Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1148: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War of Wants: Dr. A.J. Swoboda

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

Dr. A.J. Swoboda (Ph.D., Birmingham) is an associate professor of Bible and Theology at Bushnell University and lead mentor for the Doctor of Ministry Program on Spiritual Formation and Soul Care at Friends University. He is the author of many books, including The Gift of Thorns (Zondervan), After Doubt (Brazos), and the award-winning Subversive Sabbath (Brazos). He lives and works on an urban farm with his wife and son in Eugene, Oregon. In this podcast conversation, we talk about the content of his forthcoming book The Gift of Thorns. We discuss the nature of desire, how our desires play into discipleship, how saying "no" to our wants actually increases our joy, the therapeutic benefit of communal confession of sin, the pleasure of self-denial, why we need more slow thinking/writing on tough topics, and how we can become incapacitated over all the books and articles and "things" we feel like we need to know. Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

Hey friends, the Exiles in Babylon conference is right around the corner, April 18th through the 20th in Boise, Idaho. All the information is at theologyintherod.com. If you do want to attend live, and I would highly recommend if you can afford it, if you have the time to come out to Boise, Idaho, attend the conference live. Space is filling up, so you want to register ASAP. We are tackling loads of really important and very controversial topics. We're talking about deconstruction and the gospel. We're going to hear from people who have had a journey of deconstruction. Tell us why they did so. We're going to hear from women, talking about women, power, and abuse in the church.

We're going to talk about LGBTQ people and the church. We're talking about different Christian views of politics. That should be loads of fun, if not really intense. And we just added a very important pre-conference symposium on the theology and politics of Israel-Palestine. And we're going to have different viewpoints represented. Various discussions are going to be engaged in with that really important conversation. So come to Boise. You can ask questions. You can engage the speakers, engage other people who are at the conference. It is loads of fun. It really is, I would say, the highlight of my year. So again, April 18th to the 20th, Boise, Idaho. Check out all the information at theologyintheraw.com.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. And if you are watching on YouTube, you will notice that I have a new studio. Well, I moved to a different corner in my basement and my daughter, Aubrey, helped me with all the new lighting, the background, the cool bookshelf you see over to my right shoulder there. And yeah, I hope you find the aesthetics

a bit more pleasing than the old school, the Aldrin Robb bookcase, which is just over there, but you can't see it. So really excited about the new studio. Got a new mic, got a new soundboard and everything. So hopefully this sounds good for those of you who are watching but are listening to the podcast. My guest today is my good friend and just a guy who I have so much respect for. AJ Sobota has a PhD from Birmingham University.

He's associate professor of the Bible and theology at Bushnell University and a lead mentor for the Doctor of Ministry program on spiritual formation and soul care at Friends University. Author of many books, including his most recent book, which releases the end of February, called The Gift of Thorns, Jesus, the Flesh, and the War of Our Wants. AJ is one of the best Christian writers that I know. He's just super creative, thoughtful, and yeah, I just love it when he publishes a new book. So please welcome back to the show for the fourth time, the one and only Dr. AJ Swoboda. AJ, how are you doing this fine Tuesday morning? Tuesday morning. You know, Preston, any day that begins with me coming into my office to have a conversation with my friend Preston Sprinkle in his new studio is a good day. The mercies of the

Lord are new every day, and that is no less the case today. I'm terrific. It's a joy to see you. It's been all too long. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it, man. Always an honor to talk to you. And yeah, this new studio, just for my audience, we're still working with some of the lighting. And AJ said on his end, it does look like a North Korean concentration camp from his angle. I think this platform

does clean itself up a bit. So I'm hoping that it's a little bit brighter and cheerier and that my face isn't so darn red on the final version. So we're working with minimal space here here and so i'm told i'm supposed to have depth behind me but what you can't see is i'm as far as i can go and my lighting over here is as far as it can go and if i get any closer i'm gonna get a sun pan burn uh so yeah we're working with the light we're working with space issues here in the Theology of Narah's basement. But anyway, again.

Well, just so you know, you, Preston, you have an audience that for years has been praying for your internet connectivity. Because there's probably every fourth episode, we all get to hear you bemoan the oppressive internet of Boise, Idaho. And I have Starlink. I have Starlink. I have Starlink. So Elon apparently is overselling his... Yeah, I just found out. It's actually the uploads. The download, I'm pushing

80 to 150 to 250 megabytes. Is that right? That's the upload that's still around. It can be 8, 10, which I hear, you know, isn't that good? Anyway, welcome to 2024. You're my first actual, so the podcasts that have been coming out in 2024 so far were pre-recorded. I mean, it'd be recorded before back in 2023.

You're my first actual interview in live 2024. What a great way to start 2024. I'm giddy. I'm giddy with anticipation. I really don't know how to control these emotions i have referred to you as one of if not my favorite christian writer what was that the first one i read a glorious start i remember your email that you sent to me yeah it was it was one of those times when I was discouraged reading a book because I was like, I genuinely battled with envy because I think you and I both,

when we read books written by Christians, they might have be good content, maybe great content might be decent writing, but then you go and read like a professional writer and you're like, Oh, but there's, there's a difference. I mean,

we all, most people know how to write read and write right most people but that's worlds apart from being a writer it's like people know how to speak but doesn't mean you can get on stage and give a speech right so you're one of the few people i know that is a christian and a writer but as an actual like if you lost your faith you could make a living i think wow right you're a writer you're you're you're you're you're the content is awesome i love how at the end of each chapter i don't know if you do this in your new books i haven't read it yet um you'll you'll you'll

