I recently got this comment on a spiritual formation-related Substack note:

It’s bizarre to me that when spiritual growth is talked about, so many people feel the need to give this caveat every single time: “We want to pray, but not because we’re saved by works” “It’s good to read the Bible, not that it saves us though by any means,” “We should live like Jesus, but it’s not to earn God’s favor”… like they can’t get past that or they’re afraid of being called a heretic…

When I was baptized and had to give my 15-second summary of the gospel, I mentioned that we have to believe in Jesus as our salvation and my elder stopped me and said, “Not because we’re earning it though, right?!” I was quite taken aback that even the language of choosing to follow Jesus was viewed as a no-no because there’s too much impetus on my own action. Needless to say, I felt quite stunted after that, because it felt like everyone was constantly going back to the “I’m a terrible sinner” drawing board and never growing.1

This experience is enormously common. “Works righteousness,” “striving,” or giving the impression that holiness involves expending effort is the boogeyman for many churches.

It’s also the source of loads of generational tension. Mainly because it grates against the way lots of young people at your church are catching an interest in spiritual formation—practices and paradigms that seem chock-full of self-effort.2

Some dismiss this interest as a fad—like a common cold that we just have to wait out. But it’s not a virus or bacteria or naïve trend. It’s an essential organ of Christian life.3

And yes, the term “spiritual formation” doesn’t really play much of a role in Christian history, but the reason why actually works in its own favor: we didn’t develop a term for it because we didn’t need one.4 In the same way the early church didn’t need to dream up a specialized term for breathing, they also didn’t need one for formation.5 They actively beheld the Lord and received transformation from His Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18);6 it’s just a give-in—a natural connotation of committing to the whole Way of Jesus thing.7

Which means: all the talk about spiritual formation nowadays is certifiably not just a fad; people are just trying to resurrect something that’s been buried under three quarters of a century worth of paranoia about “works righteousness.”8

So, thesis: the young people at your church interested in spiritual formation aren’t just backpacking off a soon-to-expire trend. They’re simply paying attention to an impulse that should lie within all of us: the craving for virtue, wholeness, and Spirit-driven radiance. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of holiness.

In that sense, the necessary duty for theologians, pastors, and well-wishers is to put up healthy guardrails to tone down the negative side effects that come along with formation (and there are plenty of negative side-effects).

To clarify up front: supporting formation doesn’t mean that we have to get really into Practicing the Way or John Mark Comer or Tyler Staton or Dallas Willard.9 But it does mean that your community, regardless of the source materials you affirm, should come up with some working theology for transformation that goes beyond “Just trust God.”10

Let’s start with a

thought experiment.

Imagine discovering a papyrus from the 1st century that’s assumed to be from an early Christian writer. It contains the following phrases:

• Do you not abide by the law?

• Through the law they’ll be judged.

• It’s not the hearers of the God’s rules who are right with God, but those who keep the rules.

• The one who loves another has fulfilled the law.

• Do we undo the law by trusting in God? By no means!

• My opponents don’t care that much about God’s rules.

• We’re not saved by faith alone but by the works we do!11

Now, what kind of person would’ve written this? We’d probably assume they were some kind of Jewish legalist12—someone so caught up in the Mosaic Law that they were struggling to internalize God’s grace.

But as many of you already guessed, NT writers like Paul and James penned all these phrases.

If we compare the NT writings to how churches talk today, a disproportion becomes pretty clear: we’re much more careful to call out works righteousness or legalism than they were. Legalism is one of our first concerns, but it rarely shows up in Paul’s letters or Jesus’ teachings.13

But of course: Paul and Jesus definitely weren’t legalists. They call out asceticism (extreme, over-the-top self-discipline) and those who make a big fuss over their own good deeds or fasting or festival regulations (Matt. 7:22-23; Gal. 1:6-7; Col. 2:16-19; Phil. 3:3-11).

Yet in these cases, they’re correcting the negative side effects of spiritual practices; they’re not abolishing them. Something’s abuse doesn’t nullify its use.

In fact, Jesus even expects “works” like giving to the needy, prayer, and fasting (Matt. 6:1-19). He says we should do good works because they’re just plain good for the world around us (Matt. 5:16).

The difference is in the prescription: whereas Pharisees assign practices to earn God’s favor (Luke 18:9-14), Jesus anticipates spiritual practices because we’ve already earned God’s favor. Because, ya know: we’re not saved by good works but for good works (Eph. 2:8-10).

And so if that’s our reality, then I’d wager that a lot of the paranoia about spiritual formation stems from mixups we’ve made of justification, salvation, and sanctification:

Justification Isn’t Earnable; Salvation Isn’t Just Conversion; Sanctification Isn’t Optional

Let’s start with the basics: justification14 isn’t something human effort can earn.

It comes by grace through faith; there’s no getting around that.

But salvation15 is an umbrella term for the ongoing process of God reconciling us to Himself, applying His Kingdom here and now, and the assurance of entering into His glory and rest.

Again: not something we earn.16

But mixing up justification (basically, conversion) with salvation is a major no-no.17 It metastasizes a cancer in our formation—vetoing the beauty of ongoing participation and forward momentum; instead of seeing justification as initiating a journey of glorifying God and enjoying Him forever—becoming a person of love joy and peace who’s radiantly alive in Jesus—we start assuming that the process is basically over.

When we minimize salvation to God just putting a “You’re saved” barcode on our souls, we miss out on the healing that comes from participating in God’s kingdom. The goal downgrades to just waiting until post-mortem to get to the good stuff.

God initiates salvation, and we respond—but it doesn’t seem like it comes without our response. Just take Jesus’ miracles for example—one place where we consistently see the word for “salvation” used (usually translated as “healing” in these contexts). He required an active response from every recipient—even when what He asked them to do was just plain difficult.

• He tells a man with a withered hand to “Stretch forth thy hand,” seemingly overlooking the whole not having a hand thing.

• He tells a man who can’t walk and had to enter the room via his friends airlifting him down to “Take up thy bed and walk.”

• He puts mud on a blind man’s eyes and tells him to wash in the Pool of Siloam (roughly a 20-minute bus ride away from where they were at the time—not easy for a blind man).

• He tells a corpse to “come out” of his tomb.

• He tells the woman caught in adultery: “Go and sin no more.”18 Piece of cake.

Dallas Willard puts it bluntly: “Jesus said, ‘Without me you can do nothing.’ And I will guarantee you that if you do nothing it will be without him. It’s just that simple. Now, it’s not a matter of earning. But it is a matter of acting. We have to act.”19

Even if we come from the perspective that God’s meticulously controlling our actions, we can’t avoid that it, at the very least, feels as though we’re investing effort. We don’t accidentally help the poor or stumble into a fast or get transported to a prayer meeting against our will.20 God won’t memorize Scripture for you. It’s a “conscious process” that we “actively pursue,” not something that happens whether we’re “paying attention or not.”21

As Keas Keasler writes, “God will not zap us into mature persons of Christ we ourselves have not chosen to become.”22

To clarify, if by saying “We can’t do anything on our own,” what we mean is that we couldn’t do this or that without God’s help—that’s spot on. But if we mean it in the sense that we literally don’t do anything and just wait for the Spirit to possess us into righteousness—that’s dead wrong.23

In my perspective, the reason people get so spiritual formation/spiritual discipline critical is because they misunderstand

The Role of Human Effort in Light of God’s Grace.

There’s this old Jewish joke about a

man who constantly prayed that he would win the lottery. Eventually, he shook his fist heavenward and demanded that God explain why he wasn’t answering the man’s fervent prayer. “My son,” God replied, “you need to come halfway to meet me. You could at least buy a ticket!”24

It’s funny because it nails a genuine confusion. As the Singaporean theologian Simon Chan argues, the relationship between God’s grace and human effort is “perhaps the most problematic development of a Protestant spiritual theology.”25

He’s not exaggerating. Sadly, there’s no clear lines that mark where and when the Spirit’s power does its thing and when stuff falls in our territory of responsibility.

Plenty have proposed models of how to make sense of it. But most I’ve come across kinda fail to reflect the theological reality that allows us to pursue disciplines and formation without developing a guilty conscience about “striving”:

Our Effort Doesn’t Compete with God’s Effort.

Regardless of how you picture the relationship between human and Divine agency, the wrong question to ask is how much sanctification is on God and how much is on us. The solution isn’t charting out God’s action and our action as competing quantities; we’re not aiming to hit the ideal ratio.

The hinge, the crux, the point of all this isn’t to see ourselves and our effort as separate from God, but seeing our action itself as God’s action in us.

The real theological state of affairs is that God isn’t doing the 90% while we do the other 10%.27 As people who literally have God’s Spirit in them, God initiates and sustains 100% of our actions—but we also perform 100% of that action.28

So basically: your intentional effort is one and the same as God’s effort in you. They’re not competing.

I’ve been wracking my brain for a non-nerdy way to explain this, but I kinda think that there just isn’t a simple way—and maybe that’s the point. The faith God grants us is also the active trust we give Him—and that trust is active solely because of God’s continuous work in us.

Like Paul said, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure (Phil. 2:12b-13). Paul isn’t saying, “God’s got you, you can step back”; and it’s also not “It’s all in your hands, but God’ll cheer you on.” Instead: “You work, and God works, too”—there’s no separation between the two.

When we pray, God doesn’t stop working so that we can start; His grace enables the prayer. When we exert effort toward holiness, we’re not yes-and-ing whatever sanctification God left unfinished. We’re participating in the work God is already doing in us.29

Put flatly: grace can’t compete with effort because grace is what makes effort possible in the first place.

Therefore, neglecting the impulse to expend effort is a way of neglecting God’s work in you.

We don’t have to sweat so much about whether we’re “striving” because it’s the Spirit who agents the agency that makes the “striving” possible.30 So long as we’re not diametrically and arrogantly aiming at earning Divine or human approval—we can have confidence that we’re safe from striving or works righteousness.

This is why we can approach spiritual practices—and systems for growth—without skittishness. The desire to grow is the Spirit in you beckoning that very desire.

Now let’s get to the main point: lots of young people at your church are interested in spiritual disciplines and online spiritual formation materials. So here’s a few tips, kind of like the guardrails you set up at a bowling alley, for handling this interest:

1. If you don’t like them using online resources, become an embodied resource.

Around the turn of last century, the Reverend R.A. White wrote, “It is not enough to denounce the saloon and the dance hall. Put something better in their place.”31

Similarly, it’s not enough to just critique formation. Rather than being a parent who tries to blacklist some paraphernalia only to have the kids go and use it whenever your back is turned, you have to put something in its place.

The desire to go deeper in prayer or fasting or Scripture memorization or silence. is a good, beautiful, pure impulse. Don’t drown it out. Jesus said it was better to have a stone tied around your neck and fall in an ocean than to cause a young person to stumble.

And you don’t have to even rely on the spiritual formation content that’s popular nowadays. Matthew Bingham came up with an alternative paradigm that’s more preferable for those skeptical of the Comer/Willard/Peterson/Barton/Foster stream of the movement. It’s pretty easy to take his advice and apply it for a basic theory of formation in your community:

Regardless of what you affirm, you have to provide some kind of theory of holiness or vision for maturity and then paint a loose pathway to get there.

2. Community Growth Over Isolated, Individualistic Formation

One of the most consistent (and realistic) critiques of spiritual formation is the way it can turn an already isolated generation even more isolated. By emphasizing things like silent prayer, the kids risk becoming more interior-oriented than ever.

But this is way simpler of a fix than many commentators make it out to be.

The reality is that spiritual disciplines—and spiritual formation itself, of course—when removed from community, don’t make sense, and don’t work.

For example, one of the disciplines talked about a ton these days is silence and solitude. It’s a great discipline, but weirdly enough, it only makes sense within a larger group of Jesus followers.

Immersion with community is a prerequisite—it’s what makes the contrast of silence possible. If you don’t have a community to return to and debrief with after a silence retreat, you wouldn’t have been doing a silence retreat, you would’ve just been having more alone time than usual.

So regardless of whether you drill it into their minds or the lack of actual growth reveals itself to them first, sooner or later they’ll run into the reality that formation is impossible as an island of one.

3. Teach them that habits don’t produce growth on their own

I’ve had a tendency or two to put growth in my own hands. I wanted to be a navy seal Christian. But this isn’t because spiritual formation is bad, but because I misunderstood the disciplines.

They’re just the means to an end; the spiritual disciplines, on their own, do very little. They’re not what transforms us. Instead, disciplines put our hearts, minds, souls, and potentials, in the best placement to receive transformation from God.

We can fast all we want, but if we’re doing it for the wrong reasons—or trying to get God to just flip an internal switch of righteousness on—then we’re missing the point entirely.

The moment we convince ourselves that our personal willpower is what got us where we are, we’ve lost all humility—and thus formation is void.32 Effort must be scaffolded upon our creatureliness, fallibility, and knowledge that we’re merely a branch to a tree (John 15).

It’s a hard tension, but we have to expend effort to get out of bed in the morning, carve out a time in our schedules for prayer and Scripture study, while realizing that the only thing that makes it possible—and worth it—is the Spirit’s work in us.

There’s a reason so many young people are going East or submitting to Rome. These traditions offer spiritual practices, history, and spiritual depth that many modern Protestant churches don’t offer.33

Which is just unfortunate, since the churches that they’re leaving also have a rich tradition—a grand history of seeing our efforts as the Spirit’s grace-empowered work in us—but many of those churches just aren’t clued into the tradition.

Protestants should have the least reason to get skittish about works righteousness, and yet we often broadcast the most trepidation. And so rather than confidently walking in the theology that God agents our agency for growth and good works, we scoff or shrug off these impulses as if acting on them detracts from Christ’s work. Which seems a tad more dangerous than the issues that stem from leaning toward the striving end of the spectrum (Matt. 21:28-32; Luke 6:46).

Spiritual growth, catechesis, union with Christ, being formed into the image of Christ, aren’t optional. We have a responsibility to pursue radiance—along with a duty to convey a beautiful theological vision for how becoming radiant happens.

So rather than scratch our heads wondering why the younger generations in your church are interested in spiritual formation, the better question is: why isn’t your church in general treating spiritual formation as a norm?

My brother and sister-in-law had been trying to get pregnant for over two years. And I’m not exaggerating to say that my wife and I prayed for them to get pregnant, every day, for about 730 days straight. Then on New Year’s Day, it finally happens.

And best part was: twins. Which felt like a total miracle—a confirmation of God’s generous gifts.

Fast forward 23 weeks, and a disease called CTTS—just a random affliction, no genetic, let alone logical, causes whatsoever—hits and the babies have to be emergency delivered 17 weeks early. Rees Margot and Celia Evelyn emergency C-sectioned into the world, weighing less than a pound each.

And so it goes that Celia lives—strong and healthy to this day—but ten days after this emergency delivery, Rees passes away.

As you can imagine, this, to put it so lightly as to seem morbid, puts you in a funk. We prayed for healing constantly. Our church held three prayer meetings a day, fasting regularly for a month, but healing didn’t come.

Every night before bed my wife and I read a story from the gospels—which are, of course, loaded with healing stories. And reading them stopped feeling comforting because it felt like they were megaphoning our own family’s lack of healing.

We didn’t blame God; we ascribe to a theodicy1 that doesn’t consider things like pain and death and disaster and disease as coming from God; instead, in our opinion, that blend is sourced from the devil and principalities and the force of entropy and the butterfly effect of human sin.2

But still, even though I didn’t blame God, I couldn’t help but doubt His activity—or just His general ability to interact (or want to interact) with the universe.

In a sense, it was one of the only real times that I’ve struggled with doubt. And it felt irrational not to—we were provided a picturesque reason for doubt.

Sadly, Pentecostal environments aren’t always the best places for grief or doubt; I love me some Pentecostals, but their twin tools for dealing with these hardships are typically (1) suppression and (2) over-spiritualization. Which are to doubt what bandaids are to scrapes; they cover it up, but the wound won’t heal unless it’s paired with peroxide.

So I took a detour during this phase to think a bit more about what doubt is and does.

In surveying the varieties of doubt from those I’ve met, heard from, seen online, or read about, there are a lot of ways to approach doubt—but only a couple ways seem helpful.

Doubt is inevitable; the crux is whether we greet it as something that closes us off from reality or a process through which we become more planted in reality.

Regardless of how long it takes us to process the initial bitterness of doubt, we should eventually move toward growth, not perpetual introspection—seeing it as a challenge rather than debilitating illness, for reformation rather than ruin.

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However, after reading an advanced copy of ’s In Defense of Evangelicalism, I asked Bonnie if she’d wanna do a written interview.

I once heard an acquisitions editor say that no one, not even the upper echelon of the publishing strata, can predict how or why a book takes off. But even keeping that in mind, I’d be shocked if this one doesn’t.

For some context, Bonnie is my point editor at Christianity Today. She gatekeeps all my writing’s characteristic buffoonery from making its way into the hallowed pages of America’s flagship evangelical publication. So it was lovely to turn the tables on her for once and edit her words (which I didn’t actually have to do, because of her whole actually being a professional writer thing).

Let’s get into it.

Bonnie: Yes and no. I spend half a chapter on this because it’s such a big question, and I explain my aim as describing more than defining, and describing evangelicalism as a movement—or, yes, a vibe—with a knowable center rather than hard edges. Think more or less evangelical, rather than is or isn’t.

That said, the short and necessarily inadequate answer that I’ll give in interviews like this is: Evangelicals are creedally orthodox Protestant Christians who have a shared history and culture dating to the First Great Awakening, who generally attend church, and who maintain in action and belief alike the four emphases of scholar David Bebbington’s well-known quadrilateral, which I recently wrote about for Comment: conversion, activism, Bible, cross.

But again: more or less. There are people and groups who fit most of that description, but not all, or who have other emphases too, and yet are still substantially evangelical. As for you, from what I know of your writing and background, I think you’re squarely evangelical, even if the label feels weird.

Bonnie: Some of it is as basic, I think, as an inverse of the comedy practice of “punching down” (i.e., making a joke at the expense of an easy target). By just about any measure or definition, evangelicals are very numerous in America, so where it’s obviously rude and gross to go after a tiny religious minority, the same skewering of us might feel okay. And if we’re talking about actual comedy, then sure, that may be true. We should be able to take a joke!1

But I do think the first joke isn’t the same as the 5,000th, and there’s a darker edge here as well. I’d point to someone like Jennifer Welch, an enormously popular podcaster whom I wrote about for The Free Press. Extremely prominent Democrats, up to and including Barack Obama, go on her show—and she routinely calls evangelicals a “cancer,” a “cult,” the “worst people” in America. She’s said evangelicalism is a “dumb factory” and “white trash, magical thinking, dumb people bull****.”

Can you imagine Obama doing a podcast with a host who talked that way about Catholics or Muslims or Jews? No—and that’s good! Evangelicals deserve the same courtesy.

Bonnie: In some ways I didn’t! I’m not afraid of a taking a controversial position—you can’t be, as an opinion journalist—but I’m not someone who really courts controversy, especially not for its own sake. You don’t find me out picking fights on social media.

When my editor and I first discussed the idea, in fact, I had to seriously think it over. Like: Do I want to be that person? And I realized a few things: One is that, to most of the world, I kinda already am that person. I mean, I work at Christianity Today. I’m a member of an evangelical church and a graduate of an evangelical seminary. My beliefs are not exactly a secret.

Another is that while I do care about my own reputation—and Matthew Lee Anderson has some great developing work on the theology of reputation that has been very helpful to my thinking here—if people are mad at me because I liked this huge swath of the church too much, well, okay. I can live with that.

And then finally, as I recently wrote in a Substack post explaining the history behind the book’s subtitle, the more I thought about it, the more I felt compelled to do it—that this stuff needs to be said. I’m equipped to say it, and I came to feel both a freedom and a duty to do it and do it well. As Paul says about other matters of Christian dispute in Romans 14:16, “do not let what you know is good be spoken of as evil.”

Bonnie: That’s wild, right? I touched on this a bit in that Comment piece too—and it’s hard to say this without sound condescending—but I think it’s basically low-information voters. People get things wrong.

Even a lot of actual evangelicals aren’t totally sure what the word means; historian Thomas S. Kidd describes it as a word more native to journalists and academics than most of the people it describes. I think it’s even more unfamiliar to people outside Christianity, so if they only ever hear it in political contexts, then it makes sense that they might mistake its meaning to be something like “religious and Republican” or even just “Republican.” Ryan Burge wrote the definitive article on this subject for The New York Times.

I so appreciate and often rely on Ryan’s work, but the point I want to drive home is: Those people are wrong. It’s interesting and informative to think about why they made the mistake they did, but evangelicals are necessarily Christians. There is no such thing as an evangelical Buddhist, for instance, and a few Buddhists’ confusion here does not override hundreds of years of history and millions of Christians’ practice of faith. That isn’t how words work.

Bonnie: Some of both! Evangelicalism isn’t a static movement—and this is true on many fronts. Brad East wrote a great piece about this for me at CT a while back, expanding on a post he’d done on his blog the year prior. Weirdly, none of the changes mentioned (i.e., shifting opinions on alcohol, tattoos, gambling, church calendars, and raunchy movies) are political. Even as that basic description of evangelicalism I sketched above remains consistent and recognizable—not only across decades but centuries and also continents—there’s always going to be change.

One change I’m thankful for is the move off purity culture in the last 20 years. It was well-intended, I think, and, as Katelyn Beaty recently wrote, an understandable reaction to an era of pop culture prone to gross sexualization of young girls. But also, I have a daughter and am so glad she’s not going to hear about how premarital sex would leave her indelibly dirty, like a piece of used chewing gum or a manhandled rose. That’s literally sub-Christian, undermining the work of Christ and limiting his power to save us from our sin, and it’s good that evangelicals have learned there are better ways to teach biblical sexual ethics.

In the political space, again there’s both real change and changes in perception. And here it’s vital to be distinguish which evangelicals we’re talking about. There are very prominent and powerful people like James Dobson who, in my view, directly and knowingly reversed themselves on questions like whether character counts when picking a president. That gets bad PR because it is bad.

But there are also tens of millions of ordinary evangelicals who simply did not make a decision of that same weight, knowledge, and responsibility, and it’s unjust to sweep them into the same pile as the prominent people who did. I go into this in far greater detail in the book because it’s an incredibly important question.

Bonnie: Tossing me a softball here! Yes, in fact, I made just this analogy in an email the other day. The person I was corresponding with likened my book and some of the books I critically engage to that parable of the three blind men encountering different parts of an elephant and mistaking the parts for the whole.

I replied and said I think there’s something to that—but let me specify that the part the critics have found is the tail. I grant that there’s a tail. But I reject that an elephant is just a thin, bony string.

