Episode 226 - Dennis Edwards

[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 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. Stay inside the little home. Anyway, so here we are. So I'm going to try it. Also my printer. I feel like we might have a ghost because I'm home alone. The printer in this next room is. I just hear it, so hopefully it's not getting in the audio. [00:00:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I hope now I don't hear it, but okay. [00:01:01] Speaker A: I hope not. Anyway, it's fine. Dennis, I have to say. So you are with the Covenant and have other friends and colleagues who are with the Covenant. And I see you wearing your sweatshirt and I can just tell you our denomination does a conference every January, usually in. [00:01:26] Speaker B: Yes, we do. [00:01:28] Speaker A: And I have said to people who've said, you should come out to Midwinter. And I say, there's nothing about me that wants to be in Chicago in January. [00:01:38] Speaker B: I can understand and appreciate that. [00:01:41] Speaker A: Like, I can see you wearing your sweatshirt and I am wearing a little sweater because we had our cool front come in. It's November. We had our cool front come in. And we are highs in the. [00:01:52] Speaker B: Well, that's good. Our high is going to be 47. [00:01:57] Speaker A: Thank you. [00:01:57] Speaker B: And we're at 46 right now. [00:01:59] Speaker A: This is what I'm saying. We won't see in the 40s. This cold front will get down to the is kind of enough for me. [00:02:08] Speaker B: I understand. [00:02:09] Speaker A: I appreciate all of you who my. [00:02:13] Speaker B: Wife would like that where you are. [00:02:15] Speaker A: See, this is what I'm saying. It's not terrible. It is rainy, though. So I've told Seth, my husband, this is his weather. He likes rainy and drizzly freezing. But anyway, I just said it was November. When this airs, it's going to be December. And I know this is not your newest book is not a Christmas book. It's not an advent book, that's true. But the humility of Jesus is right, the focus of this season. [00:02:50] Speaker B: I appreciate you saying that. I'm actually trying to write a little piece on humility and advent, and I see these concepts together. So thank you. [00:02:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I've been thinking about it. I haven't necessarily been wanting to think about Christmas because I am not a Christmas after Halloween kind of person. Apparently my entire neighborhood is. I am not. [00:03:12] Speaker B: I'm where you are. [00:03:14] Speaker A: I'm holding it down for us. [00:03:15] Speaker B: Get to Thanksgiving first. [00:03:17] Speaker A: But thank you. That's what I say. But I have been thinking about it, because it is this season. It's turning cooler and all of those things. And that's one of the things, at least, I think if we grew up in the church, a lot of our upbringing has been focused on the humble way. Right. The humble kind of the word we use, way that Jesus entered the world. That's right. I'm going to skip what I thought would be our first question, though, even as I say that and ask you to give us a definition of humility, because I've just used it and said, oh, it's Jesus coming with nothing as a baby and all that stuff. But then we have the one that I heard growing up, which was, it's not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less. Right. Or all of these things. And then here I read a book on humility by a biblical scholar who gives us a different definition. It's actually probably my favorite one to date. [00:04:24] Speaker B: Well, thank you. I feel like from looking in the Old Testament all the way to the new, that the thing about humility that kept hitting me was how the truly humble person submits to God. So I defined humility as, first of all, submission to God, which then plays itself out or works itself out in deliberate acts of peacemaking and mutuality with other humans. So I don't want to start humility with just how I would relate to my neighbor, although that's important, of course, that's going to be how we see it. But it starts with a recognition of who I am before God and my yielding to God. That's important for me because it kind of helps me to think about where I'm at, regardless of how my neighbor responds. Right. I mean, I might try to be that humble person with my neighbor. They might not respond the way I would hope they respond, but I'm still anchored because fundamentally, my energy, my motivation, is because I'm seeking to be submitted to God and yielding to God. [00:05:41] Speaker A: Okay, so I'm going to stay here for a minute before we get to. Why. Because this book is a wonderful book for any of us to read, laypeople. I'm saying, I'm a seminary student, so it's not just for seminary students. [00:05:57] Speaker B: Right. [00:05:58] Speaker A: But it is definitely written. The reader can tell by a biblical scholar. [00:06:03] Speaker B: Okay, well, that's good. [00:06:05] Speaker A: Okay, so that's who you are, right? That's what you do, and it's written this way. But I would like for you to kind of hang out there for a minute and give us some examples. Like, you didn't just pull this definition of submission to God with acts of peacemaking mutuality that didn't just come out of the air or think, oh, this seems like kind of a good way to define this. You use a lot of Greek terms, which I appreciated. I will hopefully never translate again. Now that I'm done with. Oh, no, don't say, oh, I can't do it. I'm not very good at it anyway. It's fine. I'll leave it to the pros. But you use a lot of Greek terminology, which I appreciated, and examples of folks from the Scriptures and thinking of Moses. Right? [00:07:00] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Well, I do. I spend a little time talking about Moses and particularly the incident in numbers, chapter twelve. Now, I won't