chum some ideas and thoughts and then in the most creative way like the last paragraph of each chapter somehow you'll you'll you'll return to a thought that you kind of chummed early on or something. I don't, is that, is, is that intentional or do you, does that even, is that some, I think you did that in, I'm pretty sure, Glorious Darkness and The Dusty Ones. I can't remember if that's just a style you always do, or if you'd played with that in just previous books or. Yeah. You know, first of all, your words are beyond flattering. It's weird. I'm just noticing in my own body how uncomfortable I feel hearing you describe my writing this way because largely, I'm actually very believe in myself or the gifts that God has given to me. And so I feel a sense of almost, um, what, what do they call it? Uh, that, that concept where you just, you feel like you're, uh,

you don't live up to the thing that you, you, what, what's that word that they, that they use regarding people who become professors or doctors that they, for a while they experience, um, like they're fraud, they feel fraudulent or. Yeah. No, no, that's exactly right experience. Like they're fraud, they feel fraudulent or they feel. Yeah. No, no, that's exactly right. Like, so I feel I'm honored, but at the same time I'm struck at how awkward that feels.

Yeah. As a reader, you know, as a reader, I love when I read a book where the author has gone out of their way to structure their work in a way in which I leave a chapter feeling as though they not only have set me up for what is coming, but simultaneously have done the work of showing me that they had reasons for bringing up the stuff that they had reasons for bringing up the stuff that they they brought up you know it's a weird it's a weird thing on a sitcom or a or a tv show you have to end an episode you know with some sort of thing that invites the reader the watcher into the next episode so i just learned that frankly from watching uh west wing i mean at the end of the day

pretty much everything i know is is of West Wing. That makes sense. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for offering that. Again, not to keep harping on how awesome you are, but you pay attention to other expressions of art and culture and you either intentionally or just intuitively integrate that into your writing. But that's what a writer does. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, Einstein's famous line of there's nobody that's brilliant. They're just good at hiding their sources. And in a sense, you know, I've just been able to learn from other people that are really, really great. And that's what I get. It's so funny. You describe how you don't receive your own self-critic and felt again the word that we were exploring not my word but what you were harping that was was uh fraudulent i i felt like a fraud during my entire phd program

i was like literally looking around thinking like when are they going to find out that i don't belong yes yep i wouldn't i go to seminars i just like sit there like sweating like what are they gonna check my papers you know and like realize my application was like mixed up with somebody else or something. And then they call you doctor and you have to look behind you to see who's, yeah, it's called, it escaped me. It's called imposter syndrome. We all experienced that. We all experienced it on some level with the gifts that God has given to us.

Yes. Yeah. Thank you, Preston, for your words. Let's dive into your book. The Gift of Thorns. I love the subtitle, Jesus, the flesh and the war of our wants. So even that subtitle, it's like so beautiful and brilliant and provocative. Uh, give us a snapshot and then let's just maybe see if there's a rabbit trail,

rabbit hole you want to dive down into. Um, every book I've ever written and maybe this may be the case for you. Any project I've ever undertaken, um, is rooted in the soil of something from my life that has needed to be fleshed out. One of my favorite parts about writing is that it's, uh, it's a, it's a way to take quiet space and obscurity to think about something before you talk about something.

And I, um, for me, it, it actually, the origin story for this book, um, goes back to,

uh, an epiphany I had when my wife, I hate, so I hate my birthday. Really? Yeah. And it, I don't have many things in my life that I hate. And actually it's not just, I hate my birthday. When I turn my new age, the week after my birthday, it is predictable. my new age, the week after my birthday, it is predictable. It is, I go into about one week after my birthday, I go into a very deep and dark depressive state. Um, every single time,

uh, this last year was one of the worst, um, for a week I was in the darkest dungeon of my soul. Uh, I think I'd, I'd ever been, and I'm talking Preston, not, not, I'm sad, but like, um, there, there have been years where I've, I've experienced suicidal ideation, not wanting to live, not, um, knowing why I'm a human feeling like I'm a failure as a dad feeling like I'm a failure as a husband, um, all these sorts of things. And, um, a couple of years ago, I noticed that when my wife would ask me what I want for my birthday, that question really angered me. I never knew.

I never had an answer. And I certainly did not. This is upon reflection. I certainly did not want to have a birthday party. I don't think I've ever had a birthday party for myself. I've certainly never thrown myself one, but I probably only had two or three in my life. And it goes back to a series of stories from my childhood that when I was a kid, a child of divorced parents and an only child, my parents threw me a one or two birthday parties, but I remember there were not very many kids there. And I remember the shame of feeling like

when there's a party for me, nobody shows up. And so I don't want to have a birthday party because I don't want to see who's not going to come. Okay. So when my, here's, here's the Genesis of this book. Um, when my wife would ask me what I want for my birthday, it dawned on me, I don't know what I want. Um, like I don't, I literally don't know what I want. I don't, I don't know what I want to celebrate. I don't know why we would celebrate. I certainly don't know what a gathering would look like. And that little story, that little silly, seemingly unimportant story opened up a jar for me, opened up a whole world for me of something I frankly just never thought about. And that is that I have no problem being discipled in the way I live. I have

no problem being discipled and taking a day of rest or repentance or living into healthy rhythms as a Christian, daily office prayer. I had never once invited the work, the healing work of Christ and the Holy Spirit to enter into the cavernous realm of my desires. I can control the way I live and what I do, but the desires have remained unchanged. And it opened up a whole world for me. And basically the big idea is this, our desires and our wants and our longings are perhaps the most important thing Jesus desires to disciple in our life. And it is simultaneously one of the most vexing and painful places to invite Jesus to enter into. Because for many of us, we feel as though our desires have no hope. And the things that we want and the things that we want that we don't want.

