Episode 25 - Chosen Family with Rev. Dr. David N. Moore, Jr.

How do we change our minds and hearts? The Rev. Dr. David N. Moore, Jr. believes in the power of storytelling to catalyze our awakening. But what about when, despite our best efforts, people refuse to budge? David challenges Anni to expect to encounter our modern-day Judases, and to use her time to find chosen family instead of trying to make everyone happy in the name of diplomacy and unity. Drawing from Jesus’ teachings about judgement, David asserts that what will ultimately save the world is self-aware folks properly judging the world and calling for justice.

Listen to full episode :

Transcript

Welcome to season two of Barely Christian Fully Christian.

I'm your host, Anni Ponder, and I'm so glad you've stopped by for the conversation about loving Jesus, being repulsed by the un-Christ likeness of so much of what the world sees from Christianity, and my personal favorite, honoring the Holy Spirit as the Divine Mother, or as I call her, Mama God.

Hello, beloved listeners, and welcome.

Today, we open the gates to a conversation that walks tenderly through fire and listens deeply to the wind.

We are joined by Reverend Dr.

David N.

Moore, Jr., whose voice echoes with the cadence of the prophets and the patience of the contemplatives.

He is a pastor, scholar, bridge builder, and bearer of inconvenient truth, a man anointed not only with insight, but with invitation.

Here, we do not come to consume wisdom, but to sit with it.

We come to let the spirit, sometimes a whisper, sometimes a whirlwind.

Unmake what needs unmaking, and breathe into what is being born.

We come to let Mama God speak, and we come to let the Imago Dei, the sacred feminine image of God in us and between us, have her word in the world's healing.

So, take a breath, take a beat, take your shoes off if you must.

This is holy ground.

Reverend Dr.

David N.

Moore, Jr.

is the author of Making America Great Again.

Fairytale?

Horror story?

Dream come true?

Published in early 2017, it weaves together his personal journey, especially as a black pastor, and a prophetic call for Christians to engage truthfully, tenderly and broadly with issues of race, justice, and unity.

Reviewers describe it as both challenging and hopeful, urging white Christian readers in particular to wake up to systemic inequities by standing with those who have been marginalized and to do this without condescension, but with solidarity.

Well, welcome, David.

I'm so glad you're here.

Thank you.

Thank you for joining me today.

Good to be with you, Anni.

Are you doing well?

I am.

Yes, thanks be to God.

You seem to be excited about being you.

Thank you for noticing.

Generally, that's true.

What my listeners may not know is that more than the revered doctor that you are, you are also my professor.

And so I came to know you at St.

Stephen's University this last semester in our coursework and then in person at residency.

And from the very first conversation we had, I had this, it's not a feel, it's like an indescribable knowing about you that just said, I just wanted to be near you and sit with you and learn along with you and from you.

And I sensed that there was a depth to who you are and the work that you bring that I really just wanted to soak up.

So thank you.

Now that you mentioned that, I recall that we had a couple of lunches together in the comments.

We did.

Yeah.

Some of those conversations to me feel like you step out of Kronos and into Kairos and you just sort of witness one another for a moment and go, wow, I love who God has made you to be and who you have chosen to be also.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was, I think, in your follow up, let's see, how did it happen?

There was kind of a lecture.

Did you give a lecture one of those first days?

And then the next day, we just sat in a circle, all of the students.

And you just said, I think people need to ask some questions.

Am I remembering that correctly?

And I don't even know that I would call what I did either time a lecture.

I think it was more storytelling.

That came through really strongly.

And the more and more I lean into this work that I'm engaged in and read and learn from people also engaged in this work in their own corner of the world.

The more and more I am convinced that story is where transformation really happens.

And we learn so much more by listening in and experiencing this story through somebody else's eyes than in a textbook or, yeah, in a lecture, right?

Yep.

Yeah.

So, you have a personal journey going from, what did it say on your website?

Something about starting out in, you were born into Christianity, and how would you describe the story of where you are now?

Yeah.

I was born into Christianity, and then the next segment says, I dream of a new global family, global reality.

I think of the realm of the divine as being what Jesus talked about when he said kingdom of God, which is a very patriarchal term.

Thanks for noticing.

Yeah, I always point that out.

I mean, when I bring it up in our own community, which I do all the time, I always say that.

You know, even if there's like just only one new person there, I have to make sure that we're on the same page.

So yeah, it's a patriarchal term, but it's also a delimiting term because it often suggests that there is a domain that is separated from all of reality.

And so what does that mean?

Does it mean that the rest of reality is not the property of the divine?

