Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Welcome to that makes total sense, a podcast dedicated to exploring God's generosity and justice. I'm Alexis Busetti, a Christian aiming to ask good questions and encouraging you to do the same.
Every one of us is wired by God to live out generosity and justice, but that the how sometimes elusa that makes total sense is a way for us to get together, posture ourselves as learners, and challenge one another to practice generosity and justice in a tangible way every day.
So I am super, super thrilled today to be talking with Norman Wordsbaugh about one of your many recent books, but this one is called this sacred Life, humanity's place in a wounded world. And Norman, I mentioned this to you before we started recording. I am currently overwhelmed by what I have just read in really amazing ways, but I'm still processing it. So I'm going to try to not stumble over myself too much. And I'm hoping that you as a professor, will come in and kind of carry some of this for me because you deal with some weighty, deep concepts, and I'm grateful for the ways in which you have framed some of these that have helped me kind of look at myself, my surroundings, even the creator, in ways that I hadn't really processed before. So I just want to get that out of the way, say thank you for this work. Thank you for this book. And if I stumble over my words today, please help me. Just pick me back up and take us where we need to go.
[00:01:59] Speaker B: We'll stumble together. That's the best way.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: We'Ll try and get through it.
I want to just say the subtitle of this book felt very so humanity's place in a wounded world. I didn't know what to anticipate necessarily when I started reading, but I think what I came away with most, and this is someone who, I would say, I sometimes joke, oh, I'm a recovering perfectionist. This morning I had a meeting in which I said, I'm a firstborn. I have some kind of type A tendencies sometimes.
And so to embrace not only the world, but my own woundedness, to embrace all of our brokenness, to embrace our connectedness and interdependence in the way that you help frame out in this text, felt very refreshing for me. To embrace limits, to embrace our creatureliness, as you phrase.
Yeah, it felt really refreshing to me, and it felt like a very gracious way to kind of just walk through this life.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: Well, that's really gratifying to hear. Thank you. I mean, it is. It's a hard topic when you want to understand the kind of world we're in right now and how we may have gotten to this place in time. And the book, in a way, is a bit audacious because it's asking really big questions. And those are questions that have been answered by lots of people over time in lots of different ways. And you could write books about all of these questions.
But what I wanted to do in the book was really try to give sort of a bird's eye view on these big questions when asked together, because I think oftentimes we don't ask the question about how where we live relates to who we are and how we should live in the future. I think that question doesn't always show up in their sort of contextualization, so that we might talk about where we are if we do, but we don't think about, well, what difference does it make for how I live my life, that we describe the world this way rather than some other way? And so I wanted to figure out if there is something like a christian way of speaking about our world, about who we are as people living within it, and then also what our vocation is in this world being the particular kinds of beings that we are.
And I hope by putting those three questions together, the where, who, and what, that we might get some fresh insight on all three of them.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. And I want to say I won't be able to systematically go through this conversation, but I do want to kind of start at the beginning of the book where you start, because, a, I was hooked by the preface. I was like, okay, I'm done. This is great. And second, in part, I was intrigued by the term that you begin this with, which I had never heard before. So I hope I don't mispronounce it. The Anthropocene.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Yes.
People pronounce it in all sorts of ways. So that was perfect.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: I think. That was so intriguing to me. Can you define that for folks who were like me and had no idea what that, yes, we can gain from context clues what that might be, but kind of officially, what is that definition working with? And then, yeah, how are we to respond to that as christians?
