The Blessing of Limitations

[Music] foreign thanks so much Molly and let me just add my own welcome to all of you joining us for today's online conversation with Kelly kapik on the blessings of limitations I'd also like to thank my own uh bit of appreciation to our sponsor Baker publishing and Don and Rita Walker for making for for your generosity in making this program possible we really appreciate you and we're delighted that so many of you have joined us today I believe we have over 1100 registrants which is great in this busy time of Advent and just really appreciate the honor of your time and attention and I'd like to give a special Welcome to our first time viewers I believe we have more than a hundred of you who have signed up as well as our International viewers joining us from at least 21 different countries that we know of ranging from Kenya to Canada Greece to Guatemala and Panama to the Philippines so thank you for joining us from across the miles and across the time zones and if you are one of those those International visitors and you have not let not let yet let us know where you're coming from please do so in the chat box it's always fun for us to get to see the range of people who are joining us today if you aren't one of those new or first time people or otherwise unfamiliar with the work of the Trinity Forum we seek to provide a space for leaders to Grapple with the big questions of life in the context of faith and ultimately come to better know the author of the answers and we hope today's conversation will be a small taste of that for you today the topic we're going to consider today the purpose and blessings of limits seemed an appropriate one in Advent as we anticipate the Incarnation when God himself took on human limitations for the sake of relationship with finite and frail creatures prizing and counter-intuitive idea for a while to be human is to be subject to limitations we all seem to yearn for exactly the opposite a quick Google search will reveal that the appeal of No Limits is significant enough to serve as the title for a movie a sportswear company as well as quite a few foundations non-profits and athletic organizations and even more so many billions are invested in finding ways of forever extending our productive capacity so that we can do more achieve more and demonstrate ever greater impact functioning like finely tuned machines Relentless and untiring always maximizing our output eliminating inefficiencies imposing our agendas at scale Our Guest today offers a very different Vision in his new work you're only human he argues that limitations are in his words a gift from God and therefore good and in better understanding and embracing our creaturely finitude Our Lives can actually become more expansive and full of love friendship joy and creative interdependence it's a fascinating Paradox a hopeful Prospect and even a huge relief in an anxious and adult time and there are a few that have grappled with a topic with a theological expertise much less the energy and enthusiasm than our guest today Kelly kapik Kelly is a professor of theological studies at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain Georgia where he's taught for more than two decades as well as serving on the board the editorial consultants for the Journal of spiritual formation and Soul Care and he's also served as a contributing editor for cultural encounters a journal for the Theology of culture he is the award-winning author co-author or editor of more than 15 books including embodied hope which won Christianity today's book of the Year award in Theology and ethics the God who gives the devoted life becoming whole and of course his most recent book you're only human which we've invited him here today to discuss Kelly welcome thank you so it's this is fun to be with you I like the Christmas tree in the back we're ready to go it's fun it's great to have you here Kelly so I have to ask all of us at various points have had to confront our own limits uh and our own finitude but whenever this happens when we first realize that whether it's due to exhaustion or anxiety or old age or just discovering that someone else's bigger smarter stronger better faster whatever it is rarely is the Discovery a pleasant one or a joyful one yeah you have argued that our limits are actually good news reflective of Divine Design and you've called It ultimately good for us both individually and communally so what do you see as the blessings of limitations yeah that's I mean that's a fantastic question and the reality is we we kind of all know about this reality that we're not God if we ask are you God we all say no of course not but when you look at kind of this unrealistic relent unrelenting kind of endless expectations we have that's where we run into trouble um and so I'm really interested in why is it that that the way God made us with our limit is a good thing and part of I mean finitude we've thrown that word around but it's kind of a newer word for some people even though it's old it just means limits in space time knowledge and Power and the reality is we can only be a place we can only do so much we can only know so much so how is it that that is part of the good way that God made us it's not actually a result of of this of the fall or sin and so I I'm interested in kind of trying to help us think through that a little bit um yes and so what have you sort of encountered or discovered as the blessings that attend that finitude and Frailty yeah it's the simplest way to put it is love um because the the reality is we are when we're not coming to terms with the Dynamics of our limits efficiency and productivity become our highest Goods yeah and love is kind of counter to efficiency and productivity all the time I mean I love efficiency and productivity they're these are serious values for me but you can see when they become the highest values I tend to get isolated um it tends to undermine Community it tends to undermine the common good and part of what you start to see is some of the good of our limits is that it is actually what Fosters relationships with god with others even with the Earth and that kind of healthy interdependence not with God but healthy dependence with all these other um realities God neighbor and Earth that's actually the stuff of life that's actually where the good stuff is and so our limits are not a bad thing they're what cultivate