sins?
36:08 --> 36:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Or did Jesus die for my sins?
36:10 --> 36:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Or even you're going to get straight pure undeluded fundamentalism.
36:16 --> 36:23 [SPEAKER_00]: And it won't say something like in my experience of any question like that, I won't say, well, there is a,
36:23 --> 36:25 [SPEAKER_00]: It could serve to you and there's a liberal view.
36:26 --> 36:27 [SPEAKER_00]: There's whatever it serves you want to.
36:28 --> 36:34 [SPEAKER_00]: If you asked a political question, they might well say, Republicans would do this, Democrats that are right and left.
36:34 --> 36:35 [SPEAKER_00]: They would know there's two.
36:36 --> 36:40 [SPEAKER_00]: It's like AI doesn't know either by culpable,
36:40 --> 36:48 [SPEAKER_00]: ignorance, or by evil design, that there's only one fundamental answer to any Christian question.
36:48 --> 36:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, this is a new experience for me, but very often I use, I just, if I'm writing it, I'm not sure of a date, the simple as that.
36:59 --> 36:59 [SPEAKER_00]: I look it up.
37:00 --> 37:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And I started just as long as I was doing it, asking questions like that.
37:05 --> 37:06 [SPEAKER_00]: I suddenly appalled.
37:07 --> 37:14 [SPEAKER_00]: As far as I can see, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't hear the search in the others, is totally fundamentalist.
37:14 --> 37:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I never got into even asking about Christian nationalism, but even the basis of Christian nationalism are in that so.
37:22 --> 37:27 [SPEAKER_00]: That's a whole new world coming at us, and it's fundamentalist.
37:28 --> 37:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Serenely, quietly, smilingly, fundamentalist.
37:37 --> 37:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Tell us there is, you can say it's a liberal view and, of course, it's wrong if you want.
37:43 --> 37:54 [SPEAKER_00]: There's liberal views that I cross and who think this incorrectly fine fight, but just do tell us, you know, there are two views, even in the minority.
37:56 --> 38:06 [SPEAKER_04]: It is difficult, I think, you know, in my day job, I use a technology quite a lot, large language, machine learning and all that sort of thing.
38:07 --> 38:13 [SPEAKER_04]: And one of the things I've learned very quickly is that it is only as good as the props that you plug into it.
38:14 --> 38:24 [SPEAKER_04]: And I do worry that is a concern of mine that people are using it and I've read articles to this to this point as you would Google.
38:24 --> 38:35 [SPEAKER_04]: And if you don't put it in the right props, you may get all together incorrect information or as you suggested, one particular point of view.
38:36 --> 38:51 [SPEAKER_04]: So that is a concern I think going to the future where people use AI as a replacement for actual critical thinking and or not, you know, again, just not putting in the correct type of question that's going to elicit the most correct answer.
38:51 --> 39:00 [SPEAKER_04]: I think it's probably, sorry if that took us out of our book, but no, no, that's, that's a lot of it.
39:00 --> 39:04 [SPEAKER_04]: It's just like of the age
39:04 --> 39:16 [SPEAKER_04]: I distinctly remember that evolution from the age of encyclopedia to a search engine online and the adjustment and the concerns that came along even with Google back then.
39:16 --> 39:20 [SPEAKER_04]: I recall people saying, well, kids now, they have Google.
39:20 --> 39:26 [SPEAKER_04]: They don't have a reason to know, actually learn or know anything because they can just look it up.
39:26 --> 39:32 [SPEAKER_04]: Right then and they are not even taking consideration the fact that the sources that might be pulled from Google,
39:33 --> 39:34 [SPEAKER_04]: maybe bad sources.
39:34 --> 39:37 [SPEAKER_04]: You know, may not pull accurate information.
39:37 --> 39:42 [SPEAKER_04]: And so I think you're right in saying there are concerns with AI that are very similar to that.
39:43 --> 39:47 [SPEAKER_04]: You know, I put up a response on my podcast page the other day.