[00:05:52] Speaker B: Yes. The way I start is to say, first of all, what kind of world are we in? Because we should not assume that the world has been the same all the time or that the world has meant the same across time, because we are clearly in a changed world. And that's something that I think a lot of folks don't appreciate. But what the Anthropocene is trying to do is give us a new way to understand about the power that human beings now have in the world to affect the most basic geological, geomorphological, ecological, social, cultural conditions in which we live. Right. Climate change is often one of the sort of signatures of our anthropocene moment, because there's been a lot of debate about when does the Anthropocene officially begin? But a lot of folks are quite content to say it begins roughly with the industrial revolution, which is the time in which human beings start burning fossil fuels on a scale that they never have before. And what that has done, of course, is it's sent a lot of co2 into the atmosphere, along with other things like methane and nitrous oxide. But what these gases in the atmosphere have done is they've created a kind of blanket. And people feel this when it's a summer day and your windows are closed in your car, you come to your car, the car is 20 degrees warmer inside, and it shouldn't. Right? It's just glass. And so you would think, well, the sunlight comes in, the energy goes out. But no, that glass, which keeps the heat in, that's exactly what co2 is doing in our atmosphere as it builds up in that atmosphere. And so climate change is often considered one of the sort of main ways to talk about the Anthropocene. But it's not the only way, right? Because we know that it's not just in the atmosphere, but human beings through their technological advances, but then also through the power of their economic reach. There isn't a process on earth that is not unaffected or not affected. Sorry. By the fact that human beings are active. So even when you think about something like the birth of a child or you think about a weather event, or you think about how plants grow, what kinds of plants there are, you always have to ask the question, where was human technology in all this? Because we know that medicine is creating the possibility of all kinds of adjustments in birthing process and fetal development. Or we can think about how anytime we have a natural event like a storm, we have to ask now, well, is that natural, or is that anthropogenic? Is the term that scientists use. So the point is not to say that nature is finished, right? Nature is still very active. It's become often very extreme in its behavior because of these disturbances in natural cycles. But the key thing to remember now is that the idea of nature as that realm in which people are not sort of powerfully present, that concept is over. And with it goes the idea of, well, that's natural or unnatural. There is no such thing as natural any longer. And that raises lots of really important questions, because for a long time, people thought the most important thing was to live within the bounds of nature. Well, there are no more bounds to nature because we've just kicked them away, because we have decided we want to engineer our habitats, we want to engineer our bodies, we want to engineer our foods, we want to engineer everything, because we're not content with things as they are given. So we're constantly engineering, commodifying, appropriating, adjusting, transforming. And the anthropocene is that sort of new time period that earth system scientists say we are in describing how the power of human cultures and the power of human economies means we're living in a world unlike the world, for instance, of the scriptures.
[00:09:58] Speaker A: Yeah. So, as I was reading this book, I was reading another text by a different christian scholar, and I'm not going to pick on this particular scholar because it's a common view, I think. And the context of the text was different. It was a different subject matter. But what I found in that it was interesting kind of reading them in parallel, was, though, this theological idea that exists, that is, as you're describing things, there is almost an affirmation of. Well, of course, that's the way it should be, because humans are XYZ. They are the crown of creation. They are to be the ones who are the dominating forces inside of creation and on the earth. And your work, I would say, gratefully pushes back against that theological idea and embraces, instead humanity living within creation. I think even several times in the book, I noticed we're not living on earth. We are living in earth. And that earth isn't something that is dead or dying, or it is just a plane for us, but that it is an interactive living and creating and dying and moving and making that we are inside of this. So I'm wondering if you could speak to that some, because I think that that theological idea is kind of prevalent. But when we think about what that means, it kind of affirms those things that you're saying, which really, I think, aren't things that we really should be getting behind.
[00:11:51] Speaker B: We shouldn't be. No, that's a great question, Alexis. I think the main culprit here is this verse in Genesis 128, which says, subdue and have dominion over the earth. And it's repeated, and it's given very precise instruction over everything that moves and all that. And the trouble with people who use that verse as a justification to say human beings are the kings and queens of the heap. The whole world exists for us, and we can do with it whatever we want. There's so many problems with that way of interpreting it. But one of the very basic ways that it's just a falsification is that it's not true to human experience, right? So think about the Bible is written in a period in which people are agricultural, right? They're shepherds. They're farmers. That's what they do. That's what they know. That's their experience. There is no world of technology like we know today where we can terraform the whole planet using big equipment, drag lines, explosive devices, all that sort of stuff. There's no sense that you could just commodify the world and sell it. None of that is happening in scripture. But that's the world in which a lot of people now interpret Genesis 128. But if we step back for a minute and say, okay, these are agricultural people. They live on land, which means they depend upon the life of plants and animals. That's