We've struggled with things for years and struggled with unwanted desires. And we've struggled with temptations that have just never gone away. And we get to a point where we just kind of buy this idea that the work of Christ counts for everything but what I want. This journey for me of writing The Gift of Thorns was a journey of inviting the power of Jesus into my desires. And it was a wild journey. This was the most painful book I've ever written. And it's simultaneously the most scary book I've ever released. Because I know the minute you start talking about desires, you start talking about things that really matter for people. And so, in a way, that's the genesis of the story.

The whole book is about how are we formed in our desires? How are we formed in our wants? How are we formed in our longings? So, can you give us some examples when you say, well, I guess those are good three words, desires, wants, longings. Because as you're talking, my mind kept going to like desire for food or comfort or, you know, these, but it sounds like you're going far beyond that, but it doesn't include that sort of thing. Like when I heard gifts of thorns, I, it made me think of like, I need to do more like ice baths, you know, or intermittent fasting. I'm supportive of ice baths, but my book says little about the topic.

Yeah. Let me give you, let me give you, let me give you an example. Um, let me give you an example of the kind of thing that I'm talking about. Um, this was, this was four years ago and this is, I've shared this story in a couple of environments, but I don't think I've shared it in a, in a place like this about four years ago, after my wife and I moved from Portland, we'd planted a church before I entered into academic stuff and being a teacher and kind of a public thinker. We pastored. And when we stepped down from that and moved to Eugene, I had this very clear sense that the Lord Jesus wanted me to take

a year and not preach. Now that was, and not do any public speaking. That was a huge deal for me because one of my favorite things to do is I love to preach and I love to speak. It's one of my favorite things to do. I love being in a room and seeing people encounter God because I was able to share something. I love them. It's one of my favorite things in life. And it made no sense. A year. A year. When your life is being a public speaker or a preacher, that affects the bottom line. It affects how you structure your budget and your family. It was a really big homiletical fast.

It was a big speaking fast. And what I discovered during that time was that for a lot of my soul, I did not love preaching because I loved preaching. And I didn't love speaking because I loved to communicate what God was saying. There were some deep desires in me that Jesus needed to get his hands on. Namely, the desire to be wanted, the desire to be needed, the desire to be adored, the desire to be looked up to, and that those particular desires, which were rooted in some childhood experiences of feeling like I was not being seen, particularly by my father, that essentially I had been using the pulpit and my speaking ministry as a way to salve deep fatherhood wounds. And I could not have seen that

had it not been for taking a year off. Usually fasts reveal something of the structure of your heart. They reveal something of the things that you want. When you stop doing something, you're all of a sudden realizing the things that you desire. And so in a way, that's a great example of the kind of thing I'm talking about, is that most of our desires reveal something of a deeper nature. It was Richard Keyes who wrote a book about the idols of the heart. Calvin talked about the heart is the idol factory, right? This idea that our heart has a way of making idols out of everything. And we constantly need to get at what are the things that motivate us and drive us and make us who we are. And many of those desires are connected to childhood stories.

One of my aspects of this book was dealing with my own sexuality and wrestling with some stories from my childhood that I had never addressed. I had just sort of stuck them under a carpet and pretended like Jesus would deal with them and they would go away, as though the minute I believed in Jesus, all this stuff just sort of ended. And that didn't happen for me. Part of being a Christian for me was allowing God to get under the carpet and finally get into those stories. And what I discovered was that Jesus not only can heal us in the present, he can actually heal us retroactively, that he can go back in our story and meet us in the past. He is the alpha, the omega, he's the beginning and the end. And he was there at the beginning for me and the God. So wrestling with my own sexuality as a, as a, as a man was allowing Jesus into my desires. And that's scary stuff, man. Scary stuff. Can you give us some more details there that

you share in your book? I mean, I want to go beyond what you share in the book, but because yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, um, a number of experiences as a child that were unchosen, a number of things that happened to me, sort of traumatic sexual experiences that put on me at a very young age, a whole variety of pressures, temptations, identities that were not words that god was speaking over me and i i actually feel like for the sake of the conversation it's not helpful to go into particular detail because i want to keep it general for the fact that every single person i suspect that's listening to this has some sort of story that goes back to their earliest years in which their identity and their story kind of collide. But essentially, yeah, last December, so this is not this December, but last December, I went for three days on a retreat with my therapist to get into my story. I was sort of tired of not getting into my story. I was just evading it, running away from it. And I would say the most, one of the most important

decisions I've ever made in my life is setting, getting that phone number and setting up that three-day session. And I met for three days and got into my story. And what I found was that, do you remember when Jesus says, let the, let the children come to me? We always assume that means like literal physical children. And I think that means that's part of it. But we often don't let the little child that is our sort of childhood self come to Jesus. And I had never let the little child come to Jesus. I had never let that little kid with those experiences come to Jesus and sit on his lap and, and to allow him to touch my heart and my mind. And what I found is that Jesus invites all of us to let those little, that little child in us to come to Jesus. And that is the journey of healing. That's the journey of

the work of Christ. Yeah. So I think that's probably the best. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think, I'm curious, could you have healed well without like professional therapists? I'm a huge fan of therapy. If you asked me five years ago, I would have said, Oh, I guess if you're really messed up, then, you know, find a therapist. Now I'm like, I don't know how, I don't know how anybody raises kids without like a full solid therapist, you know? Yeah. You know, let me be, let me say up front just to,

just to give a, not a trigger warning, but just a word to the therapists that are listening to this. Um, I want to share something that could be interpreted as though it is like anti-therapist and it's not in any way, shape or form. Um, I need you to know I have a therapist. I wouldn't be sitting here. If it weren't for my therapist and I pay my therapist very well. So I'm the first believer in therapy. Where does therapy come from? You know, where does the work of therapy come from? There's actually been a number of people who have written about this idea, and most histories of therapy and counseling actually kind of show that the work of the need for therapy arose directly as a response to the Protestant Reformation.