So when I hear the realm of the divine, I think it refers to everything, to reality.

So anything that we see that is inhumane, anything that we see is quote-unquote ungodly, anything that is brutal, then that's an aberration.

It is abnormal because the realm of the divine is the cosmos.

I've been sitting with that phrase also.

And, as you know, one of my areas of really intense interest and focus is the D, how to say, taking out the patriarchy from the language and from my framework, and beginning to see God as a more whole being than just a white man with a long beard.

And so, as I've begun to turn a critical and curious eye to the language that I was raised with, I've realized, oh, it's embedded everywhere.

And so, the kingdom of God is something that I both appreciate what Jesus was saying in his historical context right there.

And also, I wonder, and I actually heard you preach a sermon about this, I wonder what he would say if he were here now.

What language would he use that would help expand our understanding further that we might be ready for now?

That, you know, the folks in his day, they weren't able to think about that.

What term do you prefer to use then, if you don't say the kingdom of God, I heard you say realm of divine.

Is that?

Oh, reality.

Reality.

Yeah.

And again, when we hear Jesus using the word father, it may sound like it's regressive, but in his moment, that was not regressive, because his audience understood God to be a king, understood God to be a warrior, but not an entity, a personality to be related to, exclusive to the powerful, to the regal, to the rich.

And so, for him to tell people that you can say, our father was revolutionary.

And I say it, revolutionary in every sense, that it was upturning the powers.

For them to say, our father was to suggest that they did not surrender to the idea of domination.

Which was the entire landscape of that whole region of the world.

Yeah.

So, we can use other terms.

I think Jesus wants other terms now.

Because father can be, but is not generally revolutionary in this moment, because it's been co-opted.

So, you know, we have to be creative.

Because our language really matters.

Yeah.

I think that a lot of our leadership in this moment comes from transgender people who are not committed to the same terms and pronouns that, you know, at least in recent history, have been the norm.

So, you know, I was thinking about this earlier today.

As an African American, there is something that remains of the revolutionary.

When we call our siblings brothers and sisters, there is a historical reference that calls us into solidarity when we say brothers and sisters.

And yet transgender people would prefer that we say siblings.

So I was thinking this through and thinking, I probably should, if I'm in an audience, if I'm in among people who are African Americans or black people, I think I might want to say brothers and sisters and other siblings.

Uh-huh.

I've really been thinking about that too lately, that particular idea of using the word siblings.

And I think it's also come to me from listening in to trans folk and also the intersex population that I've just become familiar with because they have a really interesting perspective on gender, having both masculine and feminine traits in their actual physicality.

That leads me to go, wait, what are we even talking about then?

So it's been really important for me to lead into that conversation and tune my ear to, okay, what could we then, how could we upgrade our vocabulary so that we are, A, really more inclusive and B, able to expand our own understanding of reality with a capital R, so that we are not missing really important components of God's self, God's nature, our nature, ourselves, and the interconnectedness that we all share.

Yeah, and I don't know if, you know, there may be other people who are better at expressing this than I am, but I don't know if terminology exists.

So whatever terms we use, we might want to qualify them in the same way that, you know, if I use a particular term, I might say it with the asterisk and explain what I would like to say.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think I have found lately in conversations I've had, well, you heard this when I spoke at your church, I often preface when I begin a conversation with people, especially if there are people I don't know and who don't automatically get me and understand where I'm coming from, I often preface, I want to talk about divine femininity, and here's what I'm not going to say.

I'm not saying that we can't call God our Father.

I'm not saying this.

So that you begin to answer questions that haven't even come up, that will probably come up.

So all of this just makes me know we have a lot more conversation to have.

We're just getting started.

Yeah.

It's very spectral.

Yeah.

Well, I'm curious about your own story.

I love to ask this question of people whose way of thinking I really appreciate and enjoy.

I'd love to hear what was a major catalyst in your journey going from, oh, here's the little Christian box that I fit into to your understanding and your posture now.

Can you share a little bit about what started that for you?

You know, that's an interesting question for me, because I just had this conversation with a friend of four decades just last week.

And, you know, there are things that there I can, for instance, when I chart my journey from hetero normativity out of hetero normativity, I can reference specific experiences and conversations that help me along the way.

But then there's one other area where I don't have an experience to point to.

And it is simply this, because I didn't have a conversation or anything.

I just one day decided that I was living in this Christian world that was unjustifiably Zionist.

And I could not accept it anymore.

And it wasn't because I'm not a Middle East scholar, but I am a historian.

I mean, I taught ancient Greece and Rome at St.