Bonnie: Because it has real goods, real faithfulness, real gifts for the church universal—and all that is neither negated by nor reducible to the real foibles and wrongs also present in the movement.

Alan Jacobs put it wonderfully in the foreword:

I’m glad because, in spite of everything—and if you don’t know what I mean by “everything,” this book will tell you—I remain an evangelical. One of the people Kristian interviews says of evangelicals, “They are my people.” Well, they are my people also, because they brought me out of a dark place—what that proto-evangelical John Bunyan called the Slough of Despond—and up to a higher ground where the sun shines on the green grass. Almost all that’s good about me comes from my immersion in the world of evangelicalism, and I must honor my sisters and brothers in the faith for all they’ve done for me. Yes, sometimes—well, often—they drive me nuts, and when they do so in the future, as they certainly will, and when I start to forget the debts I owe them, as I certainly will, I’ll have this book to help me remember what’s what.

Bonnie: Partly because, as I said, it’s absurd. We’re talking about normal people here: people with jobs and kids and mortgages who are not, in fact, a lurking menace. Talking about them this way is ridiculous conspiracy theorizing that flies in the face of common sense—a modern, secularized update to Know Nothing ravings about Catholics’ supposed Papist conspiracies to seize power in Washington and submit the Constitution to the whims of Rome.

But also, I’m confident to say it because I’ve observed a great deal of evangelicalism both personally and professionally. I grew up in evangelical churches—a lot of them, in fact, because we move around quite a bit: Southern Baptist, Pentecostal, Independent Fundamental Baptist, Christian & Missionary Alliance, Methodist, Mennonite, Anglican, and nondenominational churches from New York to Texas. I’ve attended evangelical schools and seminary, too.

My work at Christianity Today brings me into contact with American evangelicalism all day, every day, including the ugly stuff. And for this book, I did extensive research, cross-country reporting, and dozens of interviews with scholars and ordinary Christians alike.

Bonnie: Some of it may be evangelicals failing to study our own history—we do need to be better about that—and in some complementarian circles that could include a deliberate neglect: After all, if you don’t think women should teach or preach to men, you probably won’t be eager to tout histories of people putting women in positions of theological authority. (It bears noting here that most evangelicals are egalitarian now, including me.)

In some cases, though, I suspect evangelicals have been a little too eager to believe caricatures about ourselves. As I’ve begun telling people about this book, I’ve encountered a real eagerness for it in some people—like they’re hungry for permission to be openly happy about their own tradition.

These are generally evangelicals who have a vague sense that they should feel bad about being evangelical even though evangelicalism has been a positive thing in their lives. They’re in a good church every Sunday, but out in the discourse, they’ve absorbed the idea that evangelicalism is kind of shameful, backwards, something for which you need to apologize. And someone in that frame of mind might not even know to go looking for history like this, which I honestly find very sad.

Bonnie: The first thing I’d say is that I get it. As is obvious from that quote, I tend to share those frustrations. At that level of lifestyle and culture, I am in many ways pretty atypical for an evangelical, especially a middle-aged evangelical mom.

But the part of me that wants to detail for you here and now how much better my taste is—that is not a good part of me! Indulge it too much and I could all too easily be a “cultured despiser” myself.

But (as I said in a recent conversation here on Substack) in my better—more gracious, kindlier, more Christ-like—moments, I want to say that having good taste does not reliably correspond to the imitation of Christ, and that having bad taste is never a justification for looking down on someone, and that I think it has become too common to cover distaste for evangelical tackiness with a gilding of political and/or theological superiority and pretend it’s solid gold all the way through.

That’s what I’m against, because there are many deeply tacky old church ladies who have done more in love of God and neighbor than I can ever hope to do. Far be it from me to dismiss the importance of aesthetics, but we can have and propagate good taste without plunging into an attitude of Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

Bonnie: I think there’s a place for going either way on this, and in the context of specific relationships and ministries, it might be prudent to jettison the word: “I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” As I said above, plenty of evangelicals don’t even know the word themselves. You don’t have to call yourself an evangelical to be one, and this label certainly not the measure of salvation.

And yet: I don’t want to distance myself from the people in those pews. I’m not embarrassed of those people. Annoyed with them sometimes? Oh, yes. But embarrassed, ashamed? No. I’ve read the history and grappled with the theology and argued about the politics and still come to the conclusion that there are real goods here in evangelicalism, that these are my people, that we are doing our ever-inadequate best to follow Jesus in the same way, together.

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Bonnie Kristian

Posts weekly on religion, politics, tech, family, rhetoric, and writing. Unsentimental & unconventional.

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Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is about a hero’s journey home—but it’s almost more so about the contagion that spreads from violating sacred hospitality.

In this sense, art really does imitate life. And life is a lot like The Odyssey.

Throughout the film, we’re rhythmically fed a glimpse of Odysseus keeling over a set of stairs in the center of Troy’s sacking. Viewers divine something profound boiling through his facial expression—but it’s clear it’s not the kind of triumphalism you’d expect.4

As the story unfurls, we gather that Odysseus’ plan to sow soldiers inside the wooden horse to penetrate the city walls has been immortalized across the sea as a legend of his greatness. But he’s reluctant to accept it; they sing praises he doesn’t crave. We slowly intuit that Odysseus’ replays of that night are similar to how a trauma victim accidentally rehashes critical memories.

Near the climax, the reason behind the rehashing becomes clear: he offered Troy the trojan horse as a gift of reconciliation, but the gift was laced with the surprise attack that became their demise.5 He broke Zeus’ Law in a grand way. And by breaking it, he’s set up a mimetic contagion for the breaking of Zeus’ Law across the West.

This law basically stated that you should act hospitably toward strangers; but more than just having them over for dinner, it also implied the “provision of food and protection for travelers” and could even include “a bath, supplies for the traveler’s onward journey, and an escort along the road to the traveler’s next destination.”6 Basically, it’s the “kind reception of a stranger.”7

Ironically, this law that Odysseus spends a decade in regret over desacralizing is the very principle that legitimizes his wife and son’s torment back in Ithaca. Penelope and Telemachus entertain a gaggle of suitors taking advantage of them by invoking Zeus’ Law on the daily. Each wants to marry Penelope, establish themselves as king, and get rid of Telemachus.

At the height of their need for the return of their king, Odysseus is stuck on Calypso’s island, filled with lotus flower that forces him to forget everything about himself. But as Calypso weans him off the lotus, the broken chains of memory slowly piece together.

As he Bourne-style relearns who he is and what he’s done, he grapples with the gravity of it. The trojan horse tale spread the breaking of Zeus’ Law like stomach flu. He became another reason for the world to start locking their doors at night.8 This is sort of how mimetic contagions work: one person’s violation of sacred law authorizes someone else’s violation.

Even still, the king must return. He’s not meant for shame-induced self-exile. He can’t fix the past; the past is past.

But the gods won’t allow a homecoming on his own terms. The only way forward is letting go of what’s backward. So he builds a raft, drifts into the expanse, and surrenders control. And this relinquishment of control—surrendering power, his lust for glory, his craving to tone down the fallout of his sins—convinces the gods to wash him onto the shores of Ithaca.9

He returns to his palace disguised as a beggar, since the clearest way to see what a man is really like is from below.10 The suitors unveil their true selves embarrassingly quickly. Still disguised, he enters a challenge that Penelope devised to take on a new husband, and wins—the king’s come home.

The viewer is frothing at the mouth at this point for comeuppance—like an itch they’re dying to scratch but can’t reach.11 And we’re not denied it. Despite all the repentance and letting go, Odysseus can’t not take revenge.12 Odysseus breaks Zeus’ Law once more, purging the suitors from his temple.13

And this is why life is like The Odyssey.

I’m not an expert in hospitality, but I’d like to be.

It’s why I resonated with Odysseus’ arc: I want to act hospitably because I’d like others to act hospitably toward me. But my actions are usually dictated by convenience. Zeus’ Law becomes an optional add-on, reserved for when I have enough time and energy (two qualities that are scathingly rare to just stumble upon).

Obviously, we don’t worship Zeus; but we worship a God who makes a similar law central: “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.”

In early Christian history, Zeus’ Law is basically what you’d call xenia.14 The related term philozenia (literally, “love” and “guest” mashed up) pops up all over the New Testament (Rom 12:13; 1 Peter 4:9; 1 Tim 3:2).15

Henri Nouwen captures the beauty behind philozenia:

When hostility is converted into hospitality, then fearful strangers become guests—revealing to their hosts the promise they are carrying with them. Then the distinction between host and guest proves to be artificial and evaporates in the recognition of the newfound unity. Thus the biblical stories help us to realize not just that hospitality is an important virtue, but even more that in the context of hospitality guest and host can reveal their most precious gifts and bring new life to each other.16

And fascinatingly, the rationale behind Zeus’ Law sounds vaguely familiar: they took care of strangers in case those strangers were actually gods in disguise. Which should ring a bell for those who’ve read this sin of omission: “Do not neglect hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it” (Heb. 13:2).

The verse hyperlinks to these weird reoccurrences across both testaments in which the strangers we care for turn out to be God or angels in disguise (Gen. 18, 19; Judg. 6; Joshua 5; Luke 24). It’s like the biblical writers were trying to spread a suspicion that caring for other people might just unearth the best in them. Consequently, it also brings about the best in ourselves: everyone who cares for these angels-in-disguise gets blessed beyond measure.

Summarizing the strange God-stranger phenomenon, the scholar John Koenig writes, “If we love God and God meets us in the stranger, then we shall naturally (and even unconsciously) love the stranger.”17

But over and above Greek hospitality, we’re not just accepting the poor and powerless because they might be gods, but because Christ became them. “Whatever you did not do for the least of these you did not do for me” (Matt. 25:45).

Sadly, we sometimes resist divine hospitality because it seems prudent—wise, even.

It’s easy to disregard what’s right for the sake of the logical, the rational, and the cinematic. Like Ovid put it, “I see the right way and approve it, but follow the wrong.”18 We struggle to not take the other’s eye or tooth—especially in situations where turning the other cheek feels imbecilic.

And yet, in Jesus’ school for living the best kind of life (Matt. 5-7), He instructs us to care for the enemy, love those unfamiliar to us, and transform others through hospitality (cf. Ex. 23:4-5; Prov. 25:21; Rom. 12:19-21). And it’s not something we need to choke down and carry out begrudgingly—it’s something that’s as good for the other as it is for us. As Parker Palmer writes,

when we invite the stranger into our space, important transformations occur. Our private space is suddenly enlarged; no longer tight and cramped and restricted, but open and expansive and free. And our space may also be illumined...Hospitality to the stranger gives us a chance to see our own lives afresh, through different eyes.19

After studying how asking people for favors actually makes them feel loved—because it makes them feel needed—the Harvard Professor Arthur Brooks started asking homeless people if they wouldn’t mind praying for his family after giving them money.

Almost all of them happily agree to do so. After describing one of these interactions, he wrote:

I happen to believe, as my Christian religion teaches, that God hears the cries of the poor—so I judge that I got a lot more than I gave that day.20

And ever since I’ve read this anecdote, I’ve made a habit of doing this exact same thing. Which just goes to show how even though one person’s bad actions can create a negative mimetic contagion, another person’s altruism can create a stronger, positive contagion.

Similarly, my wife and I are currently riding a wave of inspiration after having lunch with and her lovely family this past weekend. In all earnestness, she should probably do a bootcamp on hospitality to whip the rest of us in shape. We felt elevated for the rest of the day because generosity and kindness are just plain contagious.

Now, I’m a big fan of generosity out on the streets and hospitality in third spaces, but I’m frankly terrible about being open with our house. But limiting that real and true and deep hospitality—the kind that welcomes others into the most intimate recesses of your life—is something I’ve been convicted about lately.

George Saunders once said that the greatest regrets of his life weren’t his business blunders or even contracting a rare illness after his friends dared him to dive into the Amazon River, but his “failures of kindness.”21 That’s what truly chews us up when all’s said and done.

Nolan’s message is just as unsubtle as it was in Oppenheimer: we’re our own demise. If we don’t put our passions for conquest, power, and personal security, under control, we’ll never find the beautiful kind of mutuality that we know is possible but struggle to realize.

Essentially, until we find a way to accept our neighbors, treating them as potential little-g gods, we make ourselves less like Odysseus and more like Sisyphus: rolling a boulder up one side of the hill just to watch it fall off the other side. Doing the same things, expecting different results. The security we hoard for ourselves keeps us stuck in cycles of fear and distrust, while using our potential to reciprocally help others is what gives our boulder pushing an actual telos.

Yet, I think it’s easy for viewers to miss this message.22 Because after seemingly repenting over trampling Zeus’ Law, Odysseus returns to slaughter the suitors.

However, I’d argue that regardless of our Christian ethics, this ending is completely satisfying; but even further, I don’t think we should feel guilty for finding this ending satisfying. Take Matthew’s “The Parable of the Wicked Tenants” (21:33-36) for example. A man leases his vineyard to a group of farmers, but when he sends a servant to retrieve his harvest, they kill the servant. He sends a second servant, they kill him too. Then he sends his own son, and, predictably, they also kill him.

But crucially, Jesus pauses the parable at that point to ask the crowd what they think should happen to the tenants. And I’d wager that He decided to fish for the parable’s ending because He knew we’d find the tenant’s actions horrendous. He predicted how we’d fill in the blank, so he lets the crowd write the ending: the owner should bring the tenants to a wretched end.

Conversely, if they thought, “Well, we should’ve humanized the tenants a little more and felt more compassion for them,” then they might’ve bypassed a basic moral sense of justice that Jesus anticipated within us. That said: it’s not wrong to want to protect Penelope save Telemachus’ throne.

Nolan gives us a hero who regrets violating hospitality, who unearthed some regret in myself for my own failures of kindness. The Christian faith pushes the envelope even further in caring for the other. Not just regretting the wounds we’ve caused through greed or inattention—but learning to welcome them, to love them, to see ourselves—even God—in them.

And paradoxically, we may find ourselves endlessly better off for it.

I’ve always liked this joke because it exaggerates Picasso’s truism: “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.”1

We really do steal. Sometimes unconsciously, other times very consciously.

In the 1930s, a woman named Sanora Babb got in touch with John Steinbeck and shared some of her notes for her rough draft novel about dust bowl migrant farmers.

But it wasn’t until 2004 that this rough draft was finally published. And commentators immediately noticed the similarities between it and Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.

Plot thickens: apparently Babb showed Steinbeck her rough draft in the dead center of when Steinbeck was drafting Grapes.2

The similarities are damning: both novels mention similar environmental prose, prejudice against migrants, and even stillborn babies.3 In fact, the reason Babb’s book didn’t come out until 2004 was because publishers were worried it’d get called a Grapes ripoff.

So did Steinbeck steal? It’s inconclusive; but it’s likely he was at the very least inspired by Babb—who insisted Steinbeck stole from her until her death in 2005.

However, I doubt Steinbeck literally plagiarized with malice and forethought, just like I doubt Pharrell and Robin Thicke stole from Marvin Gaye while writing “Blurred Lines,”4 just like I doubt Olivia Rodrigo consciously copied Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer” bridge for her “Deja Vu” bridge.

But what probably did happen in all these scenarios is that these artists worked on their projects while their influences were floating at the top of their toolboxes.

Reality is: we can’t help but regurgitate what comes our way since we’re all more or less sponges that absorb our environments.

But there’s a way to steal well and a way to steal poorly. People make films and novels smearing the latter kind (The Social Network, Amadeus, Yellowface), while the former kind get hailed as the greats of their field.

And while it might seem like this article is geared more toward writers, it’s geared toward everyone.

Imitation and mimicry is both a natural phenomenon (toddlers copy their parents as they learn to live and move and have their being), and an intentional discipline for excelling in life (as in when a guitar player picks up their mentor’s idiosyncrasies or a preacher mimics their hero’s cadence). Imitation is so powerful that Paul even used it as a placeholder spiritual formation model: “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.”

This good kind of stealing (what Kierkegaard called “admiration”) is crucial for lovingly investing ourselves in our callings. In short: everyone steals, but the redeemed form of stealing is imitating out of admiration.

So let’s start by talking about the basics:

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Something new happened recently.

For the past seven years, I’ve always had the “next” writing project. As in, whenever I finished the current thing, I always had the next thing. Usually there’s about five things in the queue—from articles to book chapters to academic papers to pitches to proposals.

But after finishing my last article, the aforementioned new happening happened:

I didn’t have the next thing.

Which felt confusing—like encountering an inside joke that you pretend you’re in on but don’t really get.

So I scanned the mental reserves to check for anything squirreled away. Nothing—a concerning lack of activity, honestly. Then I pulled up Word and scrolled through my everything in my storage. I probably read 25 rough drafts; all too rough.

So for the first time in seven years, I had no idea what to write.

It wasn’t really writer’s block—it was more of a black hole of novelty. Almost like a decision paralysis from realizing that every possible thing that I could say had already been said—and was there any use in just rephrasing smarter peoples’ words?

But in tossing spaghetti at my brain’s wall searching for something interesting when everything’s interesting’s been said before, I noticed I’d been thinking intensely about not having anything new to say for 25 hours.

So I thought: can I write about that?

And so I did.

Here’s the TL;DR, offered in three premises that form a rough syllogism:1

1. There’s nothing new to say—even your most creative thoughts start to feel uncreative with enough backtracking through your creative influences.

2. Especially for those doing theology: most of what you could write—or even think—has already been written or thunk before. Which makes the pressure to come up with something original both ridiculous and exhausting.

3. Yet that constraint—the fact that we’re all stuck repeating & remixing ideas because we’re supposed to stay within the sandbox built by biblical theology—is a good thing. That limitation provides a bottomless well of innovation.

Because, the more I studied the futility of writing when everything’s already been written, the more I saw that this constraint makes us thrive—the boundaries and borders and limitations are actually more gift than curse.2

To begin,

everything is plagiarism,

if you do enough research.

When I first started writing, I’d dream up an original idea and get this euphoric nerd high.

Nowadays when I dream up an original idea, I take it as evidence that I haven’t done enough reading.

Sooner or later, that original idea pops up in someone else’s book.

As Qoholeth, the author of Ecclesiastes, said,

“Is there anything of which one might say, “See this, it is new”?

It has already existed for ages…

There is nothing new under the sun” (1:10, 9).

He’s right. In fact, lots of “original ideas” that seemed novel in their heyday are just remixes of biblical ideas.

• Shades of 18-20th century existentialism already popped up in Paul’s exposition on inner conflict in Romans 7.3

• Nietzsche’s ubermensch (super man) and letztermensch (last man) dichotomy was already (loosely) proposed in Qoheleth.4

• And of course, the belief in humanity’s inherent dignity—which backgrounded every human rights advancement of the past few centuries—has its origins in the Bible’s first chapter: “Let us make man in our image” (Gen. 1:26-27).

Not every idea that ever was pops up in the Bible—just most good ones.5

To clarify, all of us can write plenty of new sentences that’ve never been put together before. And that’s because we keep inventing new things. But I’d wager that even when we write new sentences to comment on new things, we’re probably relying on timeless, universal principles that’ve been around since people started putting pen to papyri.6

Some people hate this idea; but it’s not as constricting as it seems.

Yes, there’s nothing new under the sun—but there’s always a need to find new ways to describe old things. In fact, it’s one of the most noble tasks we can assign our imaginations.

To explain, let’s discuss why

constraints make us freer.

Imagine a film studio (A24, for example) hired you to make a movie. Assuming you want to make the best possible film, which of the following options would you prefer?

1. You have complete freedom—your budget is limitless, you can cast anyone you want, and you can craft plot from scratch.

2. You have a 5-million-dollar budget, 5 actors already cast, and a 5-page loose plot treatment that you’re allowed to adjust slightly here and there.

Most assume the first option (more freedom) is best.

But the science writer points out that, contrary to this knee-jerk belief, less freedom usually encourages more creativity.

Epstein (such an unfortunate last name, the poor guy) explains why through the “The Green Eggs and Ham”7 model of creativity.

The model gets its name from a Random House editor who bet Dr. Seuss that he couldn’t write a children’s book by using a vocabulary of only 50 words.

And of course, Dr. Seuss did—selling 200 million books in the process. And it worked so well it became his paradigm for writing most of his bestselling books: limit the word count, limit the pool of words that you can use, and this will force your creativity into overdrive.8

Again, the go-to assumption is that freedom leads to innovation. But sadly, as the cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham says, “Contrary to popular belief, the brain is not designed for thinking. It’s designed to save you from having to think.”9

Because the brain is naturally inclined to avoid effortful thinking and to rely instead on familiar patterns, complete freedom tends to lead to unoriginal ideas, simply repeating what is known.10

This is why many directors, novelists, and bands who make it big often wind up rehashing their earlier work in their new projects. Their success causes their studios, publishers, and labels to start giving them more freedom, but this often ends up with them falling back on what works: films with the same formulaic plot, novels with interchangeable architecture, or the same four chords that originally got the band on the charts.

When everything’s possible, our brains go on autopilot and take the path of least resistance. We start conforming to past triumphs to avoid the discomfort of shaping future innovations.11

Conversely, putting parameters around our freedom pushes “the brain beyond its default tendencies, forcing it to engage in deeper problem-solving.”12

Examples? Sure:

The Beauty of Eu-Constraints (“Good Constraints”)

The radio personality Howard Stern said that at beginning of his career, he was all about breaking boundaries and exploiting taboos. So he’d interview adult film stars and do extended bits on bestiality and plenty other things you shouldn’t mention in a Christian subculture.

Yet, even though chaos is fun for a bit, Stern realized that it eventually gets surprisingly dry and repetitive. Coherence is a necessity—it gives the audience a norm that allows them to feel surprise when the norm gets broken. Edginess isn’t possible when there aren’t any rules.

When nothing’s off limits, we develop a dizziness from the anxiety of possibility. As the novelist James Baldwin wrote, “There is nothing more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.”13

So Stern pulled back, added rules, and built one of the most successful audio format shows of all time.

Plenty studies show the beauty of eu-constraints:

• When asked to draw what lifeforms would look like on other planets, most people drew creatures that looked like what you’d see at any old earth zoo. But when they were given the rule that they had to figure out how the lifeforms would eat, they quickly dreamed up more atypical designs.14

• When asked how to improve public health, subjects only started generating novel ideas when they were given a specific field to focus on (i.e., nutrition, exercise, hygiene).15

• When asked to produce creative rhymes (aka, spit bars), people performed much better when they were forced to integrate a specific word than when they had an endless word bank.16

Personally, I was stumped on what to write for this essay because it felt like I had limitless options of things to write about. But then I remembered that that’s not true. Plenty’s off limits. Ex: I’m not going to write heresy.