and the Reformation took over. There was one aspect of Catholic practice that was vehemently rejected, although Luther did not. He still believed it needed to be connected, committed, continued, but it didn't. And that is the practice of confession, of going to a priest and naming your sin. And of course, when the Protestants stopped doing this, essentially what happened is it left a void. There was no longer a place to go and name your sins to somebody who could offer you some sort of absolution or something like that. I'm not getting, I'm just saying that's what I believe confession should be. But when you go read 1 John 1, where John says, if you confess your sin, he's faithful and just to purify you from all righteousness. That is confession to God, right? When we confess to God, we are forgiven. There's another kind of confession in James,

in which James says, when you confess your sins to one another, you will be healed. And he does not say you'll be forgiven. He says, you'll be healed. James 5. James 5. So here's what's happened is most Protestants, we do 1 John 1, 9, we experience forgiveness, but we don't do James 5. And so we don't experience healing. we experience forgiveness, but we don't do James 5. And so we don't experience healing. And so we are forgiven, but not healed. And I think, I think that ultimately in many respects, the therapist world has had to pick up the slack because in many Christian communities, there is no way to name your sin and find healing in those stories.

It makes me think, first of all, I probably gained a few Catholic followers for that little tidbit. So thank you for that, AJ. It makes me think something I've often said, a lot of people have said this, that seminaries, this is going to sound too harsh, but you're a seminary professor. So I think you'll agree that seminaries exist

because the church isn't doing what it should be doing, could be doing like, like if, if theological. It's had to make up, it's had to make up for something. Yeah. I mean, in a sense that the, this, we can do that podcast or even the I run a nonprofit and it's like, I would love to, I would love to be out of work. We're not a single church is calling us because they're already resourcing their congregation on how to, you know parents love their lgbtq kids and and helping leaders

understand theology of sexuality i mean like i in a sense i i would love to work to not get another phone call because churches are doing it you know but like i you know i don't even say that in a bad way like i um i yeah a lot of non yeah non-profits, Christian organizations that aren't specifically local churches. Is it a terrible world we live in that they exist because they're filling voids that the church isn't filling? So it's not even really like a negative statement. It's just kind of an acknowledgement. In no way, shape, or form. Yeah, that could come across as a negative statement about the church.

And I simultaneously don't want it to come across as a negative statement about the church. And I simultaneously don't want it to come across as a negative statement about therapists, because there have been some folks who have called the sort of therapist world, the secular priests of society that they have had to make up for the priestly role that somebody had. But when you look at the healing power of confession, when you look at, for example, John Wesley's ministry, how did he, why did, why did the Methodist movement in its earlier years expand and grow as fast as it did? Cause he would go into cities and he would start communities where you would gather and confess your sins to one another. Wow. And it exploded. It exploded. I think if a church, if a community can, could find a way to create confessional

communities right now, and that Kurt Thompson right now, that's what his whole thing really is around developing confessional communities. If we develop confessional communities right now. And that Kurt Thompson right now, that's what his whole thing is around developing confessional communities. If we develop confessional communities, the healing that comes from that. So you asked me about therapy. I have learned in my later years, I'm 42. I feel like I'm starting to do my swan dive into my midlife crisis. I am just now beginning to recognize the power of having a safe community of small people whom I can tell everything to and that they know that the nooks and crannies of my deepest desires and even the power of naming those desires is part of the healing process. If I can simply name it and bring it into the light, so much of its power is deflated. Unfortunately,

what happens when we don't have a place to name our desires, we find a place for those desires to find their outlet. And often we find them on the internet or in social media, which for some people is the only place where they can actually tap into the kinds of things that they're, they're wrestling with, but man, the power. Yeah. So the answer is good night. Our therapist, so important to us, but more importantly than that is we all were made by God to need a community to confess. You know, I just had a, well, John Mark Homer on the podcast. It's weird. Cause I recorded it back in November. It released... It will have released

before this conversation is released, so the chronologies are all whacked. Anyway, listeners will have probably heard that. But he said a lot of the same stuff. He's highly prioritized having a small group of people where he's... He was talking about opening up his bank account. I think he even said that he's his small group of committed disciple, disciplers, disciples.

Ensure their finances. Yeah. Like they don't, if he makes a purchase more than a thousand dollars, he won't do it unless he gets approval from other people that have access to us, you know?

And I was struggling with that a little bit. Maybe I'm more of an introvert or maybe I don't have that kind of type of community around me here. access to us you know and and i and i i was struggling with that a little bit maybe i'm more of an introvert or maybe i don't have that kind of type of community around me here um so part of it was like ah that'd be so awesome but that'd be super scary like would i be willing to do that but his response was i'm so scared of getting complacent or however he worded it. Like I so know myself that if I don't have this, I will drift away. Like I won't live the radical Christian life that I know is where joy is found, where prosperity is found, where true living is found.