the fundamental reality. It's not something they think about. It's something they experience through their bodies. That's the crucial thing. Now, ask any farmer, any shepherd, if you can just do with your animals or your plants whatever you want. And the immediate answer is absolutely not. Because the minute you think you can do with your plants and animals whatever you want, you kill them. And the minute you kill them, you destroy yourself. Because your life depends upon the well being of plants and animals. You will not be a farmer for long or a shepherd for long if you think you can just be a dictator on your farm. The best farmers, and every farmer knows this. The best farmer is the one who learns to attend to the needs of their plants and animals. And so they become the students of plants and animals. They become the students of weather. They become the students of soil, because they're having to constantly navigate a world in which life is vulnerable. It's fragile. And again, this is something that farming people know viscerally through their own daily experience. Animals are always susceptible to illness and death. Plants are always susceptible to blight and death. So you can't just rule over the world as some dictator doing with it whatever you want. That whole line of interpretation is just rubbish from any honest, economic, even physiological way of understanding our existence. But I would also say it's really problematic theologically, too, because it assumes that when you say humans are supposed to subdue and have dominion over everything, that that means something like ruthless control or outright power over others. And if we are made in the image of God, which is often what people will say, does God rule over the earth with that kind of coercive, constricting power? Does God do with creatures whatever God wants? I mean, you look at the gospels, and Jesus is the person who embodies solicitude, right? The one who comes into the presence of others in a non coercive way. And so even on theological grounds, the idea that human beings can do with the world or with creation whatever they want just completely misses the boat. And it's important to then emphasize that this interpretation of Genesis 128, that we hear so much within certain segments of Christianity today that that interpretation didn't come about until the modern period, in the 16th, 17th centuries, when we're living in a world now which is presumed to be dead, it's just dead matter, and you can do with it whatever you want. And the engineer has become now the prototypical human being. If you approach the world with an engineering mindset that says you can appropriate, modify, do whatever you want with the world, Genesis 128 will sound very different than if you're a christian farmer or shepherd who is imbued with the love of God as the primary power that operates through everything, you don't do at all. This idea that you can sort of have with creation whatever you want.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: So let's talk about Adam.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: Because I'm thinking these things that are true, our being made as images, and that we are creatures.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: I like your adjective, our creatureliness.
And I like to think of myself as a creature. I had a relative who had. We have one english mastiff, and this relative of mine had two before we had our one, and one of them was named creature. And I think this is perfect for a mastiff. They are the most bizarre, amazing, wonderful creatures that are. But I often think, when I think of myself as a creature, I kind of picture this big mastiff, wrinkly head that's slobbery and wild and fun.
But I've also heard another author say there's only two categories. There's creator and creature, and we only fit one.
We are the creatures.
But recognizing our own creatureliness, I think, helps with what you're talking about.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: A creaturely person doesn't think of themselves as dominating, domineering.
[00:18:16] Speaker B: Right. And here's the thing. Right. The people who love Genesis 128 because they think it gives them license to do with the world whatever they want, they're assuming that God, as the sovereign power, also does with the world whatever God wants. And that, of course, is not at all true to the character of God as revealed to us in scripture. So their operating assumption for what God is or who God is and what God's power is like is fundamentally mistaken. And this is why bringing up Adam becomes so important, right? I think a lot of people, they love the first creation story or poem, actually, in Genesis one, carries in a little bit to Genesis two. And they really forget the first part of the Garden of Eden story, right? They like the Garden of Eden story. When there's nudity and when there's murder, that's when it gets interesting. But the stuff before, they don't read and they don't care about. But if they did read it, they would discover something profoundly important for human beings to remember, right? The first human being. How is this human being created by God? Well, it's God on God's knees, holding soil in God's hands, and then breathing into it, kissing it, you might say. And out comes this first human being, the Adam. And the translation of Adam should be earthling, because it comes out of the earth. And at this stage, there is no gender specificity. So Adam is not a proper name. It's a common name that you would use. A common noun. So what happens? It's not just this Adam who's created out of the ground. So are the plants or the animals. And the first instruction given to this Adam is to take care of the garden, take care of the soil, nurture the soil that nurtures you. And nurture the soil where God's breath is constantly active, bringing creatures into being. Now, how do you interpret that very basic first instruction, which is to take care of the garden? Well, the reason you're asked to take care of the garden is not because it's a punishment. There is no sin in the garden. Instead, the way to interpret this is to say that the first human being, this earthling, is asked to take care of the earth. Why? Because in taking care of the earth, they participate in God's gardening ways with the world. Right. You join with God in the discovery of the kind of world we are in. And the kind of creatures that we are by taking care of each other.