these relationships yeah that's fascinating so so I want to dig into both love but also efficiency and and also as just sort of how how you distinguish both in the book and and you know more broadly between you know a healthy or even holy respect or reverence for for limitation and perhaps just getting a little bit too comfortable with stasis or stagnation or uh not pushing ourselves and that um often there could be really a Temptation um you know to call a certain amount of sloth or self-indulgence um as reference for limits yeah it's a fascinating thing um because you have it it depends on who you are and what season of life you're in um the reality to be perfectly honest with you is most listeners who are tuning in to the Trinity Forum on a Friday afternoon are probably realistically not people who struggle the most with Sloth uh they tend to be driven people I could be wrong these are stereotypes but interestingly it's a hard-working crew Kelly yeah yeah so I mean interestingly enough I do I feel the same thing and I I would say what I've discovered is I actually think it's the same coin where on one side is kind of this endless pursuit of productivity and not recognizing our limits and the opposite side of the of the coin is sloth and actually I think a lot of us struggle with both things which is why it's complicated so you find a lot of us who are driven we'll just go go go and and then what happens is we turn to Media social media binge watching Netflix Etc um and it's kind of when we talk about these things it's interesting to me how often social media is to blame Netflix is to blame and I I've kind of stopped thinking that and I think rather than blaming social media and net and binge watching shows the more interesting question is why do so many of us do it and it it's an indirect way of getting to your question because I actually think we we turn to those things because they're basically socially accepted ways to numb ourselves about the endless demands so in other words a lot of us who are driven really hard all sudden find ourselves jumping into what might be sloth but it's almost a self-protection kind of thing and so even high schoolers it's you know so frustrating for parents but if you can this is not an excuse but if you can help understand that teenager is often trying to avoid the endless suffocating demands so playing the video game is in a way of Escape so actually I think that sloth and the overwork are two sides of the same coin and the short answer I would say to figure out how to navigate it is you need Community because I don't think we're the best judges of these things we either think we're letting ourselves off too easily or we're pushing ourselves too hard so I really do think friends people that love you and know you have to speak into that because we don't just tend to struggle with one of them we tend to struggle with both of them yeah you know that is a fascinating point it sort of reminds me there is a quote I found from Wendell Berry I'm going to read it he's like it's easy for me to imagine the next uh division of the world will be between people who want to live as creatures and people who want to live as machines you know and as you were talking about kind of like as we sort of seek to numb ourselves there's a certain extent to which we choose some of this um you know we choose both to take on the extraordinary burdens but then also numb out with social media uh as opposed to just say go to bed yeah um you know there's there's an appeal to some of this and as a theologian so I'm curious why do we long to live as machines yeah there well it is fascinating obviously that's such a great but extended kind of question and there's all kinds of this historical and Theological things I mean part of it is when when people are more connected to the land and to physical labor some of these realities just come a little bit easier but when but when kind of what we compare ourselves to is not a horse but an iPhone an iPhone just needs to be plugged in for half an hour can go a lot longer right it's just kind of endless so I do think you know this kind of technological one author argues the more interconnected we've become the more life feels accelerated and and so there is this kind of um Everything feels faster uh there's some fascinating studies in terms of we all by and large a lot of us think we're working more than people worked 30 40 50 years ago but what's interesting is there's some recent studies that have actually showed that's probably not true when you actually have people do the the best way of keeping track it's not true but the difference is we're never done with work it's kind of always with us and so what happens is now we we create all these escapes throughout the day but that means you could be at the soccer game with your kid and your phone's buzzing and you have work so you're never done even if you're not actually necessarily working more it just gets spread out um so that that's an example of some of the challenge there yeah you know it was interesting reading your book I mean your background is as a theologian but you uh included quite a fairly extensive history on clocks which I wasn't necessarily uh expecting in your work and you know often our our instinct is like we must have a time management problem right yeah you know we we are we're numbing ourselves with social media we're clocking out we're getting distracted uh whatever it is um you've actually argued though that the problem is not a time management problem uh you've claimed it's a theological problem what's the theological problem behind our inability to manage our time well yeah that's great it is this kind of relationship to time when you think about you know all these words we use when we greet people like how are you doing I'll say well I'm just so busy but think about the language we use like I'm buried I'm crushed I'm overwhelmed I'm stretched all of those it's actually physical so many of those are physical and and so there's this interesting discussion about our relationship to time and to the clock uh that's that's kind of growing and I I didn't plan on researching clocks as you mentioned and it just became super interesting to kind of spend full time for six weeks or so just diving into the history of clocks because the our relationship to the clock and the clock is a later invention um does kind of affect things it starts to