Can love be redefined through understanding mimetic theory? Find out as we chat with Jonathan Foster, a multi-faceted father, husband, writer, and former church planter. He shares his unique insights on mimetic theory and how it can shape our approach of understanding culture and religion. We dive into the enticing world of open and relational theology, exploring its impact on the complexities of human life and relationships.
Jonathan isn't your average theologian; he's got an intriguing blend of life experiences that make this chat as light-hearted as it is profound. As we share a few laughs over his love for Mexican food and his move from Arizona to Kansas City, the conversation takes a deeper turn with Jonathan's personal journey of loss and grief. Listen as he bravely delves into the emotional world of writing a book about his personal experiences, showing us that even in the face of tragedy, there is room for growth and understanding.
From exploring Girard's theory of scapegoating to challenging the traditional concepts of omnipotence in Christianity, this episode promises a thought-provoking journey. Understand the workings of mimetic theory, decode the complexities of human relationships, and redefine your perception of love as Jonathan sheds light on these intricate subjects. Tune in to expand your knowledge and get a fresh perspective on how shared experiences can pave the way for theological shifts. Be a part of this enlightening conversation, and let the exploration begin!
bit.ly/indigocampaign
jonathanfosteronline.com
See audio and video episodes at: https://communionwineco.com/podcast/
Find out more at: https://linktr.ee/communionwineco
Can love be redefined through understanding mimetic theory? Find out as we chat with Jonathan Foster, a multi-faceted father, husband, writer, and former church planter. He shares his unique insights on mimetic theory and how it can shape our approach of understanding culture and religion. We dive into the enticing world of open and relational theology, exploring its impact on the complexities of human life and relationships.
Jonathan isn't your average theologian; he's got an intriguing blend of life experiences that make this chat as light-hearted as it is profound. As we share a few laughs over his love for Mexican food and his move from Arizona to Kansas City, the conversation takes a deeper turn with Jonathan's personal journey of loss and grief. Listen as he bravely delves into the emotional world of writing a book about his personal experiences, showing us that even in the face of tragedy, there is room for growth and understanding.
From exploring Girard's theory of scapegoating to challenging the traditional concepts of omnipotence in Christianity, this episode promises a thought-provoking journey. Understand the workings of mimetic theory, decode the complexities of human relationships, and redefine your perception of love as Jonathan sheds light on these intricate subjects. Tune in to expand your knowledge and get a fresh perspective on how shared experiences can pave the way for theological shifts. Be a part of this enlightening conversation, and let the exploration begin!
bit.ly/indigocampaign
jonathanfosteronline.com
See audio and video episodes at: https://communionwineco.com/podcast/
Find out more at: https://linktr.ee/communionwineco
Well, it is that time again for another episode of Cabernet and Pray. Today, I am joined by a very special guest, and we're going to go to the deep end of the pool, and so, for some of you, you might need to pause this and do a Google search of some of the words we're about to throw at you. You might need to watch or listen to this a couple of times, but this is going to be a great conversation. I'm very excited to see where this goes. I only know the questions I'm asking. I don't even know where this is going to go yet, but I'm stoked to do this.
Speaker 1:Today's guest is a guy named Jonathan Foster. A little bit about him. He's a husband, a dad, a writer and a former church planter. I love this sentence. Get ready for this. He exegetes culture from a mimetic theory and open and relational framework. Now, if that sentence like totally lost you, then listen in, because we're going to we're going to get into. What on earth is that talking about? He is the partner of one and the father of three. Welcome to the podcast, jonathan.
Speaker 2:Hey, thank you so much, jeremy. It's really really good to be here. We're going to have fun, yeah and it's. I mean it'll be deep, but it won't be like it's not crazy deep. Not not crazy deep there you go. No, no, no, it'll be fine, it'll be fine. It's going to be appropriately deep Appropriately deep, I think, is the way to say it. Yes, excellent.
Speaker 1:Anything else we need to know about you that I didn't get to in my little bullet points.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think that pretty much covers it. I'm, I'm doing, I'm grinding out the work, trying to be a writer. That's the main thing. Yeah, we talked about kids and you talked about mimetic theory, open and relational. I like to hike and I would. I don't think I've ever turned down a like a dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Wow.
Speaker 1:Big Mexican food fan. Huh, sure, sure, yeah. Well, that's got to be hard because you, you, you were telling me you used to live in Arizona. Now you're in Kansas City. I can't, I can't imagine that is a an equal Mexican food experience there.
Speaker 2:It's not, but the trade off is barbecue. So it it's a, it's okay. But uh, yeah, I do. I do miss the, the Southwest Arizona Well, I miss everything about it, but I do miss the South Carolina. I miss the Southwest food for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when we, when we lived in Oregon, I remember thinking this Mexican food is not the same. No, it's not the same. It's not the same, all right. Well, that sound means it's time to introduce what we're drinking today before we get into the deep end. Uh, I have a bottle that I was so excited to have an excuse to drink this. Um, this is a 2019 cave spring Cabernet Franc.
Speaker 1:I actually tried this at a tasting one time. We were tasting a whole bunch of things and I tasted this one and it was one of those wines that just like grabbed me and I'm like what on earth is that? This is actually from Canada and I, I do not think of Canada and Cabernet Franc. That's just not where my mind goes. Uh, but this is an incredible wine. Uh, I, I enjoyed a little bit of this last night.
Speaker 1:I had a, you know, just in preparation for the show, not not for fun. This was, this was work strictly, but I was getting tons of raspberry notes immediately. But then I was also as I was actually getting on the palette was getting herbaceous notes of, like, green bell pepper, which was a super fun mix for me, and, and this one is just, uh, it's, it's velvety, it's smooth, it's perfectly balanced. This is one of those wines that like doesn't need anything, it's just like it's, it's all by itself, and so I'm super stoked to be drinking that. Jonathan, you had a little help from your wife, I think. What do you? What do you drink in today?
Speaker 2:That's right. Actually, she turned out to be not much of a help at all. She's not a big red wine person, but this is apparently Justin Cabernet Sauvignon, um, in, uh, 2020. Who knew that 2020 was a good year? But apparently, apparently it is, and I know almost nothing about red wine, um, so when I taste this, I taste grapes.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's the one thing you're not allowed to say about wine. It's because it's made of grapes, so like that's the wine, it's not cool. You should say grapes.
Speaker 2:You should have told me my palate.
Speaker 1:It's more fun to tell you in the midst of the podcast. You know, just put you on the spot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my, my palate is uneducated, uh, but it's not bad. It's really not bad, and, um, I could see pairing that with a nice steak. There you go. Now I'm thinking about dinner, so yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I always tell people you can make wine very complicated, but at the end of the day, there are wines you like and wines you don't like, and it's really not more complicated than that, and so it's kind of like theology. Yeah, yeah that's.