Stephen's University to undergraduates for a decade.

So I do have some understanding of the region.

And maybe that was what was underlying my change.

But I just, it almost feels like I just started talking to people and started in my teaching, talking about the injustice of Zionism and the unfair experience of the Nakba.

And I was at that time living in a world where it was presumed that you support Israel, you know.

And I'm going back over 20 years in my experience.

And something about that said to me that if I find this unjust, what else is unjust?

What else can I, should I be questioning and challenging?

So that was kind of like, I think, a beginning point for me to critique everything that I had been fed.

Yeah, it's a real slippery slope, right?

I mean, you just start questioning one thing and there you go off the cliff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And like I said, you know, I can, I can point in when there are other things, you know, a woman's bodily autonomy, I can point to encounters and conversations that I had, where people helped me process and have a change of mind and heart.

But when it comes to this one, it just like, it was like an awakening and, you know, and so it made me susceptible to having a change of mind on everything.

Uh-huh, it does.

One of the analogies or metaphors that I've looked at several times is I've kind of looked squinty-eyed at many different points of, you're right, people just assume, if you identify as a Christian, then here's your stance on women's bodily autonomy.

Here's your stance on Israel versus Palestine.

All of these different things are just assumed.

And when I started squinting my eyes and going, wait a minute, that one doesn't actually seem like Jesus, right?

I know Jesus, he lives right here.

I have this knowing of what it is to be truly loved and that thing doesn't align.

Then a lot of people in my life who were afraid that I was pulling out critical blocks in the pyramid, and the whole thing was going to crumble.

And someone, I can't remember, it might have been, might have been Brian McLaren, but it's hard to source, cite sources these days because I read so much now.

Anyway, one of my author guides said, you know, our faith might be better envisioned as not a pyramid that stands on a hierarchical structure, that if you pull out the bottom pieces, the whole thing crumbles.

But maybe instead we could view it as like a spider web with a whole lots of different points of attachment.

So if we look at one point of attachment and go, that doesn't work.

We can move it and reattach it, and the whole thing doesn't fall down.

We don't have to lose our faith, although maybe we need to for a time, and come to something much more real and vibrant.

But that's been useful for me as I've looked at specific things that I've needed to change my mind and heart about over the last couple of decades as I've been kind of undergoing this, like you said, awakening.

When I was quote unquote pro-life, I was actually, I had not given much thought to it.

All right.

I was kind of, I was recruited by, I live in a community that has a lot of white evangelicals.

And I think that they feel the need to have voices who are not white.

So I was essentially recruited because I was part of the community.

And I remember here on the campus of University of California, Santa Barbara, there was an event being sponsored by an organization called Crusade for Life.

And they had, they platformed three speakers, three pastors, actually.

And I think, I mean, I don't remember where I was in the order now in the sequence, but I remember standing before all of these college students in this quad area.

And by then, I had pretty much decided that the people that invited me were very much interested, very, very much against abortion.

But they didn't seem to have the same kind of passion.

They didn't bring the same fire when it came to other issues, especially when it came to racial justice.

And a few other things.

So I remember in my intro, I said to these college students, and there's a big crowd, maybe a thousand people.

And I remember saying, you know, I just want to be clear from the beginning here that I'm not here to support the religious right in any way.

And then I, you know, went on with my talk, and later the woman who invited me wouldn't even look at me.

She wouldn't talk to me.

You know, that was an interesting experience.

So that further exposed them to me, that they were more about a single issue.

Yeah.

And you weren't going to tow the party line.

And so, yeah.

No.

Oh, yeah.

Wow.

That's interesting.

I can relate to that on a smaller scale.

And again, it has to do with like specific times, I've come close to people whose stories are different than the narrative I've been handed and realizing, wait a minute, I haven't even really thought this through very deeply.

So here's a conviction that I essentially inherited when I was baptized and it was assumed then that I wasn't going to question anything and just sort of regurgitate the party line or whatever.

And once you do start asking harder questions, or like you did, drawing a line and saying, I'm not about this, you get looks, you get ostracized.

And well, and I liked, as you said before I hit record, you said, I'm not even in spaces where I need to be diplomatic anymore.

Can you unpack that a little bit?

OK, so here's, you know, for people who are familiar with the Bible, you'll know that in Matthew 7, Jesus says, do not judge and you will not be judged.

Right?

Now, first of all, you have to understand the mind of Jesus to some extent to even accept that, because we're all going to be judged.

I mean, if you think you're going to go through life and not be judged, you're that's a dream that's not going to come true.

Right?