rehearse everything that I say in that chapter, but there's this verse that's in some translations that's put in parentheses. It's in verse three that says he was either the translation would say the meekest man or the humblest man on Earth, or there's no one humbler. That's the idea. Right. And it seems OD in some ways that it's placed there. When the issue is Miriam and Aaron, his siblings, complaining about Moses having just married this Kushite woman, and in their reflection on him marrying a Cushite woman, they say, they complain, has God only spoken to Moses? Doesn't he speak to us? So it seems like at least something that's at issue there. As one scholar says, it is not so much Moses ego, but his status. So when God gets agitated over this and visits with the three siblings, he, in essence, know, how dare you? Miriam and Aaron speak against my servant and affirms Moses as somebody he speaks to, literally, mouth to mouth. He says, other prophets I speak to in dreams and visions, but with Moses, I speak to face to face. It's sometimes rendered, but literally, it's mouth to mouth. So this idea is that God is saying, I have an intimate relationship with him, with Moses, and from that intimate relationship, he then does his ministry. So I see that. And I'm not alone in that. It's not original to me, really. But I tried to expand on what I saw from some Old Testament scholars, is that God is affirming Moses position as a submissive servant, and in that intimacy, he's defined as humble or meek. So I see that with him. But it's not just there. I'll give another example. It's not in a person, but it's in an admonition from James. This is going all the way now into the New Testament. When James speaks to the community in chapter four, he connects repentance, which is our posture before God, to humility, to humbling ourselves before God. So again, it's not just humility, and then treat your neighbor a certain way, which, of course, will be a result. But it starts with reorienting ourselves with God. Humility starts there, I believe. [00:09:36] Speaker A: Thank you. So now that I've asked you to define it, give us some of the definitions that you did in the book, which is slightly out of order. I want to know why this subject, and kind of specifically why now? [00:09:54] Speaker B: Yes, well, thank you. The subject has always been of interest to me. Since I was a young man, I didn't really know what humility was. And I say this in the book, too, that for me it was this mixed bag of things. Is it self deprecation? Is it pretending to be low or hiding your gifts or somehow not acknowledging who you are for fear of making somebody else feel bad? And I admit some of that was the result of my own damaged psyche. I won't get into all of that, but just the way I was raised and around the situations I was in, I was sort of taught to diminish myself. So I'm thinking, is that humility? So I had my own personal sort of curiosity about the subject for years, and I was always drawn to Philippians, Chapter Two. I mean, I guess a lot of people are. But that picture of Christ that we think is even a hymn, right? So it was in a conversation with folks at IVP and a varsity publishing that I was talking about these things, and they said they were looking for somebody to write on this topic. And I said, well, because of my biblical interest, my pastoral experience, my own personal inquiry, I felt eager to pursue it. But the other part of your question, like the why now? Time is when we first had the conversation, there had been some notable pastors and churches that had gone through some issues. I'm sounding cryptic, but without naming names, really, there were just a few that made the press, you might say. And we started to wonder, or people were wondering publicly, how leaders could be so toxic and abusive and what kind of situations allowed them to have those kinds of platforms and then do such destruction. That's not a new thing, though, even though that new cycle, it seemed new and fresh. So I think the timeliness was to say you know what? We have that happening in the church, but that's a symptom of a bigger thing that's happening, in my view, that this whole polarized way of our world right now. So for me, it was timely to say, look, we're in a season where we may have always been polarized, but people are boldly polarized now. And I feel like part of the issue is that we don't understand what humility is and how we can move ahead better than we have been and that we're doing right now. If we can embrace it, I think we can do better. [00:12:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I think you're right. Even as you're talking, though, one of the things that comes to my mind is, A, I'm super grateful for your work and that you chose to pursue the project, and B, there's part of me that was sitting back going, I don't think I'd want to touch that with a ten foot pole. [00:12:59] Speaker B: Well, of course I want to know why you would not want to touch the topic of. I mean, really, why wouldn't we all would say that? That's such a virtue. We even say it about other people. Oh, they're so humble. But sometimes I think when we say that, we mean they didn't offend us, they didn't make us feel bad, but we've interpreted humble as nice. We have a really low bar, that they weren't abrasive. So as long as they weren't abrasive, then they're a humble. I think it's more than that. Right. So maybe we do have a fear approaching it because it's going to shine a spotlight back on us. Our motives, our desires, all those really introspective things that right now. Oh, I would say another thing about why humility is important now is the picture that some people have of Jesus. They form a picture of Jesus based on their politics. So if they're kind of hawkish, they like the idea of conflict and war and being right and winning all the time. Then Jesus has to be functionally a bully who is