Speaker 2:I guess that's we can make it really complicated. At the end of the day, there's theologies that we like. There's theologies that we don't like.
Speaker 1:That is true, and we're going to get into some theologies that I like today.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah Me too.
Speaker 1:Now you and I, uh, recently just met through a mutual friend. But as I was preparing for this episode, I'm realizing you and I have a lot in common, and part of the overlap here is you were previously a pastor. You stepped away from that role and from the little I know of this, it sounds like there was some tension with your denomination. Over that I can relate a bit. Let's go into what was that journey like for you. Tell us a little bit about part of you know, that season of of of your life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean most of my life I've been a church planning pastor. Like we already said, I was out there in the valley, planted a couple of churches over the years, moved back to Kansas City in 2012 to start a Nazarene church back here, cause all of our families back here and and other things, but that was mostly it. Yeah, my theology started this shift in 2012, 2013, especially I was reading and then 2015,. We went through some really significant loss which just acted like basically high octane fuel to my disassembling and reassembling of my faith. I wasn't necessarily mad at God, although I do think some well I know some people thought that, cause they told me that I was never really mad at God. I was just trying to find a more spacious place to entertain all the antagonism and all the questions that come along with really intense loss, as well as as other things we all deal with.
Speaker 2:And so, long story short, I really started changing my posture towards humanity in general, which means I was no longer comfortable with scapegoating the LGBTQ plus human being. And as my posture changed, my denomination said that I was out of alignment with their theology, which was hilarious and absurd, maddening and pathetic all at the same time, and after a series of multiple meetings and things where there was just mass confusion and hysteria on on their part not that I did everything right either, but after all of that, I finally had to agree with them. I really am not in alignment with the theology that you are completely unaware of, and so, yeah, so they asked for my credentials and that was in 2018, I think, yeah, 2019. So it's been a journey since then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you obviously didn't rush back into trying to recreate that role in another arena, right or another right.
Speaker 2:Well. So we had a little church plant, a couple hundred people when that all went down and for the most part the church was with me, and so they got rid of me and the whole church. I've actually never really quite seen anything like this. I've seen pastors that they've gotten rid of, but I've never seen them say peace to the whole church. Yeah, and part of the reason probably that happened was because we didn't have a lot of money our average age probably late 20s at that point, so not a lot of discretionary income so and we didn't have a building, so that made it easier for them to do that. So we stuck together.
Speaker 2:I continued to pastor, but two things. Number one some of the folks that were my age that were really financially kind of supporting the church, it just kind of. It was kind of interesting when we were a part of the church of the Nazarene and we were progressive, we were kind of like the cool kids on the block because we were still kind of a part of something but on the very edge, and once we weren't on the edge anymore it just began a lot for some people to process, I think. And having said that, it had probably still been fine. But then COVID hit. And on, covid hit as we all know it. Just, it changed everything for us.
Speaker 2:And so the end of what? Are we 23? So beginning of 22,. I just said we're going to give this thing a big hug, let it go. And we did. I feel great about the 10 years that we put in. And then, to answer your question, sorry, it was probably longer than I needed to go, yeah, since then I have not felt compelled to step back in and to either start something or to pastor. I've entertained the idea a couple of times out of necessity, of like, oh geez, I would like to get a paycheck sometime in the rest of my life. That would be cool, a little more stable than the author life.
Speaker 1:Oh my word, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I shouldn't say never, but I don't think that's going to happen again. That's so interesting.
Speaker 1:I just relate with that. And when I stepped away from being a lead pastor, I had a whole bunch of people hey, let's plan, let's do this, let's do that, and yeah, for all those reasons, you entertain it. And yeah, that's what I know, it's what I've been doing for decades, and yeah, and then there also this sense of like I don't want to do it anymore. And what does that mean? And then you end up with a wine podcast talking about theology. This is what it means right here.
Speaker 1:This is what it means and I'm okay with that, yeah, just talk a little bit about the emotions of that for you, Because I think this is one of the things for people who are attending a church you can kind of put the pastor on the pedestal for good and bad. They kind of can become a celebrity leader, but also like you don't have feelings and you just do what you do because God told you to. What did it feel like to go through that from like an identity point of view? These are deep relationships. You had Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, that's a good question, Probably a pretty complex answer.
Speaker 2:I think part of it might have been slightly easier because I'm a little bit older than you, I would assume, and so had been through two or three church plants and transitions, so some of that kind of felt similar. But then there was other parts of it that were brand new. To actually get voted off of the tribe officially and to then watch and to feel and to experience so many people from around the country self-select out of relationship, including people from my own family, that was, yeah, that was. That was super challenging, and to do it with our boys and my wife. So I think identity is a really good word and I've just kind of tried to roll with it. I've tried to, as I do with everything. I try to give myself space and grace to feel it and to name it, but to not let it, to not let it define me.
Speaker 2:You know these emotions and these tensions and these things. They're along. They get to come along for the ride, but they don't get to. You don't get to drive the car. You know they can come in the car but they don't get to pick the music. They're just, they're just, they're there and I try not to shame them and I probably did that more when I was younger. I try not to like dominate them, because what happens in a lot of different instances is when you do that, you tend to over validate these things and, like you, give the thing more power than it really has. So it's been very hard, very difficult, but also at the same time I'm like super proud if it's okay to say this too late, I already started it. I'm super proud to have been scapegoated by the, by the powers that be over you know, trying to stand up for marginalized people. So it's complicated but we're making it work now there's a question.
Speaker 1:I got asked a lot and this question caught me by surprise. I'm curious if you've been asked it too. Did you have a lot of people ask from like a concern level, if you were okay with Jesus?
Speaker 2:yeah, corrects me up. How? How is your heart before anything like? What are you talking about, man? My heart is. Heart is great. I'm so excited about the things that I'm. You know the way my theology was shifting and expanding, in the way that love was actually now for me making sense and being really inclusive. So, yeah, I heard, yeah, I've heard all of that quite a bit and it's pretty. It's pretty frustrating, isn't it?
Speaker 1:well. So I think it shows the the limited imagination we often have with what church can be, what following God looks like, what the kingdom looks like, right, like it. It's this thing and the moment you step out of that thing, the way we all understand it.
Speaker 2:A lot of people just they don't know, they don't have a box to put that in right and, to be fair, a lot of these people signed up for, let's see, I want to say this respectfully a lot of us sign up to go to church for a lot of different reasons we're not even aware of.