39:47 --> 39:52 [SPEAKER_04]: There was I was engaging with someone I'm lying about immigration and this individual
39:52 --> 39:56 [SPEAKER_04]: simply kept repeating the same misinformation.
39:56 --> 40:04 [SPEAKER_04]: It was just untrue about the percentage of violent crime committed, for example, by immigrants.
40:05 --> 40:07 [SPEAKER_04]: That it just blatantly not true.
40:09 --> 40:30 [SPEAKER_04]: And so we got to this conversation where I kept saying, listen, you know, if you're going to hold that point of view, then you have to do the homework necessary to ensure that the information that you're leveraging to make your point is accurate and if I'm coming back with a multitude of resources that are reliable peer reviewed, you know, that come from
40:30 --> 40:35 [SPEAKER_04]: non-political, you know, research firms and saying that you're wrong, then we have a problem.
40:35 --> 40:38 [SPEAKER_04]: And so I do think that is a huge problem right now.
40:38 --> 40:40 [SPEAKER_04]: I think there's a lot of misinformation flooding around.
40:40 --> 40:48 [SPEAKER_04]: And even the people who are saying claiming that they're doing the research, they're doing their homework, aren't pulling good resources.
40:48 --> 40:54 [SPEAKER_04]: They're not using credible, reliable sources to even support their claims.
40:56 --> 41:01 [SPEAKER_04]: So, I don't know, it's Michael, I see you kind of nodding along, I feel like you might have some thoughts on this.
41:02 --> 41:08 [SPEAKER_05]: Well, there's a lot of propaganda and misinformation, and it makes it very, very difficult today.
41:08 --> 41:23 [SPEAKER_05]: I think this is one of the things that we get to in the conclusion of the book, which is the importance of being part of an organization, a civic group, a faith-based group, where you're with people.
41:23 --> 41:38 [SPEAKER_05]: In a rubber petnum talk, talks a lot throughout his body of literature about the importance of civic organizations, community groups, which are in decline in the United States, but we need to be part of groups that help us be better people.
41:38 --> 42:02 [SPEAKER_05]: more civically engaged, more publicly engaged that it's difficult to do this on your own and that being in community helps us to cultivate the civic virtues that are better for us and better for our society, that it allows us to wrestle with difficult and complex problems where our assumptions can be challenged.
42:02 --> 42:29 [SPEAKER_05]: hopefully in a grace-filled way and in a way that helps us learn and adapt, but for many people we are just consuming information from our phones or our laptops and we're not able to engage in a very real and meaningful way in the world and our neighborhood in our community through face-to-face, actual human interactions and you know, Jesus and His movement did not have
42:29 --> 42:40 [SPEAKER_05]: the technological golf, you know, that was keeping people away from one another, their reality was lived in deep communal relationship with one another.
42:40 --> 42:45 [SPEAKER_05]: And the way they learned was through stories and parables.
42:45 --> 43:06 [SPEAKER_05]: you know deep profound moral insights and we've got to figure out a way of cultivating a common set of truths or working through complex problems and the only way we're going to do that is in community and still the church is a very sacred special place despite all the challenges.
43:06 --> 43:12 [SPEAKER_05]: that church is faced today, as we've talked about, the church still is a place where people can gather.
43:12 --> 43:34 [SPEAKER_05]: It's not the only place, but one of the most important still today in society where people can gather, reflect, pray, discern, think through complex challenges, act faithfully together to do deeds of good and mercy and to be humane towards one another, to love one another and to love their neighbors.
43:34 --> 43:48 [SPEAKER_05]: And we're seeing that we're seeing that play out in places like Minneapolis, and in Chicago, faith community showing up, trying to do their part to love their neighbors, to protect their neighbors, to affirm the dignity of their neighbors and one another.
43:50 --> 44:04 [SPEAKER_05]: But it's only going to become more and more challenging as AI continues to advance and
44:05 --> 44:10 [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, I realized we're already short on time here.