It might seem silly to acknowledge that, but it’s weirdly helpful. Two musicians of equal renown, Jeff Tweedy (of Wilco) and Ke$ha, say that they often start songwriting sessions by writing a terrible song. And once they get the bad song out of their system, it shows them what’s off limits, putting a cap on the unbearableness of freedom and providing clarity on what a better song might look like.

Beyond that, there’s the rule every writer hates but needs: the deadline. One copywriter called deadlines “amphetamines for writers.”17 My rule is sending out an article once every 14 days, with some leeway for emergencies and vacations. Which again, seems unfun and stingy—but it’s a constraint I literally need to keep me from listlessly watching Tim Robinson Youtube videos instead of writing.

Now, those of us who write, preach, or teach have an incredibly unique constraint: the fact that what we say has to stay within the parameters of biblical theology or else it becomes blasphemy.

Thankfully, this limitation is less handicap than opportunity.

The Freedom of Unoriginality

One of the leading scholars on MLK Jr., Keith Miller, was putting the finishing touches on his PhD when a friend called him up. Apparently, the friend found a sermon by J. Wallace Hamilton that was almost an exact copy of King’s sermon “The Drum Major Instinct.” Miller laughed it off at first—until he tracked Hamilton’s sermons down and found one called “Drum-Major Instincts” dated 16 years before King’s sermon.18

But even worse, as Miller dug deeper, he found more and more damning evidence. Apparently, many of MLK Jr.’s most popular sermons were plagiarized.

However, as he traversed the sources and followed the footnotes, Miller found a bread trail. Even though King copied Hamilton, Hamilton had actually copied his sermon from a popular Atlanta radio preacher, who copied the sermon from a Yale theology professor, who copied the sermon from Reverend Ernest Tittle, who copied the sermon from an unnamed liberal preacher, who copied the sermon from an itinerant Virginian pastor, who copied the sermon from John Wesley.19 The more Miller researched, the more he found that many preachers from MLK Jr.’s generation plagiarized sermons without citing sources.

What was with all this stealing? Well, our modern ears hear this and think “plagiarism.” But apparently, before 50 years ago, people would’ve heard this and thought “remixing.”

MLK Jr. came up in the folk preaching tradition, watching both his dad and grandad preach from a paradigm where borrowing someone else’s words wasn’t taboo—it was even encouraged.

Apparently, “excessive originality” was considered “self-centered, if not downright suspicious.”20 Familiarity with tradition showed more respect for your audience than attempts at originality. By borrowing from what other people said, it was like paying homage to the great cloud of witnesses.

Now, I’m all for decreasing plagiarism (hot take, I know) and believe citing sources is an artform, but honestly, this skepticism about originality is kinda comforting.

Every pastor I know is exhausted by the pressure to come up with something innovative each week. Most writers feel dread wondering how their next piece will compare with their last.

Which is unfortunate—and a little weird. We want our theology to look innovative, when theology itself hasn’t really innovated much over the past 2,000 years.21

Theology has to stay more or less the same because getting too “creative” in theology is better known as “heresy.”

Yet this pressure to innovate drives us down that road. To keep afloat, we turn to saying more and more fringe, radical, or esoteric things—losing sight of the basics in the process.

But in reality, Christians are the people group that should be the least anxious about originality.

Henri Nouwen diagnoses the side effects of our craving for originality:

I wanted to say, write or do something “different” or “special” that would be noticed and talked about. For a person with a rich fantasy life, this is not too difficult…You can teach in such a way that it differs enough from the traditional way to be noticed; you can write sentences, pages, and even books that are considered original and new; you can even preach the Gospel in such a way that people are made to believe that nobody had thought of that before. In all these situations you end up with applause because you did something sensational, because you were “different.”

But just as people can watch a circus artist tumbling through the air, so they can listen to a preacher who uses the Word of God to draw attention to himself. But a sensational preacher stimulates the senses and leaves the spirit untouched. Instead of being the way to God, his “being different” gets in the way.22

Ow.

But he’s got a point. Theological reflection is paradoxically the purest when we resist personal pyrotechnics.

And intentionally suppressing the craving for performative originality—something all Christians are sort of required to do—doesn’t mean we have to suppress innovation or creating beautiful things. I’d wager it’s a perfect constraint.

The folk preaching tradition attests that some of the top-tier sermons of the past few centuries happened by chopping up other people’s work and then preaching whatever screwed together.23 And by building off of some previous work that was crafted with help from the Spirit, you join in the chorus of Spirit-driven creativity that’s been congregating for ages.

Maybe skepticism over self-inflating originality (the constraint) leads to greater preaching, teaching, and writing (the innovation).

And in all earnestness, there’s nothing wrong with not being original. Because of our unlimited capacity to forget, we need reminders—along with reminders that we need reminders. Like T.S. Eliot wrote,

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before.
I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again?24

He isn’t defending mechanical repetition; he’s saying we need to revisit and recite certain truths over and over and over again because genuine understanding isn’t achieved by hearing something once.25

The truth must root in you. Get inside your body.

It’s why no spiritual journey ever moves beyond the fundamentals. We get past elementary school, sure (1 Cor. 3:2); but we’re never so far past elementary school that we can do away with the building blocks it provided.26

The fact that we have to return over and over and over again to the same Bible, the same words, the same church, the same Christian tradition, the same theology, but then creatively work within those parameters that’ve been established long before we were born is a grace.

The paradigm shifting writers or preachers or theologians of each new generation don’t reinvent the wheel—they simply pick up the torches that’ve been passed since the beginning while reframing the flame in an angle that provides more clarity in a new context.

Constraints Make Good Things Run Wild

There’s, of course, a limit to the benefits of constraints. When you have too many—as in when you’re getting micromanaged at work—innovation and joy crumble. There’s a sweet spot where we have rules, but those rules encourage rather than suppress.

Thankfully, Christian theology is constantly, permanently, forever, a perfect representation of that sweet spot.

Like G.K. Chesterton put it, “And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.”27

This is a perfect sketch of the eu-constraints granted by Christianity. We know what’s off limits in the best possible way. And with those borders drawn, we work with the Holy Spirit to creatively discern our daily movements within the gorgeous reality God designed. That’s the good kind of freedom—the kind that frees us from the wrong and frees us toward the beautiful.28

To end, it’s okay if I don’t have anything new to say. The reality is that this isn’t a crisis—unoriginality, borrowing from trusted sources, and reframing the same old Scriptures is often what faithfulness looks like.

Paul said he didn’t care if he came across as an unglamorous preacher; he said he’d prefer to know nothing other than Christ, Cross, and Resurrection so he could draw people toward those things and away from himself (1 Cor. 2:1-5). That’s the kind of energy I wanna go for.

So, I’m grateful that we never grow out of the ethical sandbox built by Christian doctrine. It forces a kind of anti-originality that weirdly allows for more creativity. Which is probably why many of the greatest artists (Michelangelo), musicians (Bach), writers (Bunyan, Dostoevsky, Lewis) also happened to affirm the Christian faith.

There’s nothing new under the sun—but that doesn’t mean that sitting under the sun isn’t a gift. Being inside the box paradoxically gives us more space for good things to run wild.

Audio voiceover available here for paid subs!

Everymorning the alarm cried just before 6am and I’d shoot up like a cricket bat of anxiety and caffeine smacked through me. I’d grab literal caffeine on the way down the wood steps of the 1k per month,1 3-roommate apartment on the corner of Melrose & Kingsley. My 12-hour shift didn’t start until 10, but Melrose goes from two lanes to one around 7, and parking enforcement had a martyr-ous passion.

So every M-F morning, I’d walk to find wherever I left my Ford Fusion with the wheel wells rusted out and google “hiking trails.” I wasn’t really granola, but I needed to get into quiet—any kind of urban oasis where my ears would stop ringing and my limbs could stretch around nature for awhile. If I had enough time and gas money, I’d aim to find some place along PCH.

The whole time I lived in East Hollywood, it felt like my brain didn’t work. Something about the pace and the rush and the traffic and the unfulfillment you’d see in every unfamous but desperate to be face. And the smog.

The only reprieve was those morning walks. They were healing. Like a balm for a soul that was desperate to resist adjusting to a sick society.2 I’d talk to God; or just listen.

I still love walking. Now more than ever, probably.

Winter or summer, I walk around 4 miles a day.

There’s a boatload of research and writing on the philosophy and psychology and physiology of walking—but very, very little on the theology of it.

Which is interesting—especially considering that it was every biblical character’s primary mode of transportation.3

So here’s my best attempt to crack a theology of walking.

But here’s the gist: whenever you’re feeling stumped, overwhelmed, or overstimulated, one of the best possible responses is

GO FOR A WALK.

What Is a Walk?

Surprisingly, there’s lots of debate about what should count as a legitimate walk.

On one hand, we have “walk purists.”

These are the thinkers like Frédéric Gros who argue that carrying any technology, tracking your steps, or wearing a weighted vest to burn extra calories disqualifies the walk from being a real walk.4

Then there’s the “walk generalist.”

These are the folks who use walks as their time to catch up on podcasts and get their daily exercise. There’s not much art or style to it—it’s mainly functional.

Cards on the table, I’m somewhere inbetween on this spectrum. Sometimes I go full monk and walk deep into nature, other times I just walk on my home treadmill and get some extra reading in.

My philosophy is that as long as part of a walk’s goal is the walk itself, then it should count.

But one thing I’m picky about: we all need those purist walks every now and then.

A generalist walk is a great way to catch up on an audiobook and raise the heart rate.

But the meaty kinds of walks—the pure walk—are just plain elite; our souls run on those airplane mode, no pictures no noise, just you and God, kind of walks.5

Let’s start breaking down the “why” with

A Philosophy of Walking

Walking plays a weirdly crucial role in philosophy. Augustine, Aquinas, Rousseau, Rimbauld, Kant, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Thoreau all wrote about walking.

Philosophically speaking, in an era where we don’t have to walk—because, ya know, planes trains automobiles and those scooters you can rent via phone app lying on every corner—why is it that we still walk?

There’s a trope we see all the time in movies where a character who’s just been through something emotionally important gets asked, “Need a ride?” and the response is, “No, I’ll just walk.”

Few question this response because there’s something contemplative about a walk that’s universally recognized. We understand “I think I’ll just walk,” on a cellular level.

When my wife and I were first married, there were a couple tough months of adjusting to marriedness. And so whenever my wife needed a breather, she’d go on a walk. When she got back, she felt better.

And I never really had to question why. Walks process jumbled up emotions like few other activities can.

Throughout Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, his narrator walks around prodding existential questions about life. One of his thought sums up walking perfectly:

“Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion.”6

Basically: a walk forces you to become whatever the opposite of distracted is. They pierce you through whatever dross is smudging up the soul so you can gather enough clarity to reprocess.

There’s a phrase attributed to Augustine that backs this up: solvitur ambulando (literally, “it is solved by walking”).7 Essentially, when you’re stumped with something emotionally or intellectually perplexing, a walk somehow forces your brain to cough up an answer.

Michele de Montaigne wrote that he walked “to stimulate his thinking, to move reflection forward, to deepen inventiveness. My thoughts sleep if l sit still; the mind needs the help of an active body.”8

That’s spot on. Whether the problem is philosophical, personal, or social problem—a walk can solve it. Not by making the circumstances surrounding the problem better, but by giving us a weirdly calm vantage point over all of it.

Walking also has a weird way of making us more aware of who we are. And it does this, oddly enough, by disconnecting us from our sense of self.

The sociologist Hartmut Rosa notes that walking chips away our desire for control.9 Even if we know the path, we’ll never know who we’ll run into, the animals we’ll see, the sensations we’ll experience.

As such, the uncontrollability of a good walk reminds us that we’re not gods. It teaches us more about our creatureliness.10

And once we come into a deeper awareness of being created and not Creator—that we’re simply God’s imagers occupying one microscopic blip in time and space—we shed off the nagging thoughts that tell us to derive a sense of worth from our lifestyle, CV, and daily tasks.

This fits with what Gros, the walk purist from earlier, says:

By walking, you escape the temptation to be someone, to have a name and a history. Being someone is all very well for smart parties where everyone is telling their story, it’s all very well for psychologists’ consulting rooms. But isn’t being someone also a social obligation which trails in its wake—for one has to be faithful to the self-portrait—a stupid and burdensome fiction? The freedom in walking lies in not having to be anyone.11

Precisely. The walk is where we notice the creases where the false self strives for superiority over the true self. We build resilience against the stupidity of buying into the false self’s promises that we’d be happier if we let it run the show.

So when we walk—no ads, notifications, temptations to be someone we aren’t—we process our emotions, existential crises, intellectual conundrums, and, best of all, we become who we are.

Next up:

A Psycho-physiology of Walking

In 1909, to shake things up, the 70-year-old Edward Weston decided to start walking from Times Square to Union Square. Ya know: a casual stroll from NYC to San Francisco.

And 105 days and 3,925 miles later, he did it.

Scientifically, this was a brilliant idea. The journey likely slowed down Weston’s mental and physical deterioration to the point that it probably tacked on a couple extra couple years to his life.12

Walking comes with an astounding number of (1) physiological, (2) social, and even (3) religious benefits.13

(1) Physiological

Like the philosophers noticed, scientists also point out that walks “make our minds mobile.”14 It’s not just the quiet; there’s something about the rhythmic process of putting one foot in front of the other that syncs your brain to a frequency that affords more clarity, resonance, and joy.15 Going on consistent walks has even shown to decrease the risk of depression by a full 25%.16

(2) Social

Walks click our minds off from individualistic styles of thinking and help us see everyone as interrelated and dependent on one another.17

It’s one reason why it’s easier to make friends while out hiking—we literally see them less like strangers and more like another member of our expansive social web.

It’s also why, instead of doing early morning coffee, I prefer to ask my friends to just go on a walk instead. Like musicians that feel more bonded after playing a set together, so the physiological synchronicity of walking with someone leads into mental synchronicity.18

Is it a coincidence that my wife and I’s first date was a walk through a nature preserve because it was Covid and nature was the only place we were allowed to hangout? The walk was how I nabbed her.

(3) Religious

Even those who don’t feel like going on a walk claim that they feel better, emotionally and physically, after walking.19 Famously, when Kierkegaard wrote to his sister-in-law who was bedridden from depression, he said:

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.20

Kierkegaard isn’t just thinking along the psycho-social benefits. He understands what scientists are just starting to: that walks are transcendent.

Which is a good segue into

A Theology of Walking

There’s no chapter and verse, “thou shalt walk,” proof text. But we do know that when God incarnated, He transported himself by putting one foot in front of the other, traversing each and every terrain at roughly 3 miles per hour.

Now, God speaks anywhere God wants to speak—but it seems like a big chunk of that speaking occurs after walking into the wilderness or up a mountain (1 Kings 19; Mark 1:35; Luke 5:16; 22).

One of the most profound cases of God’s speaking happens through a recently resurrected Jesus as He walks alongside two people on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35). They have a profoundly literary back-and-forth while moving in step.21 They only realize who Jesus was after arriving at their destination. And then they start walking back to Jerusalem.

Which means: their walk was essentially destination-less. The journey itself became the plane of enlightenment. By walking nowhere, they discovered where they were going.22

The story is also just an excellent illustration of how God works much more slowly (and confusingly) than most would prefer. As Kosuke Koyama writes in Three Mile an Hour God,

I find that God goes “slowly” with his educational process of man. “Forty years in the wilderness” points to his basic educational philosophy. Forty years of national migration through the wilderness, three generations of united monarchy, nineteen Kings of Israel and twenty kings of Judah, the hosts of prophets and priests, the experience of exile and restoration. Isn’t this rather a slow and costly way for God to let his people know the covenant relationship between God and man?…God walks slowly because of his love for us. If he did not love, he would have gone much faster. Love has its speed. It is an inner speed; a spiritual speed.23

Amen and absolutely.

Some ancient Jesus followers said that walks encouraged righteous headspaces. Apparently, early monasteries prescribed walks to monks who were struggling with acedia. Which is a difficult word to translate, but it’s almost like a self-obsessed inward concern that manifests as sloth, solipsism, or apathy. Acedia is the opposite of a flourishing life with God because it makes God’s gifts seem delusional. And so one of their cures was going for a purposeful walk.24

It makes sense: walks get us outside of our anxieties, depressions, until our daily worries start to feel more delusional than the life God’s highlighted for us. As the director Ingmar Berman said, “The demons hate it when you get out of bed. Demons hate fresh air.”

Pilgrimages

It’d be a crime to talk about walking without mentioning the Songs of Ascent (Psalm 120-135). Israel would chant these 15 psalms while walking on their tri-annual journeys to Jerusalem:

These Psalms themselves are essentially walker chants: they either sing of the sadness of exile, of the eternal stranger, or speak longingly of the Promised Land. Psalms do not call for much intellectual effort on the level of meaning or content. They are meant to be uttered, articulated, chanted, embodied. They should be actualized in the body, and when chanted by several people, made real in the body of a community.25

Beautifully, these Jerusalem journeys have continued on in church history thanks to “pilgrimages”— essentially, “spiritual journeys to sacred places.”26 A pilgrimage separates you from the twistedness of the world and catapults you into Beatitude.

Pilgrimages are surprisingly alive and well today—particularly the Camino de Santiago. Starting at St-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France, this journey requires typically 30-35 days of constant walking, literally “walking 500 miles” to wind up at the door of the Cathedral of Santiago. It’s said that those who are perplexed about their lives should take the pilgrimage to find profound spiritual enlightenment.27

In one of the most harrowing caminos studied, a husband and wife made the pilgrimage after discovering that their son had done something atrocious to their daughter. In a mountain of confusion and hurt, they started the walk. For days, they walked wordlessly. Afterward they said they didn’t need to articulate their pain, because the pilgrimage did it for them. While consciously walking together in light of God’s presence—sharing silence, sharing pain—they gained peace and direction over their situation.28

The Harvard Professor Arthur Brooks and his wife did the Camino de Santiago when he was in a phase of his career where he was confused about what to do with his life. They made the whole trek, and by the end of it, he knew what his calling was:

“I will lift people up and bring them together in bonds of love, using science and data.”29

Since then, he’s gone on to have a mind-boggingly successful career in teaching on meaning and happiness. And its genesis was the pilgrimage.

I related to Brooks’ story because it’s almost exactly how I found my calling. Long before I ever started writing or teaching, I was doing silence and solitude in the dead of winter, walking around a frozen pond over and over again, asking God to speak. And it’s one of the only times I felt like I heard from Him with undeniable clarity:

Teach and write and live the Bible.30

And since then, that’s what I’ve done.

Challenge: Go on a Mini-Pilgrimage

Describing the beauty of pilgrimage, the psychologist Joshua Knabb argues:

To “walk with God” and ponder his attributes and actions may be one of the ultimate spiritual disciplines, given that we are pairing the use of our God-given mind with physical activity. We are doing so as we employ our God-given senses (e.g., our sense of sight by watching God’s creation, like the birds, trees, and surrounding mountains or hills; our sense of sound by listening to the birds chirping in the trees or dogs barking in the background; our sense of touch by feeling our feet make contact with God’s stable earth below us or the cool breeze make contact with our face as we slowly walk through our neighborhood) to enjoy God’s magnificent, vast, mysterious world.31

So your challenge—my challenge, too—is to make an effort to intentionally enjoy God’s magnificent, vast, mysterious world by going on a walk this week. The pure kind. It can be a day, a half a day, an hour, or during whenever you have childcare. I’m aiming to take at least a half day pilgrimage either next week or the week after.

Take a pencil and notebook and write down whatever comes to mind. Maybe you’re wrestling with a question or your stumped on how to process something. Bring that with you. That’s where most of my ideas that turn out to be any good come from. Most importantly, if you’re wrestling with the biggest questions pertaining to meaning relationships, calling, whether a new opportunity is best for your family, a pilgrimage is likely one of the best possible ways to wrestle with God all the way through those milestone decisions.

It is solved by walking.

But I also had a barrel of fun putting this together. And for me, it doesn’t feel that gimmicky because this is the kind of stuff I wish I’d known when I started writing, but that I had to learn the hard way.

Also: since it’s the type of thing that people ask me about perpetually, but I’m not enormously interested in repeating over and over, I can ideally just point them to this article and then we can talk about the really important things, like what music they’re listening to or if they’ve read any George Saunders or what their opinion is on things like the practical relevance of saying “theosis” instead of “deification” even though deification is the most literal translation of the Greek theosis, and we only started subbing in theosis in the past few centuries because people were worried “deification” sounded too wonky.

Anyways: I wrote this as as if I was writing to myself about two or three years ago, before I ever had a single article published and no one cared what I had to say.

So: apologies for the paywall—but the support from readers is genuinely such a huge blessing to my family. So thankful for you all.

Withoutfurtherado:

Read more

Audio voiceover available here for paid subs!

Somewhere in a 4^th century desert around the Near East, a Christian monk named Abba Lot approached Abba Joseph and said,

“Abba, as far as I can, I keep my little rule [of life]. I fast, I pray, I keep silence, and I strive to purify my thoughts. What else should I do?”

And Abba Joseph stood up and stretched out his hands toward the heavens and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire.

“If you will, you can become all flame.”1

Now, I’m not about to get all wonky on you. I’m aware this story is in the legend (or “true myth”) category. But ever since reading it, I haven’t been able to get that last line out of my head:

“Why not become all flame?”2

Essentially: why settle for spiritual infancy when you can become a full-grown adult?

Which feels very relevant for nowadays: it seems like almost everyone, everywhere, is becoming more and more comfortable with languishing in immaturity—even though the option to become fully alive is staring us down from across the table.

You can only be young once, but you can be immature forever.

In general, I’m a next-gen optimist; but even other next-gen optimists like Harvard’s Nancy Hill and Alexis Redding are conceding on this point: today’s youth are drastically delaying landmarks of maturity—such as

• getting a driver’s license,

• moving out of their parents’ home,

• securing steady employment,

• getting married,

• starting a family,

• and feeling confident about who they are.3

Apparently, 15% of Gen Z and 13% of Millennials say they’ve intentionally put off four or more major life milestones.4

This doesn’t include those who want to get married or have kids but can’t for myriad reasons. It’s about those who are fully capable of achieving those milestones, but don’t.

Adulthood has become so deferrable that some suggest adding a new developmental stage between childhood and adulthood called “emerging adulthood.”5

More eerily, many aren’t just deferring growing up—they’re rejecting it all together. Worst-case scenarios include social withdrawal phenomena like hikikomori (when someone locks themselves indoors indefinitely to protest participating in society) and gooning (ya, just read the article if you want more details).