Speaker 2:There's all these desires that are going on all the time, and I'm pretty convinced at this point that one of the things that's going on with American Christianity is we're signing up to be a part of a place that helps us make meaning out of the absurdity of life, and we really I mean, no one says this but we really really want the pastor to kind of have it together and to have most of the answers and to be, you know, pretty certain about what he or she thinks.
Speaker 2:Most of the time it's a he, and so when that person doesn't, it really begins to freak them out, and I experienced a lot of that. There's a lot of projection and transference going on and also, to be fair, I'll know the subject there's probably a lot of reverse projection and transference going on, but, and so people, they just kind of don't know how to process at all when a religious leader changes his or her mind, that's just. You know, we're and we're all to blame for that. We've all created this environment where, for whatever reason, you can only change your mind to a certain degree and then and then it's done with but. Yeah, I totally relate to that and and it's part of the work that I do is now trying to help people in so many words like, hey, it's not only okay to change your mind, it it's an inevitability, because this relational context we live in everything's kind of in flux so good, so describe that for us then.
Speaker 1:How? How have you changed your mind over the last ten years? As you look back over all of this, you know a version of you ten years ago to the, the version we're talking to you today. What's what's different?
Speaker 2:yeah. Well, that that's a lot, let me. I'll try to pare it down and I'll just go with the first thing that comes to my mind, and that is I really decided that I wanted to be. I'll say this way, but I don't know anything for sure. I don't even know for sure if there's a God. I think there is. By faith, I think that there is. And if there's a God, I think that God is love.
Speaker 2:And so I started recommitting myself to try to figure out if I could actually read the Bible through a lens of love and to try to live a life that way, which invited me to redefine and re-approach love, to unpack it.
Speaker 2:So now, when I talk about love, like you know, loves an overused word and, and maybe some people are like, well, of course, of course about love, but really when you start to, you know, parse it out, it is a lot going on with it. So now, when I say love, I think of this, this intentional, relational energy that is non-binary, nonviolent and non-scapecoding, and all five or six of those things I just mentioned, all have, I mean, there's, there's a like, there's a lot of reading and thinking through and staring at the ceiling and banging my head at the wall to try to to intentionally say all those things. So I think that I'd like to think that I'm committed to love and it's just. It's caused me to, you know, have to redefine and re-approach this and I've had to change a lot because of it. There's a whole bunch of other stuff, but I guess I'll just I'll go with that that's a good umbrella yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2:I think, if you're going to go through the struggle of you know and the honor of trying to figure something out, that that's a pretty good concept to have to struggle under so you did your dissertation in memetic theory, which is going to be a phrase a lot of the people listening and watching are gonna go huh.
Speaker 1:I've read on this but to be totally transparent, I would say I still don't feel like I understand it. Well, I understand, like, maybe maybe this much. Can you give us a one-on-one level explanation? What is memetic theory?
Speaker 2:yes, I'd be happy to it's. It's a lot of stuff, so I'll probably I'll have to have to leave some stuff out to keep it one-on-one, but that probably goes without saying. The medic theory is comes from a guy by the name of renais Gerard. He's a French. It was something of a polymath. He didn't really fit into any one category. He was kind of a theologian, but he was really a literary critic. He was really a post structuralist philosopher, sociologist, anthropologist, and so he kind of began to look at some different civilizations and he began to glean some stuff from our most interesting novelists like Shakespeare and Proust and Camus and others, and and then he began finding some common denominators between all of that and Hebrew scriptures. So it's super fascinating. When he started this he wasn't a Christian, but by the end he decided that what he had learned had revealed enough to him that he felt like there was well. He became a devout Catholic. So that's the quick backstory.
Speaker 2:What comes from the 101 with my medic theory is now, if anyone's listening and they know about my mises, they'll be scandalized by my my brief foray into it. But but you asked, so I'll try to do so. What I often do is I often break it down into five parts, and so it's it's not linear, but I'll say it in a linear way so that you can kind of you know, people can kind of get a handle on it. But it has to do with our desires and how our, first of all our desires. So our desires are what's called mediated or influenced, initiated. Our desires are always initiated by the desires of others. No one lives in a vacuum. So you know, what you want influences me and what I want influences you, and so we begin to go for some of the same things, and as we do, we're imitating each other.
Speaker 2:So the second piece is imitation, and there's a cop, a sense of copying one another. So desire leads to imitation, leads to the third part, which is conflict. For Girard, conflict always arises out of this constant back and forth imitation. We, we both want the same thing. And then the fourth piece it is the thing that Girard is probably most famous for, and that is the idea of scapegoating. Obviously that the word isn't original with him, but he does as much work on scapegoating as anybody, and what he discovers after he studies anthropology and ancient civilizations and human psychology, and again the novelists and the Hebrew scriptures is. What he discovers is that we have created a scapegoating mechanism and that society is is ordered upon a scapegoating mechanism.
Speaker 2:We were always devising systems that leave somebody out, and we do this to process all of our own desires that we can't handle in the first place, and and there's a whole bunch of reasons we could other reasons we could get into that if you wanted and so it's this desire that leads to imitation, that leads to conflict, which leads to the resolution of the conflict, which is scapegoating, so that at the edge of chaos, we all, you know, I'm fighting with you, let's say, and you're fighting with me. And then we decide at the last second, before we go to blows although sometimes we do go to blows, but we decided the last second to turn and point our finger at someone else and we scapegoat them, which is more than just blaming. It is actual. It's a kind of a I often say a psycho, spiritual move, where we offload all of our garbage onto the backs of other people, and so then we lynch them, we throw them into the oven, we push them into the volcano, we crucify them on a tree, we don't sit with them at the lunchroom table, we write bad stuff about them on Facebook. You know that it's endless, and so that's the scapegoating piece.
Speaker 2:And then the fifth piece, for Gerard, is that religion is birthed out of humanities obsession with the scapegoating mechanism, and so, as we meaning humanity, as we repeat that over and over throughout the centuries, we've created religion. That's a lot, I know, but that's a really fast overview. My dissertation is called I Called it Theology of Consent, and so that's what the book is called in the subtitles memetic theory in an open and relational universe. If people want to read more about it, I would encourage them to do so, and it's been super helpful for me and been helpful for a lot of people. Actually, at this point I will stop there, because I know that's a lot.
Speaker 1:No, that's good. The scapegoating piece is the part that I haven't fully ever been able to connect. Because I understand the desire part. The scapegoat always kind of seemed like a little bit out of left field, like how you know? That's where mentally I would get stuck of, like how is the scapegoat the answer to these desires? But you're saying, basically when we don't deal with the desires, that's kind of the natural wall. Then I have to put it on this other person who I'm in competition with.