strong enough to squash everything that doesn't fit a certain ideology. And then, of course, by contrast, we could picture Jesus as weak and dismissive. So I say no. I want to recover this notion of humility, that humility is strength. It's courage. It takes more strength to be gentle and humble and meek. These kinds of words that we almost take as negative terms in our society. Those things take more courage and more strength than not. [00:14:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I do appreciate you saying that. Well, since you did take it on, and I've only done a little bit of writing, but I think in the writing that I've done, there's usually things that will excite me, something I can't wait to research and get down on paper, and some things that I think, I know this project wouldn't be complete without it, but this is really difficult to cover. We've covered the first part a little bit, but in this, even though it excited you, were there any parts of it that you were like, man, this is difficult, or, I'm not sure how to write about this or any of those parts, but the project wouldn't be complete without that. [00:15:36] Speaker B: Yes. No, that's a great way to put it. Thank you. Yes, for sure that was the case. And, in fact, I didn't even know where to place this in the book, and I think where it is is the right place. It's the last chapter. I call it empowering. And the challenge for me was to say, what does humility really look like for people who have been humiliated? Those words are related, and they're related etymologically, but they're not the same thing. Humility, this voluntary submission to God, is a lot different than being humiliated, where people push you down. So the question I was wrestling with is, fundamentally, what does the biblical call to humility? Or as the Greek word that's in Philippians two, Kenosis cannot emptying. What's this emptying? Self emptying and humility. What is that for the person who's already on the bottom or for the people who are already on the bottom and marginalized? So fundamentally, I don't think people who are in the low position are called to go lower. I think, for example, let's take this Philippians two passage that I already alluded to, but before we get to that hymn, the Apostle Paul says these kinds of things to the Philippians for you not to consider. Look out for your own interests, but to the interests of others. Right. That you should be of one mind and one purpose. Consider others better than yourself. I mean, all these really altruistic, beautiful kinds of things which sound great, but when you think about the reality of a congregation or a group of people in a very stratified society like the ancient world, you've got enslaved people in that congregation. You have people who probably enjoyed some high social status in Philippi, probably connected to the empire in some real way, maybe military or something like that. So you have people who are citizens because, I mean, Philippi is a colony of Rome, so you have people who are citizens, who enjoyed status, and then you have enslaved people who may also have been baptized and found their way into this Christian world and Christian community. And now can you imagine that powerful Roman citizen know, looking across the room to the enslaved person who's probably just been serving them food and to say, consider others better than yourself? That's a strong kind of a thing, right? So what does that mean, though, for that person who's been the server? So that was a struggle for me. So I think it does mean something like taking on a posture of Christ that doesn't push yourself down any further, but also does not seek the same kind of power that exploited you. So for me, I still think there's a call to humility for the person who's been humiliated. But that call is to have the courage to live a life that's submitted to God. I still believe it's fighting against the injustice and the inequity, but it's not trying to pursue the same kind of power or same kind of exploitative power that's been used on you. [00:18:41] Speaker A: That's really tough, though. [00:18:43] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. It's tough. Which is why I say it's a courageous thing, it's a strength thing. And I even use the words empowering. This is like what I tried to say in my earlier book, Mike, from the Margins. I tried to say it's the people who've been on the margins, who've been humiliated, who are the ones who show us the way of Christ most clearly, most, sometimes dramatically, sometimes the most forthrightly, that those who have been pushed to the side and cling tenaciously to their faith are our exemplars, because that's the way of Jesus, who was humiliated as well as humbled himself. Both of those things happened. I mean, Jesus humbled himself, took on the form of a servant, became obedient unto death, even death on the cross. But he was also humiliated. Right? So it's not the humiliation that we value, but what we see is in that same ChriSt hymn, it says, therefore, God super exalts him, hyperexalts him, and gives him a name that's above every name. So it's in this self emptying that we see God providing the strength. So I would say that's true of the humiliated in our society who cling to their faith. God then super exalts them in a way that may not look the same as somebody else. It doesn't mean he dumps them a boatload of money, but it might mean that somehow the tables get turned in some way. The maxim that I'll say here, just as wrap up this, my part of this question is to say there is a maxim that rides all the way through Old Testament apocrypha, New Testament, and then beyond. And it's that God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. So I find that to be the empowering word. I don't know what that grace is going to look like. Right. It's a gift of some sort, but God is opposing the proud and somehow gifts or brings charism