Immaturity is trending upward in the larger culture, but similar problems exist in the church. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard someone who feels called to marriage say they won’t even consider dating someone until after landing a picturesque job or “getting past their 20s.”

What’s even more common, though, is seeing people who know their calling (i.e., becoming a missionary, going back to school to become a data analyst, starting a lawn care business, etc.) but can’t seem to take the necessary steps to move closer to that calling.

Now, this is a crucial nexus where I could go all fire and brimstone Driscoll and scold everyone to grow up. But that’s not really my modus operandi.

However, this next bit might sort of break that modus: society’s common good isn’t really enhanced by adult adolescents running around doing whatever the flesh pleases. There’s no biblical category for “emerging adulthood.”6

But to clarify, we don’t need maturity because it’s annoying that lots of dudes are sitting around playing video games; we need it because we need mature imago Deis who have the confidence to do what God designed them to do (Eph. 2:9-10).

So, TL;DR: Christian maturity is becoming “all flame”—fully alive—but we can’t mature unless we’re painted a compelling vision of what we can mature into.

Lots of factors prevent us from becoming all flame—most of which, I think, have surprisingly straightforward solutions.

1. Design an Omega Course

In a paper by the scholar Bruce Hindmarsh, he asks: why is it that so many Christians never actually grow up?

He comes up with plenty suggestions, all of them gems, but his first is most convincing: without painting people a clear destination, they won’t get anywhere.7

Essentially, the Christian faith—and humans in general—are inherently teleological. Which basically means that we’re designed to move toward an end.

We’re supposed to go from conversion toward consummation; and yet, many Christian communities make conversion, what the author of Hebrews equates with “infancy” (5:12), the entirety of the picture.

Essentially: we call it good after getting people through the Alpha course.

Though normal today, this is kinda weird, historically speaking. For early and medieval Christians, “it would have been hard to design an Alpha Course without having in mind also an Omega Course.”8 The infant must become an adult; there was no “just enjoy stumbling in a listless entropy for awhile.”

Ephesians is probably where this is most explicit: urging Jesus followers to stop being “children” (νήπιοι) and “grow up” (αὐξήσωμεν) into Christ. And the metric for whether one has become a “mature people” (ἄνδρα τέλειον) is through comparing themselves with the “measure” (μέτρον) of Christ’s character (Eph. 4:13–15).

Modern discipleship tends to begin with the shallows: here are the basics, here’s where you can serve, we’ll inch you deeper over time. Conversely Jesus, Paul, and many early theologians started by laying out the deep end. I.e., “Take up your cross daily” (Luke 9:23; cf. John 6:53) or “Until Christ is formed in you” (Gal. 4:19);9 even the beginning of Augustine’s Confessions lays out the end of Christian formation: your heart remains restless until it rests in God.

Similarly, the 5^th century theologian John Cassian begins his Conferences, a series of interviews about the heart of spirituality, by asking bluntly: what is the goal of the spiritual life? The answers he uncovers—namely, the kingdom of God, eternal life, love—are the ends that shape the means of every increment of life with God.

Cassian realized it was crucial to start with the telos because it breathes life into everything else we do—“until all our living and all our wishing become one unending prayer.”10

Real growth requires some kind of eschatological catechesis.11 Without sketching a tangible telos that displays the compelling beauty of maturity, we’re left without a target to aim toward—along with the incentives to start aiming.

2. Don’t Lower the Bar

The family systems theorist Edwin Friedman once shared a statement from a football coach that has squatter’s rights in my head:

When I coach, if receivers complain that the quarterback throws the ball too hard, I don’t go to the quarterback and tell him to let up. I tell him to throw it as hard as he can, and I then tell the receivers they had better hang on to his passes if they want to hang on to the team.12

Point being: if you lower the bar, it obviously puts a cap on your star players; but, more subtly, it also ruins the whole team’s capacity to grow.

Friedman argues that we should apply this whole mentality to every field we can think of: corporations, therapy offices, court systems, tech enterprises, and churches.

Even from my minor teaching experience, I can attest that lowering the bar doesn’t do much more than raise a few grades. But prioritizing grades (or pining for positive course evals due to handing out easy As) over challenging students is a perfect example of a failure of nerve.

If you don’t stretch them to read Plato or Chesterton or Augustine or write an AI-free paper, you limit their opportunity to become the kind of people who can pull those things off.

This isn’t to say we should just toss people into the deep end and say “Catch up!” Meeting people where they’re at is crucial (1 Cor. 9:1-23).

But simultaneously, if we lower the bar for everyone, it puts a speed limiter on everyone’s pace for pursuing radiance.

3. Confessionalization

There’s also the problem of “confessionalization”—the minimizing of Christian practices to doctrinal affiliation.

We saw this a bunch in the early post-reformation era: “People were resting content in their doctrinal correctness and confessional identity, but they were not showing any signs of real change in their spiritual lives.”13

But it continues strong today, evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of YouTube subscribers flocking around voices publicly wrestling through denominational dynamics.14

I’m always impressed by the quality and quantity of angry comments I get online because something I said didn’t fit within the parameters of someone’s denomination. I’m all for friendly denominational debates, but I bow out whenever it gets heated. In my un-peer-reviewed opinion, we only have a limited amount of righteous anger that we can healthily channel per day—and denominational fighting just doesn’t top my list of deserving channels.

Doctrine is necessary—we can’t do without it. But doctrine that’s stuck in cerebral musings and a Freudian tyranny of minor differences just feels a bit un-conducive to righteousness.15

Sure, they’re usually intertwined; but correct doctrine doesn’t equate to—or necessarily lead to (James 2:19)—spiritual maturity.16

4. Avoid Overstimulation

Recently, the Harvard Professor Arthur Brooks did a series of interviews with several young, rich, and restless professionals to try and figure out why they were so enormously unfulfilled.

Surprisingly, a shared fear that lots of these rational, intelligent, and by all accounts normal people had is that they felt like they were living in a simulation—like Neo in the Matrix.

Which boggled me. I skipped the simulation theory lecture in my Intro to Philosophy course this year because I thought it was boring; but maybe I did them a disservice.

But as Brooks point out, when we spend too much time scrolling, living life through screens, it’s not all that surprising if we start feeling like our daily life is profoundly unmeaningful.17

In terms of maturing, overstimulation—or just chronic online-ness—removes us from the reality of having to face our reality.

recently argued that social media tends to make us more immature since it rewards traits like passivity, performativity, and reputation management.

It makes sense; keyboards allow us to bypass the growth that comes from difficult, in-person talks. Calling people out online is easy; living is harder.18

Avoiding quiet and calm forfeits time that we could’ve spent processing our lives in a way that allows us to move beyond immature reflexivity.

So encouraging strategic breaks from stimulation is just a solid idea in general—those moments act like checkpoints toward maturation.

5. Honor Better Models

There’s a saying in Christian tradition that states: “As the leader goes, so goes the church.”

But troublingly, at present, the models we elevate are typically either someone who has good social media skills or an uncontroversial Ned Flanders who does what they’re supposed to do.

The commodification of Christianity via social media—as well as the modern Christian celebrity industrial complex—sadly camaflouges the paradoxical reality of what real righteousness looks like.

Putting less than emulation-worthy talking heads up front makes us more likely to imitate traits that aren’t worth imitation, since we’re shockingly susceptible to imitate those who seem popular.19

The best models usually aren’t putting themselves in the spotlight; they’re usually off to the side, beating their chest saying “Have mercy on me, a sinner.”

We need saints, not celebrities; we need models who care more about theosis, union with Christ, than building platform.

6. Pass Batons

As older generations continue to live longer, they naturally hold onto leadership roles longer. As such, younger people have fewer opportunities to step into genuine responsibility.

And, of course, becoming mature can’t happen in a lab. You don’t become a good husband or leader by sitting in a room and thinking hard about doing those things—it requires real world stakes.

Institutions that hoard authority in the hopes of retaining stability can accidentally create the exact immaturity they lament.

Growth requires trusting someone with responsibilities that they can, and often will, fail within. Stakes don’t just incentivize maturity—they create maturity.

7. Accept that the Circumstances of Your Life Will Never Arrive at a Perfect Place

My wife and I didn’t have any money when we met. We still don’t have much. I’m still working on a degree in a field that notoriously doesn’t pay a lot. We still have loans. We still don’t know what the future looks like. Sometimes, we know what life will look like two months from now, other times we don’t.

Given all that, should we have just waited to get married?

Absolutely not. These past five years have been the best five years of my life. Wouldn’t change anything for all the money a Fortune 500 company generates in a year.

Same thing goes for all my friends who got married too young, had kids too young, or started a full-time job way before they were ready. Sometimes it’s the very fact of a change in your life that forces you to rise to the challenge.

If we keep waiting for everything to fall perfectly into place before settling down, going back to school, starting a family, or even nesting, then we give up so many precious moments for the sake of things that we can’t take beyond our graves.

The opportunity costs of putting off growing up simply aren’t worth putting off—we’ll spend way too long waiting for an imaginary ideal moment that’ll never arrive.

And to clarify, this isn’t to say that God’s called us all into grandpa mode. Like the Proverb goes, “The glory of young men is their strength, And the honor of old men is their gray hair” (20:29).

Skipping over youth for the sake of becoming a serious adult is silly. We should enjoy and glory in whichever age we’re at in the time we’re in it. So if you’re older, glory in the wisdom God’s given you; if you’re young, glory in having little back pain and the capacity to stay awake past 9pm.

Now, back to the start:

Why Not Become All Flame?

Both Abba Joseph’s initial question and Abba Lot’s response are scathingly relatable. Like the rich young ruler, we approach our mentors, spiritual directors, trusted compadres, or even God Himself by asking “Why am I not fulfilled?”

And the response is the same as it was for the rich young ruler: “Come follow me.”

Or, ya know, something adjacent of: “Trust Jesus fully,” or “Surender all your attachments to Him.” Etcetera.

But for whatever reason, it’s wildly difficult to actualize these bits of wisdom beyond momentary mental assent.

Personally, I’m not necessarily an exemplar; compared to some friends, I’m a late bloomer. But I did eventually get on track (I think). And it feels genuinely wonderful. I’m more alive than I’ve ever been—at home in my own skin and calling and place.

The flame is always worth the risk, the vulnerability, the sacrifice of the “good ole days.”

In reality “all flame” simply means to become more like Jesus. In that sense, the truest mark of becoming flame, becoming mature, is just becoming a person of love—someone who loves their family and kids and community enough to give themselves over to the labor God’s called them toward.

In that sense, the question is really asking: why settle for less than the abundant life that God intends for you?

Framed that way, the response to the question feels more obvious.

Why not become all flame?

Audio voiceover available here for paid subs!

There’s never been a good time to have kids.

An optimal time to bring a baby into the world is an optical illusion.

But we’ve had them anyways.

In the documentarian Daniel Roher’s The AI Doc, he gathers some of the top experts in tech to ask them this basic question: is AI going to doom the world into oblivion?1

He’s not just amiably wondering out loud; there’s a deeper (and personally relatable, for this writer) impetus behind his curiosity. His wife’s pregnant. So the not-so-subtle paranoia he invites the viewer into is: Will there even be a world left for our kid grow up into?

This paranoia is pretty common. It’s the kind of anxiety that creates questions about whether having kids is even worth it—which leads to The Los Angeles Times articles like “It’s Almost Shameful to Want to Have Children.”

The journalist behind that particular article interviewed a plethora of Gen Z and Millennials to get their take on having children in light of impending global disasters. One girl answered: “I know that things aren’t going to get better. So why would I want to put a child through that? Even when my sister gave birth to my nephew, I was like, Why? They’re gonna go through so much.”2

She’s not alone; according to the most recent Pew data, 44% of 18-49 year olds say they’re never going to have kids.3

And aside from “just not wanting to,” the overwhelming reason for “why” is because people are terrified about the state of the world. Thus not having kids is a kind of mercy.

In one of the darker ends of this conversation, the philosopher Matti Häyry even argues that because of climate change, the best gift we can give our kids is non-existence (i.e., it’s virtuous to not procreate).4

Now, I’m inclined to believe most concerns about the state of the world are valid (though, in many cases, they’re greatly exaggerated). We’re not living in a new Eden. But everytime I see something like this, I can’t help but think: there’s never been a perfect time to have kids. But right now is not, comparatively, the worst.

Purely from a medical standpoint, it’s never been safer to have kids.

In the 19^th century, the child mortality rate in the U.S. was 462.9 deaths per 1,000 births. According to the CDC’s most recent data, that number is now at 5.5 out of 1,000.5 Meaning, a 98.8% decrease.

Even beyond the medical angle, we have substantial evidence to suggest that the vast majority of doomsday predictions made by some of the world’s leading experts never pan out.6 This isn’t to suggest that climate change or economic concern shouldn’t be taken seriously; in fact, it’s the opposite: because we take these concerns seriously, we’ve been able to avert innumerable natural, political, and economic disasters.7

Yet, even in spite of how many steps on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that we can easily provide our kids today, we’re more skeptical of having kids today than at any other point in history.

I just got through The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck based the novel on factual accounts of real migrant workers moving westward during the dust bowl. Most places, wages were 15 cents an hour in exchange for grueling sun-up-to-sun-down labor. And even though 15 cents was enough to feed the parents, it wasn’t enough to feed the kids. Which is to say: it wasn’t a good time to have kids.

And yet: they were really excited to have kids.

They talked about Rose of Sharon’s pregnancy like it was a gift, and lamented when the baby was stillborn.8

Taking it back to Bible times, they had an even higher view of procreation. Some scholars even argue that barrenness was one of the worst evils that could fall upon a woman.9

Keep in mind that this is way before all of the medical luxuries that help create a safe birthing process. There was none of that. And yet, they recognized childbearing as something that was such a deep blessing that being deprived of it was a unique injustice.10 It was such a blessing that Hannah even offered to devote her son Samuel’s life to the Lord if she was simply able to bear him (1 Samuel 1-3).

And yeah, AI is scary. So is lots of other stuff. But also, it’s categorically superior to the birthing environment of whatever was going on here:

Anyways, I’m of a small camp of people who are optimistic that things are generally going to be okay in the long run. I’m often (usually graciously) told that I’m naive and it’s better to assume the absolute worse. This is deemed the “smart” position.

John Stuart Mill noticed this too: “It is not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, who is admired by a large class of persons as a sage.”11

Maybe I’m just more depressively inclined, but I don’t function very well when I believe the forecast is an entropic spiral into oblivion. I prefer the philosophy of hoping and praying that things will generally be okay and then making my decisions accordingly.

And maybe I’m totally off and things go DEFCON 5 (or 1? Is lower worse than higher?). And that will be genuinely horrible. But I’d rather not let the possibility of bad dictate the possibility of good.

The logic C.S. Lewis uses to shape his reasoning for continuing to learn even during wartime feels relevant here:

Life has never been normal. Even those periods which we think most tranquil, like the nineteenth century, turn out, on closer inspection, to be full of cries, alarms, difficulties, emergencies. Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right. But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons. They wanted knowledge and beauty now, and would not wait for the suitable moment that never comes.12

I know the world isn’t perfect, but I also doubt a perfectly “suitable moment” will ever come.

The authors of Scripture wrote about children as if they were a blessing—an inherent good. So even if this world is marred and drenched in a horrible amount of bad, bringing something good into the world isn’t going to increase its bad. It can’t.

It’s endlessly more beautiful, good, and gracious to exist than it is to not. This world is abundant; it can handle another child. Life is a gift.

So anyways, as you probably picked up on, my wife and I are having a baby:

And for us personally, it’s a little easier to recognize this as a “good gift” (James 1:17). It’s been a difficult road. Similarly for many of our friends and acquaintances, fertility didn’t come easy. Of both of our adult lives, this journey has easily been the most harrowing. For those in on the lingo, our daughter is a double rainbow baby.

To put it like did in one of the most affecting books I’ve read in ages, I’ve already had kids; I’ve just never met them.13

But I’m sure I’ll meet them someday.

Because we have so many friends and online wellwishers who are reading this and still struggling with infertility, please know that God sees you. I know it’s cliche. But it’s true. His compassion for your pain is limitless; you are and will remain in our prayers.

Also: we’re definitely terrified in many ways. In one sense, it’s because, as Andrew Solomon wrote “Parenthood abruptly catapults us into a permanent relationship with a stranger.” Are we even mature enough to handle entering this permanent relationship?

In another sense, and despite optimistic forecasting, we really don’t know what’s going to happen. Life for her might really be harder than life was for us.

But regardless of all the challenges she’ll face, we’re thankful. And sometimes, I’m even thankful that the world she’s coming into isn’t perfect. Neither of us ascribe to the belief that a life without resistance, hardship, let down is what makes for a flourishing life. We need every note on the scale of human emotion in order to stumble into a textured, beautiful life.

In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 1877 short story titled “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man,” he writes about a man who dreams about an alternative version of Earth, where everything is mostly the same, but it’s missing one thing: suffering. At first, the man feels like he’s stumbled into heaven on earth. But it soon sours into meaningless misery. Without any sense of pain, the love that his soul is designed to crave isn’t given enough oxygen to breathe:

“I long, I thirst, this very instant, to kiss with tears the earth that I have left, and I don’t want, I won’t accept life on any other!”14

So even though philosophers like David Benatar argue that reproducing is immoral simply because you’re going to expose your kids to unavoidable suffering, we can feel confident that this isn’t true in the slightest.15 The less-than-ideal state of the world freaks us out, but a frictionless environment isn’t all it’s cracked up to be; without the bitter the sweet isn’t as sweet.

Lastly, I also can’t help but mention how unproductive it feels to have a baby. I like to hustle and work and create. And this is necessarily going to slow that down a tad (a lot, really). I’d wager that this is a subtle fear around a lot of modern childbearing paranoia.

And paranoid I was. Not even about the normal things, like having less time to see friends or go to the gym or wallow in introverted brooding.

But plenty more eccentric pre-father jitters popped up, such as: I need to start working on the great American novel.

“What if the next 8 months are the only chance I ever get to become Gen Z’s Hemingway?” is a real thought I had.

Now, please know: I’ve never aspired to write the great American novel, let alone a novel, before this. But this inexplicable paranoia arose in me that told me I had to, right now—because, come November, I’ll never get the chance to cook that manuscript.

And yes, it’s probably one of the more selfish fears I’ve had in a long time. This bit about the novel is the most extreme example; but it’s bubbled up in a lot of other productivity-related ways: What if I don’t have time to do what I’m supposed to do? What if I can’t write anymore? Or read? Or finish my PhD?

What if I can’t do what I’m called to do?

All those fears evaporated around the 10-week mark.

We were at the fertility clinic getting an ultrasound. I didn’t know any of the details beforehand, but the nurse said that we were gonna try to hear the heartbeat.

Which brought in a sick, trauma nostalgia for both of us. We’d been through this routine twice before and heard crickets. So we held our breaths.

And within a second of hearing our baby’s heartbeat, I knew that this was exactly what I was called to. This was the main gig.

Having less time to write won’t imply the giving up of my vocation even a fraction. I knew from that moment in time that I was actually stepping into the most important calling I’ve ever had.

It’s hard to stay cynical when you see a baby’s heartbeat.

I realized, and am continuing to realize, that so much of what I think matters in life (productivity, excelling, doing good work) isn’t really life.

This is life.

And I love life, thank you.

I also loved this reflection on becoming a dad by that just came out yesterday. Highly recommend.

Experience? Mental fortitude? Motivational speaking?

Take a second and rattle off the top three qualities that come to mind. What turns an average leader into an exceptional one?

Okay, do you have them?

Great.

Chances are, you just described yourself.1

For example, if you’re extroverted, highly opinionated, and punctual, you’re likely to think, “A great leader has good people skills, speaks their mind, and gets things done on time.”

But if you’re introverted, analytical, and strategic, you’re more inclined to answer, “A good leader takes alone time to recover, thinks through scenarios from every angle, and isolates the best route forward.”

Now, these qualities aren’t necessarily wrong—lots of them are exceptional leadership building blocks. Social scientists simply used this as a thought experiment to show that we all struggle to see reality as is.

Like the famous Babylonian aphorism goes: “We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.”2 It’s why we tend to skew our perceptions in ways that flatter the self.

Truth is, we’re all far more biased than we give ourselves credit for. And even those who’ve heard that “we’re all more biased than we give ourselves credit for” a billion times are sadly not that much less biased than those who’ve never heard this news.

Even after all the research I had to do on the science of bias for my dissertation, I’m still wildly, surprisingly, and egregiously biased.

Which, yeah, there are probably bigger problems in the world.

But the danger isn’t just projecting biased leadership qualities; the danger is more so that whenever we encounter something that’s ambiguous, we subtly reshape it into our own image—and we even do this with God Himself.

But thankfully, there are some key tips and tricks—well, one tip and trick, technically—to help us see reality as reality is.

And even though that might not sound all that fun—because, you know, we prefer our cozy illusions—it’s far superior to become the kind of person who tastes reality as it is. Those who live in Plato’s cave forever can’t become radiant because they never step into reality’s shine.

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Open this article in Substack to read the whole thing—the email gets cut off!

Audio voiceover available here for paid subs!

The roommate we rarely heard from surveyed the wreckage before retreating upstairs. He descended originally to inspect the arguing overheard from the second floor. I was doing lots of it.

A rite of college life is rhythmically winding up in bleary late-night conversations over sophomoric philosophical disagreements. We were sprawled around the cookie cutter living room with Facebook Marketplace couches shoved against each wall. One girl mentioned that it was okay to get mad at God, and I thought that sounded like heresy. I’d only been following Jesus for two years, so I was in the thick of that phase where everything unfamiliar sounds like heresy. I shot back that getting angry with God was insubordinate—treason-lite—since it showed we didn’t trust His plan and/or will.

She said that anger was just honest—a vulnerable confession of emotion. It admits the conflicted guilt—the frustration that God isn’t showing up more tangibly in your life—in a way that allows you to process and reappraise the feeling in healthy ways. She pointed to a couple imprecatory psalms as proof texts.

I said you might as well skip that part and just get better at trusting God and went to bed.

Later, I found out that she was, of course, exactly right.

For a long stretch of my Christian life, I was closer to embodying a Jesus-y stoicism than Christianity.

One of the most common criticisms I’ve gotten—from friends, mentors, employers—is that I can get so cerebral that I end up analyzing emotions to skip experiencing them. One time I got upset with a therapist because he told me that understanding why I was feeling depressed couldn’t fix depression. I thought that if I kept an intellectual buffer between myself and my experiences, I could control them.

Even today, I’m still an embarrassingly big fan of suppressing emotions. Telling myself I’m not anxious or sad when I’m one or both those things. I prefer it. It sort of feels valiant—like a vague toughness (or “tuffness”).