where I mean you always had clocks you had like sundials those kind of things but all sudden when you move from our hands to you know days to hour minutes and seconds and now we carry it on our bodies um there is this sense of ever pushing more and more to get more done because because we tend to think of clocks now as about um something even think about the term managing time like what in the world is that that's a crazy idea where did we start to think about that uh time is just this reality it's a it's a that's a larger conversation but time is something happens and so one of the questions is how do we relate to time and a lot of the scholarship will tell you there's a there's what they will call a difference between contextual and non-contextual view of time and let me just mention it real fast because those of us in the west living at kind of this non-contextual view of time what that means is tonight it could be Friday night and you could go into your kitchen it can be 11 o'clock at night and you open up your laptop you turn on the lights the lights are on your laptop's buzzing at you and you see emails and you think I have an hour of work to do so I'm going to do it that's non-contextual because it's not taken into account your body chemistry your blood sugar levels it's not taking into account there may be a baby crying in the Next Room it's not taking into account you know it's dark outside whereas for most of the history of the world and for much of the world to this day they live in what we call contextual time so when it's dark that affects our body chemistry it's time to you know uh and and I just think it's a fascinating thing where stuff like the the wonderful blessing of electricity has changed our expectations about how much should get done and changed our relationship to time so we do have and the last thing I would just say on this is Innovation as wonderful as it is part of what they've shown again and again whether it's a vacuum or a washing machine is all of these quote unquote time saving devices all that happens fairly quickly is increased expectations and so we end up that's why after we get these things you know the iPhone was going to save us time and now we feel busier the Washington you know it's just one of those things and I I love the Innovations but we have to understand there's a bit of a cost there yeah you know one thing I was curious about um in reading your book uh one of the things we do at the Trinity forum is we try to provide space for leaders to Grapple with the big questions of life in the context of faith and most significant professional accomplishments are actually built around exceeding limits in some way you know there's structural incentives around constant Improvement there's Six Sigma management techniques to eliminate error and virtually you know certainly any medical or technological breakthrough is doing something new surpassing what we had assumed previously was a limit and and we're pursuing those goals you know inevitably requires Focus efficiency sustained effort you know and drive so what council would you give to leaders who are who are driven to achieve or are captivated by a problem that they believe they can solve what does it look like for a leader yeah Embrace limits that's a that's a great question because I can't imagine someone hearing especially if you haven't read the book you're thinking what what is this guy talking about I mean if you're an athlete and someone tells you embrace your limits that's a terrible thing to say right you're never going to get faster you're never going to get stronger you're never going to get better and you can you know if you're going to get better at math or engineering or anything we we do constantly push against our limits and I'm not naive I'm fully aware of that and that's part of the goodness of growth right um so what what we have to wrestle with is in in some ways when I'm talking about limits I'm just talking about what it means to be a particular creature with particular strengths and weaknesses and trying to figure that out and so we do push ourselves and and you want the doctor who studied normally you want the doctor who studied more than the doctor who didn't right so those are those aren't aren't bad things um but part of what we have to ask it gets again to the community what does this look like and one of the things I would ask among leaders is as you encourage yourself and others to grow is this growth the only thing you're thinking about because we're holistic creatures so if you're so focused in one particular area that all of these other things are falling apart this becomes a massive problem right so we you you have to think it's kind of like you do have companies where someone will devote 14 hours a day to you but in three years they're gone right so trying to think through this even in the book one there's a section talking about Stress and Anxiety and the differences and stress itself stress is a good gift from God we you know where if you hear a lion roar you can run faster right if you're going through an alley at night you're a little more attentive there are these things that you know even physically we react stress is a good gift the problem is when you take something that's meant to be episodic and make it a lifestyle and so for leaders I would encourage them to think how do you help create rhythms and seasons for your for your team that honor both seasons of pushing and of rest Farmers have to work super hard at different times and harvest but then they don't at other times it's a different pattern and the problem is now we just live constantly like it's harvest and and we can feel it you know speaking of rest and needing it you drew it a Peril or a connection that I thought was interesting between rest and Rich relationship how is it that rest um and you know basically prioritizing that enables us to have deeper relationships or to love better yeah that's good I mean I think rest there there is in some ways I let me take it in a slightly different way I mean rest is learning to be present there is a sense in that so we could talk about sleep you know even in light of some of the things we said earlier and I think there's this really beautiful Theology of sleep we could talk about where the reason we sleep is because God doesn't right and that's that is this ultimate rest of when you're when you're in in war you don't sleep