or something to the humble. So I would rather be in that position than to be on the proud side. [00:20:54] Speaker A: Yeah. My thoughts were drawn to some concepts that I think were first made familiar to at least our generations in some of the tenets of some of the liberation theologies. But just the recognition, though, that oppression is harmful to those who are oppressed and to the oppressors. [00:21:25] Speaker B: Yes, well said. [00:21:26] Speaker A: And so that part of it, to say, as someone who has been marginalized or oppressed, someone who has been the enslaved person in that community, to not seek to push myself lower, but also, as you said, not to seek the power that put them in that position in the first place. [00:21:49] Speaker B: Right. [00:21:50] Speaker A: Seeking that power is not godly. [00:21:53] Speaker B: That's what I think. Right. And now I know there would be people who might surely disagree with me that they would just simply want the tables turned. [00:22:00] Speaker A: Right? [00:22:01] Speaker B: I don't necessarily think that when the tables get turned, it means that the exploited become exploiters. The tables getting turned is more like the way Mary says it in the know. She talks about how God's going to bring down the thrones of the mighty and then lift up those who were hungry. Right? I mean, that kind of movement, that's what I'm talking about. That kind of movement where God changes the situation does not mean that the lowly now become the exploiters. Right. Now, those are grand themes that could get worked out, surely in more detail than I could do in one chapter. But my basic point was to say, though, if you're in that marginal position, humility is still a relevant word for you. Not to say I need to go lower, but to say, what am I ultimately pursuing here? And can I lean somehow into the promise of God's grace that comes to those who are humble and not crave the kind of power that put me in my situation? [00:23:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Also, I don't know how you got a hold of my notes, but I'm preaching on the magnificent on that text is that text is fresh on my mind, and I think of Mary as being one of those who would have been in that lower position. The things that she was speaking, I think in her submission to God in those moments, the truth that she was speaking, she was speaking in humility in that she didn't see that. [00:23:46] Speaker B: Amen. [00:23:47] Speaker A: Didn't see the powerful being brought down and the hungry being brought up. [00:23:52] Speaker B: Amen. Amen. Thank you. Wow. Well, you pretty much preached the thesis of the book in so many mean and I say men. But I do mention Mary in the book and cite some of the magnificate and Hannah's song as well. Because those women of God are our exemplars because of their tenacious faith, having been marginalized. So they show us they are our examples. So rather than us pitting them or somehow saying, oh, how nice that these women could. No, we need to submit to what they're telling us because they are empowered by God in this. So, yes, thank you for that. [00:24:32] Speaker A: I think that's a powerful think, too. Okay. I'm not going to preach my sermon right now, but we're going to go back to the book. But something about Mary and Hannah that you mentioned, too, that I think is an appropriate thing to say here. Because I think sometimes, especially as you're connecting humility and humiliation and even some of the definitions that we found out before, I think humility can feel sometimes I'm speaking for myself. It can feel sometimes maybe a little naive or even sometimes involuntary. And one of the things that, like you said, you're just a nice guy or this person didn't offend me or something like that. But in that, I think we lower it. But one of the things that I think is important about the humility exemplified by Mary and Hannah as we brought them up as an example, is that they had agency. [00:25:33] Speaker B: Yes. [00:25:34] Speaker A: And humility, it's something that is like something that we do on purpose. Right. It requires choices that we make on purpose if we talk about being submitted to God. [00:25:51] Speaker B: Right. [00:25:52] Speaker A: Those are made up of conscious decisions that we make. [00:25:55] Speaker B: Thank you. [00:25:56] Speaker A: Every day, not just something that kind of happens to us. [00:25:59] Speaker B: Thank you. I'm really excited that you put it that way because we almost, and I say we now, and thinking about a kind of American Christian world, like I said before, we might value humility. And we see somebody being kind or nice or thoughtful and not, like, abrasive rather than. And they may have just been taught that way. It might be just a cultural thing. Right. And there's a lot of that in how I think some of us think of humility. But you've got, like, in Colossians, the language, know, put on humility, like, clothe yourself with this. And Peter will say it the same way, clothe yourselves with humility. Like, embrace this, take this on. Which is a conscious choice, is the way you said it. It's not like, in fact, in their world, the culture did not show them what this was like. The culture minimized this notion of submission to God and peacemaking with your neighbors. And that was not a value for them. It was a value to make a name for yourself. That would be honor as opposed to shame. So I would say, I like the way you said it. It's a conscious choice. It's agency. That's why I call these women leaders, because they leaned into their relationship with God and became prophets for us, because they put on that mantle of humility, if you will, and then showed us something about God. In fact, I would say that the way I think of humility as this active thing is that I say something like this in the book. I thought it was more thoughtful in this book than I'm saying it right now, maybe. But we