Speaker 2:Yes, it could be that way, and so a lot of times I skipped over one piece. A lot of times I'll talk about it in terms of sorry if it's getting dark and light here, there's a lot of clouds coming by, but hopefully you can still see me. I do my best work. When it's shadowy and gray Anyhow, like if it's black, it's like super bright. That doesn't work theologically, it needs to be darker.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this thing, this memetic theory, is born out of, there's always two things to keep in mind. One is that we live in a relational context, which I already kind of mentioned, and the other thing is that what seems to be true about humanity, like a shared common denominator with all of us, is that we all have this sense of what the philosophers would call lack, like a gap, but there's some. Maybe in religious Christian language we would call it like a falling shortness, kind of a thing we don't quite measure up, and so it's against that backdrop out of which all these other things emerge. And so, to try to connect with what you're saying, so, yes, for Gerard, this conflict grows because we've never really come to terms with the fact that to be human means that we have this antagonism. And so we look at others and we think they don't have the antagonism. So that's why we want to be like them, we're trying to emulate them, because we assume that they have it all put together. And if we can just be like him, then like that other person or her, whomever, then we can, it'll make us complete and whole. But of course that never really happens. And so that agitation builds and builds, and so because of that we don't know what to do with it.
Speaker 2:So Gerard posits that then, ultimately, we make this, this offload, this move of projecting it onto others, and the really interesting thing is is that it works Like, but it never lasts. It works for a little while, so a community can come into a sense of resolution by scapegoating a group of people or the outcast, and there's real power in doing that, because the community is in unison. Gerard calls it unanimity minus one, because there's always one that's left out. So there's real power in that, and then there's resolution and there's a sense of peace. But then of course the antagonism is never really dealt with. It crops back up and then the whole sequence, the whole thing is sequenced again and it starts over. But it's an attempt, according to Gerard, it's an attempt to assuage our deep seated antagonism. I don't know if that helped, but that's the idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the angle of it that is so fascinating to me is giving the explanation behind why do I want the things I want? And I think it's a very American idea to say I want them because that's how I'm wired, and that has intrinsic value. And then so the very premise that no, you want them because your neighbor wants them. Yeah, it's like that, I think, is the piece I always have loved about it. It's like, no, I don't, I'm above that. It's like, no, you're not. We're deeply shaped by the people around us, and that's why I think it's so fascinating. Okay, since I've got you on the podcast, I'm going to have you explain a quote to me that I have stared at for many years.
Speaker 1:I read Renee Gerard's book I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, which is, I think, one of the big ones. Yep, there's a quote in that book that has always stood out to me and it's one of those like again, I'm not sure I fully understand it, but this sounds pretty deep and pretty cool, and so I'm going to get your take on it. Here's what he says the resurrection empowers Peter and Paul, as well as all believers after them, to understand that all imprisonment in sacred violence is violence done to Christ, humankind. This is the line. That's amazing. Humankind is never the victim of God. God is always the victim of humankind.
Speaker 1:I remember reading that for the first time and I was like whoa, because for a lot of people they would say, no, god is this angry, you know, angry dad, or angry Zeus, like figure, you know, and wrath and this and that, and you don't play by his rules and you are going to be the victim. And Gerard is literally submitting the exact opposite. It's like no, no, no, we are not the victim of God, god's the victim of us. Which is fascinating he looks a lot like Jesus. Where do you go with that?
Speaker 2:I think you have a pretty. You're interpreting it well, I think, and I think that that's a very Gerardian way to look at it. Yeah, I got into Gerard and into scapegoating memetic theory because I was trying to come up with reasonably intelligent answers as to why Jesus had to die in the first place. And maybe, similar to you, I don't know but you know, I grew up with a pretty traditional American evangelical understanding, which is, well, jesus had to die because, you know, god needed to sacrifice in order to offer forgiveness.
Speaker 2:And there became a point in my life eight and a half years ago where that just it just no longer worked for me. It just didn't make sense. I had three kids and there was never a time in the life of my kids when one of them made a mistake and then came to me and I said, well, hold on a second. I got to go beat one of the other kids before I can kind of like what get in the mood. You know it was. That was so far from my mind. It was so far. It was like the complete opposite. It was. I loved that whole interaction with my kids and and of course there were consequences and things like that, but I never, once, even hesitated. I always, most of the time I even just would laugh because I, I was so eager to forgive them and and that, you know, becoming a dad just really changed me. Because then you think, well, if a for relatively decent earthly parent is like that, how much more would our heavenly parent be like that? And I think it speaks to love.
Speaker 2:So I, I was introduced to Gerard when I was really trying to figure out well, wait a minute, why did Jesus have to die? I'm a little embarrassed to say that I was in my forties and pastoring before I really, you know, wrestled with that, but whatever, that is what it is. And so finally, after I I got a pretty good handle on what Gerard was saying, I finally realized, oh, jesus had to die because we killed him. It's just what we do. He didn't have to die to get God to love us or to. I mean, god, in the section we call the Old Testament, was already forgiving, you know, and Jesus was forgiving before he was even brutally tortured and murdered. So it wasn't because of that, it was because, I think that because we've ordered our systems upon scapegoating, violence, and Jesus identified with, he didn't identify with the powers, and so we had to project our, our issues on to him. And Gerard is, I think, spot on there, and when he's saying, yeah, god doesn't need any of us to be victims, I call that in my dissertation the myth of redemptive sacrifice.
Speaker 2:I'm borrowing a little bit from Walter Wink, who talks about the myth of redemptive violence, and I just change that word to sacrifice because I think it makes it a bit more specific. But I don't think God operates that way. I think we do. I think we operate by the myth of redemptive sacrifice, but I don't think God does. I think it's possible that God might be love, and if God is love, love doesn't need sacrifice and would not force Love. Actually, I don't think actually love can force, because if you could force, it wouldn't even be love. And so Gerard gives me a yeah, an intelligent way to try to process all of that, and I'm super, super thankful for that.
Speaker 1:So you really you see that through atonement theory lens.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do. And so when I think of atonement now atonement's another word I mentioned love earlier like how I had to reassemble and reassemble it. I've done that with all the words and some of them I've just tried to kind of throw away basically Atonement. Now, when I think of atonement, I just think of at one meant, and that God has always been at one with us, that God has never been separate from us, that the Christian story well, no, the American West religious story that we call Christianity, is basically that we send, or more specifically, adam and Eve, really specifically Eve send and started this whole break between us and God. And I just don't.