44:10 --> 44:20 [SPEAKER_04]: So I want to give you guys both an opportunity to respond to sort of my last question, which is, if readers walk away, remembering just one thing from this book, what do you hope it is?
44:20 --> 44:23 [SPEAKER_04]: You know, Dom, I can start with you a few, if you like.
44:26 --> 44:29 [SPEAKER_00]: I am responsible for my world.
44:32 --> 44:33 [SPEAKER_00]: I am accountable for my world.
44:34 --> 44:36 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to do something about it.
44:41 --> 44:41 [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
44:41 --> 44:42 [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, like that.
44:42 --> 44:43 [SPEAKER_04]: Michael?
44:44 --> 44:47 [SPEAKER_05]: In the same vein that God is waiting on us.
44:49 --> 45:10 [SPEAKER_05]: that God is there, present to the suffering, the pain, and God is waiting for us to engage as protagonists in this world and in this struggle, peacefully and not violently but with courage and persistence and hope, and that we must be followers of Jesus, and that is a difficult task.
45:12 --> 45:12 [SPEAKER_04]: Truly.
45:13 --> 45:15 [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, thank you guys so much for coming on today.
45:16 --> 45:23 [SPEAKER_04]: For folks who want to get a copy of the book, Jesus and Justice Organizing for Guys Rain on Earth and now, we're going to get a copy of the book.
45:23 --> 45:28 [SPEAKER_05]: They can go to Amazon where it's available in paperback, or in Kindleform.
45:28 --> 45:30 [SPEAKER_05]: They could also go to bookshop.org.
45:30 --> 45:39 [SPEAKER_05]: If they want to order it through their local bookstore, they could go there and request that the local bookstore provide copies.
45:39 --> 45:42 [SPEAKER_05]: So it's available in those various platforms
45:44 --> 45:44 [SPEAKER_04]: Great.
45:44 --> 45:45 [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you guys so much.
45:45 --> 45:50 [SPEAKER_04]: I will definitely have those links in the show notes and again, just appreciate both of you coming on down.
45:50 --> 46:00 [SPEAKER_04]: Thanks for coming back out again It's always a pleasure fantastic meeting you and thank you guys so much for coming on wonderful to meet you John Thank you for having us and job.
46:00 --> 46:08 [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you
46:15 --> 46:37 [SPEAKER_02]: He's got it, even here, but as she carried it, I don't, as she carried it, I feel something tells me God will survive.
46:37 --> 46:45 [SPEAKER_01]: So take a breath, breathe in,
46:51 --> 47:08 [SPEAKER_01]: First we don't know you, I think that you've been If God has a face, His face must look like you
47:18 --> 47:23 [SPEAKER_02]: Did God kill his kin?
47:24 --> 47:29 [SPEAKER_02]: Did he have to have blood before he would forget?
47:29 --> 47:45 [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe we
47:45 --> 47:56 [SPEAKER_02]: Is the aching my soldiers confined to my brain, even so?
47:56 --> 48:03 [SPEAKER_02]: Does that mean it's not real?
48:03 --> 48:11 [SPEAKER_01]: So take a breath of breathing, the mystery that...
48:15 --> 48:33 [SPEAKER_01]: But if God has a face, her face must look like you.
48:44 --> 49:05 [SPEAKER_02]: A face like a teenager, and I'm at a meal dreaded A rock sent his husband, got sent their children Vays like a Kim, a TED or Tyrone A little sea born with an extra chromosome
49:06 --> 49:26 [SPEAKER_02]: Powerful with legs, he can't move by himself A girl born a Daniel, who now is then now A pillage of Eve, and white guy's name died If you have a heart beat, you are the first
49:34 --> 50:01 [SPEAKER_01]: To take a breath, breathe, a mystery that is there.
50:04 --> 50:33 [SPEAKER_02]: If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If God has a face, If