unless you have someone watching over you right and then it's safe well Christian sleep because God never does there's there's something actually deeply important about the idea of sleep there there is this idea of God making us in this one in seven pattern um uh Abram heschel this great Jewish author had written a simple small book called the Sabbath on the beauty of the Sabbath or this one in seven pattern that that the the Hebrew Bible gives this cathedral in terms of time where we're made to work and to rest um and to get to your particular question I actually think it's related to the biblical idea of the fear of the Lord the fear of the Lord is not not fundamentally about being scared of God that can show up occasionally in scripture but fundamentally the fear of the Lord is just living in recognition of God's presence and provision right that's why it's the beginning of wisdom and knowledge and it's interesting in our day I think we find being present which is related to rest being present so difficult because we're always thinking of the next thing or things we didn't do and you know I think about these Christmas parties we're going to how often are you fully present there to the person you're talking about are we thinking about the next thing um and I think it's there's something Christians can offer to this conversation where actually by cultivating a slowness and learning to recognize God's presence and provision to be present with God amazingly allow it helps you to learn to be more present with other people um but you don't tend to get that without times of quiet and and Solitude that doesn't have to be days and hours and hours but I do think there's something counter-cultural to Christians saying and other people saying slow down and you can I mean the mindfulness movement um I'm sympathetic because they can feel you don't whether you're Christian or not you can just feel we're not being present with people we need to slow down we need to be present right you know that reminds me of something you said in your your book that I thought was quite uh quite fascinating you know many of our inherent limits are fairly obvious to us like you know we know about time you know our bodily limits are you know very Vivid to us but what are the limitations that you talked about is that of Our Own self-knowledge uh which I thought was quite interesting and that uh you've argued that paradoxically um knowledge of our own of our own Identity or kind of even uh or a gestation of it like living into our gifts growth is often something that we cannot do entirely for ourselves that we we know ourselves better in community and it's often others that first see and then later call forth who we were made to be and I'd love for you to talk about this a little bit more and how um you know how our own limitations infinitude actually can be related to our own growth and flourishing and identity yes thank you for asking it's it you know it's funny it's one of these things where we're pretty comfortable with the idea whether or not we practice it that other people can help us see our blind spots right this is part of the goodness of diversity where we're saying we need to cultivate diversity in our communities in our workplaces and our in our churches because they help us see blind spots and that's true and we need to celebrate and cultivate that but I think it's actually the similar principle not just other people help us see our blind spots or the the negative Parts but they also help us see gifts that we have that we don't recognize and I and I think that surprises people because they no no you know what you're good at but actually often our gifts are what it's not that you don't have to work at them but they come more naturally and because they come more naturally one of the great challenges is we assume everybody else has it we just think that's part of being human right which makes us judgmental of others and those kind of things so it actually can be very helpful to have other other people speak into our lives and say hey I really see this in you I can't believe that you know when you walk up into a group just so you know everyone kind of relaxes you have the gift of hospitality and I don't know if you realize that or or you know you you look at a problem in a different way than the rest of us and it's so good having you in meetings because you see things the rest of us don't there's something about speaking that into other people's lives that's that's a tremendous gift and can bring some confidence not air we're so worried about making people arrogant but actually it's so affirming right there's something beautiful especially with all this pressure in our culture know yourself be yourself the internal world is a lot more complicated than that so we need ourselves and others to navigate this yeah yeah as you conclude your book you you give several different um suggestions or guidelines for what you call living Faithfully with infinitude and um and they're excellent but I wanted to ask you about one in particular which was lament and gratitude and you uh encouraged your readers to practice both simultaneously yeah um rather than picking between the two of them and so I wanted to ask you um what lament and gratitude have to do with living Faithfully with infinitude and better loving uh others yeah that's good I I think as Christians we are constantly tempted to lie um I think we're constantly tempted to lie primarily about two things one is how hard or complicated things are we're tempted to just make it it's all great and and plastic or it's all terrible whatever we make we we're tempted to lie about how things are and we're tempted to lie about how good God is um and part of being a creature part of being finite is recognizing these limits of knowledge and all of this kind of stuff but but what this looks like in a healthy kind of way is learning to cultivate this sense of when you see hard things you talk to God about them you lament them because it is hard and or or bad sometimes it's just wrong it's Injustice and you need to lament it and not act just because God is Sovereign that what you're seeing is a good thing but at the same time cultivating the sense of gratitude for God's provision and his kindness and you you probably know in in Psychology in the positive psych movement that you know where they've responded historically to psychology was good for