A Spiritual Evolution Interview

so I know this sounds a little bit odd but because you wrote the foreword and I wrote the book but I wanted to talk with you and just have a conversation that we could record just about your thoughts I mean you you've expressed a lot of them to me but so that people could hear us talking about some of the different because there's a lot of different topics in the book that you're aware of and and that are part of my journey they're also a part of yours although our journeys are different so anyway just off the top of your head first question like what what are the things that struck you about the book that immediately hit you you used Asher on the front cover who is one of my favorite all-time genius yeah artists and actually that's original art I know I know but it was it's an excerpt a total total empresas and and it has a transformation of shapes which Escher is very yes for and it's called a spiritual evolution evolution used to be a bad word when we agree and but it just means change over time and the book is centered on your transformational journey over time yeah so so let me ask you where did you where did you come from and who are you writing the book for the where I came from the longer longer story and a lot of that I talk about in the beginning of the book I'll give you the short version my parents they became Christian or followers of Jesus when they were older in life and as a result I think they were a little bit more with my dad I could definitely use this word strict my mom not so much but certainly more conservative and more concerned about their kids not growing up the way they did so because they they didn't come to faith until they were in their late 30s and so they were I think more not just proactive but it was more like this is what we do this is what you believe you know kind of almost dictated to us so I was raised in a community church that was and you'll remember this at the evangelical was like a forward progressive kind of thing very much so if you really want it to be like known as a you know a true follower you were fundamental so we went to a fundamental Bible believing Church right and there were a lot of good things about yeah good and bad yeah absolutely and but it was I think more the feeling of it was pretty strict and my dad I was pretty what we would say legalistic and I think that really had a lot to do not so much with this theology as much as it had to do with his personality he just was a controlling man he felt like the best way he could help his kids as a parent was to control them yeah and we all three of us rebelled and so but I pretty much was apathetic toward all of it you know I I went to the sunny schools and the Vacation Bible schools and church and had to do that all the time but really got in with a different crowd that really wasn't much to do with church and so that's I really didn't care that much about it they knew I went and I was like yeah John's Church guy but you know he smokes pot with us so he's okay it wasn't until my summer between my junior and senior year where I am I think had on an experience level the first dramatic encounter with Jesus and even then it was really based a lot of information because I was the first time in my life I've had a lot of questions answered that hadn't been answered before and I saw a reality in in people's lives that I hadn't seen before it wasn't a dead faith in because they were younger people and there were people that that I respected and I saw life there so there was there was a change for me in terms pretty dramatic change for me in fact again back in the day all my friends said John John's of Jesus Freak man oh because that was the term he's a Jesus Freak so this was 1971 uh-huh right so yeah that's a little bit about where I came from we're not from there I went on to Bible College and to seminary and was schooled in kind of the evangelical North American Christian theology generally speaking sure and and then ended up teaching a lot of those same things for a lot of years yeah a lot of years and a lot of different roles as a teacher as a pastor as a college pastor most of it something that you and I also have in common yeah but so yeah did that and the second question was so that spans your experience and now you write a book for oh who I wrote it for whom well at first I didn't think I was writing a book I was I was really writing it was more cathartic to me I was I was on a photo shoot in Norway and what you need to understand John is a professional photographer nature photographers yeah that's my vocation that's my job that's what I do so anyway I was in Norway and I was I was in a cabin on a few 'red literally like you it was awesome I was I was 50 feet from the fjord I was right there on the shoreline but it was pouring rain and a poured rain for three days I had no internet I had no TV I had nothing I had already read the book that I took with me for the trip so I had nothing to do so I started writing on the back of pieces of scrap paper that I had with me and it was what I started writing was more of an apology or a confession for things that I had believed in taught that were changing in me and that would be in some sense the early earliest the roughest of drafts of the chapter I'm right you're not and so at the time I didn't think it was a book it was more cathartic of me just me and God in the cabin talking and me writing out stuff that I used to think and believe about him my my insistence of being right yeah all that and so when it wasn't for anybody it was it was really that when it started to morph into the idea like hey maybe there's a book here then it was almost to