So care becomes the fundamental vocation. And the care of soil, plants and animals. Anybody who's actually done it will tell you it's an exercise in humility. And that's why there's a strict etymological connection between humus, soil humility and human right. They all tie together really beautifully. And then a thing that probably shocks a lot of people, who are more authoritarian in their interpretation. Is that God, looking out onto this world, says, it's not good for this Adam to be alone. So we want to give this Adam a companion. And who gets presented as the companion? Possibly companion. It's animals, right? So don't think you're so fancy that you can't possibly be a companion with an animal. Now, it turns out that the animals don't quite measure up to it, but that does not mean that animals don't matter. Of course they matter, because God creates them as potential partners to live with human beings. So that garden of Eden story, it's so important as a way of setting a stage for how we understand the kind of world we're in, right? We're all soil birthed, we're all soil dependent, and we will all return to soil when we die. So that's our identity. But we also get a sense for what our vocation is as human beings, and that is to take care of the contexts that feed us, that nurture us, that provide for us. And obviously, if you're living in any kind of embodied form, that means you have to take care of the earth, because our body, even if we think that this story is mythological, it's not from a physiological point of view. Scientists will tell you, everything our bodies need to live comes out of the ground.
Without plants, you don't breathe.
Without those biotic elements, all the microorganisms in the soil, plants won't grow. Soil won't work. You need roots. Roots need plants to grow above and below animals. They feed on the plants with us. And so it's all so intimately connected to each other that we have fooled ourselves into thinking that we are above soil. We don't need to pay attention to soil, and we certainly don't need to care about soil, which is why we're seeing massive erosion rates all around the world.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: I want to keep going in that direction because I'm as guilty of this as the next person.
We live inside of one of the biggest cities in the country. We live in Houston.
We have a little backyard space with soil, a little front yard space with soil and a couple of pets, a couple of plants inside the house that I can't seem to keep alive. And other than that, we have pork chops in the fridge that came cellophane wrapped. Right? We have eggs in a carton.
Completely. I am completely disconnected.
I say, unfortunately, remorsefully completely disconnected from some of those things. I realize that there are moments when I actually, if quizzed, this is so embarrassing. If quizzed, there are some produce that I would not know what it came from.
Is it a tree? Is it a vine? Does it come directly out of the ground like I am? There are some of those that are maybe the more exotic kind that I'm like. I actually don't know. I actually don't know how this grows in the anthropocene. I think this is the way many of us are.
A farm ends up being a field trip kind of situation.
And I think, of course, it's connected. It adds to us being able to think of ourselves in this domineering way, because in many ways, plants and animals and earth has been subdued for us. It's been subdued for me. In order to eat, I don't have to kill anything in order to eat, I don't have to harvest anything. I just need a credit card and a way to bring it home.
So one of the places that really impacted me when I was reading was when you talked about, I'm going to say this in an elementary way, but kind of what we can learn from plants, how they grow and communicate and live with one another and their intellect of plants, which just felt, even, as you said, this etymological, it felt very humbling. It was a very beautiful concept to start to ponder. So can you talk more about that soil and plants and living in the earth and not on it? It's not dead. What can we continue to learn?
[00:26:00] Speaker B: No, it's a really important thing that you're bringing to light here. And the first thing I want to say is, it's not your fault that you are in a situation like you are in, because that's just the way life is now for most people, right? The future of this planet is urban, and it's the kind of urban in which people are completely insulated or isolated from any of the sort of ecological realities that in every age prior, in every culture prior, would have been just common understanding. You depend on plants, you depend on soil, you depend on weather. If you don't have those, you're done. Everybody knew that. But we don't because we live in climate controlled spaces. The food seems to always be in grocery stores, unless you're living in communities where, of course, there's a food desert and you got to go to 711 to get whatever. There's a lot of injustice in the food system, for sure. But one of the things I want to tell people is you have to appreciate how completely unprecedented our situation today is in terms of the world's history.