And the only, I know objectively that this is the best way to do it. Is it hard? Oh, heck yeah, it's hard. Is it hard? Absolutely. You know, but like, so I read that's, that's, I'm hearing you say the kind of same thing, emphasizing confession is a big component of that. Yeah. Can I, can I actually go to what is, I think, an equally important part of this

conversation around desire, around the fact that, you know, we, we live in this kind of new, new moment, as you're keenly aware, we live in this new moment where we are given freedom to pretty much do whatever we desire, as long as it doesn't break the law. So what's that Richard Rorty line where he says he's a postmodern philosopher who says in the postmodern world, truth is whatever your colleagues let you get away with. That's pretty much where we're at is we're at this place where, um, it's okay. As long as, uh, as long as the laws and the rules, um, say it's okay, which is actually a very terrifying society because we're, we're one

amendment away from, you know, very dangerous stuff. I mean, whatever, all that to say, there's this little chapter, this little tiny chapter in a book that Dallas Willard wrote. It's obscure. I actually have never heard anybody quote this chapter before. I'm sure other people have. But it's this obscure chapter called Nietzsche versus Jesus Christ. The Dallas Willard wrote in a place. How is the chapter of that title not quoted? Isn't that great? Oh my goodness. Great. Such a great chapter. And in the book, he outlines basically what Nietzsche accomplished, Friedrich Nietzsche accomplished, and what has come as a result of the revolutions that came about. And the basic idea is this, is that through a series of major philosophical turns and shifts in the 1800s and 1900s, we have arrived at this place where we no longer have a difference between the will and desire.

So basically, we see one's will, what they're supposed to do, what the right thing is, the good thing is, and desire are now the same thing. So the will is what you want. And that's American ideology right there. You do you. I mean, it's the whole concept of like, your desire is your will. Your desire means you must do that thing. So he has this section in there about how that leads to a world where we no longer know how to desire. Because when you have every possibility open to you, the human heart cannot handle infinite desires. it all of a sudden stops desiring. You know, this is called choice paralysis. When you go to the grocery store and have a thousand cereals to choose from, and you walk the aisle for an hour trying to find the cereal that's going to bring joy to your week, you can't do it. I mean, I have students in my classroom that experience this all the time,

cannot make a single decision because every decision is a possibility. That when everything is possible, it leads to paralysis. And what he says is, Willard says in Nietzsche versus Jesus Christ, is that we live in a secular world where because all desires are now permittable, we now no longer have the capacity to desire because we don't know what to desire. Let me just read this to you. This is direct from his article, Nietzsche versus Jesus Christ. He says, this is the new prison. This is how the prison works. Someone says, what shall I do? And we reply, we reply, well, do what you want. And the honest person says, well, I don't know what I want. And Willard says, what do you want? What do you really want? Can you see how this Nietzsche perspective on freedom traps us? Because now we don't know what we want, and in this structure, because as living beings we have to act, desire as a reasonable human capacity defaults into

impulse. Curiously enough, we wind up in a world where we desire to desire we live in a viagra society it is a society that is seeking to desire to desire and addiction in its many forms is an attempt to escape the loneliness that is enforced by a will uprooted from a world of truth and reality okay a viagra society. When was that written? Yeah, it was Viagra. So I- This was written. Yeah, I want to say 1999.

It's one of his kind of, again, it's in an edited volume that he wrote. But that phrase, a Viagra society, we're a society that is seeking to arouse arousal because we don't know how to desire. How do we solve that? And how does loving Jesus and knowing God actually arouse godly desire? That Christians should be the most desirous people in the world. Desire, of course, in the New Testament has a pretty interesting storyline. The same word for desire, epithumia, can be very, very, very negative. It can be lust, you know, lusting for things that are not good, but it can simultaneously be the same word for longing. When Paul says, I long to come and be with you. When Jesus says, I long to go celebrate

Passover. The same word epithumia, lust, can be the same word as desire, as longing. And so, Jesus wants to lead us into, take that desire that God created us to have and nurture it in such a way that we don't need to live with a spiritual Viagra, right? We get to lean into the desires of God. This episode is sponsored by Biblingo. Biblingo is an incredibly effective and efficient way to actually learn the biblical languages of Greek and Hebrew.

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I mean, the kind of physical and the intellectual. Let me tease these out a little bit. I'd love to hear your thoughts. intellectual let me tease these out a little bit i'd love to hear your thoughts the physical is just how most people living in america that are lower middle class and above just have access like you said a grocery store like a refrigerator bursting with food a cupboard with cans i mean it's just like that's just that's just humanly unheard of in the history of the world not just you can satisfy the second you feel a hunger pain instantly but with a a wide range of options like that that's just that's just crazy i've been um trying to integrate intermittent fasting uh so going 16 hours without eating so like like right

now i'm on our while or something. And the next four hours, I, I'm, I'm, I'm hurting. Like, I'm like, I've gone 12 hours without eating and I'm drinking my coffee black right now. And I, I like cream in my coffee and I'm just like, and it's like, I'm so weak. Yes. That what was just the normal way humans live, would go a day you know i don't know hunter gatherer days whatever you know they you know they go hunter meal and you know have one meal every couple days i don't know however that worked but like just to go just doing something so depriving yourself of such not even depriving just delaying it just by a couple hours you know but like the satisfaction

you get when you do that food tastes better drink tastes better just you know that kind of delayed gratification right i have been doing ice baths which i i don't know anybody that hates cold water more than i do it is four minutes of absolute hell i have to i mean i'm gonna confess i have to listen i listen to i've got a playlist that has metallica uh lip biscuit and a few other kind of punk rock you know and i just sit there and i headbang for four minutes in the ice bath i won't tell you what comes out of my mouth when i'm when i'm sitting but like but that's wise that's wise let's keep that keep that quiet i'm gonna lose some followers, but I get some followers. But then the reward you get,

like they say it's hard to feel depressed after an ice bath because you're just flooded with all these endorphins. Like, I didn't know. It's like you come out and you feel like you can conquer the world. It's crazy.

All that they say, I think it's just super mundane, just like just a little bit of delayed gratification, a little bit of resisting comfort, a little bit of delayed gratification, a little bit of resisting comfort, a little bit of embracing the thorns, you know, just like almost like an artificial thorn of like an ice,

you know, but like, it just, it just informs us that God has designed humanity to live a more pleasurable life when it's not just indulging in every pleasure sensor that is satisfying every kind of longing for some kind of pleasure sensor that is satisfying every kind of longing for some kind of pleasure. So that's the kind of artificial, I'll be quicker with this next one. For me, what I've been struggling with recently, you asked me offline how I'm doing.