Speaker 2:I think that's so, so incorrect and wrong and misguided and it sets us off into a thousand other errors. First of all, it's antithetical to the reality that we live in a relational cosmos Like what would the Christian think? Where could you go to actually be separate from God? I don't, there's not. I don't think there's such a place if there's a God. So I think it sets us off on the wrong foot and the answer to all of that is to say no, we've never been separated from God and that Jesus didn't die to show us that God requires sacrifice, but that Jesus died to reveal that God is love and the great lengths that love will go to to be at one with us. So, yeah, it's an at-one move.
Speaker 1:God will play our scapegoating games.
Speaker 2:Right, in this case, jesus voluntarily stepped into our scapegoating mechanism, not because God needed a scapegoat, but to subvert the mechanism from the inside out. You know it. Yeah, whenever you see like I just when I said that I thought of an old movie, men in Black, where I can't remember which the end of one of the shows, the one older white dude goes into the, the beast of the belly of the whatever they were, the extra-treacherous, the demons, the ghosts, and then he blows the thing up from the inside out. Yeah, that's pretty much the move that Jesus made went into the inside.
Speaker 2:And what was fascinating to me and we could talk a whole bunch about this, but we'd get off track is what I discovered a few years ago was that this was essentially a give or take. I'm loosely paraphrasing here, but this was essentially the take that the Eastern Orthodox Church has made all long. They never went to the penal substitutionary tome at violent blood sacrifice. Yeah, eastern Orthodox has always been an at-one-met, so to speak, using our words, and so I was just shocked to find that out, because obviously, if you grow up as we all grew up, you would, you know, you're told that that that's the gospel. It is not the gospel. It's our version of. It's our very violently influenced, colored version of what the gospel might be. But I think we're respectfully, I would submit that we are totally wrong in that sense.
Speaker 1:Garbage yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You realize, you know and you talked about becoming a dad opened your eyes to that A hundred percent. I have these moments as a dad where I'm like okay, I think I'm a pretty good dad. You know, I'm not the best, I try to be really good but I seem to be a lot better than God's doing. You know in a lot of different ways that I was told that's how God is and it's like well, god, you kind of suck in this role because I'm way better, I would never do what you do. And then you go well, that can't be right, you know, it starts backpelling and they go there's got to be more here. And that's why I love diving into theology, because what we think about when we think about God is so, so profound and it affects all these areas. And that's a great segue into the next one I want to talk about, because this is one that a lot of people would say, yeah, cool to kind of think about for fun, and I would put this in the non-essential camp. However, I would say of this is how I often describe it of all the non essentials, this one has had the most profound impact on me and my journey with Jesus. So that's how I kind of put this up.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm referring to what's called open theology or relational theology. There's obviously, like anything, there's different versions of this, but you and I have this in common, and so that's when I knew another kindred spirit, and in other circles we are labeled heretics for believing this, and so when you find someone else who also resonates with this understanding of God, we got to encourage each other, we got to lock arms a little bit, that's right. I'm curious and just to give a real kind of preface to that, open theology is making room for the idea that God doesn't have to have everything set in stone, that God doesn't have to for know everything, god doesn't have to cause everything. So on a real general level, kind of the opposite view of Calvinism if more people are familiar with that, but starting to read the scriptures and go, maybe God really did change his mind, maybe God really is present in the moment and we're not all robots following this movie script.
Speaker 1:My question to you is did you grow up with this theology? And if you did, I'd love to hear about that. Or if not, how did you get there? Because this was like a whole journey for me and I'm curious how other people get to this place. What led you to this road?
Speaker 2:Well, I should have grown up with it. You know, my background is Wesleyan, and so John Wesley gives you a foundation to to go in this direction. Unfortunately, so much of American Christianity just kind of starts to look like each other desires and imitation and conflict and scapegoating, and so then it was never really nuanced, and so I essentially, even though I had the best reason to grow up with the idea that now that's that, that God doesn't have every single thing figured out and it's, you know, pushing buttons and pulling levers and making it all work like the pre-ordained plan. That is how it colloquially, how it happened in a religious sense for me. So for me again, I referenced we I really started thinking differently in 2015, and I think one of the things we've talked about that you're gonna ask we'll get to that in a moment but so when I did the first thing, I wound up.
Speaker 2:I don't know if this needed to happen in this sequence, but for me what happened was, as I already mentioned, I really was wrestling with why, why did Jesus have to die? And once I decided that really this whole thing is about love and not about sacrifice, everything started to change and I started to think about love like well, if you knew the future and you knew exactly how it was gonna go, there would be no vulnerability and no risk involved at all. To me, that's that makes no sense when I think about love, then, because love always has an element of risk and vulnerability to it. Otherwise it just wouldn't be love, it'd be some as you mentioned pre-programmed robotic thing happening, and so it really just kind of messed me up to think that way, and so I was searching, and that's when I landed upon who's now one of my closest friends, thomas J Ord, who's a open and relational theologian, and Tom is a Nazarene, actually still is.
Speaker 2:We none of us can, including himself, figure out how, how he still is, but he, he's roughly my age, but he's been in theology his whole life. I never really planned to get into theology. I got there because of some difficult things that I went through and it just invited me to. You know, try to come up with some decent answers as best as anyone can. By the way, I don't think there's any one theology that answers it all. I think there are some theologies that suck less than others.
Speaker 1:I think I think open, a relational theology sucks the last, the least amount if that, if we have to pull a quote for this episode, I think I just found that you, just, you just found the ology suck less than others that's an open, a relational sucks the least sucks the least yeah that's good.
Speaker 2:So I landed on, just yeah, I got connected with Tom and one thing led to another and then I wound up. He started a doctoral program and and I wound up actually wound up being the first to graduate with that program a year ago through North Wind Seminary.
Speaker 1:So let's see, the question was how to die land on open, a relational, that kind of that might give you a bit of an overview so okay, so you're just saying around 2015 is kind of when you got into it, did you like I didn't even grow up knowing it was a possibility, like I didn't grow up knowing that there's another way that you can even interpret this. I just remember the way that I grew up being taught I just had issues with, and so, you know, I'm just like I started reading, like I can't make sense of this and everyone else seems fine with it and I wasn't fine with it. And then I, literally I read, I read a book. It was called divine for knowledge, for views. You know, it's one of those kind of like entry-level academic books and they get you know a person in each camp, they all get to argue with each other and you as the reader, get to see okay, which. Which are the four views do you resonate with the most?
Speaker 1:And Greg Boyd was the, the, the open, you know, theology chapter. And I read this chapter and I'm like I've never I never heard of this stuff. And again, I'm a second-generation preacher, like I'm not new to the Christianity, I just grew up in a space where we never, never talked about God like this and it was like this, this season of coming to life. And then Greg, you know, became a mentor of mine and has become a great friend. But I had to have someone literally hold my hand and like, here you go, come on in. Like I just am curious, like how do other people find this stuff? Because in my circles of Christianity it's not talked about no, it's not.