someone like me someone who loved Jesus wanted to follow Jesus but found themselves in a tension that they couldn't sustain and that was their beliefs about Jesus made them afraid of him and to up to a point where I want to trust you but I'm having really a difficult time trust me right and you just can't sustain that something's gonna give you these are gonna walk away and say it's it's not worth it or whatever but I I think on a personal level I did love him and I and I in my heart I knew that I wanted to follow him but the path I was on was leading me more toward despair than it was toward joy or life or any of the things that you read about in the Bible I was the other drive and you've been teaching all these years yeah the very things that were driving you now toward despair yeah now and all of what I was teaching wasn't necessarily theology ya mean so or exactly I mean there was a lot of good to it but there was a lot of bad to it and the bad I really would try avoid teaching I wouldn't want to talk about it because you know if I stand up and I say to a class at the University the Bible College I'm teaching at you know I'm not sure I believe in Hell well I lose my job teaching and I lose my credibility of anywhere else so to admit that I'm having those kind of questions and think I'm not saying more hell as we've understood as we've understood correct yeah so yeah one of the things that I loved about the book is that it does speak to my history my heritage my world and for those of us who grew up in the modern evangelical frame of reference fundamentalist modern evangelical you found a way because of the openness of your own journey to use language that I could identify with and you did it kindly and you know I think there's a lot of a lot of folks out there that are in this transition they're asking the questions and an up comes all the fury which frankly is legitimate to a great degree right and and they go through a mean stage where they basically gonna shoot everybody that was in the pack of which they were a part and and that's not helpful but but your books very helpful and you tackle I think part of it is because you you taught it and so you're very familiar with the information which are people were all about the information you know we'd rather have information than to trust somebody and and so because you're so familiar with it you knew the points of your own journey that created the tension that drove you actually away from relationship rather than toward it and and you're very honest about it your your apologies in the sense of I need to apologize and and this is a frame that you use throughout the book where you'll say this is what I taught and this is what I believed but I don't anymore and and I recognize that what I taught has had negative or destructive consequences in the faith journeys of others yeah which is part of the dilemma of a teacher to begin with sure and I and I I want to say that I I admire the courage for someone who has done something for a long period of time and changed their mind and done it in a public way because that's not easy remember when FF Bruce changed his mind about Galatians three oh yeah and he got immediately called an eel or that I do i doing I can't believe you brought that up oh and now out of Princeton I tell you at his age to do that was remarkable to me yeah and and there was a firestorm because it had to do with recognizing that that women had the same access to position and authority based on the Galatians passage and he's a little bit more of a scholar and a little bit more well-known than me yeah yeah but but again the same thing applies I mean I think a lot of times people are afraid because they have a position they can't change their mind they've been identified as believing a certain system and for them to change their mind includes now job security issues and all kinds of other things which I think job security has more impact on interpretation of scripture than almost anything I was fortunate in that because my job was photography yeah the teaching was always just something I did part-time yeah and so that allowed me maybe a little bit more freedom a little bit more space to do that and I thing I wanted to make quick comment on the people that have experienced that like that anger or that fury right that was another reason why at the very beginning of the book I deal with the whole I'm right you're not that that had to be dealt with in me before I could even take a step forward and give myself first of all personally give myself permission to begin to actually dig into the questions that I had but then to also admit it because I didn't want to just transfer the I'm right you're not because I had a different paradigm but hold on to that and then just do the same thing from a different side of the fence ya know the goal is not to create a new division yeah which is what we pride that for a long time he doesn't work I think what Richard Rohr says is important we as you transcend you include mm-hmm you know and so you know I always identify modern evangelicals as my people for that reason is I don't want to create a new division and I'm not saying everything you believe is wrong I'm saying there are elements of what we all believe that need to be challenged right because they don't work yeah and if we don't have a conversation about it yeah how is it ever gonna change how that's that's a hard thing for for people that come out of a background like mine where certainty was the goal it was it felt like a house of cards and so you had to challenge anybody that had a different perspective about anything and and you tackle those things you tackle the issues of