This is a minor part of some struggle in my life, but it's so real as a consumer of information. I just feel overwhelmed with all the books and pieces of information I feel like I have to consume. Two podcasts a week, I feel like I need to be an expert in that field. I've been doing, as many people know, a ton of reading and listening on the Israel-Palestine conflict, diving into women in ministry stuff and how many books are on there. And then you get a flood of pushbacks. You need to read this, you need to read that, you need to read this article. I just feel like this overwhelming, almost debilitating sense of there's so much information out there that I feel like I need to consume and want to consume. And I just feel depleted. My book list is just like growing with all these different topics. And it's like,

I'll start to read this and I need to read this and another book in the mail and they did that. And I just get defeated. You feel like you're a consumer of it it is what i'm experiencing especially that the first part i think it's kind of self-evident like yeah our physical desires we need to discipline those this this information world we live in that's exacerbated with the internet and social media and everything and and and i'm just wrestling with that i do Yeah, would love to hear your thoughts. Yeah, two responses. And thank you for your own, how healing it must be to be in this confessing community today, Preston,

to have a space outside of your cold bath to be able to speak what's going on in your life or with you. Yeah, two immediate things come to mind. A really important dynamic to the conversation about desire is revisiting some of the core ideas that St. Augustine had in the fourth century around what he called ordering of loves, the ordering of desire. And that is learning that this is the lifelong journey of learning to love the right things the most and the least things the less. When I look at my book list, here's a struggle I have, is that I give the same amount of weight because of that book list. I give the same amount of weight to reading N.T. Wright and C.S. Lewis to books that are being written today. The idea that I

would wait, I'm just saying, it is important for me to deal with first the deepest thinkers. I need to deal with, I want to deal with N.T. Wright before I deal with most of the books at the local Christian bookstore. And I'm saying that as a publisher, a person who writes books. So I'm being critical of myself here. So the ordering of love says you cannot do everything. And actually the myth of getting to do everything is the heart of the deception of the serpent to the woman in the Garden of Eden, who was told you can eat from every tree but one. There were boundaries. And the serpent says, no, you should have more. The heart of the deception of the man and the woman in the garden was the deception of universal, unbound, unrestrained, everything is yours.

And the minute we believe we can do everything, we can have everything, it kills us. It is actually critical that we learn restraint of desire to say, I don't get everything, and I shouldn't have everything. And it's a gift to be limited and finite. So example of this, my exercise pattern probably is a little lighter than yours. I go, I walk. That's when I listen to my podcasts and pray and whatnot. And when I walk in my neighborhood, there are these houses in which the neighbors always keep their garage door up. And I will tell you right now, the greatest point of envy in my life of anything I struggle with more than I struggle with other writers or other thinkers is garage envy because everybody else's

garage is totally upkept, perfect, ordered. And I come back to my house and I'm like, I see it all. And I come back, where does that come? Garage envy. I don't know where this comes from. And then all of a sudden I come home and I've got an awesome 12 year old son at home who wants to play ping pong with me. And I'm in a season of life where I can't make my garage do what I want it to do. So I've actually had to make a choice. I want to do. So I've actually had to make a choice. Do I want a son who experiences love or do I want a sanctified garage? And, and actually a point of discipleship for me is to recognize, embrace the broken garage and play ping pong. I cannot do it all. Yeah. I struggle with the exact same thing. I mean, you even, if, when you start opening up these doors of your life,

you realize that this battle is everywhere, right? Yeah. Yep. Yep. On the, you, you brought up as well,

the physical stuff, which you talked about, Hey, you can get a pizza at any moment. Um, when you go back to Genesis one and two, um, there is a very distinct difference in the garden story.

There's a very distinct difference between how God creates the animals and how God creates the humans. Now, as you have, I've heard people say this, you know, the man was created first before the woman. So the man is more important. And if you're going to follow that logic, you better be ready to say that the jellyfish is more important than the woman. So the man is more important. And if you're going to follow that logic, you better be ready to say that the jellyfish is more important than the man because they were made before the humans were. So you got, don't follow that kind of uncritical kind of thinking that's not accurate at all. But when you look at the way God created the humans and God created the animals, there's one distinct difference between the two, because when God created the animals,

when God created the animals, he created them synchronously at the same time. He created them in pairs at the same exact time. And yet, when you look at humans, God did not create the humans synchronously. He created them asynchronously. He created the man first and then the woman. And the differences in the animals, they're created at the same time. Humans are created at different times. There was a thinker, Hans Urs von Balthasar, who wrote a book called Man in History, who has a paragraph where he makes the case that that is one of the core distinctions of the Imago Dei, where he makes the case that that is one of the core distinctions of the Imago Dei is that human beings are the one animal or the one creature God has

made that both has desire. And by the way, desire animals have desire. If you've ever seen a dog eat, you don't know what desire is. Humans are the only creatures God has made, made who simultaneously have the power for desire and the call to desire and the call to wait. And that the capacity for waiting for something

is a unique human attribute that we were made to wait. Why is Jesus so long in coming back? We are waiting. What is God doing in the waiting? He is making us. Matthew 28 ends with Jesus saying, go into the whole world and preach. And the next chapter, Acts 1, Jesus says, wait. Apparently, part of the mission of God is waiting. Apparently part of the mission of God is waiting. And we've lived in a world that has exported all waiting. And it has created a world of complete dissatisfaction because when you no longer have to wait, you no longer find joy in the things that you receive. That's so good.