Even 200 years ago, if you could have asked someone, do you know that one day you'll be sitting on your couch in a climate controlled room, and you'll have this little device on your lap, and you'll just punch buttons and stuff will magically show at your door, stuff that comes from all over the world. They would have said, oh, come on, that's impossible. Even God couldn't do that. And yet a six year old can do it now, right? They can be in their pajamas the whole time, and they'll even come and put it in your fridge, and eventually they'll come and put it in your mouth for you. Because we are just not capable of participating in some of these very basic realities of growing food, harvesting food, preparing food, sharing food. We've become the most deskilled, most ignorant eaters in the history of humanity. And again, I don't say that to point the finger and blame people and say, that's such a horrible, horrible thing. It is a horrible thing. But the way out of this is to recognize the truth of our condition. And the truth of our condition is revealed so much in the life of plants, right? And I chose plants because there are plenty of people who are talking about animals, but plants are still getting a pretty bad deal when we think about the nature of our life. But plants are important not only because we depend upon them absolutely, not just for the production of oxygen or just because they produce fruit or flowers, but they're absolutely essential to the soil health that we need. So what is a plant? A temptation is to think that a plant is just a stalk comes out of the ground, there are roots, it sucks up nutrients, and away you go. But it's so much more complicated than that, because soil is not just dirt. Soil is this incredibly complex, mysterious realm in which there is more life below ground than above it. And we've not paid attention. I mean, one of my good friends is a soil scientist here at Duke, and he says, we've only been studying soil seriously for about 100 years. We still don't have a clue about what's really going on down there. But in any event, soil is incredibly complex. Plants are in communication with this soil all the time, not just as a means of extracting nutrients from the soil, but in the form of feeding the soil. So you have to think about a plant as something like a conduit, right? What's above ground reaches out to the sun to get sunlight energy, which it then transforms into sugars, right? Glucose that it sends down into the roots, that then goes out into the soil to feed all these microbes that are down there. And in feeding those microbes, the roots can extend. And as the roots extend, they can get more nutrition from the soil. So it's a constant up and down, back and forth movement.
If plants only extracted nutrients from the ground, they would exhaust the soil. But they don't.
Plants are rooted beings that, in their rootedness, improve the life of where they are right now. That's a key thing to say. The question for us now is how many human beings, simply by being where they are, improve where they are by their being there?
One of the first things you learn in sort of restoration ecology, if you want to bring land back to health, make sure the plants are growing.
If plants are growing, the land will come back to health over time. Human beings, we've been the opposite of plants. Most everywhere we have gone, rather than being a benefit to where we are, we've been a disaster to where we are, because we are the kinds of beings that go in and often just extract, extract, destroy, and then abandon.
And so we need to learn from plants this very basic lesson, which is nurture the place that nurtures you. And if we do that, then we can do, as the hebrew scriptures say, we can live long on the land, because that's what God wants.
God wants for creatures to flourish in their places, but they can't do that unless they participate in God's gardening, nurturing ways with the world. And what I'm saying is that plants do that as a pattern in their very own living. They grow by growing the soil beneath them at the same time.
[00:31:42] Speaker A: But Norman, we can't do that because we're independent.
[00:31:46] Speaker B: Yeah, that's another problem, right? That we think that we are these, you know, self legislating, even self grounding kinds of beings. But that too, is a fantasy, right? And here we have to ask lots of sort of not just physiological questions, but also cultural questions. Because one of the things that we've learned about bodies more recently is that when you eat, you're not just feeding yourself, whatever that self is, you're feeding billions upon billions of microorganisms, organisms in your gut, because if you don't feed them, you will die.
And we need these microorganisms in our gut because these microorganisms, they facilitate very basic physiological functions like growth and healing autoimmune systems, right? They all depend upon these microorganisms being in our body and being healthy, right? And so this is a conception about how you are never just you, you are always a zoo because you are a host to billions of organisms, right? There is more diverse genetic material in you, right? More than you can imagine. We can't even name all the genetic material that's in us. Because as long as you think you're just this single, solitary thing. You're actually being dishonest about who you are. But then there's also the cultural side to this, which is like today, we live in sort of a neoliberal paradigm. Where it's all about personal success and personal virtue. And if you succeed, you did it all by yourself. And if you fail, it's all your fault. And it's not just a personal philosophy, it's a political philosophy. Because we see how governments, especially in the time of Thatcher and Reagan and following, they just dismantled all the sort of social institutions. Because they said it's all about individualism, right? And Ayn Rand, who's this novelist, philosopher type person. Who has influenced many of our political leaders. She's totally about the self made man.
And that nothing could be further the truth. Because all of us, we depend upon the kindness, first of all, of parents, of teachers, of friends. We depend upon institutions that enable us to flourish in the many ways that we will. And so the idea that you could do it all by yourself, it's just a fantasy. But what's so damaging about it is it's so deeply dishonest. It's so disrespectful of all the other people, of all the institutions that have been around for a very, very long time.