heaven and hell and justice I loved your sections on your chapters on justice Thanks yeah and and very important conversation becoming even more important with the kind of shift that I think is happening in the planet and so you wrote this with the intent of creating a safe space for a conversation made safe because of of your own journey and your own apology you're basically saying I need to ask for forgiveness because of the things that I've taught that I no longer believe to be true right yeah and and and I've read it in its its it's very Orthodox in fact I think it's more orthodox than where you work oh absolutely yeah I would agree with that yeah I would uh-huh and again I'm not I don't mean that in that like I think I'm right now I'm not sure what I'm right about but I think I've moved more toward what would be considered orthodoxy even by most of our modern evangelical friends true true and a lot of that is grounded in the thinking of the early church and yeah and and you're speaking from that so what kind of response are you getting yeah that's that's been kind of fun I mean there aren't a whole lot of people that know about the book yet it's new rights right so but well first of all I've had maybe three or four people that have read it that I know don't agree with me that are friends and they're good enough friends that they've said yeah I'll read it because they care about me they want to write they want to hear about my journey even though we've talked about it and all of them have responded in a really positive way one so much in fact that said you're making me rethink some things that I thought I disagreed with and I said that's awesome I'm not trying to convince you of anything but if you're willing to rethink them let's let's talk yeah so their response has actually been good they've they feel they don't feel threatened by it good but they has clarified for them the differences and at the same time they I think they get the sense that I'm not trying to convert them to the way that I think because I don't have that agenda anymore of you know I got to be right yeah right then there's others that I think you that you mentioned that are more similar to us that have been in this on this path in this journey and they found it to be a dead end or unsustainable on fulfilling whatever and they have been changing and I've had probably a dozen people that have read the book and then come back and ordered like 10 mm-hmm which means they want to give their friends and so that's a that's a great I think for me and affirmation that I'm saying something that is meeting something in them and they want they want to share so in fact I think you know a friend of ours in Texas Mary Ann she's actually gonna have and this has happened several times where she's ordered a bunch of copies and they're gonna do a study of the book so that's great to this point I haven't had a whole lot of people I haven't anybody that has been irate about it or said you're a heretic sure that'll come someday but I don't think any of those people even know the book exists yet so they don't read it so and maybe they never will I don't know I wrote the foreword so you might in trouble yeah right off the bat yeah they won't even read the book they'll just assume it right exactly kill twice don't read my books is guilt by association your last name begins with you know anyway so I think the response has been good a good friend of ours Linda you know she has been a champion for the book yep she like bought a case and put him in her car and she like she's like some of them out on the road kind of thing and I'm like so is that yeah it's awesome it's terrific switch which means it is finding a place that's important and I'm pretty familiar with the gamut of material that's available the content that's out there yeah and and this this was something that needed to to find a place in a voice and I'm grateful for what you've done here Thanks and it means a lot yeah good I'm honored that I got to write the foreword for so gosh and I yeah I feel like you get asked a million times so I'm getting ready for a couple million data that one of the things I when you asked me about the audience I don't know if this is necessarily audience but one of the things that I hope that the book would be is a bridge so to speak yeah because I feel like you know as I've been on this more recent journey in the last 10 15 years and these shifts have begun to take place for me and my my view of God and my view of life myself etc I become aware of a whole stream of books and people that have been talking about this from for hundreds of you hundreds thousands and even more modern ones right yeah and so there's those and then there's the pool from which I came from and all these books that keep talking about these things the same way so when I go with a different thought or a question to them they immediately are just talking about the same thing and so I'm my hope was that there would be something that could say here's here's a connection okay from someone who knows this very familiar with this narrative saying this narrative I think is better and can I show you the journey that it took me I'm not saying you need to end up in the same place as me but if I can show you the journey of what it took for me to get there the questions are the struggles I think that could be really helpful for people sure so without going into a deep dive give a little sense of the scope of what what some of those questions are they yeah they involve this and this yes of this that that's actually yeah pretty easy because it's pretty just the chapter titles so you know the journey was I I've said this before and I even