showing things that are bad but not that are good and anyways um you know Bob Evans Robert Emmons at UC Davis was one of the leaders on gratitude studies and they've just shown and this shouldn't surprise us as Christians cultivating a sense of gratitude even making a gratitude Journal of you know five to ten things every day for a month has all these physiological benefits people tend to sleep a little better their blood pressure goes down it's all this kind of thing so um but I think we choose the between those and that's where we get into trouble you know it's kind of like um my wife is thankful for her job and way you know all these things she gets to do and her tremendous gifts and responsibilities and so she's thankful but there's still so much sexism in our world and she should be able to lament that and when it affects her and say the good things she doesn't have to pick between those and that's kind of what I'm trying to argue for that is a way of recognizing our creaturely finitude is we don't solve it we don't know it all but we do go to the one who does that's great well uh there are quite a few questions that have come in from our viewers and for those of you who are joining us for the first time you can not only ask a question but you can also like a question and that helps give us a sense of what some of the most popular questions are so they've lined up here one question from Derek Sherman and Derek asked in what ways does technology shape or misshape our notion of creaturely limits is there a way that technology might actually help us with accepting and living within our limits yeah that's great um you know technology is a funny thing because when we use the word technology now we tend to think of like digital things right and iPhones or whatever but you know creating a hoe creating you know uh a hammer and any of that these are technology a pencil is a technological you know Innovation so technological innovations are tremendous gifts um and even those employing them recognizing that how they've been given to us how they can help us I think I think those are great um but you're right about the he's right about this question of how are they are shaping or misshaping us the question is are we recognizing it and I do think unintended consequences are things we need to try and think about as they're happening so that we're more aware um and I would say you know without getting into a long thing a simple one of the simple questions is do you find your use of a particular technology makes it more or less difficult to be present with people right if you're finding that it makes it more difficult to be present with people then you you're probably being misshaped by it those kind of things it does it Foster relationship doesn't Foster well and even a better word than relationship is Shalom does this technology help with Shalom or not um and and sometimes the same technology for some people can be beneficial and others are negative and I think we need to acknowledge that I think simple black white answers are are often not very helpful so what is an individual in a community how does this technology affect them and is it fostering Shalom or undermining it is the way I'd put it that's great our next question comes from Timothy Gulick and Timothy asked why do you think that Community is so desired but not experienced as much now as it's historically been it is fascinating how Community is desired and we long for it and um you know uh what was that um oh it's not um Bobo's in Paradise but the the sociologist you wrote the book um bowling alone right um yeah this idea of there has been this cultural shift where you used to go to bowling leagues you used to be part of Kiwanis Club you used to do these kind of things and you had community and one of the most stable of those were religious organizations and that is you know that has become less and less it is fascinating that since covid there is this sense of both uh the desire to be alone and a sense of the problems with isolation both of those um and I do think humans we are made for even introverts I'm not trying to make light of it I don't think we all need to be extroverts but even introverts need other people right there's something about that um just before you and I came on I was watching the World Cup and it's amazing kind of the the significance of these communal kind of things and you and I were talking about in Croatia everybody's leaving their house right now to celebrate because they want to be with others they don't want to do it alone but so many people There's Something About Us humanly and I think that's the way God made us I mean we do need Solitude and we do need community and when we only have one of those we can we we have this internal sense that something's a problem something's off makes sense so an interesting question from Rachel sawinski and Rachel says I'm deeply involved in disability rights advocacy all following 1997 disabling motor vehicle collision thought of disability is a consequence of human sin in general an emerging Trend among disability rights Advocates is promotion of disability as a natural biodiversity to be embraced among all human diversity please share your thoughts on the diversity of human disability oh I know that's a fantastic really hard question um because my views on some of this have evolved have have changed somewhat over the last 10 to 15 years particularly because um my wife dealt with cancer and then has dealt with chronic pain since 2010 and I ended up writing a book called embodied Hope on pain and suffering and in the research on that like she mentions I ended up digging into a lot of kind of Christian ethicists even friends that have really thought carefully about what's often called disability and thinking through that because there has been a a Temptation sometimes in Christian theology to confuse difference with problem so and and so insofar as that's the case I do want us to be very careful right it's kind of like dyslexia and dysgraphia might are serious challenges when you're living in a western world that puts so much emphasis on reading and writing but for most of the world in the history of the world that's not a problem at all right and often people who have these issues have other kind of gifts that were so so needed so it was just difference so the one thing I would say is I I do think it's difficult to navigate that and I