are afraid of humility because we think it'll make us be doormats, right? That we say, oh, I got it. But I say, humility is really asking the question, why is anybody in our world a doormat? So humility says to me, if I'm passing, look, I'm from New York City, and much of my life, I'm riding on the bus, riding on the subway. I'm just used to the hustle and bustle of urban life. I mean, that's just who I am. When my wife came to live in New York City after we got married, she was overwhelmed by the numbers of people, but also by the poverty. So you would see people who look like all their worldly possessions in a bag on the subway. And humility, which I think my wife was exemplifying at the time, would say, why is that happening? Right? So it's not a question of what I have versus what you don't have, but the humble person is asking, why this injustice? Why is this happening? What I'm finding is the people who become the most abrasive start to blame impoverished people for their situation, start to blame ethnic minorities, rather than understanding why we might say Black lives Matter or Indigenous people matter, rather than exploring that and leaning in and say, why is there this cry? And why is this justice? They put up a wall, right? That's a self righteousness. I think that's a pride. So humility isn't saying fearing, losing my position. Humility is asking why. [00:29:05] Speaker A: Yeah, that's so good. And actually, just before we got on our conversation today, I was listening to a podcast. A friend of mine host a podcast, and they were talking about seeing one. My friend is Jasmine Bellamy. She was interviewing Terrence Lester, who works with unhoused people. And he was talking just. They were talking about just seeing one. We, several weeks ago, some friends who are new to the area came over for dinner, and we live in Houston, and Houston has no zoning, and so it's kind of a very OD city in that way. But this new friend of ours was also from New York, and she was saying there's just something about living in this city life. And the phrasing that she used was, we're just kind of all on top of each. And this is. This is how it is. We're all on top of each other. [00:30:03] Speaker B: My mother used to put it that way. Almost exact words, we're all on top of each other. [00:30:07] Speaker A: We're all on top of each other. And that's the thing, right? It's very different than living in more rural communities, but we're all just kind of on top of each other. But I think even as you were talking, I was thinking about that and thinking about how it's a conscious decision to see one another. [00:30:23] Speaker B: Amen. [00:30:23] Speaker A: When we're on top of each other. [00:30:25] Speaker B: I love that. I love that you made me think of something just now that is not in the book. And I almost wish it the well, of course, we could spend a whole book just on Jesus and humility of so, but I'm thinking of the bleeding woman who was just making her word through the crowd. And Jesus wanted her not to just slip away, right? I mean, she was healed. She could have just kept on going. But he gets her, and she says, at least Mark's version, she comes trembling at his feet and he know, daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, be free from your suffering. And just kind of giving her this language of peace and this assurance, all of that wholeness. But he saw her. That's the thing. She wanted to be invisible, but he wanted her to be acknowledged. And there's something that I think you tapped on really well there in your conversation from that podcast is that I think that truly humble people do take the time to see others, to listen to others, and to recognize our shared humanity. But I think that's born from our relationship with God. Because if I thought about doing all of that seeing each other, spending time listening, I could see it as depleting me, and then I could say, then why am I bothering to do this? But if I'm related to God and I'm submitting to God, then I have to depend on divine energy. I have to depend on the spirit of God to empower me. I have to depend on God to be able to do those things. So it becomes less about me and more about how I see God working in the world. Right. So that's kind of what I was trying to say in the book, and then try to illustrate how it might work out in different areas of a Christian community's life. [00:32:16] Speaker A: Yeah, and you hit on a lot of different areas. And I'm going to bring up a quote that I thought of when we were, and I had written down, but it came to my mind again when we were just talking. But you have chapters on, as you said, empowering but also stewardship, which some people might think, what is that doing in there? Or creation care, which I think is wonderful. This quote, I think, if I'm not mistaken, is actually from the chapter on creation care. But I just have in my notes. But it's also just generally a good statement, and I think it relates to what we were just talking about. And you wrote, humility resists exploitation and instead strives for the flourishing of God's creation. And that's the flourishing of all of God's creation. [00:33:08] Speaker B: That's right. Amen. Amen. [00:33:09] Speaker A: And so I thought of it when we were talking about seeing one another. Right. So we're not blaming, we're not exploiting, we're not turning our faces so that those people could be exploited or their position situations could be exploited. That's really important. But that statement, that humility resists exploitation and strives for the flourishing of God's creation, applies to people, but it also applies much more broadly. So what is humility? Where's the connector there? [00:33:45] Speaker B: Yes. Thank you. I almost wish I had made that statement in a different chapter, more broadly, because I think you're right that exploitation is of people and other parts of this planet. Right. Well, I