used the metaphor in the book I think of my life almost like a like dominoes and I remember watching these guys on YouTube you know you know they spend a year studying up dominoes and then you watch for 30 minutes what they just spent a year setting up it's fascinating I love it that kind of stuff but so the first domino for me was that I'm right I had to let go of that I had to give myself permission to go you might be wrong about all this stuff and again I was told before like when you have those kind of doubts that's bad I know don't entertain those doubts like you that's that that's the enemy you know quench those like get rid of those and when I finally gave myself permission to go wait a minute okay I need to pursue this so that I can at least have some kind of maybe not closure but at least some kind of better understanding why I'm struggling so much with this but in term so my journey was more theological so that the big questions what the first domino for me was who is God and you had a lot to do with that because I was four years working in the Gospel of John and was coming to realize that God his relationship and this is the craziest thing I've told you this a long time ago when I first got your book and I read it you know it's just a few months after it come out and I'd never heard of it my think very many people you were selling them out of your trunk hey you're right right and so as I read it I just kept going yes yes because you were articulating things that I had been thinking and I didn't know how to articulate and the weird thing for me was why did I not think this is this is condemning why did I not think Trinity yeah I mean I was I was thinking father-son relationship but I never thought Trinity because that wasn't where I started in my in the way I thought about God God was I I agreed to that and lip-service in terms of this is what I was I believed if someone had asked me I'd say yes I believe that God his father son in spirit but I had no impact on on me really and so that would be the first domino when I started to think that God is trying that he's a relationship that this is the deepest truth of his essence of his being this just changes the trajectory of everything that I had because my trajectory had come out of I yeah I agree with that but I really talked to God like he's an individual right right and whenever I read the word God in the Bible he's an individual and ever you know and they don't know that went so all of my descriptions of God were descriptions of an individual you know abstract you know whatever so that would be the first ones and then from there the other Domino's were topics like justice relationship love my concept of who the father is but then what I did ultimately Paul this for me and you know this because you read it it all comes through better understanding the Incarnation who Jesus is right again that would be something that I would had you asked me 15 years ago who is Jesus I had the right academic answers right but the things that I attached with it were so I was going to say bizarre kind of bizarre they were weird but they sound right when you're inside that frame of reference because you've normalized something and and it's like well there are things about God that are too mysterious tattoo yeah it's okay it's like you know it's it's you don't fully have the mind of Christ yet like I do but once you do then you will you'll understand how these incoherent things actually it you know and and we weren't allowed to ask those questions and we had friends that were that were good people that weren't as condescending is that I also met people that were as condescending as that but that also brings up the other big thing that kind of weaves all through the book the thing that first initiated the whole thing was the fact that I I began to realize that my life was a life that was operated more out of fear than anything else correct fear was the biggest deal for me was the biggest motivator to me it was - fear and shame yeah those two hmm oh maybe I'll get to shame something yeah so but it was fear so that's how I start the book and that's how I end the book is going coming back to that so what difference does this make well I'm finding that fear it's not just that I'm finding courage to overcome my fears so that the fears are still there but I can live in spite of them they're actually dissolving so which is better so this is actually changing your life yes yeah I'm not just changing your mind exactly I know I know and that's he's so many of us were stuck just in the thought world even if when we went home we had all this conflict we had all these unresolved things we couldn't figure things out but we but we knew the truth and and the whole point of this is as we grow and move and and you've got it in your book that it changes the way we're able to love and changes the way that we're able to be free in terms of relationship and and kind it moves us back towards the truth of who we are yeah that is grounded in our understanding of who God is yeah and over the last 11 12 years I've seen that in you and that I'm incredibly grateful for and thankful for no I mean because you've been you've borne witness to this that that there is life here because your life is different your life has changed and I see it being real not just a you know a mask that I put on because I'm famous or I'm wealthy or them whatever so the the topic of justice and how you dealt with it I think it's very it's going to be really helpful for a lot of us and I was I've said in recent weeks how much we as evangelicals love Moses more than we love Jesus we identify with eye-for-an-eye and and and we had a theology