So when he says do not judge and you will not be judged, what he's talking about is cosmic judgment, that God is on the side of those who are not judgmental.

But he's not saying that people are not going to judge you.

Judge not and you will not be judged has to do with reality, has to do with your self-awareness.

But here's the thing, he says judge not and you will not be judged.

Then he goes on for several paragraphs to talk about ways to judge, right?

At the end of it, he says something about, you'll know a tree by its fruit and you need to know what kind of fruit you're eating.

So he's talking about judging.

But immediately after saying, judging it, that you may not be judged, he said, you know, you might have a log in your eye while your friend has a speck in their eye.

First remove the, he says, you hypocrite.

First remove the log from your eye and then you can remove this, help your friend to remove the speck from their eye.

Again, this is how you judge, right?

So what Jesus is telling us is, is to be self aware so that we can judge because we need to judge.

We need to be empowered to practice self judgment.

We need to, we need to be empowered to practice judgment in the world.

And that comes out from a place of humility and self awareness.

Because if we don't judge, this is really significant.

If we don't judge, then we're going to leave other people vulnerable.

We're going to leave other people exposed.

We have to judge wherever we see harm being administered.

We have to speak up and we have to, we have to get our voice, our power.

We have to get our power up.

We have to raise our power quotient so that we can speak with confidence and authority where we see immorality.

We, the world is going to be, I mean, part of what's going to save the world is us judging, is us, you know, speaking out against what we see is wrong.

But it comes from self-awareness.

And that's why, you know, he keeps telling us, this is how you judge.

You do it this way.

You do it that way.

Yeah.

Wow.

I've never, ever heard a sermon about that till right now.

But I have full-bodied chills.

And that tells me, like, everything in me is agreeing.

Yes, if we don't have sound judgment, then we can't call out injustice and we can't work for, you know, stopping oppression and bringing shalom.

We can't do it if we don't have a way to go, well, this is unfair.

This shouldn't be.

This is contrary to God's reality.

Yeah.

So then how?

There's a saying, speak up even if your voice shakes.

I think that kind of, to some extent, may reflect the beginning steps of us getting our power.

Because that's what society needs.

That's what communities need.

That's what families need.

They need somebody who's going to...

Listen, if you don't have judgment, then the person that you know who is transgender, who has disabilities, who is a racial minority, who is indigenous, whatever the case may be, if you don't speak up, then you leave them vulnerable.

And you're responsible.

So your judgment is necessary.

That's right.

Because Jesus would tell us in the story of the Good Samaritan, you're actually not off the hook if you just walk on by.

Like those guys do not get off with a blessing.

Jesus actually has condemnation for the people who just walk on by.

Yep.

Okay, so asking for a friend.

How?

I'm sure you've run into this in your life.

I hear a lot of the educators that I listen to talk about when we speak up against injustice or we root out oppression or we find inequities.

Oftentimes, within the Christian world, what we are told is, well, you have to be careful to preserve the unity of the body.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you know, that's not true.

Just not true.

You're not responsible for preserving unity in the face of immorality.

You know, because again, if you don't judge, you're leaving somebody vulnerable.

Remember the statement Jesus made?

He said, do not think that I came to bring peace on earth.

But a sword.

But a sword.

Yeah.

Even in a family.

You know, that's interesting.

You bring that up.

I was thinking about that a day or two ago and how I don't think he meant the sword as an instrument of violence, of division.

Yeah.

Yes.

And it does cause division when we speak up, we speak to power, we speak to authority and we say, hey, you're actually enabling oppression by allowing this to continue.

I can't find a way in my daily life then to go, okay, but yes, the unity of the body is the most important thing.

And so, and to make those two things meet in the middle.

It seems to me that you have to pick one.

Oh, you have to, and to live with yourself, to sleep at night.

You know, to be remembered.

You know, there aren't many better feelings for me as a father of adult kids.

When I once took a stand that was unpopular and my son gave me a high five, it meant that much to him.

There's not a much better feeling than getting a high five from your kid.

However, I'm not living to get high fives from my kids.

That's why I would get it.

I'm not living to get it.

So, what I'm saying is that, you know, Jesus says, you know, even in the context of family, I came to bring a sword.

And this is why I have often said that Chosen Family is not a Plan B.

Chosen Family is not a Plan B.

You know, there are people who feel guilty, who feel inadequate because they're not, in terms of values, they're not close to their biological family.

They feel guilty because they don't get along with their parents or even their spouse or whoever in their family.

And that's just what Jesus is addressing here when he says, I didn't come to bring peace, I came to bring a sword, you know.