That's so good, man. And waiting, it seems theologically is always intertwined with faith, right? Waiting cultivates waiting in faith, patience and faith kind of go hand in hand, like they interact with each other. Again, I would imagine you feel probably a similar way. Again, the intellectual side of me, I feel this very strongly, you know, especially, you know, as a writer of books, what happens when you, you know, you get an idea, you drop a proposal, you he listens to pretty much

every episode. So this is the I get it. They have to have a deadline. They have to plan so it's not as it is when it is. As a writer, you see that deadline looks a little bit like, okay, yeah, I can probably make that. And then

life fills up, a couple rounds of COVID, family stuff, another project that you signed on to, whatever. And all of a sudden, you know, you're three months out and you're like, there's no way I could do justice to this topic and meet that deadline. Yes, that's exactly right. And I've tried over the last few years, especially the last year, there's a, I haven't even read the book, but Eugene Peterson, The Long Obedience in the Same Direction. I just love that phrase, but I've, I've tried to step back from the rush of getting stuff out there and really trying to get back to kind of pre-internet phase of, yeah, this may take me a few years to really think through or, or even like, um,

two examples in the podcast. Do you remember, do you remember way back, you know, 10 months ago when Josh Butler wrote an article for TGC and it blew up? Yeah, me too. Me too. We talked extensively about it. I just brought this up on a more recent podcast as well. But like, the whole thing blew up. You know, everything. It just, you know, if you went on Twitter, it would just be chaotic, right? And I didn't, it took me like a month to respond, say anything, you know, and I was getting, you know, because I endorsed the book. And people sounded out, you know, like, what do you think?

What do you think? I'm like, I don't know. I'm thinking through it right now. I'm really thinking through, I'm going back, I'm reading the article, I'm talking to Josh and not everybody has access to Josh, but I mean, thinking through it, talking to other people, listening, listening. So like slowly forming kind of my response. And when I say slow, it was like a month. That's like nothing, you know? But I remember standing back and saying to wait a month to really that's like nothing you know but i remember standing back and saying to wait a month to really think through and how to respond to something that that's just nothing

even that's short but the fact that i didn't respond within a couple hours or a day you know people were like what's going on where you're out on this and by the time i responded other people moved on the next thing you know um it's it's hard because it's like you're we're swimming in a river that's just moving really fast and to try to grab onto a rock and say hold on so i'm gonna slow down here a little bit and really try to navigate this it's just it's so counterintuitive in the world we're living in but i feel like it's so needed it's so healthy for my soul i get asked in my women in ministry, you know? So where are you at?

Didn't you get away for a couple of months and figure out, I'm like, yeah, I'm still thinking through the word kephale and what that means, you know? And it might be another year till I, you know, like how long did it take the lexicographers to know what this word means? I mean, yeah, anyway, I'm, all that to say,

I'm trying to be more vigilant at being a more patient thinker, researcher, writer. And it's so incredibly hard. It's just, you go against the whole intellectual evangelical stream that we're living in. Do you, again, I would love to hear. Yeah, the system, the system rewards, the system rewards fast responses. I will never forget that hilarious story of when Bono reached out to Eugene Peterson to meet, and Peterson didn't know who Bono was. He just had no clue whatsoever.

And it wasn't a ploy. He actually didn't know who the guy was. He was ignorant. You've had a guest on who talked about that story. When I heard that there was something prophetic about that ignorance. There was something prophetic in our culture around that ignorance that I gravitate towards in my soul that I don't have that I want that I'm so wildly. There's another interview that Peterson does where he'm so wildly, there's another interview, uh, that Peterson does where he he's asked about, um, he was asked, I think Rick McKinley, my friend was, was interviewing him and, uh, some, somebody was interviewing Peterson and, and, and he

was, was asked, you know, why don't you do these other things over here? Why don't you speak more when he, and he goes, well, cause, cause you know, I got, I got a deal. I'm reading Jeremiah and they go, yeah, but you got these opportunities. He goes, yeah, but it's Jeremiah. You know, I've got to, I got to, it's like, that was his heart. He actually, at the end of the day, his heart had been structured around desiring God at his deepest core.

And I hear that and it sounds like only something somebody from a previous generation would do, but I want that. I want that holy ignorance of the ways of the world to such a degree that, you know, my friend, I never want to come into a podcast to plug a podcast. My friend Nijay Gupta and I have a podcast called Slow Theology. And the whole premise of the podcast is that our theological reflection should be the thing that we take the slowest to do, that we do a meditative approach towards theology. We've got to remember in the ancient world when churches would write Paul a letter, they'd be like, hey, Paul, you know, tell us about the Trinity. Tell us about the Lord's Supper. Tell us about, you know, what we're supposed to do with the gospel. We got people sleeping with each other.

What do you want us to do? When people would write Paul those letters or the letters that were written in the New Testament, all 13 Paul's letters, it would have taken a year or two years for those letters to show up. And what that means is in a world of immediacy where we can find theological clarity immediately. We no longer have to do the work of prayer. They would have had to pray for two years and I'm pro podcast, but that is one of the downsides to podcast is it creates immediate reflection where we no longer have to take hard things and go deep with them for a long period of time because we can find

immediate answers immediately. And in many respects um the podcast world is a blessing but it can also be very dangerous it's a little bit of both i've been i think about this all the time i we're we're i mean i feel like we're in the eye of the storm that's not the best analogy but like podcasting has blown up in the last few years right and i just we're not going to know the sociological or even spiritual impact and role it plays until for a while, right? It's almost like, you know, printing press was invented, what, 1450? It's almost like we're living in like 1455, you know? Like, what impact did literacy rates have on history of human civilization? They didn't really know what the lasting impact of 1455 you

know um if i hope i got those dates right i know it's a ballpark but um yeah no i i uh i've had a few conversations with fellow podcasters like what is it uh i've been thinking more specifically what is an ecclesiology of podcast what role does podcasting play in the in the role of the rhythm of the church because right now i feel like largely it's in comp can be in competition or simply at the podcast is posting sermons from the church, whatever. But I would love to see some more thought go into how can podcasting be more ecclesiologically helpful and beneficial. And I don't know what that, you know, what that looks like.