about the atonement and about the crucifixion and all of that where justice was seen in a legal kind of sensor and and very violent yeah way and and you get to unpack that so I want to just read some of your confessions that are out of that section and as a way of peeking people's interests in terms of just sort of the topics around what you were talking so one of your confessions in my former version of justice if someone acted with evil or behaved immorally what I really wanted was for them to be punished another confession I thought that justice for a victim was synonymous with punishing the oppressor or how about I confess I defined God's justice only in the context of sin evil or wrongdoing I confess I did not think of justice as a relational quality which that one is really significant and that goes back to your view of God so all of these conversations are entwined and you know the the systems of this world both the religious systems and the political systems they wanted to find just 'men justice in terms of retribution or a punitive response yeah and and as you unpack it and the more that we dive into this and the goodness of God and we see justice as a relationship that does not like McDonald would say this is not a God who stands idly by while anything that is not of loves kind remains in US and and so we're dealing with a strong and fiery response on the part of God but we've defined it as the person is so identified with their behavior and their imperfection behavior that that the punishment is meted out against them with the purpose of destroying them because of what they've done right as opposed to there is this whole reality that justice is an expression of the goodness it is just love it is just love and the fury of God is against anything that would harm the one that he loves which would be you and and for those of us who grown up in a in a world where our behavior was the definition of our identity and then our misbehavior was the revelation of our destiny what justice was just retribution and so no wonder you lived in fear no wonder that fear was one of the strongest motivators because we had to deal with the justice of God and we had we had like Janice the two faces of God right yeah it comes more he actually becomes vindictive oh right yeah and one of those things that really bothers me is that because of the way that we've seen the atonement we've seen that there is a God behind Jesus who is actually the one that needs to be appeased and sacrificed to them and because Jesus doesn't you know somehow he's able to walk amongst us and look on sin and and become sin as Paul says you know but this God requires something and he uses violence to accomplish love and it's like how does that even work and that is so incongruous in terms of my relationship with kids that I would even begin to think that violence then becomes an act of love but in our theology it did and you unpack a lot of those kinds of issues with regard to the justice of God in a way that I think is very it's it's it's comprehensive in a way that's I can apprehend it and yeah that was that would be another goal I mean I didn't try to write an academic book right I mean I wanted to at least know what I was talking about but this is more something can you comprehend this more like the bridge yeah and then can does it change anything yeah so much a theology just didn't change anything except make you bright yeah when an argument uh-huh so what but so justice then and this I tried to actually show the progression in my thought so but I'm gonna say where it finally took me yeah please that heavens violent revolt against our our sin was to submit to it yep and lame like that just turns everything on its head yep right absolutely does because it's not God passively going yeah yeah you can I'll let you do this to me now this is he's actively saying this is the way I'm going to fix this right by submitting to you right which was not part of our theology either we didn't have a God who submitted no as soon as we soon as you use those words you know we kind of get the garlic and way right but justice looks again for me that this this has roots in the way just the family dynamic of my house well that I grew up in the dynamic of justice in my home was really that was part of what fueled well and even made it more readily acceptable to you know embrace this theology that had God this way so be and again I think my dad's just passing on what he of course I what he learned and what he knew so but and again it's it's not just a Christian thing no no because you know there's karma you know even if there is a God the the the life force of the universe will get you back right it's it's about yeah and we have our texts you know God is a vengeful God and bla bla bla bla but but it's the meaning that we fill into those things really comes from I think a really dark place because like you said if we if we did this with our children we would at the very least be called bad parents we'd probably be thrown in jail yeah yeah right so that like the Romans passage of vengeance is mine says the Lord but he defines vengeance as repaying evil with good yeah so goodness is the Vengeance of God no it's just like well we just didn't see that yeah and that's part of the whole reason you wrote the book is because there were so many things we didn't see and you didn't see yeah I didn't yeah and and they need to be talked about Thanks yep

Channel: John MacMurray

Views: 4,182

Rating: 4.9565215 out of 5

Keywords: trinitarian, paul young, john macmurray, a spiritual evolution

Id: pFc4CTIf8Mw

Length: 34min 11sec (2051 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 03 2019