It's like your family needs, if you are self aware and your judgment is right, then your family needs to get on that same page.

And if they do not get on that same page, you don't need to feel guilty about it.

In fact, here's a good example from the life of Jesus, okay?

Jesus was in this house that was packed with people and people, I see people outside looking in the windows and he's talking.

And someone comes to Jesus and says, you know, your family's outside.

And the implication is that we should make a path so that they can come in, maybe sit in the preferred seating, first class, right?

But that's not his response.

Jesus says, no, who is my family?

And he opens his arms and he says, behold, my family, whoever does the will of God is my family.

That who my family is.

And I think that what Jesus is telling us today is that it has nothing to do with whether they're Christians, right?

They can be atheists.

They can be Baha'i.

They can be Hindu, Jewish, whatever.

It doesn't matter if they practice traditional religion or they're Muslim or whatever.

They're doing the will of God.

We're on the same page.

We're family.

Chosen family is a priority with Jesus.

And here's another example.

When Jesus is on the cross and he's suffering and dying, he looks down and he sees John, who is not a biological brother, and he says to John, man, behold your mother.

And he's talking about Jesus talking about his own mother.

And he says to Mary, woman, behold your son.

They're not, they're not related.

They're not biologically related, but Jesus is creating a chosen family.

And the scripture says, and from that moment, John took Mary into his own home.

Right?

So I don't think we make a big enough deal when it comes to Chosen Family.

But Chosen Family is a microcosm of our global community that we're going to have to make sure that we are building.

So this is really resonating with something a dear friend of mine keeps saying that's so hard for me to swallow.

And here's why.

I want everybody to come along, right?

I have this love for the whole world and I want everyone to take a deep breath, realize their own belovedness, see it in every person and creature.

Like I have this hope, it's utopian.

My friend keeps saying, I think we're going to have to leave some people behind as we try and make a world that's just and kind and good.

Can you help me?

That breaks my heart to think of particularly the people in my own context who, you know, I said I'm asking for a friend.

There are folks who are so opposed to what I'm trying to help birth into the world right to midwife.

And I don't, I just struggle with the idea of leaving them behind.

How do you have any wisdom here?

Well, here's the thing.

There is somebody out there who wants you to be their chosen family.

But you're not going to realize you're not going to fulfill their dream when you're trying to build your own separate thing.

So as long as you do that, you are delaying the actualization of more intimate relationship, more gratifying conversations, more satisfying relationships.

You are delaying that while you're trying to build something that's not there.

You're not the first person to be telling me this right now.

And yet it's just, oh, so hard to think of walking away from people I love, who just refuse to come along and see what I'm seeing and do something about it.

Yeah, but see, you're being protected and you just don't realize it.

You know, even Jesus had a Judas, right?

Someone who betrayed him.

And if you don't give, if you don't open yourself up to the unseen, perhaps unrecognized Chosen Family that's available to you, that is at this point seems uncertain, perhaps unknown.

If you don't do that, then you'll build your own thing, but you will also, they will be comprised of just way too many Judases, because you're going to face way too much disappointment.

In fact, I would venture to say you've already experienced that kind of disappointment over and over and over again, and it keeps piercing you, it keeps breaking your heart, it keeps disturbing you over and over again, and until you let it go, you're going to keep inviting Judas into your house.

Wow.

Wow, there's some deep wisdom right there.

And then what do I do?

Yeah, how?

How do I let them be Judas?

And step back?

I guess Jesus did, right?

I guess he just let Judas be Judas.

Didn't shy away, kept walking forward.

Yeah, but the plan wouldn't have worked if you had 11 Judases and one loyal follower.

Right, right.

Yeah, what this is telling us is we can't control all of our relationships, but we need to open ourselves up to the people who are really drawn to us, and whom we are drawn to.

I tie that back to Genesis 1, 26 and 27, which has become like my anchor point to remember who I am.

And the place where I am rooted, when I wonder, can I really let this part of myself come out and be expressed because it is who I am, and I also know that it will affront some people's sense of, I don't know, whatever propriety or decency or whatever they think, is keeping them safe and in good standing with God.

If I'm out to everyone as exactly my authentic self and I keep remembering, yeah, but that's Imago Dei, right?

I am image bearing.

I am made in God's likeness, and so to hide or keep back is not to be who God actually made me to be in this world.

And so it's hard to think about.

I was telling somebody recently, they asked, when you go to a party, how do you introduce yourself?

Like, who are you?

And I said, oh, that's really interesting.

I don't.

I go up to someone, get them talking, ask them questions about themselves, learn enough to where I can say, okay, you will not be offended by this part of me, so I can share with you this part of me, right?