Making sure that we can make it. So we got to deeply resist this individualistic way of thinking about what a human being is. And that's a hard part to learn. But I say that's what the creaturely identity of a human being is all about. You are the kind of being who, as a creature, is self insufficient. Most basically because you depend upon God for your life, right? But then secondly, because we depend upon so much else for our life too. Other people, neighborhoods, institutions. But then plants, animals, insects, bugs, weather systems, you name it. Without those, we couldn't even exist.
[00:35:12] Speaker A: I'm glad you brought up the self insufficient language. Because I just kept. As you were talking, I just kept thinking about how interdependence and embracing our limits. Are almost one and the same. They go together.
But that embracing our limits is really hard. Because, as you just said, a six year old in pajamas can order a week's worth of groceries for his household today. And that doesn't feel very limiting. That feels like we're able to do anything. And a couple of things are coming to my mind from the book, the first is you talked about freedom. And instead of maybe saying free at last, what if we said responsible at last or attached at last? And if that was kind of more our mantra? But one of the pictures that I can't shake regarding limits is the ones from your transhumanist chapter.
I want you to talk maybe about the moors, but about the psychology behind that, this idea that not only are we, I just think there's so many implications to that. We're not limited here in what we can do. We can be fiercely independent if we want to, but also even these things as creatures that are just a part of who we are, they're innate in us, that somehow, as humanity, we have decided, no, they're not.
[00:37:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
So it's a really important question to talk about, because one way to set it up is to say that human beings have, for millennia, thought of themselves as biological beings and as a biologically understood creature. You know, you are limits, right? You cannot work 67 hours in a row. Your body can't do that. It needs to rest, right? So that's one very basic biological limit. Or we know that our brains have so much power to remember so much information, but then that's all we can't go past.
We don't know exactly where the limit is, but nobody thinks we could know everything or think about how there are certain things, like exertion, how much can you lift, how fast can you run? There are limits there. We can often go further than we thought before, which is great, but there are absolutely limits because we're biological. Now, with a machine, the idea is that there are no limits because you can make a stronger machine. You can make a machine that has better computational power. You can develop an Internet which will hold all the information the world has ever known. There are all these sort of promises of limitlessness that are built into the very idea of what a machine is. And what the Moors are describing in their sort of transhumanist quest is this utter dissatisfaction with biological limitation of any kind. And the basic forms of limitation that they don't like are a, illness and b, death. As a biological being, you're going to get sick. You're going to get tired. Why should we tolerate that?
That's the question. And so the transhumanist urge is to make your life as easy, as comfortable, but also as powerful as it can possibly be. So powerful in the fact that you won't ever get sick and you won't ever die. And so that's the ultimate dream. Now, I think a lot of people would say, I'm not committed to immortality or technoimmortality, but we sure love the technologies that promise us a friction free world. So you think about something as simple as Alexa. Who wouldn't love Alexa? Because you simply push a button, order the command, and it's done.
Now, tell me, where else have we found somebody saying something, and it's done, right? That's the power of God.
And so it's an indication about how we want to be like God. Just say the word, and it happens. And the truth is, it's working for a lot of people. You got a credit card, and you got no limit on the credit card. You can order whatever you want. You can book yourself a trip to the Bahamas. You can create a smart environment so that you don't have to do anything that requires exertion or concentration. You can get machines to do everything for you. Now, the question would be, why do we want that?
There's no question that there are some technological inventions that are just wonderful. I don't want to go back to the day where we didn't have washing machines or things like that. But think about what it would be like if we treated other people the way we treat the world within this conception, which means we want to engage you, but only in terms of our own convenience, only in terms of our own comfort, only in terms of our own control. If I spoke to my spouse and said, hey, honey, we'll be married as long as you don't bug me or expect too much from me, or as long as you don't ever change your moods, because then I'm tricked into figuring out, who are you really today. No. Love requires us to be with each other at precisely the moments where we manifest vulnerability, where we manifest weakness. And the minute we say, we are only with you as long as it's easy for me, love has disappeared. And I think that's an indication that with our relationship to the world around us, where we want our food convenient, cheap, and under our control, we want our energy cheap, comfortable, and under control. We want everything cheap, comfortable, under control.
It means we've given up love, right? It means we really do want to live into that vision of the dictator who has the world on his or her own terms. But you can't have the world on your own terms because you can't exercise love if you expect the world to be on your own terms.
Jesus didn't just come into communities and say, hey, you're not operating the way I want you to. So I'm done with you.