have an engineering degree, and when I was working as a college student, trying to figure out if God wanted me to be a chemical engineer, which I assumed my grades were saying otherwise, but I thought that I should be a chemical engineer. I had a summer job where I was working at an oral refinery. I won't name the company, but it's not that important. But they assigned me to work with an environmental engineer, and I didn't actually even know there was such a thing. I had mechanical, chemical, civil kind of engineering in my head, architectural engineering, but I didn't think about environment. And she was responsible for paying attention to what the company was putting into the water, in the air. And I saw how resistant leadership was to anything that she was having to say. And so that kind of resistance is the arrogance or the pride or those kinds of concepts that I see playing out. Even in the way we treat all of God's creation, the whole planet is, we become resistant because we're saying, look, I can take advantage of this thing or don't restrict me in this way. When we actually don't then consider our neighbors, we consider maybe something else, like the bottom line, like how much money we could actually make. So stepping back from just the corporate kind of picture I'm counting, trying to communicate, you hit on something that if I'm truly a humble person who's submitting to God and recognizing that the Earth is the Lord's and the fullness of it, the world, and all who dwell in it, then the way I interact with this planet has to respect that reality. Right? So I don't want to see others hurt or directly or indirectly, I don't want the planet to hurt, because that's going to actually infect my neighbors as well. But it's still born out of my sense that this is God's world. Yeah, that's the way I think of it. That's the way I think of other human beings. I want that to be true of my life, that I'm always thinking that way. I hope I am sometimes. I know I don't think that way. I can be as selfish as anybody to think, oh, how is Dennis going to survive this or manage this or get. What is Denis going to get out of this? But I hope that most of my life is moving toward a posture of, as I submit to God, how do I help my neighbor to flourish? And my neighbor, human neighbor. But how do I help this planet to flourish? At least do my. [00:36:29] Speaker A: You know, when you kind of be. I can be selfish, or I can think, how is Dennis gonna? How is Dennis gonna? And I think that can come from a selfish place, that can come from a prideful. But I'm. But I'm curious. One of the things that struck me when I was reading the book, because one thing I thought when you were even as you were just saying that, I'm like, yeah, but we could also say that out of fear. [00:36:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes, for sure. And that's actually true for me, too, as I mentioned earlier, that my own personal issues and my own damaged psyche was such that if I put myself in a certain place, I'm going to get taken advantage of. Right? So the idea of humility, meaning I'm going to get taken advantage of, that's a fear on some level. And so I think, I mean, I'm not a sociologist, but I have pretty good sense that some of us reject the notion of humility because we think it means I will be taken advantage of. So I have this fear, or I'll have to correct something about myself that I don't really want to correct. If I'm listening to my neighbor in a helpful way, if I do see those who are on the margins in a new way, and then I realize, oh, I might be part of a system that's exploiting them that might have to change something. There's a fear that some people have there that I think is associated with humility. It's true that if I see something a new way, I may have to adjust. And once again, that takes me back to my submission to God. But the fear is not the way we should be operating. I mean, of course, that's a whole sermon in and of itself, but I think that that's another thing that prevents people from embracing this wholehearted notion of humility or clothing themselves with humility. [00:38:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. I want to go to Jesus for a minute. Let's go back to Jesus, something I jotted down. Sometimes I have a lot of notes and sometimes I take a lot of notes, and this is kind of a both end situation here. So I jotted down earlier when you were giving us your definition of humility. It's submission to God and then leading to something like, leading to deliberate acts of peacemaking and mutuality. [00:39:03] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:39:05] Speaker A: So take us through some of the things that we can see in the life of Jesus, where we see humility on display in his submission to God and his deliberate acts of peacemaking and mutuality. And that mutuality is something cool that I just feel like that's going to be a real key term to understanding this concept. [00:39:34] Speaker B: It is. I see that language more in Pauline epistles like Philippians. But let's come back and stay with Jesus for a moment. Well, just to. No, no, let me start with an example. Let's take something like Jesus interaction with Zacchaeus. Right? And he invites himself to Zacchaeus house. They have this interaction. Zacchaeus is moved by this and decides to make mean in this interchange Jesus has made himself the guest of Zacchaeus. You don't get a sense in that interchange of Jesus lording over in any way. But because of how he's been teaching Zacchaeus'curiosity, over what Jesus has been saying and doing, the interaction somehow moves this person who's been exploitative to know, make reparations. So I guess that's one quick example. I actually don't discuss that one in the book, but it makes me think about that. Now, what I want to be clear to say, though, is even though we strive for the mutuality, we strive for peacemaking, it