Speaker 2:It's so foreign a lot of people can't even express such a thing. First of all, I'm actually editing a book right now and Greg's one of the authors. There's several, and we have a handful of Christians and a handful of Muslims talking about open and relational theology. And it's so much fun to be editing this because I shouldn't have been surprised. But what I realized in the last couple years is Muslim folks are dealing with all the same stuff we are. It's the exact same story of fear and rules and you know, to fight against love and grace, you just, you just interchange it. You know, you exchange it with Muslim nomenclature and words and language. It's hilarious, but it's the same story. But anyhow, yeah, greg was a he's a gateway drug gateway author for a lot of open theists. I will you know, when you were saying that, I do remember growing up hearing people say that I, that I respected when bad things happened.
Speaker 2:I did hear people say, not always from the stage or the pulpit or the platform, whatever we called it, but in behind closed doors that well, god, god didn't want it, god wouldn't have wanted this, and so that kind of like a little time capsule, time released capsule was in my heart and mind, and so when I began to go through some really difficult things and we've been through a ton of stuff now I think that that just kind of blossomed and opened up and carved out just enough space for me to reject the idea that God would need pain or suffering or evil, or that God would author it. I just I think it's absolutely crazy that we think this, but then again, I think American religion is pretty much absolutely crazy, so it doesn't. It makes sense. So I do think that that helped me. And then, yeah, I was just in a place where I was really gonna. It didn't really matter what the answers were. I was gonna find a better answer, even if I had never heard of it. And it sounds like, in some ways, you too.
Speaker 1:So and I remember I got a chance to go to lunch with Tom Ord and talk about his God can't book and I remember I had read the book and then I think we went to lunch afterward and I had a chance to kind of like, okay, help me process, cause I, you know that's, I would think that's you know more process theology, which is kind of a another vein of open and relational theology, which I'm not as much in that camp. But you know, I've always been very intrigued by the premise that you know, because God is non-coercive, that there are things God cannot do, and that's, you know, the premise of understanding grief. So I wanna, I wanna table that and come back to it as we get to the next question, cause I'm really fascinated how you're gonna make sense of that. So I think this is a good time before we go to a real personal note, let's have a drink break.
Speaker 2:Let's go.
Speaker 1:Let's go. All right, that was great. The one's still great. That's cause you have no steak. You need a steak, I need a steak. You need to get you a steak.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna get one. You know that is Kansas City does steak well, so I think I'll do one tonight.
Speaker 1:There you go, there you go. Think of us, Okay. So before we into that, I ask everybody this and I have you know, sometimes I have no idea what's gonna go. Do you have any just great moment that you think back of what was the best bottle of wine you ever had, the best glass? Have you ever had a moment where you tasted some wine and you went whoa, that was incredible. If yes, we'd love to hear it.
Speaker 2:I will never forget, jeremy, the first time I bought a bottle of wine by myself, which was yesterday at the liquor store, and I bought from the year 2020, this Justin Cabernet solving the on. Oh, this is probably my favorite answer. And then I took a drink and I was like damn grapes. It's amazing.
Speaker 1:Guys, that just tells you the kind of person Jonathan is. He is willing to come on a podcast.
Speaker 2:I'm so desperate.
Speaker 1:I will buy my first bottle of wine to go and do this.
Speaker 2:You could have said we're doing marijuana and theology and I would have been trying to figure out where they the roll of a doobie over there.
Speaker 1:Let's do it. That is maybe one of my favorite answers. I've gotten yet to that question. Okay, well, we just created that experience for you right now. I did so the next wine podcast.
Speaker 1:You're on. You're gonna have your story ready. That's great, okay, so we've been. I've been saving the real meat and potatoes here. This is just getting you warmed up. You have a new book coming out about grief and I wanna hear all about it and I wanna push this hard for you, because I think this is gonna be an incredible resource. You've been alluding to this a little bit, so again, I would love to hear you dive into what is this book about. This is gonna connect with how you keep referencing 2015. Tell us a little bit about what is this book that you're releasing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, thanks for asking and just a heads up little warning for listeners. It's a. I love to talk about it but I hate to talk about it because it kind of sucks the air out of the room. But New Year's Day, 2015, our oldest daughter was killed in a car wreck. Our oldest kid and only child so, and we've our whole life we've, for whatever reason my family has just gone experienced a lot of death and a lot of loss. So we've already had been working through quite a bit of stuff, but there was nothing obviously as intense as that was, and so that, yeah, that just set me on a whole journey of basically all bets are off here. I gotta try to figure out the best way to process all of this.
Speaker 2:Fortunately, I think I thought I'd been a little bit younger. Well, I know if I'd been younger because I kind of did this with other tragedies in my life. I kind of took them like, oh, it's just gonna make me stronger and better and I'm gonna figure it out, and it's a real kind of American, nauseating, masculine way of approaching it. And so, by the time this thing had happened, that was not my response at all. It was much more honest and humble and very much like okay, all right, I get it, this doesn't have anything to do with me like being a better person, necessarily, or God needed this to happen in order for me to have this great preaching ministry or church or any of those nauseating things, but what does it mean, you know? So, I don't know that any one person can ever get to the bottom of what any suffering means, but again, like I said, I do think there are some ways that are less worse than other ways, and memetic theory and open and relational theology has helped me with all of that and really everything I've done since New Year's Day 2015, it's eight years and three quarters of a year now. Everything it's not a stretch Every sermon I preached and every small group I led, and every time I traveled and every book I've written five or six now and the degrees. All those things have been an attempt to approach it from a variety of different angles and to try to create sometimes I say it this way like create an interior space to help me hold all of it, cause I'm not trying to fix it. I don't really think it can be fixed. I think this is true with a lot of things, by the way, we kind of kid ourselves. So I'm trying to carve out interior space to be able to hold all the antagonism, and so all these different things have helped.
Speaker 2:All the stuff I just mentioned, plus a lot of hiking and a lot of, again staring at the ceiling late at night, early in the morning, and I've written about grief specifically a little bit early on and then, like I said, indirectly it's fueled and colored, everything I've done. But when the dissertation was over a year ago which again that whole thing, like I didn't, if you had told me 10, 15 years ago that I was going to get a doctorate, I mean my wife and I both would have just laughed at you. It's just not. It's just not what I was interested in doing. But all of that's been an attempt again to try to form some language and try to process this stuff. So when that was over a year ago I kind of felt like I had run that course and then I really just did want to.