want to be careful about confusing difference with a problem but I would say Jesus really does come and bring physical healing he brings sight to the blind right the lame walk the deaf uh speaks so you you get this healing and This Promise of God in in the end is that there will be no tears no pain and no suffering so the one thing I'm very certain of is whatever that difference looks like if it involves pain tears suffering that will be made right and that does tend to therefore point to aspects of the Fall even if it's not like sin related like this happened because of this it's just we live in a broken world you know so a question from Chuck Olson who asked not only does electricity Etc change our concept of time each day it also changes our perceptions of the seasons should we be trying to live differently during cold short days like now rather than during warm long days is there a human cost to denying the seasons oh I love it yes I mean I don't know how we do it right um but I absolutely do think that it's it's fascinating to recognize these things I mean one example I use sometimes is people if think about it depends on clearly where you live how how long the day the sun is out during the day and how long it is and then it changes during Seasons but sometimes I think about you know reading these books of old Saints and you you'll hear about the saint who got up at 4 30 in the morning to pray every morning and it could be very Godly but it also could be because they went to bed at eight at night right and so when you're thinking in a western mindset you were up till 11 because you had all this electricity and then you went to bed but you should get up if you're really Godly at 4 30. this is apples and oranges right uh because at 4 30 sometimes it's actually getting light some places and when you don't have electricity so I do think there is something about getting some connection to the Earth and for me that has started to look more and more like uh simple things like even going for longer walks outside I used to work out inside um and just some connection to being outside and the different seasons has been really helpful to me um so I I I like the question I'd love to hear what the person had to say in terms of suggestions because I I do think you know part of what we're selling you have a Christmas tree that's part of why we do these things for different seasons to recognize that the problem is with consumerism now we're making everything a season to drive consumption and so you never get the down part you only get the up part right so so Tammy Peterson asked I'm fascinated to hear more about how to disable young people infinitude and growth your comments about exceeding limits is the air they breathe in education Athletics and the Arts is there a vocational discussion we can have about the rhythms and seasons of childhood and Adolescence oh yes yeah and you know in the first chapter one of the big illustrations is just I didn't plan on doing research on high schools and um but it's amazing you know and when I go and speak to high schools now you you talk to these kids and they are starting you know 7 30 they're leaving the Homer earlier they finish at 3 30 they change they do an extracurricular till six or seven they rush home quick food and then they're basically shower and homework till 11 or so um interspersed with other activities Church things other things and distractions but they never stop and basically we're catechizing them that's what's happening and we're baptizing it in Christian circles as this is a good work ethic so actually what happens is by the time you finish college if you're not running hard until about 10 30 at night you're you're slothful so I do think we need to think about it and and I hear legitimate stories I was talking to someone not long ago who lives near UVA and just said they have a little girl and they said it literally in first grade there's pressure to get them into the right School so I do think there is there are these very important conversations um I'm an academic I have PhD I really care about education but we've got to remember education is not the highest goal so yes there's all kinds of conversations that need to be had but well I will tell you what school administrators tell me is the people who put the most pressure on schools and students to do more homework if there's not enough is the parents so it's a complicated conversation and it's worth asking what do we actually think the good life looks like and what do we actually are what are we communicating to our children either intentionally unintentionally what the good life is because I think it's actually often very different than what we think we are communicating yeah you know that sense of never being done that you mentioned is something that our next uh questioner picked up on Susan fertig Dyke's asked computers mean that there's no finish to anything we have the ability to endlessly edit what has all this done to our expectations of perfect and final yeah uh I love how the question ends because it's not where I thought I I do think it has this um it challenges our expectations again but I like the word perfect [Music] um one of the chapters in the book uh where it's you know about God you know why doesn't God just instantly change me and the way I wanted to start the book The chapter but didn't have the guts was to say that God didn't make a perfect world he made a good world now I actually believe that I think theologically and biblically that's true but I you would have to so explain it to people so they don't panic but what the reason I mention that here is what we mean by the biblically is the word perfect biblically means full or complete and God creates a good world but that world always even before their sin is going somewhere it's not it it's kind of like when you read in Hebrews that Jesus through his suffering became perfect you're like wait wasn't he always perfect well he was always without sin but he he's becoming Fuller complete in this particular task in calling and so all of that I do think we struggle to understand process and development and time and so it does make it difficult to ever say that good even if it's not final or something like that um so I don't know if that's I as an author this stuff haunts me because you can eat it you know how it is like it's nothing's ever done I love mowing my lawn because it's something