doesn't mean people are going to respond. I mean, Jesus also had hard words for people who were hypocritical or people who didn't respond to him. He could be pretty firm. I mean, Matthew, the very gospel that says Jesus is meek and humble of heart is the same one that also has him pronouncing woes to hypocrites. Woe to you, scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites who do this kind of thing to those who were engaged in hypocrisy. He could denounce them and still yet be called humble because he's speaking the truth, right? Or he's speaking as pointing out their inconsistencies. So, yeah, I guess I just want to say Jesus is an example. I mean that Matthew Eleven chapter when he says, come to me, all you who are weak, weary, heavy laid, who are burdened down. Right. Come and take my yoke on you. My burden is easy. My yoke is light. My yoke is easy. Burden is light. You'll find rest for your souls. That's the kind of posture I'm talking about, right? That's the mutuality and peacemaking kind of a posture, but it doesn't prevent us from speaking truth to the powers and to injustice. [00:41:58] Speaker A: Thank you. So let's go to some of the Pauline letters and maybe circle back something that I wanted to hang out for a minute, but we didn't. Let's take it back for a second. We live in Texas and this region of the US. I have, people who are not from this region often say that things feel od to the just kind of the general niceness that you talked about earlier, kind of this courtesy. Right? When I was a kid, I would do these things. I grew up in Oklahoma, and I would ask my dad frequently, like, who is that? He'd say, I don't know. Why'd you wave at them? Well, because they let me go through on the stop sign right or mom, who is that? I don't know. You just talk to them for 30 minutes in the line at Walmart, right? Well, we don't know them, but that's just how we do. And now I'm the same way, and my kids are asking me the same thing, who are these people? We don't know who they are. That's just how people in this region interact. But I'm curious, and I'm drawing on your biblical, scholarly now and your professor ness maybe weighted, maybe not, but maybe weighted a little bit more than the pastoral stuff, but we can get there. But I'm asking for a little bit of historical like that. Humility in this mutuality, specifically, was not something like you said. Peter and Paul are encouraging the congregants to put this on, to close themselves with this, as if this is not something that could even be mistaken for something else. What did their environments maybe look like socially? Why would this be an odd thing for Christ followers to do or something that might have felt like a challenge for Christ followers to embrace socially? Yeah, I understand. You could write an entire book on that. [00:44:04] Speaker B: Well, and some have, I think, of David de Silva's book on honor and shame, because that's really the background. It's the honor shame context of the ancient world. And you might say America has some vestiges of that. I mean, in a sense, we definitely are hierarchical. The idea of not putting yourself in a vulnerable position because that brings shame, right? You want to get status. You want to have honor. So in a society that is always pushing that way and is always trying to gain the upper hand over somebody else, why would you pursue something called humility, right? In fact, the very language that's used of humility that you see in Paul and Peter and a little bit in Matthew and such, is that it's so different. The words existed, of course, in the Greco Roman world, but they used them negatively. They didn't see this as a positive thing. Now, they could see you being magnanimous. They could see you being even gentle in a sense. Like if you could showed restraint on your enslaved population, you could be seen as magnanimous because you opted to show restraint. Right? But that's a lot different than considering others better than yourself, that kind of language in Paul. So I guess to get to your point, the Greco Roman world was a competitive one, a hierarchical one. So if you see a group of people who are not behaving that way, they would certainly stand out. So some scholars, and I think of one in particular, Marie Becker, she has a book called Paul on Humility, which got translated from German into English just a few years ago. And she says pretty clearly how humility was a Christian identity marker because humility was not valued or respected in that Grecoroman world. So you have a hierarchical world, you have a competitive world. You have a world where you're always striving to make a name and achieve honor. And here you have these Christians over here saying, no, we're not about that. In fact, we're going to consider each other equal. And there's no male, female, Jew, Greek, slave free. That's so different than the way the rest of the world is operating. So it becomes a marker of something different, right. For those people. That's kind of what's behind this whole book is that I really wish we could achieve some kind of marker of identity that's related to humility for Christians, because I think it's true in pockets. But by and large, I'm concerned that Christians in the United States are viewed as self righteous, bigoted, stingy, warmongering, even. I mean, there's just so many kind of ways that I don't think are Christ like ways that Christians are sort of leaning into that. A true identity marker ought to be humility. [00:47:18] Speaker A: So I feel like a freshman sitting in the class because I just had one of those 101 moments where I was like, because I'm thinking in my head as you're saying this, yeah, but why would people want to do that, right? Like, if I'm there and I'm listening to one of Paul's letters saying, I'm going to treat my neighbor as if my neighbor is better than me, or I'm even thinking of in Romans, of outdoing one