Jesus never does that. Jesus meets people where they are in their sickness, in their anxiety, in their hunger, in their loneliness, and he comes alongside them.
And that's what I think christians are called to be doing. But the fact that so many are enamored by what technology is promising, right, this friction free world, this world that is entirely on your own terms and is always driven by the choices you make for yourself.
This way of picturing life in the world we now see is deeply destructive, because the minute you try to control another life form, you're going to violate it.
[00:42:45] Speaker A: You talk about a mesh work world, and there's a lot about love in that chapter.
Talk more about that. What do you mean when you say mesh work?
[00:43:05] Speaker B: Yeah. So it operates on lots of levels, right? It operates on the physiological level, but also sort of social, cultural, psychic levels. So the thing that the meshwork concept is trying to get across is that you don't exist as a freestanding, solitary creature.
You are always entangled within multiple lives that are always circulating through you. So the image to have in mind, you could think about a textile, right? Something that is woven, and there's all these interlacings that are happening, and we're not even aware of all of them, but they're still influencing. Because if you're in the middle of that woven blanket, you depend upon the integrity of the whole blanket. To be a good blanket. Or another image that I like to give people is like, sometimes when you're looking at a stream and there's a little Eddie in the stream that is created by the current. Now, that little Eddie is you, but it only exists as long as all those currents are moving at the same time. Because the minute you try to extricate that Eddie out of the stream, it disappears. It's gone.
So that's something to say about who we are as people. And our own physiology communicates that we think of ourselves as self enclosed beings. We are not. Right? And if you don't believe me, just close every hole in your body, right? Close your mouth, close your nose, close your ears, and you're dead.
And it's communicated, I think, most basically in something like the belly button.
You are born attached, entangled in the womb with your mother and along with all the other microbes that are going on in that mother. And so to deny our entanglement with the lives of others is a dishonesty that needs to be stated clearly so that we can then say, okay, if I have a mouth, that means I have to eat I have to taste. So what goes in my mouth? Is it health inducing? Is it flavorful? Is it bringing joy? These are the kinds of questions you start to ask. And as soon as you ask, is the food good? Now you have to start asking about the economies of agricultural communities. What's the condition of the soil? Are farmers getting paid a living wage? How are the animals being treated? Is there too much poison in the system? Is there enough water to irrigate the fields? Suddenly you, through this very basic act of taking a bite of food, realize that you're entangled in ecological, agricultural, economic processes that are making your life possible at all.
And meshwork is just a way of acknowledging that rather than being a single, self standing kind of reality, you're always entangled within all these other creatures, all these other processes of respiration, photosynthesis, birth, death, composting, right? These are all processes that your body is daily implicated in and necessarily implicated in. And what that means, and this is the really important payoff, is if you want to have a successful human life, you can't just pay attention to yourself.
You have to pay attention to the whole meshwork. You got to pay attention to all the social ecological entanglements that make up your life. And I get that people get nervous when you talk about an entangled life, because we think of entanglement as abusive, and it can be.
This is why, from a christian point of view, you want to stress that as we talk about our relationships with each other, with our places, the power of the love of God is the thing that we most need to see operating in those relationships. Because when that happens, life is best.
Right? Imagine what our world would be like if every farm, if every watershed, if every animal life, if every community, if every neighborhood operated because it was powered by the love of God, how this world would be different. It's amazing to contemplate, but we need to contemplate it, because that's what Scripture calls the kingdom of God.
[00:47:30] Speaker A: Start to wrap us up. Norman, I'm thinking about when you said the power of the love of God, and then going back to what we talked about earlier, that love of God is not a coercive love, but it is a love that's focused on caring and nurturing, and it's a compassionate love, and it's a love that heals and befriends. As you talk about with Jesus and near the end of the book, the last chapter or two, you do a lot of work with Jesus and Paul.
And as you were talking about that meshwork and that entanglement.
And you go to the places in scripture, in Paul's epistles, where he is trying to help out his community, and they're going through some rough spots. But one of those places that we're familiar with, with the body analogies, but thinking about it in the context of what you were just saying, not just people in our specific community, but that analogy being enriched by thinking about place and entanglement and meshwork and even microorganisms, or even that picture of closing off the holes in our own bodies, how that's not even possible. So I'm wondering, as we start to wrap up here, if you could just kind of give us some of those images that you give in the book when you talk through how you see Jesus and Paul doing and teaching this.