And sadly, this brand of avoidance isn’t always called out by Christian community. Some considered my affectlessness a kind of strength. It allowed me to rise above the emotional hurdles that got in the way of ministry.

But Christianity isn’t a stoic coping mechanism.1 We need our emotions—all of them, not just the convenient, pleasant kind. The whole spectrum is necessary; they’re gauges that allow us to live well—and put us in closer alignment with Jesus’ orientation to living.

Even when Jesus’ emotions were inconvenient, He didn’t dance around them. His “familiarity with sorrow” attests that experiencing emotion with utmost sincerity isn’t a burden, but an invitation into a textured, paradoxical, abundant life. The good life is upside down.

So, TL;DR: Christian maturity and stoic tendencies can get confused because they really do overlap in several ways. But stoicism forfeits two things Christians can’t afford to lose: an affirmation of

(1) the goodness of creation and

(2) the moral goodness of our embodied suffering, desire, and emotions.

To illustrate, let’s talk about the difference between Jesus and Socrates.

The Stoic Yeshua

If you hang around philosophy circles, you might come across this observation: many great philosophers were unjustly executed by the empire for spreading counter narratives. And each of them died emotionless, stoic deaths. These lists often include Socrates, Protagoras, Seneca, and Jesus of Nazareth.

🎶One of these is not like the other🎶

The philosopher Charles Taylor specifically called out the comparisons between Socrates and Jesus because their approaches to death were completely different.2

Socrates spent his final moments convincing his friends that he wasn’t losing anything valuable—that death is the cure to the disease of life.3 As such, he can peacefully accept the death-by-drinking-hemlock because, for him, death doesn’t imply the loss of anything good.4

Conversely, Jesus suffered pure agony. He prayed that God would spare Him so intensely that blood poured from His pores. We call the sequence leading up to His burial the “Passion” narrative because it’s absolutely brimming with it.

Sure, He prayed “not my will but yours” and “Father forgive them,” but these aren’t mantras of stoic acceptance—they’re drenched in embodied suffering. And regardless of your interpretation of His last words, it’s hard to deny that they’re emotionally loaded: “My God, why have you forsaken me?”

For Socrates, he could leave life serene and unbothered because he didn’t consider this life “good”—which made renouncing it way easier.

For Jesus, He couldn’t not experience agony. In fact, if He didn’t feel anguish over His impending death, then it wouldn’t have been a sacrifice; it would’ve been a mere robotic furthering of God’s will. As Taylor puts it:

The great difference between Stoic and Christian renunciation is this: for the Stoic, what is renounced is not part of the good.

For the Christian, what is renounced is affirmed as good—both in the sense that the renunciation would lose its meaning if we were indifferent and in the sense that the renunciation is in furtherance of God’s will, which precisely affirms the goodness of the kinds of things renounced: health, freedom, life.

For the stoic, loss isn’t all that “bad.”

But for the Christian, loss is always a “breach in the integrity of the good.”5

We mourn not because we need what’s lost but because it’s worth lamenting the loss of anything God calls “good” (Gen. 1). To deny lament is to deny the beauty and intention in the way God crafted those things—whether it’s life (in Jesus’ case), food (in the case of a fast), or rest (in the case that we’re combatting sloth).

As such, the only Christian way to “renounce” something is by affirming the goodness of what we renounce beforehand. This is why it should be impossible for a Christian to self-righteously reject something (think high-horse teetotalers).

C.S. Lewis describes renunciation best: “Marriage is good, though not for me; wine is good, though I must not drink it; feasts are good, though today we fast.”6

It’s also very biblical: “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude” (1 Tim. 4:4).

And yet, even though Jesus and Paul affirmed the goodness of creation and embodied existence, how is it that stoic acceptance become a mark of Christian maturity?

Genesis of Jesus-y Stoicism

Even though Socrates and Jesus are very (very) different, stoicism and platonism (the school inspired by Socrates) influenced a lot of Christian thought. Not in a *clutches pearls!* kind of way, but in the casual way that all pop-culture subtly influences people within that culture. So kind of like the way that two plants that grow side by side tend to intertwine, some stoic ideas snuck into Christianity and became “just the way we do things around here.”7

Which matters because: if our worldview fires off from a stoic starting point, we’ll become way more likely consider the present world bad or unnecessary. From there, we might punch instructions like “don’t love the world” (1 John 2:15-17) into an equation that concludes that the present material world is useless, transient, un-holy. What God called “good” and “very good” gets downgraded to mere distractions or pleasures that we’re called to shun.8

We can see this all over church history. In the 5^th century, the theologian John Cassian encountered a Christian monk who was getting praised because he took an insult without reacting at all. While many of the Christians thought it was tough (or “tuff”), Cassian criticized this kind of monastic detachment: “He did not feel the insult because he felt nothing at all.”9

Even Thomas á Kempis’ Imitation of Christ (possibly the highest selling Christian book of all time besides the Bible) contains hints of stoicism: “A wise man heeds little what he feels.”10

Today we see traces of this mindset in the anecdote that “Bible” is an acronym for “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.”11 There’re also some corners of the modern spiritual formation movement that risk treating faith as an emotional numbing agent rather than an invitation toward reality.

All that said, theologians like Ireneaus, Augustine, and Aquinas got it right: creation and everything in it is good.12 It’s the corruption of that good that creates evil. As such, salvation is never an escape from earth, our bodies, brains, or matter—salvation is the restoration and reordering of all things toward God’s reality (2 Pet. 3:13).

Christianity > Stoicism

And yes, there are plenty similarities between stoicism and Christianity. Those who’ve read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations (probably the most essential work in the stoic canon), will even notice similarities. “The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injustice,”13 writes Marcus. “Never avenge yourselves; instead, if your enemy is hungry, give him something to eat,” writes Paul.

Paul even quotes stoic poets to land his points (Acts 17).14 But he’s not just quoting them to look well-read, like I just did with that Aurelius line; he’s quoting them to show that Christ is supreme—the hope they’re really longing for. Like Justin Martyr argued, Jesus was and is the fulfillment of everything the philosophers were philosophizing toward.15

From the very beginning, the theologian’s job description included showing that Christianity will always “outnarrate” other worldviews. In particular, it supersedes the stoic worldview by encapsulating all its strengths into a healthier container.16

• Whereas stoics cultivate self-sufficiency, Christians cultivate a deeper dependence on God (Phil. 4:12-13).17 And it’s a weird upside-down kind of dependency, because as we feel more dependent, we paradoxically come to feel more sufficient.

• Rather than let go of the attachments that we desire for the sake of mitigating desire, we rightly order desires around a perfect kingdom.

• Rather than live according to the flow of whatever comes our way, we live according to God’s will.

• Stoic formation is driven by self-discipline and effort; Christian formation is driven by an overwhelming love of God, grace, and the Spirit’s transformation.

And while both embrace suffering, their approach is totally different.

Stoics embrace suffering as a way to get better at controlling their reactions to suffering. But Christians don’t suffer for the sake of getting really good at suffering; we suffer for the sake of dying with Christ and participating in His glory (Rom. 8:12-17; Col. 1:24-29).

As the Thomistic philosopher Josef Pieper put it, “Suffering for its own sake is nonsense.”18 The martyr doesn’t sacrifice their life because it’s brave; they lay down their lives because they cherish the good of what they’re dying for more (John 15:12-17).19

That’s why we can suffer and suffer well. We suffer lovingly.20 We don’t reject or mute or discipline ourselves to hold back tears whenever something bothers us. We acquaint ourselves with grief until it reframes our experience of everything as more rich, full, colorful.

Our maximize pleasure, minimize pain culture usually thinks of negative emotions a useless detour from the good life. But Christianity metabolizes all those dips and valleys and emo modes so that we can discover as much value in grief as the classically desirable positive emotions.21

Surprisingly, happiness and negative emotions can more than coexist. A 2026 study in the Journal of Happiness Studies even found that that minimizing pain and pursuing pleasure does not lead to the happiest kind of life.22 Apparently, brief encounters with negative experiences leads to higher overall wellbeing because they give our positive emotions something to compare themselves to.

To illustrate, when I lived in LA, I never once thought “Thank God it’s sunny.” The sun in Southern California is a constant. But when I moved to Michigan around December, I immediately went through 4 months of reminders about why the sun was so great. In the same way that it’s harder to appreciate summer without winter, so the bitter of negative emotions makes happiness all the sweeter.

As such, strong-arming negativity away doesn’t create a flourishing life. What does is affirming the goodness of created existence without ever becoming indifferent to loss and grief and mourning—inhabiting our imperfect bodies and imperfects days with a knowledge that we’re licensed to rejoice.

Here’s Sort of How This Works, Practically.

I’ve noticed that as I’ve gotten older, when people ask me how I’m doing, I just say “I’m great.”

There’s a rationale behind it. Even if I’m not subjectively doing “great,” I’m still technically not that far off from objectively doing great.

For example, a few months ago, when my college’s registrar asked me how my Christmas was, I said, “Oh I got vicious food poisoning, but it was great.”

She paused and tilted her head and said, “Oh, so…not great then…?” And I said, “Well, no, it was still great—just couldn’t get out of bed for a couple days.” She sort of nodded at the oddness of this response and the conversation fizzled out.

Now, this response isn’t a continuation of college days emotional suppression. I didn’t skip or bypass my frustration; I expressed anger that God hadn’t led me away from the food poisoning, and that anger allowed me to process and reappraise the situation.

But over and beyond that, I just legitimately believe that our worldview affirms that life in general is both good and bad, but the good objectively outweighs the bad; and therefore, I’m pretty much always close to an objective sense of doing “great.”

Yes, Christmas did suck this year. I threw up constantly and couldn’t walk without getting dizzy. But at the same time, it was great: I got to talk to the God of the universe amidst my melodramatic groaning; I was reminded that I had a wonderful wife and friends and family that cared enough about me to express sadness that I couldn’t make it out of bed.

So having a “great Christmas” isn’t denial; to me, it’s just a way to “rejoice always” and “give thanks in all circumstances.” Because, you know, our lives are a perpetual celebration of the Resurrection—the historical happening that now reverberates, proclaiming that even despite all our pain and hardship and loss and grief and turmoil, all of it can and will eventually bloom into good in the long run.

The good life isn’t the absence of pain and control of emotion; it’s the presence of God in the midst of it; the reality of His created goodness and promises to restore it all in the future.23 That’s a hope that makes every drop of suffering, grief, and unmet desire eternally worth it.

That’s why Christianity outnarrates stoicism.

Someone invited me to a post-church lunch at one of those places where all the produce probably came from the Walmart and somehow a frier is involved in every dish. Chili’s is a decently close archetype.1

I’d only been sober for a few months at this point. Nothing too dramatic, just the typical third or fourth backslide until recovery finally took root. As my fork hovered back and forth, a guy who’d been in recovery much longer but attending church much shorter was now on his third or fourth critique of our pastor. “He doesn’t show up to volunteer days,” “He doesn’t listen to my suggestions,” “Etcetera.”

Now, I might’ve been grumpy, I don’t really remember, but I figured I should say something. As we were waiting for the checks, I watched him while timing out the first millisecond pause in his speech where I could interject.

“Ya know, I understand the frustration, but we do have some New Testament instructions to avoid talking badly about our leaders and whatnot. So, if you’re really upset, you should probably just talk to him face-to-face so that you don’t keep dropping this stuff into conversations with the rest of the church.”

In my mind, I said it gently and kindly; realistically, I probably said it too rigidly.

Offense and defensiveness bloomed right away. Starts asking for chapter and verse. I provide them. He says he’s not so sure. I say that’s fine.

But before we all left, he said something that’s stuck with me for years: “Well, if I don’t vent my frustrations, it’s just gonna pile up in me and then burst out in other unhealthy ways.”

And that was the problem—the street-level pop-psychology camaflouged as wisdom. It’s not the worst logic; but just because we can arrive at a conclusion via logical deduction doesn’t mean that it leads to healthy embodied practice (ex: just read up on the lifestyles of 20th century postmodernists).

The truth is that venting our anger isn’t a virtue—it has no capacity to make us better, healthier, more like Jesus.

Let’s start with one of the biggest outlets us moderns resort to:

complaining.

I love complaining; I enjoy hearing gossip. It’s embarrassingly fun.

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Audio voiceover available here for paid subs!

Millennial Pause, Gen Z Shake, and Influencer Accent

In the academic linguist ’s Algospeak, he offers an overview of what makes for a successful Tik Tok and IG reel, dumbed down for short-form video ascetics like myself. One tip is cutting “the millennial pause”—the few seconds of dead air at the start of a video before someone starts talking:

Conversely, younger creators do the “Gen Z shake,” where their phones shake because they set it down after hitting record, fabricating a sense of urgency.

Interestingly, many tips for boosting exposure on short-form video platforms run in this same vein.

For another example, take the “influencer accent.” You’d recognize it if you heard it—initially popularized by “famous for being famous” celebs like Paris Hilton and the Kardashians. The trick is to inflect the end of every sentence upward, almost like you’re pointing it with a question mark, so that your words sound like one long, never-ending paragraph.

It boosts engagement by cutting out quiet pauses and making it seem like you’re perpetually in the middle of a thought. The inflections subtly grip a viewer into hanging onto your every word. Male content creators do something similar, but their strategy is more about talking faster—as seen in Mr. Beast’s progression from talking at 120 words per minute when he started making videos to his average of 175 WPM nowadays.

There’s obviously way more to it, but lots of virality tips basically boil down to: do whatever you can to cut out every possible millisecond of silence.

But maybe the most interesting part is what Aleksic says those milliseconds of silence actually do. When a user hears silence, they’re reminded for a split second that they’re a person staring at a phone.

In other words, those gaps and spaces when our content isn’t stimulating our brain are precisely where we remember that we’re human beings.

And for this exact same reason, I’d argue that we literally need those moments. They teach us that we’re not just brains on a stick amusing, scrolling, and vegging1 ourselves to death. Silence—or just the lack of stimulation—reminds us that we’re embodied souls aching for something deeper than dopamine.

Now, this observation has been made to the point that it’s almost gotten cliché. But the solutions are typically: trade the smartphone for dumbphone, delete social media, cancel Netflix, etc. All that’ll definitely help—but it doesn’t really touch the deeper problem.

Life-hacking our surroundings is a good start; but personally, I’m learning that I also have to deal with the issue underlying the issue: my craving for stimulation, disdain for boredom, and discomfort with silence.

Distraction-maxxing and Social Acceleration

Maybe the most relatable feature of modern life is distraction. T.S. Eliot famously wrote that we’re “distracted from distractions by distraction.”2

On average, we watch 5,000 films in our lifetime. We read 700 books (probably at least double that for Substackers). We listen to 1.3 million songs.3 We watch roughly 78,000 hours of television. Based on projections, most of us reading this will spend around 130,000 hours scrolling on our phones. You can do your own screen time calculator here:

As humans, we’re obsessed with things that stimulate our imaginations. And we’ve been consuming more and more and more every coming year.

Which isn’t all that surprising. The sociologist Hartmut Rosa says we live in an age of “social acceleration.”4 Basically, the rate at which the world is advancing—in terms of tech, transportation, social trends—is so rapid that it’s making us all frenetic, restless, and fatigued.

Even though tech advancements seem to offer more freedom via promises of more time to spare, their rapidity actually causes us to feel increasingly caged and rushed. Researchers note that regardless of how much time we actually have, more and more people are suffering from a cognitive disorder called “chronic time pressure.” It’s exactly what it sounds like: feeling rushed and crunched for time for no tangible reason.5 As Henri Nouwen put it, “Indeed, it seems like we no longer have any time—but time has us.”6

So why do we keep up with the frenetic pace, noise, and distraction? In author Leighton Ford’s assessment, “Often we keep ourselves busy and distracted because we fear that if we slow down, we may look inside and find nothing there.”7 One study even showed that when subjects are told they can either sit in silence or administer electric shocks to themselves, many chose the shocks.8

Which is a little sad, because scientists have noticed that silence is wildly good for us.

Science on Silence

Even though electrical shocks can feel preferable to silence, researchers have found that silence promotes (1) relaxation, (2) creativity, and (3) information processing.

1. Relaxation

If you’re stressed, sometimes the initial impulse is to drown out the stress in more noise. But unfortunately, adding more noise usually just prolongs stress.

In a follow up to the electrical shock study, researchers had students sit in a quiet room alone without the option to shock themselves. Afterwards, they found that the exercise unanimously decreased their baseline stress levels.9 Interestingly, silence is even more calming than relaxing music.10 So even though it feels uncomfortable at first, it genuinely (and eventually) chips away at anxieties.

2. Creativity

It also makes us more creative.11 One of my favorite directors, David Lynch, said that whenever he’s stumped on how to keep writing a script, he just sit backs in his chair with his hands folded, stares, breathes, and commits to staying there until an idea arises that unclogs the writer’s block.

The writer Nicholas Carr explains how this works:

When people aren’t being bombarded by external stimuli, their brains can, in effect, relax. They no longer have to tax their working memories by processing a stream of bottom-up distractions. The resulting state of contemplativeness strengthens their ability to control their mind.12

3. Information Processing

Silence is the perfect frequency for processing information, problem-solving, and deep thinking.

When I get in the car, my immediate reaction is typically Apple Music or calling someone to get some background chatter going. But whenever I wait a second, I’ll notice some unprocessed stuff in me: some sin I haven’t repented from yet, some fight that I don’t feel right about, some emotional disappointment or jealousy or resentment that I’ve tried to shove down rather than deal with. Sitting in silence allows it to bubble to the surface so that God can sterilize its infection and kickstart the healing process.

All to say: something about the way God designed our minds and bodies makes it so that silence is like cherry-flavored medicine—it might make us gag on the way down but inevitably tunes up our immune system.

But sadly, our world today is increasingly cutting out spaces that are free from noise—churches included.

The Necessity of Tiny Cracks of Inactivity

The journalist Andrew Sullivan said that modern life fills in each and every “tiny crack of inactivity” with some distraction: a text message, a new show, another email.

Sullivan’s solution is kind of funny: find spaces where you can feel bored.

And his recommendation for finding a space that’s conducive to boredom is even funnier: go to church—so long as it’s a quiet one.

He’s got a point. Churches are one of the last phone-discouraged public spaces where you can just sit with your thoughts—the things stirring around your consciousness, your paranoias, the self-reflection you’ve been putting off. While it’s not necessarily the most captivating marketing point (“Come on in! We’re boring and quiet!”), shared silence and slowness really is uniquely restorative.

Unfortunately, today, many churches create more distractions than they free us from, which is a big part of Sullivan’s critique:

If churches came to understand that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, perhaps they might begin to appeal anew to a frazzled digital generation. Christian leaders seem to think that they need more distraction to counter the distraction. Their services have degenerated into emotional spasms, their spaces drowned with light and noise and locked shut throughout the day, when their darkness and silence might actually draw those whose minds and souls have grown web-weary.13

Again, he’s not wrong. As the church historian Diarmaid MacCulloch has noted, ecclesial quiet has been on the decline since the Reformation era; from that point onward, attention increasingly shifted toward the pulpit.14 Many churches slowly became more oriented toward the expression of onstage opinion than quiet formation.

So for many congregations—and apologies for cosplaying the Grinch whining about Whoville here—everything became “noise, noise, noise.” Like Tik Tokers filling in cracks of inactivity, it’s like we try to fill in every possible moment of dead air to retain engagement.

And if these complaints come across too curmudgeonly, I should note a few wonderful cloud of witnesses in my corner:

• Augustine lamented the presence of stringed instruments in church, thinking it only added distraction to praying—a practice he already found challenging to stay on track with.

• Aquinas thought similarly, declaring that instrumental music was simply “amiable pleasures that divert the faithful.”

• Bernard of Clairvaux followed suit, but upped the ante by critiquing building size, statues, and paintings. His point was basically: “ornament distracts from prayer.”15

Now, if you go to a loud church, please don’t leave, criticize, or resent it. I proudly attend a loud church. However, I’ve just made sure to carve out more silence in my free time and small group.

Thankfully, in recent years—in reaction to increased busyness and noise—silence is making a comeback. This renewed interest is thanks to spiritual formation writers like Dallas Willard, Henri Nouwen, Ruth Haley Barton, James K.A. Smith, and Richard Foster.16 Silence is a perfect medium for formation: it sets our souls up like a stone to God’s sculptor: exposed for the sake of getting honed, carved, shaped.17

Fish Need Water, Christians Need Silence

Maybe you’re thinking: well quiet and stillness might work for some people, but everytime I try to get quiet, the movie on the inside of my brain starts spazzing through hundreds of clips per millisecond, so silence can’t be all that helpful for me.

It’s a fair point; but I’d also suggest that those random distractions are almost certainly a good thing. There’s a solid chance that they’re exactly what God’s trying to put in your mind.

In The Screwtape Letters, the chief demon tells his apprentice to encourage the human to get frustrated with the distractions that come his way during silent prayer time:

When this, or any other distraction, crosses his mind you ought to encourage him to thrust it away by sheer will power and to try to continue the normal prayer as if nothing had happened; once he accepts the distraction as his present problem and lays that before the Enemy and makes it the main theme of his prayers and his endeavours, then, so far from doing good, you have done harm. Anything, even a sin, which has the total effect of moving him close up to the Enemy, makes against us in the long run.18

This is why even though my ADHD makes silently sitting still each morning difficult, I don’t want to give up on it. And honestly, it’s the point where most of my days peak. Those rapid-fire distractions are often exactly what we’re supposed to take captive.

However: plenty of times, they’re not—as when I spent 20 minutes of a recent morning prayer time mentally debating which Saved by the Bell character was the show’s moral backbone.19 But, generally speaking, most distractions that come our way in quiet prayer are precisely what the Spirit is leading us to lay before God.

And as you lay down more of your thoughts, worries, and concerns, it’s like taking an additional brick down, piece by piece, of the wall obstructing you from seeing God, allowing your mind freedom to glorify God and enjoy Him more clearly.

Like the Thomistic philosopher Josef Pieper (pronounced “peeper”), of Hot Pieper Summer fame (still pronounced “peeper”) put it, “Only one who is silent is listening.”20 All good thinking, all good speech, all wisdom is downstream of a posture of silence.

And so are good relationships.

Silence is often considered the universal sign of awkwardness. But in reality, it’s the universal sign of intimacy.