I'm like oh I finished so you know this is a job specific kind of thing but yeah yeah so a question from Perry huesman and Perry asked Geneva Switzerland is the watch capital of the world it isn't by coincidence that this happened to be the center of Calvinism with its emphasis on being responsible for time as a gift of God thus the development of the individual watch yeah isn't there also the aspect of responsibility before God for the gift of time yeah time I mean oh man I love that uh kind of example so there's there's debate even with Weber's thesis about you know the Calvinists who think that their productivity earns them favor with God and so they have this endless work ethic and and there's real debate about how well historically he's representing but clearly in the calvinist reform tradition one's use of their time matters right but it is also an example of where we've gotten to I think does contribute to a misunderstanding of scripture so think for example when we hear the biblical text Redeeming the time I think we tend to all think that's about time management and there's real real reason to say that's not what that biblical text is primarily about but it is in our world of efficiency and productivity we're bringing that to the biblical text and now using that as a text to justify and cause guilt and shame about how productive you are um and and and so that's that's a massive kind of issue for us to think about so yes we need to use our time with with care but I'll just give you one example I think you know you ask most Christians do you think we should pray more we all say yes and then I say do you do you feel guilty for not praying more they say yes but actually I think there's a strange thing where you have to have the courage to pray because praying feels so inefficient so non-productive and the truth is we don't think it's doing anything so it's we know we're supposed to do it we do it but it's not do anything and if you're supposed to redeem the time you better even if you're praying then that better be a checklist it better be it's not about cultivating this communion with god um similarly yeah so I have just found that kind of push to redeem in the time tends to get justified in terms of task done not people loved or shalom fostered Lane Wetzel asked Madeline says hi Kelly I am 28 and often conflicted between the amount of things I want to accomplish in my life and allowing myself Grace that they don't have to be done right now because hopefully I have many more years left in my life to do them how do you balance these two um great question uh as a college professor one of the wonderful Temptations we have is you can get a a 20 year old 18 year old 22 year old and and you can get them going it's exciting you're like you can change the world and this is you know and it's wonderful and there's some truth to that uh and you can get them really fired up and then they go out and by the time they're 28 or 30. they're about to die and then they often are bitter burned out and frustrated so part of it is this challenge of recognizing Our Lives genuinely matter to God and to others we really do and we really can and do make a difference but we're also just particular people with particular strengths and limits and so I do think there is something about embracing this kind of 28 is different than 18 but it's different than 48 as well um and again I I keep going back to community I think we need to cultivate these communities that allow us to speak about these things like I really want to do this and I want to do that and others can help us think through why don't you do this but doing this is not doing that so I I think one of the things we struggle with is the unspoken because by doing one thing we're not doing something else and none of us want to say that so we just keep adding right um and and you can't so the the maturity comes when you realize I'm gonna do this and that means I'm gonna close the door on this thing and that's okay it's not bad but that's hard so I'm on a ladle two questions on top of each other one is from Gordon cloak and Gordon ask how do Sabbath observance and related spiritual practices and liturgies help us live within our limits and structure our time and priorities and somewhat relatedly Emma Osborne asked how does your thesis on limitations infinitude differ from Christian humility ah yeah well let's do the first and and then talk a little bit about humility um the part of it's interesting if if you talk about Sabbath and certain Christian settings where they have a history of legalism with Sabbath as soon as you mention the word or the Lord's day or a day of rest there's just like this dread like oh you're just adding but it's when you talk in other Christian Traditions who aren't familiar and you just tell some Christians especially in the western world like do you know that God kind of made us with this rhythm of one in seven and one day a week you should not you don't need to work you go worship with God's people you take a nap you enjoy feasts enjoy God's creation and honestly it's a lot like no no that's too good to be true right and people think I'm joking but as a college professor at a Christian School you ask a lot of students they feel guilty if they're not studying on Sunday they don't actually this invitation of of genuine like one in seven rhythm is important to our Humanity uh is I I think key the the question about humility um is you know there's there's a whole chapter on humility because humility for me became really important and so what I would just the the short version is I think as Christians we have often based the idea of humility the reason we should be humble we often think is because we're sinners and I I think we're Sinners and that can contribute to our humility but I think when you build the idea of humility on the problem of sin it distorts the whole thing and screws it up so actually Adam and Eve before the fall are meant to be humble and by that what we mean is they're meant to depend on God to depend on their neighbor to depend on the earth that dependence is humility and that's a good part of creation so if you Embrace that view of humility as part of our creaturely finitude then actually rather than saying you know when Christians say I want to grow in humility what tends to get communicated is well focus on what a bad sinner you are well that that can lead to all kinds of