Speaker 2:So beginning of this year I just really did kind of want to sit down and write in a much more simple way about not only my daughter but about the really strange thing, and I'll just say this piece and then you can ask whatever questions you want. But the thing that I was noticing was that the absence of my daughter was becoming, and had become, a kind of presence. So the absence was a presence. It was this formless space that was forming me. There's like no energy. The energy is gone because she's gone, but yet that lack of energy was energizing me in so many ways, and so the paradox of that and the weirdness of that just really caught my attention, and so I've tried to write about it and I think I did.
Speaker 2:I think, if it's okay to say I think, it's my best writing, it's the thing I'm most proud of, and everyone has read it so far, especially my author. Friends I'm really, and friends and acquaintances I'm really proud of and thankful for their response. People like Paul Young from the Shack and Brian McLaren and John Caputo and just a bunch of people that I really respect and align with philosophically and theologically in many ways have been really gracious and really cool with it. So, yeah, sorry, there's 100 different things to talk about, but that's the most recent thing, and, as I don't know when this episode will drop, but as of this recording, we launched a crowd funder earlier this week, and so that's gone really well and I'm really thankful for it.
Speaker 1:Worked and people find that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the name of the book is called Indigo, the Color of Grief, and then I did it on the crowdfunding site, indigogo. So Indigo on Indigogo, and I can give you the link and put it in the show notes or whatever, and you can go there and that'll go for a few more weeks and then it's possible I may publish with some publishers that I'm interested in, but I may also self publish myself. So I'm still in the middle of figuring that out. But again, depending on when this drops, people can get on it now, which is kind of fun because a couple of things Number one probably trivial, maybe for some people, not to me, but we're printing on recycled paper. Amazon doesn't do that, so that's kind of cool. And number two, you can get a signed copy. And then we also have some other perks where, if people want to give a little bit more, they can get a framed quote. And then actually one of the perks is my wife and I have a little cabin out in Morrison, colorado. That's my father, yeah, so people can sign up for that.
Speaker 2:And actually I only started out with three because I didn't really know how that'd go. Well, all three of those have been sold, so I think I'm gonna add a couple more on there, so we're kind of trying to have fun with it. Crowdfunding is such a great this is for probably a whole nother subject but writing is so frustrating and a lot of different levels. But one way it's frustrating is when you release a book, even when you have a publisher, I mean, it's actually no different, because you just sit back and you wait for people to buy the book, but you have no idea who's buying. With crowdfunding, you get immediately, you know, immediately, you know the email, and people start texting you or finding you and interacting with you. So already, even though it's only a few days old, I've made literally new friends, and so I love that part about the crowdfunding thing and I'm really glad we're doing it this way.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I love that. As I was thinking about you, one of CS Lewis's famous books came to mind. He wrote a book called A Grief Observed, which he wrote after the death of his wife, and what's interesting about that story to me is that Lewis published it under a different name because he wanted to be anonymous from this. And I also heard this could be total legend, but I had heard that someone even gifted him a copy of his own book of like hey, you should read this. I was trying to look it up and I couldn't verify that detail, so maybe that's an urban.
Speaker 2:That's a great legend. I like it. I hope it's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll make it true. So I'm curious, you know, as he you know we had a chance to watch him process that in through writing but then also the desire to be anonymous from that, due just to the nature of the pain of that. How has writing about this and really opening yourself up to kind of the public nature of this, how has that affected you just personally?
Speaker 2:That's a intelligent question. It's really hard. So there's a bunch of things that come to mind, but the first thing that came to mind was, you know, to do this requires that I lay aside my predisposition towards being really cool and being a winner and having it all together and not having experienced something you know this tragic, and so in that respect, it doesn't come naturally to me. It's very, very awkward. Awkward is a great word about the whole thing and this piece of it. It's very awkward to write about it in a public way and then it's even more awkward, like, as weird as that is, it's even weirder to try to sell something, to try to cut through the noise with this message that I think that I have kind of landed on is but it has to do with losing your kid, and grief and loss and death.
Speaker 2:The whole thing is just it's absurd. It's just absurd. So, yeah, so how has it been awkward and weird and I'm just trying to own it. I've thought a lot about never saying one more word about it for the rest of my life, but I just don't. I think neither my wife nor myself have thought that that is probably in my best interests or in the world's best interest. Not that I have some great answer or the end all be all, but when you're going through things and, yeah, if you feel like you have a way to begin to enter into the pain and to be able to express it in a way that might help people, I think that it's an honorable thing to try to do it. So, to answer the question, I pretty much hate it, but also I feel at the same time like strangely, really honored and it's all kind of like this weird gift.
Speaker 1:Well, and I have not had a chance to read it, but I would just say I think it is a gift that you're giving to the rest of us and I can't even fathom trying to put myself in your shoes and, number one, trying to make sense of it like you have, which I think I would attempt, the same things you're attempting of like. All right, theologically, I have to make sense of this somehow, but then to say, hey, I'm going to have a willingness to share this for the healing and the benefit of others. I just think it's incredibly powerful. So, on behalf of whoever I just I applaud for that, thank you.
Speaker 2:And I will add because this is not surprisingly, it keeps surprising me, but now that I've been doing it for a while I realize that it shouldn't. The work isn't just for parents who have lost kids, though obviously specifically I hope that it is. It's for anyone who's experienced the loss of a relationship or of a dream, divorce or debt or the loss of time. Well, when you start listing these things, it's really all of us, and I'm pretty convinced that a great deal of our problems that we have in life, all of us, have to do with our inability to just enter into that loss. You know, rather than do that, we try to suppress it, and actually we do suppress it. But the real problem is then those things turn into repression. So repression is something you can't really control. Suppression you kind of can, depending on your psychoanalytic bent on these things. And so with repression you push these things down and then, but then they always wind up manifesting in other things and other ways in our life.
Speaker 2:And so I, having worked with people my whole life, having been through these absurd things myself, having listened to the voices inside my own head, I'm pretty convinced that a lot of our problems are, you know, these repressed things that emerge and other weird ways. And if we could just everyone, just take a big breath and step back and say, okay, I'm human, death is the ultimate human move of finitude, but God is still with me Like just those simple moves could literally change the world. And so I do really think that the book it's more than just for you know. So if you haven't lost a kid, don't be afraid to read it. It's for all of us, because we're all experiencing loss.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, it's that idea that you wanna separate yourself from everybody, talk about all your success. You wanna draw yourself to people, talk about your pain, you know, and that's what everybody goes. Oh, I know that, you know, and I think you're gonna hit that nerve. And now I'm curious. This is not my notes, but you had mentioned Thomas J Ord, his book God Can't. Is that an idea you ascribe to as you make sense of this loss, and is that helpful, encouraging Cause I've always wondered that in real time, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, the idea for people who maybe are uninitiated, god can't is the idea that because God is love, you know, the essence of God is love there are things that God cannot do. And, by the way, this is not even like, if you, for people who care about the Bible, I mean, this is already stuff that's going on. I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is like the whole passage where Jesus was unable to do certain things in his hometown because of the lack of faith. And there are other things, you know, pieces of evidence that we can point to in the text, obviously, things like even you know God is a spirit, so God can't. You know God doesn't have a physical body, so God can't reach out. And you know, give me a hug right now physically.