For example, when you first start dating someone, the quiet is unbearable—your social-thermometer fires up along with questions about whether you’re compatible. But as time goes on, you find that comfortable silence is the only way a relationship can progress. If you’re not comfortable in shared silence, then you’re not comfortable with them in general—you don’t really, truly, deeply, know them. “The most defective human relationship is precisely one in which the silence of attention is absent.”21

Same thing goes with our relationship to God. When we start praying, it’s a lot of rambling on and on about every little thing. But as we continue praying, we say less because we know God sees our heart more.

Crazily enough, neuroscientists studying silent prayer have noticed that it activates regions of the brain that register relational attachment—suggesting that people really do experience a felt relationship with God in prayer.22 As such, perhaps one of the most joyful things we can do at any given moment is cut out distraction and connect with God; sitting with Him; loving Him; being loved by Him.

Anti-Stimulation Summer

Now I’d like to note: I’m not a spiritual director, pastor, priest, or someone I’m campaigning others to look up to. I’m a layman—the most laymen of laymen.23 So this is more me comparing notes than prescribing things.

A few months ago, I noticed I was spending way too much time online—checking notifications, posting, sharing, scrolling, and layering distractions (i.e., playing music while having conversations while jotting down notes while eating milk chocolate almonds). Reaching into my pocket became an automatic reaction to tiny cracks of inactivity. And this was even after I’d already been through all the life-hacking: grayscaling the phone, setting time limits, shutting the phone off once a week for sabbath, etc.

So rather than pile on new life hacks, I’m trying to train myself to desire that stuff less by using up more free moments to sit, reflect, think, pray, or just sit with God. This includes reclaiming more car rides, commutes, and other checkpoints throughout my day (Substack’s “schedule notes” feature has been a life-saver in this regard).

For me, there are two levels of silence. The first is way less drastic and ascetic; I basically just consider it “daydreaming with God.” Daydreaming is a lost art—it’s remarkably good for us. The silence from no music or podcasts drive is where 90% of my ideas come from (and where 100% of the ideas that turn out to be any good come from).

But then there are some stretches of my day (like a 20-minute stretch in the morning and another few minutes before bed) where the silence is more deliberative, contemplative, and meditative. Usually it’s coupled with some Scripture and lectio divina. This is the second level of silence—sitting still, minimal movements, focused on a single prayer or biblical passage.

All this said: we don’t need silence because a monastic lifestyle or mysticism is the goal; we need it because silence disrupts us from the nagging impulse for stimulation. And once our brains are detoxed from craving more and more stimulation, we’re more open and available to give and receive love—and love is and always will be the real goal.

Lastly, a line from the poet Christian Wiman has really resonated with me lately: I want to become “more fluent in silence.”24

Eventually, the silence that many of us experience as hell can become heaven to a tortured mind. We become fluent in silence because we notice God there. And wherever we’re more available to God is where I’d prefer to be.

1

This isn’t your typical Reality Theology post—we’re trying something new.

Audio voiceover available here for paid subs!

“Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may obtain eternal life?”

Jesus looks at the man and then answers: “If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”

You’re probably familiar with this exchange. It’s the story of the rich young ruler (Matt. 19:16-30). Here’s how one writer interprets the passage:

The Gospel of Matthew tells of a rich young man who asked Jesus what good works he must do to inherit eternal life (Matt. 19:16). Jesus responded that if the man wanted to be judged by his works, then he must keep the entire Law—and do so perfectly. The young man thought he had done enough good works to earn a place in heaven because he was judging himself by man-made standards rather than the perfect standard of God. But that’s not how it works. As the apostle James clarifies, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.”1

To me (Griffin), this is a pretty standard reading—nothing really jumps out as “wrong.” But the New Testament scholar Paul T. Sloan bases the intro of his book Jesus and the Law of Moses on all the wrong embedded in this passage.

First off, the man never says anything about being “judged by his works”—and neither does Jesus. Instead, he asks how to obtain this so-called “eternal life” that Jesus had been advertising all over Jerusalem. And Jesus replies, “Keep the commandments.” He doesn’t call out any perfection complex—and there’s no reference to this guy’s belief that he can obey the Law perfectly.

In fact, just one chapter earlier, Jesus tells His disciples how to deal with those who break the commandments (18:15-17). Which tells us that perfect obedience wasn’t assumed; realistically, perfect obedience wasn’t even on their minds.

Beyond that: before and after this exchange, Jesus mentions that He’s going to “repay every person according to his deeds” (16:27; 25:14-46). So if we take that at face value, Jesus’ “Keep the commandments” probably isn’t a cryptic diss to emphasize this guy’s need for grace—it seems more like a very plain response to the man’s question.

Then after saying he’s kept the commandments, the rich young ruler asks, “What am I still lacking?”

Jesus replies, “Come follow me.”

Now, this new invitation doesn’t undo the previous instruction. Meaning, following Jesus isn’t against the Law—it’s what we do to supplement and properly obey it.

So the rich young ruler’s problem isn’t that he wants to keep the Law; it’s that he doesn’t understand Jesus’ interpretation of the Law.

This goes enormously against the grain of popular interpretations that paint the religious folks of Jesus’ day as a foil of Christians who live by grace. Despite the popularity of this interpretation, it isn’t accurate for two reasons:

1. Jews knew they were God’s people because of the covenant, not because of doing good works.

2. Most Jews realized that God didn’t demand moral perfection; they assumed God forgave all their shortcomings—it’s why the sacrificial system existed in the first place.2

Meaning: Jews also lived by grace; it was just a grace that was transferred through the sacrificial system.

This pokes a huge hole in the interpretive status quo. Many modern Jesus followers assume that the Mosaic Law was impractical—a mess that turns us into unloving, legalistic rule-keepers.

Following that line of thinking, many assume that Jesus tossed out all His ancestral customs—as if all the rules about dietary restrictions and ritual purity were silly and unnecessary.

But for Jesus, the Law is less a set of rules to begrudgingly follow than a necessary trellis that the Christian faith is planted within and then grows out of.

Legalism isn’t the problem; our misunderstanding of the purpose of the Law is the problem. And once we see the beauty of Law, it makes delighting in God—and everything about His design—so much easier.

Why We’re Writing This

I (Griffin) don’t read much in the biblical studies genre. But everyone’s been talking about Sloan’s book.

I read it, loved it, and wanted to dedicate a whole post to it. Sloan’s been on some great podcasts, but a short-form interview can’t really capture the scope of his work.

So I asked my friend Daniel to help me condense and popularize the book’s ideas for Substack. I’m a theology doctoral candidate, Daniel’s a biblical studies doctoral candidate. And since I’m a little clumsy in the biblical studies genre, I enlisted Daniel to help tone down the heresy.

Doctoral Discipleship

My name is Daniel, I am a doctoral student in Bible. This blog aims to bridge and blend scholarship and discipleship for the Church.

Also, just to clarify: every bit of wisdom in this article is Sloan’s, not ours. He gets full credit. That said, if you want to push against anything here—we’re not the best guys to push against; we’re just offering an overview of an incredibly important book.

And if this article fascinates you, please buy the book—it’s so good (and surprisingly readable).

Let’s start with probably the most obvious question:

But Didn’t Jesus Break Mosaic Law?

In the church traditions we grew up in, we read Jesus’ skirmishes with the religious leaders throughout the Gospels as if Jesus was breaking—or at least going against—the Law.

So for example, when Jesus healed on the Sabbath, we figured He was ignoring the Law—but it wasn’t “sin” because the healing was for the greater good.

Weirdly enough, Sloan makes a case that even when it really seemed like Jesus was breaking the Law, He was actually staying directly rooted in it.

Yet if that’s true, then why did other Law-keepers get mad at Him? Sloan breaks up the reasons that Jesus got into theological scuffles into three categories:

1. Interpretive disputes—the Pharisees had their own interpretation of the Law that they obeyed as Law; meaning, they built up a system around the Law and treated that system like it was the Law itself. So when Jesus breaks their apocryphal rules, they get heated—not because He’s literally breaking the Law, but because His interpretation of the Law ignores theirs.

2. Messianic signaling—the religious leaders get annoyed when Jesus hints that He’s the Davidic Messiah, the figure foretold in the prophets

3. Temporal misunderstandings—since the Kingdom of heaven is at hand, this means that the future reality of God’s eternal Jubilee is now overlapping with the present, broken world. As such, laws that were specifically reserved for Jubilee can now be lived out in the present, even when it goes against the standards of Law-keeping per usual.

That last one is what causes most of the misunderstandings.

Basically: now that Jesus is here, we’ve entered into a new phase of Law-keeping: one in which the rules that were reserved for “Jubilee” (the celebration that was supposed to happen every 50 years where captives were set free, debts were forgiven, and all creation rested) were now in session.

This is idea is laced within what’s called “Jewish Restoration Eschatology.”3

Jewish Restoration Eschatology

This is essentially the worldview most Jews held to at the time of Jesus’ arrival. The gist is:

This framework is exactly where the Gospels situate Jesus. He arrives to obey the Law perfectly and then relieve Israel of the punishment that’s been accruing ever since they started breaking the covenant in the first place. He’s there to renew, console, heal Israel (Luke 2:25).

And the big difference between Jesus’ interpretation of the Law and everyone else’s is that He’s interpreting the Law as if the restoration is already starting.

Because the coming kingdom is now “at hand,” we have certain liberties with how we should now interpret and live out the Law.

But these liberties aren’t licentious—they’re actually keeping in perfect step with what was already written in the Law. When it’s Jubilee season, the way we imbibe the Law looks different.

In that sense, what puts Jesus at odds with the religious leaders is this rationale: the eternal banquet of heaven is pretty close—and the bridegroom is already here—so why worry about some of these trivial things we usually worry about?

So in a way, the rich young ruler comes to Jesus expecting advice on how to participate in the restoration. And Jesus just says, “Keep the commandments” and “Come, follow me.” The first response invites him to obey the Law; the second invites him to obey the Law like Jesus—as if Jubilee is now in session.

To illustrate how this works, let’s jump through some examples.

You Have Heard That It Was Said…

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives His manifesto for living the best possible life. Importantly, He prefaces it all with: “I have not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it.”

Yet, to be perfectly honest with you, I’ve (Griffin) read this line a million times and assumed Jesus was saying that just to sound respectful before launching into a bunch of Law-rewrites. But He’s (unsurprisingly) true to His word: He literally doesn’t change a single dot or iota. For the most part, He’s just moving around the emphases.

Take His six teachings in Matt 5:21-48 for example:

You have heard that it was said…

This is a rhetorical signal that He’s about to quote the Law, which He does:

You shall not murder, and everyone who murders will be liable to judgement.

And then He offers an interpretation (that I wrongly considered a rewrite):

But I say to you: everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgement.

According to popular interpretation, this is Jesus moving beyond exterior commandments and putting the focus on the interior heart posture. Basically: renovating your interior so that you cut off the thoughts that might lead to murder at the source, killing two birds with one stone.

That’s part of it. But Jesus isn’t replacing the first part (“don’t murder”) with the second (“don’t be angry”). In fact, He’s actually not saying anything new. The Law banned murder, of course; but it also warned against “harboring anger” and “holding grudges” (Lev. 19:18)—the kinds of behaviors that could lead to murder.

So Jesus is just offering a fuller interpretation by connecting ideas that were already within the Law. His commandment against anger isn’t a modification of what was already there; He’s just putting the spotlight on the purpose of the Law in light of the onset kingdom.

Same thing goes for the next five interpretations:

1. Jesus calls out adultery by restating principles from what the Law says about coveting (Ex. 20-17).

2. Jesus doesn’t undo divorce laws—He just emphasizes that divorce was never the Law’s goal.

3. He grounds His teaching on honest speech in the Law’s existing commands about vows and truthfulness.

4. Jesus doesn’t get rid of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” He tells them to “turn the other cheek,” which is practical take on Deuteronomy 32:35’s prohibition against vengeance.

5. Lastly, He caps the list by saying that we should love our enemies. Even though many assume that caring for the enemy is just a New Testament idea, caring for the enemy is all over the Old Covenant (Ex. 23:4–5). So this commandment is essentially just “love your neighbor” interpreted through a Jubilee lens—one that expands the definition of neighbor to include enemies, foreigners, or opps (sorry).

So Jesus isn’t rewriting the Law. And He also isn’t making the Law too lofty or impossible to actually follow—which is another popular interpretation. He’s staying in the sandbox that the Law built but showing us all how to move and stretch our joints in a way that affords us even more freedom and joy within it.

Now let’s look at how Jesus handles food laws.

Jesus’ Teaching on Food

Here’s an (abbreviated) passage from Mark:

Now the Pharisees noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands. So they asked “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders but eat with defiled hands?”

And Jesus said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! Listen to me and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile…

“Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters not the heart but the stomach and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) (Mark 7:1-20)

Most of us (and New Perspective on Paul scholars) come away from this passage thinking: okay Jesus just loosened the distinction between Jew and Gentile and we can eat pork now. But in actuality, “this scene is not about the permissible menu, but about ingesting permissible food that has become impure.”4

The reason we misinterpret this passage is because we forget to make a distinction between ritual purity and permissible foods. Theologians have made this mistake ever since the church got going.5

But the Pharisees aren’t mad about the food they’re eating—they’re mad that the disciples are eating with unclean/defiled hands. And Jesus calls them out for “keeping to the tradition” rather than the Law. There’s nothing in the Law about making sure to wash your hands before eating food—their concern is based on a Pharisaical addition to the Law.

So Jesus’ counter-criticism comes from the fact that He knows that food eaten with unclean hands (and even unclean food) is purified through the body’s digestive processes. Basically, what goes into a person doesn’t defile them, because it doesn’t touch the “heart.”

So weirdly, the phrase “thus he declared all foods clean” is a poor translation of what’s actually happening here. Instead, it’s better understood to mean that the body itself “cleanses” food through digestion. Jesus isn’t tossing out food laws, He’s just pointing out that eating with unwashed hands doesn’t make someone ritually impure.

So yet again: Jesus isn’t rejecting the Law—he’s pushing back on an added tradition and making a point about how impurity actually works.

Now for (maybe) the biggest elephant in the room:

The Cleansing of the Temple

Most people think of the cleansing of the temple as the crescendo of Jesus’ annoyance with the Jewish religion. But again, He’s not undoing their traditions or practices; He’s simply critiquing the way those traditions and practices became distorted. In fact, Jesus was even evoking the same frustrations that various Jewish sects of His day felt toward the way the temple was being managed.6

Plus, the cleansing of the temple isn’t impulsive lashing out; it’s shaped by Jesus’ realization that Israel still hasn’t repented from the very actions that made them fall out of God’s favor—and their rejection of Him was the last straw. It’s why He weeps over the city as He approaches it and curses a fig tree: He knows judgment is coming their way.

As such, His arrival at the temple simply reiterates what He already knew: that the people’s unfaithfulness was going to destroy the temple (and it actually was destroyed about 40 years after His resurrection).

So the main reason He cleanses the temple is because, despite He and John the Baptizer’s warnings, the temple still isn’t functioning as a true “house of prayer.”

I Am Who You Say I Am

There’re plenty other similar cases in the Gospels—like telling a man not to bury his father or “breaking” the Sabbath.

But if Jesus’ claims about Himself are true, then He can override certain commands. So what looks like “breaking” the Law to a Pharisee is actually more like a priest doing necessary work on the Sabbath, or a priest telling a man to put off burying his father because the God of the universe has become flesh and that warrants some exceptions from our usual day-to-day obligations.

And this is precisely what creates the tension that gets Him killed: since the Pharisees don’t recognize His priesthood, every move He makes gets under their skin more and more.

Sloan uses this analogy: normally, running a red light violates the law. But if you’re driving an ambulance en route to the hospital, you’re allowed to run lights because the situation is urgent. However, the ambulance has the advantage of being visibly recognized as an ambulance. But if an unmarked car runs a red light, the driver needs to make a case for why they were in such a rush—and a driver that can’t prove the urgency would get ticketed. So the same action—running a red light—is permissible for a driver whose authority is recognized but transgressive for someone who’s unauthorized.7

So thanks to the way the religious leaders refused to recognize Jesus’ authority, they don’t detect His picture-perfect Law-keeping and He’s put up for crucifixion.

The Cross

Since God’s people yet again rejected God’s call to repent, Israel still remains in a kind of ongoing exile from God’s blessing.

So Jesus steps in to deliver them from their exile by giving His unblemished self as a ransom to pay for the weight of their sins—taking the brunt of Israel’s outstanding failures so that they can return from exile and participate in the blessings God had to withhold on account of their rebellion.

The debts that corrupted their participation in this kingdom way of life are forgiven—washed clean, demolished, the veil that exiled them from the holy of holies is torn.

All of which is confirmed by His resurrection—signaling restoration through His enthronement as Messiah over Israel, the nations, and the human heart.

(!!!!!!!)

From this Messianic posture, He sends out his followers with a clear mission: call everyone to repentance, announce forgiveness through the new covenant, and invite them to live under the Law according to Jesus.

Okay great; we’ve covered a ton of ground so far.

But now you’re probably wondering: if Jesus wasn’t opposed to the Law, and didn’t abolish it, then are we in sin for eating pork and not abiding by ritual purity laws?

Great question.

Peter’s Vision in Acts

Many astute Bible readers are probably thinking of Peter’s vision in Acts 10 as a rebuttal to Sloan’s argument. But let’s break that scene down: Peter receives an apocalyptic-like vision and falls into a trance. In said trance, God seems to declare that all the food laws are abolished (i.e., “What God has made clean, you must not call profane,” 10:15).

But according to Sloan, this is a misreading. The book of Acts is a story from start to finish about the inclusion of Gentiles—and thus we should read almost every moment in Acts in this light.

The food in Peter’s vision represents not just mere sustenance, but Gentiles themselves. So in contrast to the way Jews rejected certain foods as “unclean” (unholy), God declares that we need to accept “unclean” Gentiles as if they’re clean (holy) food.

Which helps us make sense of the pivotal moment in Acts just a few verses later where Peter sees the Holy Spirit fall on Gentiles and says, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality” (Acts 10:34).

This line shows us that it wouldn’t really make sense if Peter’s vision from a few verses earlier was about food. As Sloan notes, Jews were already able to dine with Gentiles without breaking food laws—so why would God use this pivotal vision to redeclare something they already knew?

Thus, Peter’s vision more likely refers to Gentiles as opposed to tossing out food laws.

And this idea leads to the

Jerusalem Council

What do we make of the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15)?

Sloan’s argument here is so dense that we’d recommend checking out the book if you’re curious or confused. But the gist is: the council debate wasn’t necessarily about whether Jewish believers should keep the Law; it was always very much assumed that Jewish believers would still keep the Law. So instead, the debates are more about which parts of the Law apply for Gentiles and which don’t.

And the council’s answer actually draws directly from Leviticus. The Mosaic Law already distinguished between laws that applied for Israel and those that applied only for non-Israelites living among them.

Which is very wild; before Sloan pointed this out, I didn’t connect any trace of Mosaic Law as informing Gentile NT guidelines.

So by following the instructions that Leviticus prescribed for non-Jews living among Jews, the council welcomes Gentiles on the same basis. Except now, the “foreigners” (Gentiles) are welcomed entirely through the gift of God’s grace. As such, they can participate equally with the Jewish Christians. The difference is that Gentiles are exempt from certain laws that Jewish believers are still technically supposed to follow.8

So for Gentile Christians, we’re not expected to keep the entire Law. So we can eat pork! Wahoo. Going off of what the Law itself teaches, we’re only required to abide by certain commands—such as avoiding idolatry, sexual immorality, murder, and everything else specifically outlined by the NT.

This same pattern shows up in Paul’s letters, but it’s a little harder to pick up on since his discussion of Law and grace is coded in the theological debates of His day.

Pauline Theology for Us Today

Paul says some pretty radical things about the Law. He calls the Law a “curse,” says Christ is the “end of Law,” and that the power of sin is the Law. So, how does Sloan’s argument fit within Paul?

Weeding through this maze just requires looking at Paul’s audience. Most of Paul’s readers were Gentiles—or the nations, pagans, etc. And one of Paul’s main frustration points in his ministry is Gentiles trying to become Jews through keeping the Law.

In Galatians, Paul (heatedly) writes that if justification came through circumcision or obedience to the Law, then Christ died for nothing. He warns against getting “Judaized,” or feeling the compulsion to keep the Law as an addition to following Christ.

So Paul’s point isn’t that the Law is bad: he says it’s holy and blameless (Rom 7:12, Phil 3:6). He’s just stating that the Law on its own doesn’t lead to being “in Christ.” As such, those who try to earn good standing through the Law are basically making a statement that Christ’s work toward inclusion of the Gentiles was all for nothing.

Paul doesn’t end the Law, but calls for participation in Christ as the measure of justification for Gentiles.

Okay, now it’s finally time to ask:

So What?

Sadly, scholars have spent a lot of the post-Reformation era criticizing the Law as legalistic and subpar for the sake of highlighting what makes Jesus unique. Thankfully, we have plenty of reasons to reject that suspicion. The Law of the LORD really is perfect.

Now, Sloan admits his work may still have errors. The paint is still wet on his theories. We’re excited to read more responses to Sloan’s work in the coming years.

But for now, there are some incredibly important takeaways:

• Jesus doesn’t reject the Law—He keeps it and teaches others to do the same.

• When He or His disciples “break” certain rules, it’s not that the Law no longer matters, but that higher obligations (Messianic realities, Jubilee) take priority in specific situations.

• And in places where the Law merely permits something—like divorce, or taking a fellow believer to court—Jesus calls people toward a higher ideal rooted in God’s original intent for those laws in the first place.

Personally, our favorite takeaway is how this unveils the hidden joys of obedience.

Israel never framed the Law as if it was a legalistic burden. They compared the Law to the sweetest things their taste buds could imagine (Ps. 19:10).

We can especially see this in Judaism’s longing for a future restoration. One component of their restoration theology was the idea God would give them a new heart that would allow them to obey the Law perfectly.

In other words, the Jewish vision of heaven didn’t include becoming “free” from the Law; it was a heaven where they could keep God’s law without failure.

So, flipped around, this tells us that the laws God gave us on earth are the same laws that govern heaven. By keeping God’s guidelines on earth, we bring ourselves and those around us closer to heaven.

In this sense, God’s laws are literal pedagogies for living a flourishing life.9

It’s just hard to notice it from the outside. To use an analogy, picture someone from a thousand years ago time traveling to your living room as you decorate for Christmas. They might ask: why go through all the hassle of hanging up a tree, decorating the walls, putting up lights, wrapping gifts? And we’d tell them: that’s the best part!

From the outside looking in, the Law seems arduous, difficult, or just a general drag. But from the inside, all the effort and ceremony is part of what “revives the soul”—just like how decorating our homes for Christmas is part of what makes the season so fun.