But I'm not going to tell you about this part, because that's going to freak you out, and we're going to stop talking.

And so, what I'm hearing is through you right now, and other people speaking in my life at this moment, there's an easier way to be.

Let's stop hiding.

Yeah?

Yeah.

You know, that's the thing that distinguished Jesus to his community.

When people were interviewed about Jesus, they said, well, you know, all the people in positions, you know, they're good talkers and all, but he speaks with authority.

And he didn't even have the positions.

So the authority was being his authentic self.

Yeah, I've never thought of it that way.

Yeah, they said he spoke like someone with authority.

I think probably to them, it was like authority capital A.

Like, where did that come from?

Because he wasn't a trained rabbi, but he spoke so authentically.

Huh.

Yeah.

I read on your website this quote that keeps working on me.

You were telling a story about how you and Diane got together, that she doesn't remember the beginnings of when you were 11 and you proposed.

But we'll let her speak for herself on that topic.

But then you were telling your story of how you two in your life have traveled from, here's Christianity, this is where we are, to where you are now, and you said, Christianity does not always promise the same things that Jesus does.

What do you mean?

First of all, let me just say, this vignette that you just mentioned between Diane and me, we just revisited, I mean, it's just part of our life.

And so we were in a moment of disagreement just last week.

And I said, look, I know what I'm doing.

I asked you to marry me when I was 11.

And she said, yes, but I declined.

Yeah, don't forget, I knew what I was doing too.

Right.

Yeah.

It's awesome.

So, yeah, I don't, you know, I can't remember.

I think, I think it might be the title of one of his books, Desmond Tutu wrote.

If it wasn't a title, it was in a book.

Jesus was not a Christian.

And, you know, I get that.

I don't really, and I think a lot of people today who share these values, this Chosen Family, or at least a portion of Chosen Family, don't, are not comfortable with that term, because it just sounds way too institutional for humanity, you know, for us as beings, for us as people of the earth.

You know, our relatives are the ground and the trees and the rivers that have been colonized by Christian voices and actions.

And so, for us to use the term Christian, it's just so contradictory, it's so perplexing.

So, I think it's good that people, that you and I and so many other people are uncomfortable with the term.

And, you know, because it promises domination, it promises patriarchy, it promises capitalism, and murder, it's lethal.

Where, so it's, you know, it's just a very different thing from, you know, Jesus, I think that you would agree that Jesus did come to make Christians, he came to renew humans, you know, which is why he called himself the human one.

You know, I mean, it's often called the son of man, but probably better translated, the human one.

And so, you know, his very presence models for speaks to us, you know, so when Jesus tells people to follow me, he's basically saying, you know, fulfill your humanity.

I remember at residency that came up, not sure which circle that was in.

But somebody said, you know, when he says, pick up your cross and follow me, if he were here today, he might not say cross because we generally don't have that in our execution measures, well, hopefully not.

But he would say, pick up your instrument of oppression, whatever it is, and follow me.

Yeah, that makes me think of James Cone, Jesus and the lynching tree.

Yeah, and we're seeing this in real time right now in lots of corners of the world.

Here on the California Central Coast last month, over 620 people were abducted by the government.

Some of them disappeared, some of them exported, some of them deported, exported.

And to me, that's our responsibility as fellow humans.

In the same way that the people of Gaza are our responsibility as fellow humans, and the people of Sudan and the Congo and Haiti.

I mean, the one that probably impacts emotionally many of us more than others, even though it's not the worst humanitarian crisis in the world right now, Gaza affects us because those of us who are in the United States are funding this genocide.

And we're watching the vast majority of our nationally elected officials, and some not even at a national level, who are either silent or trying to straddle offense or gaslighting us.

I mean, we are being, every day, that the gaslighting is happening.

And here we are with no political force other than our ballots.

Here we are with our eyes wide open and we're saying we're not buying it.

You know, those of us who haven't been funded by the Israel lobby and by the defense industry who get no profit from this genocide, we're the only ones who are speaking out.

And I have to say that to me, it's tragic that, because you know that there are far more Christian Zionists than Jewish Zionists.

And I will say that for the most part, the somewhere around 100 churches in our, in Santa Barbara, South County, I just don't hear, I don't hear a peep from them, you know.

Even the ones that are, quote unquote, progressive, you might have heard, I don't know, have you ever heard the phrase progressive except for Palestine?

No, but that hits real close to home.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's, that's what's happening across the country.

And it's definitely happening in, in this region.