you know self-hatred and you know I think we need to be sober about our sin and acknowledge it and repent of it but another way you can cultivate humility is actually by learning to celebrate other people by not viewing everyone as a threat or as a competition actually looking for their good and celebrating what God is doing so there I actually do think these things are related to to affirming ourfinitude allows us to to celebrate others in a different way kind of Bonhoeffer the way he said it is our dependence is part of the goodness of creation what the what sin does is distort those dependencies twist them and so now we view each other as someone you need to dominate or to ignore so Christian humility is the the pushing back against that and and celebrating honoring others that's great so a question from Emily Ahern and Emily asked how can we embody this posture positively in ways to change the culture at large so much of this is against the grain especially the idea that knowing the self is only best accomplished in community what are some ways we can convince secular people it's a great it's a great question and the hard part of the question is if we're trying to convince kind of a big group it tends to go badly it tends to undermine the very thing we're trying to do right um it's interesting I and I like how you put it so Alexander schremen was an Eastern Orthodox uh Theologian he has this book where he talks about secular SEC um secularism and and he talked about this decades ago but part of what I found interesting about his definition of secularism um was was that actually what secularism is is the absence of worship in the absence of worship of God and he goes on to basically argue Christians can be secular in this way because secular in this sense is living By ignoring God's presence throughout the world that kind of thing um and so I think rather than being weird weird Christians and saying weird things and always you know but just this authentic naturalness of Our Lives or live before God it's not weird to mention God you don't have to be strange about it um I I but also the kind of choices we make and this is one of the challenges Christians struggle with is when power seduces us this Vision doesn't work but right now including in CR in a lot of our Christian circles the way to change is to grab power and so it really has distorted Christian understanding to the virtues and classic virtues like humility I just read the other day just yesterday actually of a pastor I kind of respect who belittled someone I know for publicly apologizing about something and I thought what has happened to us but it's a platform and it fits with a particular narrative and and so um I think we're just being hurt by this so the strange answer is smallness in some ways is better I mean it it changes small Kelly thank you this has been rich and fascinating in just a moment I want to give you the last word but before that a few things to share with each of you immediately after we conclude we'll be sending her out of feedback form to all of you who registered we really welcome your feedback we read every one of these we try to incorporate the suggestions to make these programs ever more valuable and Rich and as a small token of our appreciation for your thoughts and opinions we will give you a code for a free Trinity Forum reading download of your choice there's quite a few titles that I think pick up on this theme and allow one to go even more deeply into it including algis huxley's Brave New World Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Madeleine lingle's bright Evening Star I think Bonhoeffer was mentioned earlier by Kelly our brand new reading is who stands fast by Dietrich Bonhoeffer so we encourage you to fill out that form and just thank you in advance for your input also we will be sitting around tomorrow and email mail with a link to the video of today's online conversation as well as a list of additional readings and resources if you want to go deeper on the topic I want you to be alert to that and also would love for you to share that video with others and start a conversation about the conversation we've had here finally I would love to extend an invitation to all of you joining us to join the Trinity Forum society which is the community of people who wish to further the mission of the Trinity Forum to cultivate curate and promote the best of Christian thought leadership for the common good there are quite a few benefits involved in being a member of the Trinity Forum Society including a subscription to our quarterly readings access to other programs like the one today and as well as our daily what we're reading list of curated reading recommendations and as a special incentive to all of you watching with your membership or gift of a hundred dollars or more we will send you a signed copy of Kelly's book you're only human so encourage you to Avail yourself of that opportunity a few things coming up just to let you know about at the same time next week we'll be talking with Hannah Anderson on her new book Heaven and nature sing on renewing the joy of Advent and we've also launched a new advent podcast Series where you can hear from folks like Kurt Thompson on Hope and healing and hard times Jamie Smith on inhabiting time Andrew Peterson on Incarnation and many others so hope that you will Avail yourself of that as well finally as promised Kelly the last word is yours thank you this has been a delight to be with you all uh so thanks for for taking the time yeah I think the last word I'd like to encourage us with is a simple reminder that the goal of the Christian Life is not to be superhuman the goal of the Christian life is just to be truly human the the goal that we're about is not something bigger greater grander the god of creation loves what he made and doesn't love the sin that distorts it but he he doesn't hate our bodies he doesn't hate the Earth he the goal of the Christian Life is that we might become truly and fully human lovers of God lovers of neighbor and lovers of the earth and so I think it's actually in our day discipleship needs to be framed in terms of this vision of being truly Humane in an inhumane world so I I hope that's what we're thinking about [Music]

Channel: The Trinity Forum

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Length: 58min 33sec (3513 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 09 2022