Speaker 2:So it sounds kind of preposterous. But then when you logically lean into it, you realize, oh no, I already kind of think these ways. And then when you go deeper in unpacking love, yeah, for me, in open and relational thinking, usually there's a division between the folks who think that God can do everything but chooses not to, which I think is at least maybe a step in the right direction. Ultimately it breaks down. For me, and at least currently, in this season of my life, I'm of the mindset that, no, that love can't do some things, and if it could, then it wouldn't be love.
Speaker 1:That's good.
Speaker 2:So right after you buy Indigo, the color of grief, you should probably buy God can't by Thomas J Orton.
Speaker 1:There we go.
Speaker 2:We're gonna give you a whole bunch of books. Actually, probably should buy Tom's book first.
Speaker 1:Fine, fine, no no, we're gonna buy your book first. Okay, all right. All right, let's give you a couple rapid fire questions to wrap this up. What do you see as some of the main issues facing Christianity today? Oh geez.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of problems facing Christianity.
Speaker 1:Pick a few that suck the most, then that's right.
Speaker 2:Well, in keeping in theme with what we've already been talking about, I think, theologically, our biggest problem might be the idea of omnipotence, which is a word that is not in the Bible and it's something that we've, for a variety of different reasons, have wholeheartedly bought into this idea that God is this capital, o omnipotent, all powerful lives outside of space and time, deity that every once in a while, in an interventionist kind of a way, reaches in and does his thing, variously described as miracles or any number of other weird and supernatural things. I think all of that is deeply flawed, you think, in terms of even like the Hebrew word concept of El Shaddai, from which a lot of our English translations says almighty, and then we get the idea of omnipotence. That's not a good translation of it. El Shaddai is really I mean, the literal translation is the breasted one, so it's actually feminine more than anything, which automatically-.
Speaker 1:Which is way more exciting than the omnipotent one?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and it automatically sets us up to go a completely different direction than this all powerful, mighty thing. And so some people might think, well, that's kind of abstract, and maybe it is, but what I have discovered, what I've decided, is that when you have a God, that is, this all powerful top of the hierarchy, does whatever he wants and controls everything, your religious system always winds up emulating that, and that is what we've basically had. We keep setting people up and, by the way, normally those people are white, male, straight North America, you know, and unfortunately I check all those boxes so I have to look myself in the mirror. So, yeah, there's a whole bunch of problems, but since you put me on the spot, I'm going to go with the problem of omnipotence.
Speaker 1:That's good and if you want to read on that, that's a very Greek idea.
Speaker 2:That's where that comes from, not from and in case people are freaked out. I still think God is powerful. I just define power in terms of relationality versus authority.
Speaker 1:Yeah, jesus power, not great use power. Yeah, okay, so that's Christianity. What do you see as a major issue facing the church today?
Speaker 2:as one who has been in the driver's seat, Well, we don't really believe and act out Jesus power. We really have decided that it's Zeus power, authoritative, driven, at the end of the day For the most part. I'm not saying every single person in every single church, but by and large that's what's going on and we've completely, completely missed it. And I'm totally convinced, as many other people have said, that much of what's going on, in American Christianity at least, has little or nothing to do really with Jesus.
Speaker 1:Amen to that. What's the problem that you're trying to solve?
Speaker 2:The Jesus power, Zeus power problem. These are all flowing together, aren't they? Omnipotence Are you going to change people's minds? Probably not. No, probably not I won't.
Speaker 2:But yeah, that a big part of my work has to do with that and trying to help expand. You said a great phrase earlier, something about expanding your imagination. I think that's super important, that we give young people options and that they know that there's really a more creative, there's more creative ways to think about all this stuff Art, beauty, lost life, divine, entanglement, evolution, creation, the cosmos. I think one of the ways you might say it is I'm trying to help expand people's imagination.
Speaker 1:I like that what's something you're excited about right now.
Speaker 2:I think, I think I'm going to go. Well, man, this red wine is solid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is Best wine of your life.
Speaker 2:It is. It is literally the best wine of my life, so I'm pretty excited about that. I'm excited about my youngest. He plays football for Colorado School of Mines. We're number one in the nation division to NCAA. Okay, I'm really excited about our work that we do in Haiti. My other son has just done an incredible amount of work, as we all have. He's really taken the lead the last couple of years, so that's a really beautiful saying. I'm excited in a weird, awkward kind of a way about Indigo, the color of grief. Yeah, love it.
Speaker 1:Okay, so obviously the Indigo will put the link in the show notes for that. What else can our listeners and watchers check out to find out more about Jonathan Foster?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's probably too much. I mean, if you do that, that'd be awesome. I did mention the Haiti thing, our nonprofits called lovehadyorg, and if anyone out there knows anything about Haiti, it's just it's a train wreck of a place, especially the last couple of years. I don't mean to suggest that the people are a train wreck, because the people are amazing and beautiful, but the political system and the whole thing is just really, really gone downhill. But we're still working like crazy to provide schools and healthcare and doing some of the coolest work you've ever heard of. So, yeah, if I had a second to plug that, I'd plug lovehadyorg.
Speaker 1:And that also came from your daughter.
Speaker 2:That's right. She was planning to be a medical missionary down there. I didn't even know where Haiti was until after she died, and then I was like, yeah, we should go check this out. And one thing has led to another, and it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it is so cool as I have gotten to you know, see a little bit of your journey, how you have taken, you know, the very worst parts of life and the very most difficult things that you know we can imagine going through and have just submitted that to Jesus, and in the posture in which you're trying to make sense of it, but then ultimately, in using that to be a blessing to others, I just really admire that, very grateful for that. We're going to be lifelong buddies now. Oh, that's cool, that's good to know. We're going together and we need to have some really nice wine in person one day.
Speaker 2:That's my yeah, I mean I come out there. Definitely in the winter we will come out and so, yeah, we'll have to hook up. I bet we have a bunch of mutual friends we may not even know about, so that's cool.
Speaker 1:Well, the next bottle is on me, jonathan. Hey, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day. Love what you are doing and to anyone watching and listening, please go and support this. This is great work. So thank you to Jonathan, Thank you to those of you who are a part of this podcast with us. We will see you guys next time.