People that I really thought would, that I could come alongside and stand in solidarity with have abandoned us.

Wow.

I mean, I'm talking, for example, the people that will have a protest event against ICE will not speak up for Gaza.

It's just stunning.

So that makes me wonder if they're willing to put their necks out there about ICE, but not about Gaza.

Is that because they secretly think, well, Israel does need to rebuild the temple so Jesus can come back?

And they have that theology someplace embedded deeply.

And they think we, I mean, like, can you even understand why?

Well, I can't speak for what's happening everywhere.

And that may be true in some areas, maybe in the Bible Belt or whatever.

But this is not the Bible Belt.

We have a lot of, you know, quote unquote progressive people of faith.

And so I don't think that's the driving motivation.

I think that they have sold out.

I think that, I know our local elected officials, our county supervisors and other people, you know, they're funded.

Their campaigns are funded by Zionists.

And even philanthropy organizations, you know, who hold the purse strings to progressive organizations have basically silenced them.

And so, I've decided I'd rather not have money if it comes down to that.

And it has, that has happened in my experience living in this community, where there's been a withdrawal of financial support for some things, because I speak up for Palestine.

And this started before October 7th, 2023.

The fact that I was so pro-Zionist offended people in our community.

Did you say pro-Zionist?

Yeah.

I'm sorry, pro-Palestinian.

Yeah, I'm glad you caught that.

Because I spoke up for Palestinians even before October 7th, I saw, yeah, I saw changes.

Yeah, you know, I think going back to Jesus in Matthew 5 through 7, I think that's, to me, that's the most precious portion of scripture, and I read it the most.

He flat out names this whole thing and says, look, you can serve God or money, but not both, and you got to pick.

And that, I just keep seeing that come up everywhere we look.

In all of the mess, wherever you turn your gaze, you can find this mess.

And usually, it comes down to, there's something to do with money at the base.

Absolutely.

And, you know, here's the, here's the thing that I, that I find, as far as my own experience, that I find comforting.

I, I, there wasn't, at least for me, there wasn't a point where I just, I said, oh wow, if I say this, I'm gonna get defunded.

Or, you know, they're gonna slap me, you know.

It was like, it was like, I was just doing what I knew to be me, and true.

And then the funds were pulled back, right?

So it's not a matter of deciding all the time, you know, how can I, I mean, am I gonna, you know, is this gonna be a temptation, right?

Maybe, maybe there are cases like that.

But I think for the vast majority of us, we're just being ourselves in the world, and we're just stunned when we see people show up in their compromise costumes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So then, this makes me wonder about, when we're looking at all of this, and I so agree, when we see people show up in their compromised costumes, I'm gonna hold on to that one, think about that one some more.

Meanwhile, I love to ask this of my guests, and particularly now in the context of what's going on right now, which I can only describe as madness everywhere we look.

It just looks so bleak.

For you in your own sphere, from where you sit, with all that you see and know and experience, I'm wondering, do you still have hope?

And if the answer is yes, where's that coming from?

Why?

And can you share some of it with us?

Well, I would say yes, and but not in this oppressive racial capital system.

I think that we are the global majority.

I think that as the wretched of the earth, we have chosen family.

And, you know, for all of the people that I, you know, that can be described as wearing compromised costumes, I just have such a sense of family with people who, who have disabilities, who, you know, are LGBTQIA+, who are migrants.

And because we share, we consciously share our humanity, and we're growing in that consciousness, you know, your question is, do I have hope?

Well, what do I hope, have hope for?

I think that would be salient.

I don't have hope for an enduring American empire at all.

But I do, well, you know, I tell people that I have John Lennon theology, right?

Yeah, I think it's the most remarkable thing that here's this couple, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who composed this song.

John Lennon grew up in the shadow of a US military base in near Liverpool, and he lived in what was the world's greatest empire.

And then Yoko Ono was, from Japan, the greatest Eastern empire or Asian empire.

And they just, they were anti-imperial.

And so they composed this song, you know, calling on us, calling on all of us to imagine a better way of being.

You know, I should mention that when he says, imagine no religion, he was interviewed later about that.

And he said that the whole song was birthed because, I think it was Dick, somebody's wife, I was going to say Dick Gregory, but maybe not.

But somebody's, some civil rights leader gave Yoko Ono a prayer book, and actually it was a Christian prayer book.

And that's what inspired the song.

So John went on to say, it's not that I'm against expression of faith, but the my God, his words were, the my God is bigger than your God expressions.

So, I mean, there's something beautiful about being a person of faith.

If you don't, if it's not competitive, but it's contemplative, contemplative instead of competitive.