Point is: if we continue to frame the Law as if it was a legalistic nightmare that Jesus criticized, then we’re missing the purpose that was always embedded in the law: that by keeping the commandments with a pure heart—best demonstrated by Jesus, our perfect model—we’ll learn to delight in God as God delights in us.

C. S. Lewis captured something like this when He wrote about how God woos us into loving Him before revealing the reward that comes packaged with it:

Note that life after death…was itself a late revelation. God trained the Hebrews for centuries to believe in Him without promising them an after-life, and [God] trained me in the same way for about a year. It is like the disguised prince in the fairy tale who wins the heroine’s love before she knows he is anything more than a woodcutter. What would be a bribe if it came first had better come last.10

Say what you want about it, but it’s a great illustration: God trains us to love Him on earth through guidelines that offer glimpses of heaven. And when we learn to love Him on earth, it makes earth—and even the eternal promises that come along with heaven—all the brighter.

At some point in our life with God, every commandment stops feeling like a burden and starts feeling as it was meant to feel: an invitation to participate in heaven on earth.

All of which is best experienced through the Messiah who showed us how to live the Law as if heaven was already in session.

Translated into conversational vernacular, it basically comes out to something like: if we keep setting our hearts on achieving the perfect, we’ll forget to celebrate small victories that we encounter on the way toward the better.

Failing to realize the small victories in moving toward the better is a chronic condition of modern politics. Someone introduces a plan to lower homelessness or increase housing availability or modify public transit, but after one person voices a single flaw in the plan, the motion loses steam and crashes out.

Yet just because there are issues with a plan doesn’t mean the plan isn’t good—it just means it isn’t perfect.

But perfect isn’t realizable. On this side of the eschaton, it’s an illusion, a mirage, a chimera; perfection exists only “in obituaries and eulogies.”2

And treating the perfect as if it’s a realistic goal sabotages all our small, remarkably ordinary, steps toward the good.

On top of that, ignoring “good enough” is actually terrible for us. To illustrate why, let’s walk through a concept in the psychology of well-being—one that’s crucial for living the good life—called “satisficing.”3

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Scientists love talking about happiness. But if you study what they say about it, you’ll find a lot of contradictions.

For example, every couple years a new study comes out about how getting married and having kids boosts your happiness. And also every couple years, another study comes out that says staying single and childless and grinding away at your career is the best way to find happiness.1

This is why it’s smart stay a little skeptical when someone says “this study says.”

Not because all research is shoddy, but because it’s really hard to produce a finding that’s true for everyone, everywhere, all the time, across the universe.

The economist Alex Edmans highlights how this happens a lot with studies about creativity. Sometimes a new article comes out saying, “Research shows that a messy office space is a sign of creativity,” and then another comes out saying “Study shows that geniuses maintain a tidy workspace.”2

Both can be true because a small survey showed that they were true—but it’s literally impossible to prove something this arbitrary as “true” for all people at all places at all times.

In a much more troubling example, Brian Nosek rounded up 270 researchers to try to reproduce 100 studies from the world’s top three academic psych journals.3 What they found was shocking: they could only reproduce 36% of the studies. And even the ones they reproduced showed weaker results than the original studies claimed.

Meaning: POSSIBLY HALF OF ALL STUDIES DON’T ACTUALLY PROVE ANYTHING.

Which is why, even though I love studies, I try to use them more as analogies that can inch us toward the truth rather than as the truth itself.

However, I’m a big fan of “meta-analyses”—which are basically studies of studies. They take a pile of peer-reviewed research about a similar subject and then see if they can come to any definitive conclusions when looking at what they say as a whole.

Here’s a couple basic truths about the world that meta-analyses have found:

• It’s not good to be lonely.

• Prosocial acts (basically, acting generously toward others) are good for you.4

• Humans have an impressive resilience toward traumatic experiences.5

• The American voter has a uniquely low level of political knowledge (this isn’t a snarky joke, check the footnote).6

Nothing groundbreaking—but they’re nice reminders.

Now, I’ve been ramping up to a point thus far, and now that ramp ends. There was a huge analysis a few years back that teamed up 18 of the top happiness researchers from around the world to reassess this universal question: what should we do to become happy?7

It’s super fascinating; given that the 18 researchers all had their hand in some happiness meta-analysis at some point throughout their careers, this study was almost like a meta-analysis of meta-analyses (and now it’s time to retire that word for the rest of this article).

So these 18 leading happiness experts boiled down all their expertise into 68 key strategies for becoming happier.

Here are the top 10, modified slightly for the theological angle.8

10 Ways to Become Happier

The researchers broke up their recommendations into a few different categories:

1. Connect with family and friends.

When we’re in a good mood and want to celebrate, the average American’s first thought is: let’s buy something.

It’s not entirely our fault; we see roughly 8,000 ads per day, many of which show humans happily using products, insinuating that we’re incomplete without whatever they’re selling. Ads are a way stronger formational machine than we give them credit for.

However, if we’re looking to celebrate or boost our happiness, we actually have a perfect example in Luke’s Gospel. Like the woman who sweeps her house all day looking for a coin (Luke 15:8-10), the best way to keep joy flowing is by inviting people over (or going out, if your house is too disorganized at present thanks to your pipes bursting and ruining half of it—which may be based on a true personal story).

Even though our go-to for letting good times roll is buying stuff, it’s much (much) wiser to treat our happiness impulse by investing in relationships.

We apparently don’t even need to do anything extravagant—just cutting out unnecessary clutter in our daily schedules (checking email, putting in extra hours at the office, refreshing the Substack app way too much, etc.) does wonders.

Your future eulogy will not include things like “Grinded a lot,” “Stared at their phone frequently,” or “Put in more hours than their coworkers.” Instead, your eulogy will consist of memories of how much you loved and cared for those closest to you. Live in such a way that makes for a good eulogy, not just a good resume.

George Vaillant, one of the researchers behind the famous Harvard Study of Adult Development summarized almost a century of research on human well-being like this: “Happiness is love. Full stop.”9

It makes sense; in God’s presence is fullness of joy (Ps. 16:11). And what is God? Love (1 John 4:16).

2. Join a club.

Have you ever wondered why The Breakfast Club is such a classic?

It’s because it’s 90 minutes of catharsis. Strangers come together, work through their problems and insecurities as a unit, and find that, in spite of all the things they felt self-conscious about, they all still like each other.

For a world that’s increasingly lonely, stories like this represent something we all crave: a community that lets you come as you are and they’ll still accept you. It’s sort of a metaphor for church (I think? Film analysis is best left to ).

So “join a club” basically just means finding a group of people who speak your language—who share fascinations about the same niches.

Obviously, church is the best community. But beyond that, my friends and I built a book club. Less bookish friends joined a volleyball league. My mom volunteers at a food pantry.

We don’t really think of clubs as producers of happiness—but it turns out that they’re often where we feel the most belonging, and where we feel the most belonging is usually where we find ourselves happiest.

3. Make a habit of getting active (both mentally and physically).

Workouts—both the physical and mental kind—are preposterously good for us.

We don’t have to morph our whole personality into “gym” or populate our IG with mirror pics. But a habit of moving our bodies is critical. And same thing goes for challenging our minds: whether it’s by creative problem solving, reading, or sudoko—mental exercise bulks up mental health.

This pairs nicely with David Mathis’ A Little Theology of Exercise and my recent post on the uncoddling of the Christian mind. Mathis argues that exercise is a wonderful way to care for the imago Dei of our bodies (so long as it’s not for vainglory or mogging); and I argue that our minds are a frontier we should train for the glory of God.10

4. Practice religion.

Obviously, I’d put this one at the top if I was in charge of the study—especially considering that the first three are enhanced through the Christian worldview.

It isn’t rocket science. Materialism and scientific naturalism aren’t all that compelling. Religion safeguards us from the terror of no purpose, no belonging, no metanarrative.

And even though there’s a lot of talk about how horribly atheistic our world is, the social sciences are surprisingly pro-religion. Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind and The Anxious Generation, says his family attends synagogue every week even though he’s an atheist: he knows that religion is just plain good for us and for society.11 Various studies over the years have shown that religion lowers depression, anxiety, suicidality, loneliness, and even cardiovascular disease.12

Also, importantly: they mention that we should practice religion rather than just be religious. This is crucial—especially for Christians. As Dallas Willard put it, the promises of Christianity ring hollow to those who claim to follow but don’t actually follow.13

So for the Christian worldview, this involves any number of activities. Prayer, Scripture study and memorization, fasting, generosity, gathering for worship—these are among the happiest activities we could choose at any given moment.

Point is: life is boring without transcendence. We could use much more of it.

5. Act how a nice person would act.

Our culture glamorizes the idea of the disagreeable lone wolf hustling their way to success, stepping on other people’s heads to get up the ladder. Sadly, young men are given exactly these kinds of role models in the online space. Aggro-influencers like Andrew Tate or Clavicular attract thousands of young disciples through peddling a pseudo-heroism and distorted-masculinity that looks less like a brave Hercules rising to their culture’s challenges than a horrendously selfish Dionysus. It’s not only a hollow way to live—it’s horrible for our well-being.

Agreeableness, along with kindness, is usually seen as weakness—but it’s consistently, highly, and positively correlated with more happiness and a better overall life.

Oddly enough, even though the alpha archetype is usually who we assume gets the most jobs, promotions, and opportunities, the opposite is true: no one likes working with disagreeable people. So they tend to have less job opportunities and business partnerships (and community).

6. Do generous stuff.

The brain rewards us with more dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin when we perform acts of kindness than when we pursue self-oriented pleasures.

Now, generosity always sounds way better in theory until we arrive at this question: what if I’m embarrassingly broke at present thanks to the deductible our insurance required to fix our flooded house?

A very relatable question. Thankfully, generosity doesn’t just mean giving money; it’s also generosity of presence—basically, giving away our time.

Think about Jesus’ teaching from the Beatitudes: “Flourishing are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”14 Mercy isn’t just financial generosity. The crowds Jesus preached to were filled with people who literally didn’t have money to spare.15

This is why the Welsh minister Matthew Henry argued that if you couldn’t show mercy through financial giving, then you should show mercy by hanging out with people who need the company, sitting with those who are suffering, and being a joyful presence to whoever needs one.16

It’s the only beatitude that’s perfectly proportional: those who are merciful will flourish, and those who flourish are merciful.

7. Check your health.

Over the past month, I’ve had a lot of random stomach pain. Because I’m a melodramatic complainer, my wife suggested I get proactive and figure it out, thereby mitigating the complaining. So I started by subtracting random stuff from my diet until I found the culprit: a snack that had pumpkin seeds in it. For whatever reason (and apologies to Big Pumpkin Seed), it made my stomach twist up like a contortionist.

I use this ridiculous story because: if you notice something wrong with your health, do something about it. I feel so much better now, and it’s just because I stopped being stubborn and ignoring something that seemed off.

Same thing goes for mental health: if you’re experiencing chronic anxiety, don’t just pretend it away. Seek professional help, talk to friends, pray, see a spiritual director.

There are plenty of measures we can take to raise our standard of health. And it’s easier to focus and do good work in every area of our life if we’re functioning optimally.

8. Experience nature.

Carl Jung said that the “faculty for perceiving beauty in art and nature” was one of the basic factors that augments happiness in the human mind.17

Various studies have shown that spending time in a woods rather than an urban setting dramatically lowers stress, enhances memory, and increases positive emotions.

This is particularly beneficial for Jesus followers, since God uses His creation as a way to reveal His beauty, goodness, and design (Ps. 8, 19; Rom 1:20). But sadly, it’s something lots of Jesus followers take for granted.

I could ramble on for another 2,000 words, but I think Charles Spurgeon offers the best summary for why enjoying creation is part of our duty:

If I were a great artist, I should think it a very small compliment if my son came into my house, and said he would not notice the pictures I had painted, because he only wanted to think of me.

He therein would condemn my paintings, for if they were good for anything, he would be rejoiced to see my hand in them.

Oh, but surely, everything that comes from the hand of such a Master-artist as God has something in it of himself!

The Lord doth rejoice in his works, and shall not his people do so? He said of what he had made, “It is very good;” and he cannot be very good himself who thinks that which God makes is not very good. In this he contradicts his God.

It is a beautiful world we live in.18

9. Focus on the happiness of others.

As the Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl famously said, “Happiness cannot be pursued, it must ensue.”19 We can’t find happiness by pursuing it directly; it’s more like a welcome side effect that happens while we’re doing other meaningful things—focusing on God and the good of others, namely.

The philosopher Charles Taylor notes that even though modern people try to define ourselves apart from other people, we can’t fulfill ourselves without knitting ourselves into a web of relationships with other people.20 So by paying attention to the needs and wants of those around us, we find both identity and satisfaction.

Also, at 12 on this study’s list of happiness boosting activities is “volunteer.” So, taken together, one of the best way to boost your own happiness is by boosting the happiness of other people via volunteering. Caring for others will take you a whole lot farther than obsessing over self-care.

10. Keep learning.

This doesn’t just mean “read more books.” Learning in this sense is geared toward growth.

Through stretching ourselves, we stumble into “psychological richness.”21 It’s a kind of experiential happiness that comes from adventure, going out on a limb, challenging ourselves, moving across the world, taking a leap in a different kind of job, starting a new hobby, or committing to spiritual disciplines that stretch us. It’s why traveling to new cultures or picking up a new hobby can make us feel so alive.

It’s easy to stay in comfortable ruts. But the brain makes less memories that way. For example, when you’re a kid, it feels like everyday lasts a week and summer break lasts a year because every experience is so new to us. But as we get older, time feels like it goes faster because we automate our routines. We might spend 30 minutes each day driving to and from work, but that rarely clocks in with our longterm memory because there’s nothing new to register. It all becomes a blur. But if you try something new, plan a surprise trip, or join a new group, the experience feels weighty and significant simply because we’ve never experienced it before.

The richness of growth—or even the kind of joy that comes from enduring difficulty and coming out the other end stronger—is a necessary component of a happy life. We could even retitle this rule “stay curious.” You’ll live a better life if you do.

Happiness Isn’t Selfish

I know lots of people like to dichotomize joy and happiness, but the two are much more related than we give them credit for.

The idea that happiness is selfish and joy is righteous only really makes sense if we’re going off pop-definitions of happiness.

If we define happiness as maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain through pursuing dopamine loops and passive living, then yes—that’s definitely not much of a priority for us in God’s mind.

But a happiness that comes from living a rich, moral life that’s centered around Him and His kingdom is something followers of Jesus have been pointing toward from the very beginning.22 Joy, happiness, flourishing, etcetera aren’t the goal of our spirituality, but they’re an undeniable side effect.

To end, here’s one of my favorite quotes from the evangelist George Whitfield:

Is it the end of religion to make men happy, and is it not every one’s privilege to be as happy as he can? Does Jesus want your heart only for the same end as the devil does, to make you miserable? No, the dear Savior desires to make you happy, that you may leave your sins, to sit down eternally with him.23

Amen.

Audio voiceover and article pdf available here for paid subs!

On September 13, 1980, the philosopher and diplomat Charles Malik delivered the inaugural address at the dedication of Wheaton College’s new Billy Graham Center. He shuffled to the podium and declared through his thick Lebanese accent that Evangelicals had “Two Tasks”: “saving the soul and saving the mind.”1

And at the dedication named after perhaps the most famous Protestant since Luther, he declared that the Protestant church was failing at the “mind” part. It’s worth reading this chunk in full:

The greatest danger confronting American evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism. The mind in its greatest and deepest reaches is not cared for enough. But intellectual nurture cannot take place apart from profound immersion for a period of years in the history of thought and the spirit. People who are in a hurry to get out of the university and start earning money or serving the church or preaching the gospel have no idea of the infinite value of spending years of leisure conversing with the greatest minds and souls of the past, ripening and sharpening and enlarging their powers of thinking. The result is that the arena of creative thinking is vacated and abdicated to the enemy. Who among evangelicals can stand up to the great secular scholars on their own terms of scholarship? Who among evangelical scholars is quoted as a normative source by the greatest secular authorities on history or philosophy or psychology or sociology or politics? For the sake of greater effectiveness in witnessing to Jesus Christ, as well as for their own sakes, evangelicals cannot afford to keep on living on the periphery of responsible intellectual existence.2

No one was saying “mic drop” in 1980, but this might’ve warranted starting. Or perhaps “This slaps,” in case a Gen Z felt the need to differentiate themselves from “mic drop’s” millennial cringe. Almost 50 years later, it’s more relevant than ever.

Malik wasn’t reinventing the wheel; he was simply retrieving something that feels a bit foreign to modern Jesus followers: that Christianity always has been and always should be smart.

The foreignness of this idea is probably thanks to the way Christianity’s reputation for intelligence ebbs and flows according to its most famous living representatives; and in 1980, Malik believed the ebb was so low that the robust life of the Christian mind had been rotting away in tombs for at least a couple centuries.

Today, this seems like a give-in.3 I recently conversed with an atheist who mentioned something about space travel and then apologized like he’d said something politically incorrect because, given my faith, I probably found space stuff offensive. But historically, the reputation of lacking intelligence and stalling scientific advancement is kind of an anomaly.4 The points in history where intelligence or literacy drop are exactly the points where Christians swoop in to raise the bar.

For example,

when the economists Sascha Becker and Ludger Woessmann studied the impact of the Protestant Reformation, they found that early reformers raised the overall GDP of any society they settled in.

Specifically, they analyzed 450 counties around Wittenberg, the city where Luther nailed the 95 Theses. Before the Reformation, there wasn’t any variation in GDP between communities near Wittenberg and other areas around Germany; after the Reformation, there was an immediate jump in both income and literacy. This then spread throughout other Protestant settlements like a eu-contagion (good virus).5 As faith spread, so did economic growth.6

But even crazier, when they studied why, they found that it wasn’t just thanks to the good ole “Protestant Work Ethic.” It was thanks to reading.7

Around this time, most religious communities were Catholic, which meant that the Bible was largely reserved for clergy, and laypeople virtually only heard Scripture through their local priest. So when reformers like Luther and Tyndale started translating the Vulgate and Erasmus’ Greek NT into their mother tongues, it not only gave people more opportunity to learn to read but a moral imperative to learn to read.

Once the average working-class family learns to read, it opens up a world of possibility never before available. Literacy is a gateway drug to the entire web of human knowledge. They could read the best business practices or buy an anatomy textbook or start a literary circle.8 By empowering people to use their minds well, Christianity empowers us to do everything else well, as well.

This is just one example of the hundreds we could draw from. There’s the complex philosophy of the patristics to the rise of scholasticism to the founding of nearly every Ivy League to the 72.5% of Nobel prizes that’ve been awarded to Jesus followers. Christians have an impressive history of honoring God with their minds.

Anyways, thesis: a book called The Coddling of the American Mind made waves a few years back. It argued that we’re becoming more intellectually fragile thanks to a cornucopia of misguided cultural and educational practices. Even though we could carve out a similar history among Christians (in fact, someone already carved out that history, which we’ll talk about in a sec), I’m not gonna argue that here.

I’m going to argue the opposite: that we’re currently living through a recession of Christian brainrot. It’s still out there—the caricature exists and it’s sometimes even justified—but it’s dying. I’m convinced that there’s a great un-coddling of the Christian mind in progress.

Data to Support that Last Sentence

If you’re looking for empirical data to support this thesis, I have none. There isn’t any yearly census on Christian intelligence. I do wish more statisticians traveled from church to church asking parishioners, “How dumb are you?” but alas, no one’s started yet. However, I’m positive that they’ll start now; my Substack posts grease a lot of wheels in academia.9

So my argument is anecdotal.

But hear me out:

I first started noticing brainrot reversal back in the late 2010s when lots of Jesus followers started getting paranoid about big tech and social media.10 Whereas most of my secular friends didn’t think twice about waking up and grabbing their phone first thing, Christians started noticing the way infinite scrolls made it harder to sustain attention on prayer and Scripture. From there, it was just a stone’s throw from initiating church wide digital fasts, deleting social media, and investing in the life of the mind for the sake of reclaiming whatever parts of it big tech was stealing.

This probably contributes to why more and more Christians are picking up tough books for the sake of toughness. Not just the classics of the Christian canon like Confessions or Life Together, but genre-spanning works like Brothers Karamazov and Shakespeare and David Foster Wallace’s oeuvre.11 Reading tough books exercises our attention spans, which punches up our ability to read the Bible and invest attention toward God.12

While passionate preachers get the most social media airplay, there’s also been a mass resonance with the passionate preachers who also do their research. Personally, my first exposure to the idea that Christians were allowed to have intelligence was through listening to podcasts of John Mark Comer talking with Mark Sayers. Today, figures like Gavin Ortlund, Preston Sprinkle, Wes Huff, the guys from Mere Fidelity, and the Bible Project’s Tim Mackie and Jon Collins provide online materials to anyone interested in digging past the platitudes of the faith. You might not agree with some—or even any—of these people, but they’re all at least attempting to patch up the general slop of the Christian Internet subculture with some intellectually healthy oases.

Among my college students, I’ve been surprised with how many are interested in the deep end rather than the shallows. Some church history students show up knowing more about the Filioque controversy or the apocrypha’s history in the biblical canon than I do. These 19-year-olds are casually reading Plato and Kierkegaard and master’s level textbooks.

On Substack, Christians quote Byung-Chul Han and Hartmut Rosa with the ease of a teenager quoting Drake on X. Boethius’ 1500-year-old Consolations of Philosophy had a surprising resurgence last year, topping many year-end reading lists. Millions are joining a trend called Hot Pieper Summer, which is a deep dive into the German Thomistic philosopher Josef Pieper. Others are voluntarily hopping on YouTuber Jared Henderson’s 2026 philosophy reading list—which, as a philosophy professor, I would not refer to as “light” reading.

But my favorite example

comes from the historian Mark Noll, famous for writing The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. The book traces the robust contributions that Christians made toward art, philosophy, and science before noting an abrupt drop off right around the rise of evangelicalism. The title is a snarky jab: “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”13

For years, Noll became a figurehead for any interviewer that wanted to highlight how dumb evangelicals were.