One of the, one of the interesting things that I've noticed about, um, and I have a theory about it. One of the interesting things I've noticed about the difference between how Protestants and Catholics responded to COVID, uh, is that after COVID sort of began to settle down, um, Protestants really struggled, evangelicals in particular, really struggled to get people back to church um and it's been a very slow return for a lot of communities yet when you talk to catholics they did not have that struggle at all wow there was no keep going well there was there was no like convincing people to come back and the reason i here's my theory on why that's the case

is that the protestant tradition has such a high value of the spoken word as the central part of the service that during COVID they figured out you can get that elsewhere. But in the Catholic tradition, the central moment in the service is the sacrament of Eucharist. And you can't replace that. That is irreplaceable. And you can't replace that. That is irreplaceable. And I think simply on an evangelical level, I think we've essentially displaced the church gathering because we can find the highest thing in better preachers or better communicators. And Catholics, to be frank, I think the Catholics are onto something. Well, and I mean, the whole sacred space, smells, incense.

I mean, Catholic or even Eastern traditions, it's a whole body experience. A buddy of mine who converted to Eastern Orthodoxy pointed this out. In Protestant evangelicalism, it's basically you have one sense that's being your ears or whatever. You go into a more Eastern context and your whole body is experiencing community and worship and liturgy and everything. Yep. Smell. During COVID, a family member of mine who's been in AA for years told me that for a couple of weeks when COVID started, AA continued to do meetings over Zoom. And so for a little bit, they kept doing it, but they figured out that you can't do AA meetings over Zoom because there's one thing you can't do with the drunk you can't smell and the only way

to know if somebody's being truthful is to be in the room with them and smell them and it's not a mistake that that the smell matters and i would say if it if it doesn't smell is is it a sacred space again not diminishing the importance of podcasts. You have one. I have one. But there's something lost when we can't smell. And COVID, of course, was the loss of smell. So we've become a world that is almost like sort of, yeah, metaphorically, we've become a smellless world. Even the story of Jesus is all about smell. He's born in a barn with animals.

It would have stunk like, it would have stunk so bad. When he dies on the cross, what happened just a few days earlier? He's anointed with frankincense. And in that world, you do not shower. He is born into a world that smells like death. And he leaves the world smelling like glory. They just come up with that i mean the whole smell we are the church is the aroma of christ so you don't have smell what do you have that's crazy man i a theology of smell yeah but why do you got great i mean gosh i haven't

chased out so many tangents we're just here's thing. My friend Matthew Sleet told me this. He's a doctor. Matthew Sleet told me this. Smell, your smell, your nose goes right by the part of your brain. So the air that goes in goes right by the part of your brain. So this is from a doctor. I'm not making this. It goes right by the part of the brain where your memories are held, which is why you can be walking down the street and smell this weird thing.

And all of a sudden, you're back in second grade classroom. Oh, my gosh. So your smells and your memories are held, which is why you can be walking down the street and smell this weird thing. And all of a sudden you're back in second grade classroom. So your smells and your memories are connected. And I think that we were made, what would the garden of Eden have smelled like? I think every human being has in their core memory, a smell of the garden. And we are all longing for it. We're chasing that smell. We know that smell. And every once in a while we smell it and we go like, wait, I remember, C.S. Lewis talked about this, the longing for Eden, that we were made with that longing. And from time to time we get that smell. And that is God's, the memories of of god we were made for that you do it um yeah is that on this smell thing so i started riding a motorcycle nine ten years ago ten years it's been that long

um and i immediately recognize when you're driving around town in a motorcycle you smell so many different things like i started riding in simi valley where you're it's a blend of neighborhoods but then sometimes you go go out into the foothills and it's kind of deserty and stuff. And the temperature changes, like you go into a little valley and all of a sudden it gets kind of colder and you go out into a field and you smell the field smell or whatever. And then, you know, you go buy a burger joint, you know, you just smell life. I remember a buddy of mine, Andrew Steinfeld, who got me into riding my harley um uh said yeah he's just like i can't stand riding in cars because he can't smell anything it's crazy yeah

yeah see a dog to watch a dog put its head out the window yeah and and they're just like because dogs are all smell i mean they're just like it's like a euphoric yeah it's like being on, on ecstasy and just like taking it all in. I mean, yeah, we are, we are smelling, we are smelling creatures. Um, and, and, and we were, we were made to smell and there's a reason church smell is what it is. The church should church to smell. Golly. AJ, I got to run and, uh, I've taken you up to about an hour. But again, your book, tell me the gift of thorns, Jesus, the flesh and the war of our ones. It comes out February 20th. Did I get that right?

End of February. Yep. And it's obviously on pre-order right now. Yeah. Thank you for allowing me to share about it. And it's a book that I long to see in the hands of people who have walked through it. Why I rarely, if ever, do this, recommend books I haven't read. But because I know you and I've read almost all the other books, I'm going to go ahead and just recommend this as worthy to be read without having read any of it.

But AJ, thank you so much for the work you do. It's just an honor and pleasure. You're one of the most encouraging people I know. So, yeah, keep up the great work. Preston, your ministry and your work is transforming lives. And you are a blessing to so many. Keep up the work you do, please. Thank you, bro.

Appreciate it. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.