And I think that it's remarkable that these two people composed this song and Anni, think about it.

This song, if you remember the most recent Olympic Games opening ceremony, here's this woman singing what to me was the most beautiful rendition ever done of Imagine.

And the irony is she's singing this song that is, that's sending chills up our collective spines around the world.

And across the sin are all these people holding up flags from their countries.

Talk about contradiction, right?

Right.

And talk about us being willing to tolerate contradiction, trying to process it.

What does that say about our lives, about our cultures, our inculturations, our educations, our information systems?

We're able to hold these two things at the same time and not even notice that they contradict each other.

I mean, she's saying, imagine no countries, and they're over there like, ho, ho, ho, yeah.

Well, like you mentioned earlier in the conversation, once you start noticing one area of contradiction, doesn't it just lead you to wonder about others?

You feel liberated to ask questions.

You do.

You do.

Uh-huh.

What does contemplative mean to you?

Contemplative means...

Well, you know, I think I mentioned this in the opening blessing, but there's an author by the name of Jim Heaney, and he writes, and I'll read it.

As a biological function, breath is the source of life.

As a spiritual function, it's the source of spiritual life.

Our connection with God's energy, breath is spirit.

Assigning an intention to breath takes it from a biological experience to a spiritual one.

So, you know, it is breath awareness that, you know, which can include but doesn't have to include meditation.

But yeah.

Do you have any specific spiritual practices or rituals that really enrich your soul, stir up your courage, that are your go-to for moments of distress?

Anything you can tell us that works really well for you?

Well, first of all, I would say stillness.

I might sit down and put on instrumental music in my AirPods.

I might just listen to Deepak Chopra leading the meditation.

I love the guitar music of AJ Ghent, G-H-E-N-T, and that will be sometimes what I'm listening to.

And, you know, I almost want to call it a guilty pleasure, but I will listen to Christian music.

But what I have found is, and you can get this stuff easily, you know, in your streaming service or YouTube, but I have listened lately to a lot of English-speaking African music groups, Christian church groups, you know, from Nigeria and Kenya and places like that.

And it's interesting.

There's a term that I have, that I use for myself.

It's not like in any dictionary.

But I call it re-colonization.

Okay.

Yeah.

It's when a culture, a tribe, a nation has been colonized.

But they take all the tools of the colonizing force.

And they, instead of going to war to gain liberation, they just do it better, you know.

Swords into plowshares?

Yeah.

That's basically what it is.

It's swords into plowshares.

I think that that's what, you know, enslaved Africans in the US were given the offal of the slaveholders, the enslavers, you know, animals, their pigs and cows.

And they turned them into food that is now in the most exclusive restaurants, you know, in New York City.

And I call things, and you know, when you think about it, the US essentially has very little culture unless it is generated by African Americans.

You know, I'm talking about jazz, hip hop, you know, the way we talk, clothing, you know, fashion, all of these, sports.

Yeah.

And so, you know, my word for that is recolonization.

Okay.

Well, I'm going to be thinking about that for a long time.

I think a lot about decolonization, so I like to hear there's something more to add to the conversation.

And that's what I experience when I listen to this African church music.

You know, these are people who, many of them, you can still hear their British accents underneath their, you know.

But it's a whole different thing.

It's a whole different thing.

The reclaiming.

One of the things I notice, you know, that's very true of many countries around the world that were conquered by, you know, were part of the British Empire is their exposure to the Bible is always the King James version.

Yeah, and it shows up in language, it shows up in vernacular, it shows up in church music.

Yeah.

So re-colonization.

Reclaiming the true identity.

Giving it back better than you gave it to us.

Oh.

Well, if that isn't in the spirit of Jesus Christ, I don't know what is.

Thank you so much for this beautiful conversation, which I will, I'm sure, listen to several times and continue thinking about and letting work on me.

I really appreciate your lived experience and your hard-won wisdom.

Yeah.

Thanks so much.

This is my shirt.

I don't know if you can see it.

I do.

Change the narrative.

Yeah.

My daughter, whom you don't know, but that's what she sounds like.

She gave me this shirt a few years ago.

Yeah.

That's right.

That's what we're here to do.

Yeah.

Change the narrative.

Swords into plowshares.

Yeah.

Being fully ourselves.

Thanks for being fully yourself.

And you too.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for listening.

Let's connect.

I'm always happy to hear from my listeners and readers.

You can find me at barelychristianfullychristian.com.

And now for more of my favorite song by Wynn Doran and Paul Craig.

Please enjoy Banks of Massachusetts.