But interestingly, Noll isn’t as sold out for his argument nowadays. Two decades after his book dropped, he said that even though “serious problems continue to bedevil evangelical thinking” he was hopeful for the future thanks to a “renewed intellectual life at Christian colleges, Christian study centers at research universities, further dialogue between evangelical and Roman Catholic scholars, the influence of Christians in the broader academy, and the launch of serious Christian periodicals.”14

Basically, even though there’re plenty bad apples nowadays, there’re also plenty reasons to stay optimistic. And historians like Noll note that this is because Christianity naturally inspires curiosity:

Since the reality of Jesus Christ sustains the world, so too should the reality of Jesus Christ sustain the most wholehearted, unabashed, and unembarrassed efforts to understand the world and all that is in it...The light of Christ illuminates the laboratory, his speech is the fount of communication, he makes possible the study of humans in all their interactions, he is the source of all life, he provides the wherewithal for every achievement of human civilization, he is the telos of all that is beautiful. He is, among his many other titles, the Christ of the Academic Road.15

That last line drops us at the next point:

God’s Not Dead in Academia

Thanks to films like God’s Not Dead, there’s a stereotype that Jesus is hated throughout higher ed—philosophy departments in particular. But this isn’t even close to true.

Awhile back, the passionately atheistic Quentin Smith complained about the “desecularization” of academia thanks to the theism that was overflowing from the philosophy departments.

A philosopher’s theism is particularly troubling for an atheist because it’s the kind of theism that can’t just keep to itself. Since philosophy is an “organizing” or “second-order discipline,” it “keeps the books” on all other fields of knowledge.16 It’s why hospitals hire philosophers to help their doctors figure out when and where to draw the moral line. As such, when philosophers become Christians or vice versa, it spreads faith into other fields like a eucontagion.

And today, “perhaps one-quarter or one-third of philosophy professors are theists, with most being orthodox Christians.” Presently, the Society of Christian Philosophers is the largest special interest group among the entire philosophical community.17 As Smith lamented, “God is not ‘dead’ in academia; he returned to life in the late 1960s and is now alive and well in his last academic stronghold, philosophy departments.”18

Now, I’m sure you could come up with just as many counterexamples of Christians doing horrendously braindead things. Yet I also think that if you rounded up counterexamples, but subtracted any examples in which the culprit didn’t fit the profile of “resilient” or “engaged” Christian, I’m confident you’d see this trend more clearly. Cultural Christians don’t even pursue God seriously with their heart, so why would they pursue him with their mind?

But more important than whether this trend exists is that it should exist.

Why we should love the Lord with all our minds.

The Old Covenant’s Shema Israel gave us this incredible mantra: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deut. 6:5). It’s a central affirmation of the faith—almost like the Lord’s Prayer of the Hebrew Bible.

But later, when Jesus is asked about the “greatest commandment,” He restates the Shema with one crucial difference: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30).

Why add “mind”? Well, NT scholar Frederick Dale Bruner argues that

Jesus wanted to accent believers’ mental, critical, and rational love of God. Good thinking loves God as much as good loving and good strength, and this thinking deserves equal time with these usually more celebrated faculties.19

It’s also fascinating that Jesus threw “mind” on the Shema in a culture that was obsessed with philosophy and rhetoric. It’s almost as if Jesus was instructing His followers to punch up their mental fortitude because He knew they’d run into some high-minded doubters. And later on, the Spirit empowers these uneducated fishermen and poor communicators to go head-to-head with some of the philosophical heavyweights of their day (Acts 4:8-22; 17:16-34; 18:4; 24-26).

The Spirit empowers our thinking, reasoning, and imaginations—but our minds are also like muscles that we should exercise toward a deeper love of God.

God still makes plenty room for people with little intelligence; His appreciation of us doesn’t change in proportion to IQ or reading challenges. But simultaneously, “God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than any other kind of slacker.”20

Point is: Christianity is wonderfully accommodating toward anyone who doesn’t want to learn. But the curious will flourish—stumbling into a forever-deepening treasure chest of ideas and wisdom and deep contemplation.

However, the goal is always aimed toward thinking better rather than just knowing more stuff. While on earth, Jesus was constantly training people to think better. The Pharisees of His day didn’t lack head knowledge—they were just walking storehouses of misguided thinking. So Jesus tried to teach them to trade their bad theology for good theology.

For us today, the best and first venue for trading bad theology for good is our embodied communities. But beyond that, we should also try to read classic theological texts or listen to high-caliber podcasts or engage in dialogue with curious friends. That’s how we weed out bad theology from good theology, which brings us closer and closer to embodying the truth within Jesus’ way and life.

Okay now it’s time to

Cover All My Bases So I Don’t Get Roasted by Obvious Counterarguments

Everytime anyone makes an argument in this direction, there’s concern that it’s hating on the “simple gospel.” It’s not. The Gospel is simple in some ways (kids can understand it), but highly complex in other ways (see the never-ending stream of commentaries on Romans 9-11).

The basic truths of the Gospel are digestible for everyone—and we should never not rejoice in that—but the idea that digging deeper into theology makes the Good News less good just isn’t true. The fear that loving God with our intellects weighs down a vibrant, infectious faith is a total myth.

Take the 17th century French Mystic Jeanne Guyon, for example. Her writings are laced with some of the most spiritually profound sentiments I’ve ever read. To this day, I’m not sure I’ve come across anything that feels so deeply rooted in a love for God.

Yet, if you’ve ever read any of her books, it’s more than likely that you’ve read an aggressive paraphrase. To translate it word for word from the French would leave almost any reader without a doctorate alienated. You can read this footnote to fact check whether I’m exaggerating.21

And yet Guyon’s complex writings started a small revival throughout Dijon, France. It even caused such a stir that her book was banned. Then when authorities went house to house confiscating her book for a public burning, they rounded up a full 300 copies! To find 300 copies of anything in one small French village in the late 1600s is unheard of. This wasn’t just an intellectual curiosity, it was a spiritual hunger.

We could list plenty of other examples: Augustine, Aquinas, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney, Leonard Ravenhill, Dallas Willard, and Tim Keller. All of them were brilliant, and the brilliance didn’t get in the way of a vibrant inner life—if anything, it seemed to enhance their magnetic impact.

All to say, the contrast between the life of the mind and the life of the spirit is a false dichotomy. In fact, some recent research opposes the idea that faith and IQ have a negative correlation—in some ways, faith might refine IQ.22

We don’t have to choose between intellectual rigor and spiritual fire; we can and should choose both. And if you ever do find yourself on the path toward research-induced social passivity—as many have—the response is simple: repent and reevaluate the purpose of your learning (i.e., learning for the sake of love rather than punching up the ego). But even then, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater just because the bathwater made the baby a little too introverted. To rephrase that in a way that humans actually talk: don’t throw out a plan just because you can rattle off some flaws; adapt it until its flaws turn into strengths.

So here’s the challenge:

read something hard this year. Maybe it’s just something two or three rungs above the reading level you’re comfortable with. Classics from a few centuries ago work great. Is there a book you’ve been curious about for a while but didn’t feel comfortable trying out? Give that one a shot.

But beyond that, bring some intellectual life into our communities: pick up a challenging Bible commentary to go through with your small group. Audit a course in something interesting. Go through some dense videos from YouTube didacts with friends.

For me personally, I’m going through the philosopher Charles Taylor’s bibliography this year (one down, a bunch to go). Everyone quotes Taylor, but few seem to actually read him all the way through. I’m not sure I understand every word of it, but I’m happy just pushing myself to try.

Just think of it as an intellectual workout. In the same way that we try to eat healthy or exercise to maintain the temple of our physical bodies, we should also challenge ourselves to exercise our intellectual life.

It’s part of what the Greeks called askēsis, or “self-mastery”/“discipline.” It’s a practice of stretching yourself for the sake of strengthening your thinking.

Intellectual formation is just as much a part of our spiritual formation as any other discipline.

To end, let’s think back to one of the lines from Malik’s brilliant speech:

For the sake of greater effectiveness in witnessing to Jesus Christ, as well as for their own sakes, evangelicals cannot afford to keep on living on the periphery of responsible intellectual existence.

In our mission to save souls, we can’t forget to save minds.

It’s a common practice, but it doesn’t pay respect to historical complexity. Historians David Thelen and Roy Rosenzweig describe it like this:

Using the past is as eating or breathing. It is a common human activity. What we have in common as human beings is that we employ the past to make sense of the present and to influence the future.2

So, that said, good historians shouldn’t just cherry pick their ancestors for anecdotes to back up or illustrate their points.

Thankfully, I’m not a historian. So I can play it more fast and loose, since I’m not really in the running for conference invites from the Historians Society of Academics (not real).

This is why I end my church history course with a class called “The Lessons of Church History,” in which I try to pick out advice from the past to help inform our present.

It’s essentially inspired by the work of the historians Will & Ariel Durant. After finishing their lifelong mission of condensing human history into 11 volumes, they decided to condense history even further into a slim, 100-page book about all the lessons they’d learned. So this class follows their general cues.

For some more context, I teach church history by breaking it up into six general eras. They’re not a neat standard that you’d find in church history textbooks, but it works well for the shape of my class:

1. Missionaries, Martyrs, and Messianic Jews (31 A.D. – 312 A.D.)

2. The Imperial Church, Monastics, and Seven Councils (313 – 787)

3. Medievals, Scholasticism, and Christendom Schisms (788 – 1499)

4. The Reformation & Counter-Reformation (1500 – 1650)

5. The Enlightenment, Great Awakenings, Missionary Expansion (1651 – 1946)

6. Neo-Fundamentalism, Pentecostals, and the Digital Revolution (1947 – Present)

So for “Lessons of Church History” class, I divvy out 18 different lessons among the six movements. But for this article, I cut out half since a 45-min read felt kind of abusive. As such, the nine leftovers are my favorites.

Now, I usually have no idea how much my students enjoy my classes. I often verbally ask them, “Are you enjoying this class?” Some say, “Yes,” but the authenticity is ambiguous. But the “Yes’s” seem slightly more authentic during this class. That said: I think this is good and interesting content. And I can say that because very little of it is my own original thought—it’s a conglomeration of the best of the best thoughts I’ve found.

Withoutfurtherado:

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Audio voiceover available here for paid subs!

Every friendship I’ve ever had kicked off over a shared experience. My best friend and I initially bonded through our mutual appreciation of 2000s indie music. I feel an immediate kinship with anyone who also loves footnotes.1 Sometimes it’s even a collaborative dislike of something everyone else unabashedly loves.

Yet it’s odd that even though we connect with one another best through shared experiences—and connection is one of the most joyful forces in the universe—we rarely share one of the most basic human experiences: rejection.

Whether it’s rejection from a dream job, grad program, relationship, publisher, literary agent, sports team, volunteer position at a local cat rescue shelter,2 scholarship, or medical trial, everyone knows the sting of rejection. It’s why lots of stories begin with the main character experiencing social ostracism (Catcher in the Rye, Harry Potter, The Bell Jar, Joaquin Phoenix’s The Joker, Perks of Being a Wallflower, and the most highbrow of all, Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer): the audience immediately connects with them because everyone—even the most popular among your high school, community group, or local cat rescue shelter—empathizes with rejection. And yet, it’s probably the experience we’re least excited to bring out in the open.

Which is probably because it’s uniquely painful. Several studies have demonstrated that the areas of the brain that register social rejection overlap with the areas that register physical pain; rejection can feel worse than getting hit by a car.3 These parts of the brain are so intertwined that one group of researchers even found that taking Tylenol can lower the intensity of social pain.4

When I was younger, I was so petrified of this social pain that I rarely set goals. But after I started setting some, I realized that no methods for circumventing rejection actually existed. Nowadays, rejection emails from jobs, journals, and publications storm my inbox like a SWAT team on a weekly basis.

And even though every one still stings, they’re a necessary byproduct of trying. Along with death and taxes, rejection is a certainty of living: it’s a reminder that you’re alive and pushing toward something. Sidestepping all rejection is symptomatic of not trying—which might feel comfortable but doesn’t compute with growing toward the joy within the callings that God’s laid out for us (Eph. 2:9-10).

Rejection hurts and will always hurt a little bit. But if we train our nervous systems to receive rejection as an opportunity for maturation—rather than an invitation into sustained bitterness—we can alchemize the rejection into something that makes every rejection worth it.

And personally, I find that I’m immediately attracted to people who share rejections. Opening up about failure is a top-shelf social glue. So in the spirit of encouraging rejection transparency, I’d like to offer

a collage of rejection.

There’re too many places I could start. My natural lack of sportiness got me cut from most sports from first grade to freshman year (and I didn’t start making the team after freshman year, I just interpreted the cues that sports weren’t my thing). Or there was the time my seventh grade romance that basically only existed via Facebook messenger was broken off on the bleachers during PE.

But let’s just start with writing. I started writing when I was 22. And since I figured Christian writers wrote for Christianity Today, that’s what I should do. 155 essay submissions later, no dice. But sadly (and very understandably; a CT employee once described their submissions inbox a “never-ending slush pile”), there wasn’t much feedback. So I knew I was doing something wrong, but didn’t know what.

Then I started branching out and made a habit of submitting to a list of publications at least once a week. I did this for years before anything got accepted. Take a gander:

I have about 80 rejections Plough. I keep submitting essays periodically in anticipation that they will reject it within a comically short time frame.

Let’s also note that most of the bigger publications don’t send rejection emails, they just ghost you. So imagine about 250 actual rejection emails and then 400 assumed rejections and you’ll have a mental image of how many I stockpiled.

And that’s just magazine submissions. The rejections from publishers and academic journals, if printed out, could fill up about quarter of a paper ream. My friend keeps a folder specially dedicated to rejections from publishers.

Then there are job rejections. The first one is mine, the next is ’s, and the last one is ’s from Bridgetown Church (that one must’ve stung):

I also shouldn’t tiptoe around two of the more painful rejections of all, one from my alma mater and the other from Oxford:

Now, for the record, I did get published, I did get a job, and I did start a doctorate. But along the way, I had to weed through endless cycles of rejection—and I still receive rejection constantly.

Thankfully, every once in a while, you get a rejection email paperclipped with some advice. Take ’s from back when was Ekstasis:

To this day, it’s the best rejection email I’ve ever gotten. It explained exactly what was wrong with my submission along with the chance to revise it, resubmit it, and then eventually publish it. It’s the kind of email more publications should shoot next gen writers.

Now let’s talk about

a theology of rejection.

The horseback revivalist John Wesley wrote a lot of great stuff, but his travel journals are my favorite. For years, he kept a running diary of when and where he preached and noted his progress or lack thereof. They’re actually kind of funny:

Wednesday, October 20: At noon, I preached in the middle of town. No one accepted the Good News. Later, they came to the house I was staying at and tried to kill me. The owner would not let them.

Friday, October 22: At eleven, I preached in the town next over. Not one attentive person in the crowd. Then men started shouting me down. None were saved.

Sunday, October 24: I preached at noon, and the crowd listened intently. Dozens came forward. I’d never seen a crowd so enthusiastically receive the Gospel.5

What I love most about Wesley’s journals is that his progress was never linear. He never arrived at a plateau where all of his preaching became successful. No matter how many supported him, there were always just as many, if not more, who rejected him. Wesley’s journals remind us that rejection is just a normal occupational hazard for Jesus’ followers.

The New Testament is crammed with rejection—probably because the Christian life itself is crammed with rejection. Jesus casually tailored His disciples’ initial commission with advice for rejection: “If that town doesn’t receive you, depart and shake that town’s dust off your feet,” “When you’re arrested, don’t worry how to speak, because the Spirit will speak through you” (Matt. 10:11-15, 19-20).

Unlike the existing philosophies of the day, which typically encouraged growing a vague numbness toward rejection,6 Christianity revolutionized rejection. James encouraged us to count trials of all variety as “joy” (James 1:1-2). Jesus even crescendos His Beatitudes by saying that those who “suffer for [His] sake”—getting “reviled” “persecuted” and “slandered” (Matt. 5:10-11)—will enter into His flourishing life. Essentially, He’s saying that those who are single-mindedly devoted to the Gospel will be happier than those who are double-minded and stuck choosing between safeguarding their earthly status or storing up heavenly treasure.

While Christians will still, of course, experience the pain within rejection, we’re given a framework to receive rejection without internalizing its lingering aches. It’s like an authorization to interpret rejection as a tangible sign that we’re aligning ourselves with the abundant life Jesus outlined for us.

But yes, there’s a noteworthy chasm between the seriousness of getting “flogged in synagogues” (Matt 10:17; John 16:1-2) and losing out on jobs or getting non-fiction personal essays rejected. Let’s make every effort to stave off messianic complexes. Yet simultaneously, there’s no real reason to downplay the resistance that we face on the way toward whatever God’s called us to. The early apostles knew a rejection many of us never will, but that doesn’t nullify the discomforts we experience on a smaller scale.

So on that note, let’s discuss

four ways to metabolize rejection.

(1) turn it into humor

The comedy writer Nora Ephron once said, “When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you; but when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh.”7

Tasteful self-deprecation is a superpower. By reverse engineering embarrassing moments into humor, we trade the original embarrassment for a newfound relatability.

But notice the qualifying word “tasteful.” Someone who walks into every room and calls attention to the thing they’re most self-conscious about is someone who spends too much time considering how others see them. Humility is thinking about the self less, not obsessing so much over your failure that you can’t stop bringing it up.

We also don’t want to use humor as a cover up. If we make jokes about rejection, we should posture the joke so that there’s a detectable note of sincerity within it. Laughter is best used to process reality, not avoid it.

(2) turn it into art

The creative writer Austin Kleon once compiled a long list of famous rejection letters into an aesthetically pleasing article about saying no.8 Here’s my favorite:

Kleon’s whole essay humanizes both the rejector and the rejectee; by demystifying the process, his aesthetically pleasing collection turns an emotionally devastating experience into a few minutes of escapism.

Then there’s J.K. Rowling, who submitted crime fiction under the pseudonym “Robert Galbraith” after writing Harry Potter. Posting her rejection letters showed every aspiring writer that a lack of talent wasn’t necessarily the reason they were getting rejected. Best part is, the letters offered her advice about how to write books that could have more “commercial success.”

Similarly, the theologian A.J. Swoboda once asked Wendell Berry to write a preface for his book on eco-theology. Berry said no. So Swoboda wrote up the process of getting turned down by Berry into an amusing anecdote for his follow-up book. He turned the rejection into a smile for his readers.9

Some experts even encourage young creatives to rack up 100 rejections just for the sake of growing some skin. This is sort of what The Call of the Wild author Jack London did early in his career. He plastered the sides of his room with rejection slips from publishers until it was hard to see any wall. He used it as a kind of motivating force until he eventually began covering up the rejection notices with acceptance notices.

And of course, you don’t have to be a famous writer to turn rejection into art. One study shows that processing the spiraling that’s going on in your mind by spiraling it out on paper tones down overall negative rumination.10 Regardless of your medium, art is great (and cheap) therapy.

(3) sharing rejection with embodied community.

While writing this essay, I got one of the most painful rejections I’ve gotten in years (I loathe it when Providence makes you practice what you preach). Because of the involved parties, it would’ve been too unprofessional to include here. I woke up one morning so excited for the day (I’m a morning person, so I peak around 5am and it’s usually all downhill after 7am), but then I checked my email and ended up getting next to nothing done. It felt like it whacked my stomach with a cricket bat.

And my first reaction was to conceal it. I was too embarrassed to tell my wife or my best friend. So I just sat in silence rereading the email and then got ready for work. But on the drive, I reluctantly realized that I shouldn’t just shove it down. I caved and told my wife and then got on the phone with my best friend later on. And it was instant relief. It’s so much better to suffer in community—inviting others to weep with you as you weep—than to do it alone.

I wonder if what made the apostles so much more willing and able to suffer rejection was knowing that they had their brothers and sisters constantly at their side. Since community was baked into their foundations, rejection wasn’t processed through an individualist framework—which meant there was way less schadenfreude and one-upping. Bearing one another’s burdens is easier when there’s zero degrees of status differentials and a win for one is a win for all and vice versa. Maybe modern individualism is what makes rejection so uniquely painful.

Bring sadness into your communion with God, of course; but the embodied comfort from embodied community is so crucial.

(4) use rejection to motivate others.

Lots of the people I look up to share a similar quality: they seem happier bottling up successes than failures. You know, the kinds of guys who confess that they’re struggling with patience toward their family but also run a 5,000 employee company that you only hear about through the grapevine.

I’ve always found something strangely intelligent about those who share rejection. In one sense, it’s a cathartic exorcism of embarrassment. But it’s also just a smart way to motivate others.

For example, the social scientist Xiaodong Lin-Siegler set up a study where her and her colleagues delivered a lecture to one group of students about the failures and eventual successes of famous scientists, and then lectured the next group about the same scientists but blotted out their failures. Apparently, the group that heard about the setbacks amidst the successes was more excited and optimistic than the group who only heard their triumphs—with some even expressing a desire to become a career scientist.11

In other words, the ability to pick oneself back up again after the umpteenth failure is just plain inspiring. Therefore, if we’re trying to raise up scientists, let’s weave in our setbacks on the way to progress; if we’re trying to raise up ministers, theologians, and faithful leaders for the next generation, let’s make sure to shine the brightest spotlight of the adversity we faced in our personal testimonies.

There’s even something motivational about the way Jesus was “despised and rejected by men” (Isa. 53:3). Knowing that the man who lived the fullest life, who knew best how to experience the whole spectrum of human emotion, was perpetually rejected offers us a model of what makes any and all suffering worth it. The stone that was constantly rejected became the cornerstone of all of our reality.

Okay, time to

end.

There’s lots of talk among self-help literature about learning how to “fail better” or “fail smarter.” This isn’t that. We don’t just want to self-help ourselves into metabolizing failure. We want to aim toward the calling God’s laid out for us before the foundations of the world and interpret pushback as part of the necessary sufferings within Jesus’ beatitude. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t feel sad about rejection—we should wallow over a disappointing rejection.

Sometimes, you get rejected because you’re not the right fit. Other times, you get rejected because you’re not good. When the problem is the former, it’s just a matter of finding the right niche. When the problem is the latter, as it was (and still frequently is) for me, the rejection itself becomes the antibody for growth. Like Marcus Aurelius said, the things that impede our actions are exactly what guides us toward future actions, “what stands in the way becomes the way.”12

Lastly, I’ve been absorbed with this book by the 17th century French mystic Jeanne Guyon called Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ. It’s one of the most insightful works on spiritual formation I’ve ever read. There’s one line toward the end that I’ve been sitting on:

Learn to suffer all that happens to you—even confusion—but learn to do so out of only one motive: love for God. Accept everything, whether it be ill treatment, neglect, or whatever else may come your way…Put to death the disagreeable feelings which rise up inside of you when unpleasant things enter your life. In so doing, you join in the sufferings of Christ.13

And again, to compare receiving a rejection email to the sufferings of Christ is a level of melodrama I’d rather never insinuate.14 But her larger point is endlessly relevant: learn to suffer for the sake of love of God. Like Henri Nouwen put it, rejection is never the final word. God’s love is.15 This isn’t just a naive optimism: it’s a rational exposure therapy to make all suffering meaningful and ultimately beautiful.