[00:49:12] Speaker B: Mean, I think, sort of a starting place is that when you read Paul's letters or you read the Gospels, even you discover a picture that goes so contrary to some of the positions we've been talking about along the way, this very individualistic way of speaking, for instance, or this sort of controlling posture in the world that we were speaking about earlier. And just think about what Paul describes as the fruit of the spirit, right? The fruit of the spirit. What is gentleness? It's kindness, self control. These are postures that Paul says would be reflected in us if we were truly under the power of the Holy Spirit. We would not be doing the things that are characterized by anger or aggressiveness, that are the works of the flesh. We'd be living in a way that models a kind of care for each other. And this happens not just in Paul's letter to the Galatians, where he lists these fruit of the spirit. It's evident in every letter to a congregation that he writes. He says, look, the most important thing you need to do is to take care of each other, right? Mutual upbuilding. That is Paul's primary concern. And he says, if you're not doing that, Christ is not present, right? Christ is not the head of the body. And so in the letter to the Corinthians, he actually gives the analogy to say, you are not yourself. You are a member of a body.
And as a member of a body, forget about your own importance. What's important is the body. And we like to think that, well, there are parts of the body that are super important, and therefore they should get all the sort of coverage, they should get all the accolades. And Paul says, rubbish. Paul says, what you think is the most insignificant part of the body is actually the most important, right? So think about what would it be like if.
Can we say this? But imagine if you couldn't go to the bathroom, right?
We think, oh, it's not important, right? It's the mind that's important. But if you can't go to the bathroom, your life is over. Your life becomes hell. Which is why Jews, when they do their prayers, they start in the morning by saying, thank you, God, a, that I got up, and b, that I could go to the bathroom, because if I can't do that, the first one doesn't matter.
So it's about reconfiguring human beings, not as individuals, but as Paul would say, as ecclesial beings, right? We only live well as members of the body of Christ, because what distinguishes the body of Christ from any other sort of social body is that it's under the lordship of Christ, which means it's under the power, under the inspiration of care for each other. So that when one person suffers, we all suffer together. When one person rejoices, we all rejoice together, because we're in it together. It's sort of like the african concept of ubuntu. You are yourself only through others and with others. And this is very much what Paul is all about in his letters. And we see similar things, I think, happening in Jesus, too, in his ministries. He's constantly worried about whether or not people are living together well, which is why forgiveness is such a big deal in Jesus's way of living, right? Because forgiveness means that we are willing to work with each other despite our wrongdoing to each other. Forgiveness opens it up for us to continue to be in relationship with each other. And the things that prevent relationship, we got to deal with those, we got to fix those, because it's not good for anybody to be alone. So think about the garrisone demoniac, right? He's up living in the tombs, totally alone. He's horror to himself, right? He hurts himself. He's a terror to the community. They're all just worried about this guy and frightened about this guy. And Jesus says, no, this is not the way to live, right? So he has to exercise the demons so that this man can be restored to himself and restored to the community so he can live a healthy life. And a healthy life is a life with others, in peace with others. Which is why then you have to say, in the New Testament, the ultimate vision is God's reconciliation with all things in heaven and on earth. Not just people, but all things in heaven, on earth. Because the letter to the Colossian says, the gospel has been proclaimed to every creature, not just to people, right? And so what I often tell people is, what would it be like to be good news, not just to people, but to animals and to plants? How would we have to live differently so that we could be gospel good news in those contexts? That's, I think, the new frontier.
[00:54:07] Speaker A: That's so good.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
I I thought I'd end a little bit less overwhelmed than when we started, but it's probably more.
So thanks for helping me process today.
I'm just incredibly grateful. I know this book isn't probably your newest one, but I'm still link it in the show notes so people can grab a copy and read it for themselves, since we just barely scratched the surface of so many of the concepts. But this is called this sacred life, humanity's place in a wounded world by Norman I'm so grateful for your work and for how you've helped me to view so much of my own life through different perspectives through this text. And I just want to say bless you as you continue doing your research and work and writing. And I just thank you for your generosity to share it with the rest of us.
[00:55:08] Speaker B: Well, thank you so much for hosting me, Alexis. It was really good to talk with you today.
[00:55:16] Speaker A: The links for all the resources mentioned in today's episode can be found in the show notes, music, and podcast production by Seth Busetti. Be sure to give us a review on iTunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app. You can also visit us at. That makes total sense.