another in love, these kinds of things. Like, ah, like why would I want to do when, when my neighbor know, like you said, it might not receive that, right, it might not even respond in that way, because my neighbor is not listening to letters, probably from their leadership saying, outdo one another in love, think of your neighbor as better than yourself. Clothe yourself in humility. Why would I want to do that? And then the answer of, because this is how we saw Jesus live. This is how Jesus lived. And then I'm like, oh, duh, let's go back to Philippians two, right? [00:48:21] Speaker B: Well, you're right. But also I think that it explains why the Christian movement was attractive to enslaved people and people on the margins, because they could find an identity, could find a voice, could find a community. When, I mean, if you've got power and status. Why would you. Right. Why would you want to lower yourself? And I could see how those in power probably may have struggled a lot with this kind of notion. But for those of us, or if I put myself in that situation, would think of myself probably as somebody would have to been working for somebody else, unfortunately, I probably would say, oh, there's this Jesus guy who understands my situation and can empower me in a way that's different than my oppressor. I'm interested in that. And there's this kind of love where we care for each other and show each other the kind of hospitality that's really, I think, powerful and biblical. So I'm sure that was attractive to some people. Right? I mean, people outside the Christian. I mean, that's how the church grew. But there is a sense that, yes, we do it because our Lord was like that. But then as I develop my own relationship with God and see how the spirit is at work in my life, my motivation becomes, yes, I want to be like Jesus. And I also think that my own. I don't want to just copy Jesus. I want to be like that. You know what I mean? So it's not just stuff I'm going to do. It's a way I want to be. Yeah. [00:49:52] Speaker A: Because I think, too, part of it is, as you've said in this conversation, because the grace that is a gift of that, we don't know what that looks like. And I imagine, because I see systemic things now, and I think I want to work toward those things being different. But if I'm honest, it feels hopeless sometimes that those systems would ever be toppled. And I think it may not be a how much more? But at least it's probably equal, right? That people who were on the margins and among the oppressed in first century Roman Empire would definitely think, I won't make a dent in this being different. And if I try, what, you're going to get punished. It's going to be worse for you. [00:50:43] Speaker B: That's right. [00:50:43] Speaker A: But if I'm living inside of this other system, things might somehow look different. This Grace might be afforded to me, and it's a different system. [00:50:56] Speaker B: I think that's a powerful way to say it's a different system. I'm living inside the system. Again, you used the word earlier that we are against not wanting to be naive, because it could feel that way. And I get it. I mean, it's a dog eat dog world. It's a competitive world, it's a hierarchical world, and I get that. So it could certainly sound naive to say, let's not be like that. Right. And this is where I would just encourage Christians to say, well, what do you actually believe? Because if there is a God that does truly empower us by the spirit, am I really going to trust that? Or do I really need to say, not really? At the end of the day, it's really on me to dismantle all this stuff and tear it all down. And I want it torn down. For sure. I want injustice torn down. But if that's the only thing I'm after, and as a human like endeavor, then I'm missing something about the power and presence of God at work in. So I. Yeah, I might sound naive, but I want, at the end of the day, if that's the case, then I'll be naive about trusting God the way our early forebears did. [00:51:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, so as we start to wrap up, Dennis, I've asked you to wait to weigh a little bit on your scholarly side and your professor side, and now I'm going to shift and ask you to weigh a little bit more on your pastoral side. And I'll ask a couple of things. And of course, they're both optional, but I would ask, as a pastor, how would you. How would you encourage and challenge us that this is a way worth living? [00:52:41] Speaker B: Yeah. I have some dear friends, and one of them I mentioned in the book, he's a pastor in Pennsylvania. I don't want it to be that this is all a theoretical conversation. I want it to be that I actually do know some people who strive very hard, and they might be laboring in relative obscurity, but they are creating these loving spaces for people to be seen and heard and valued and to learn about God in the way of Christ and to share that with their neighbors. That's ultimately what I want. I fear that in our competitive world, especially with the tensions that could come out from social media, I don't think social media is all a bad thing, but some of the tensions that it can create is the sense that, oh, I have to be like that church or I have to be like that pastor. So we have this competitive thing that just creeps up inside of us and wells up to say, oh, my goodness, I got to be as good as that person because my success is measured by whatever the numbers, the dollars, all of that. So we can just get caught up in that thing. And I want to say to pastors and to church folks, please, I'm not naive to the struggles that we all have, the struggles to pay the bills, the struggle to make it in this world. But if we can help create communities of love and grace that are characterized by humility, that's the best apologetic for the Christian faith in our society than any more of even the books that we're writing. If we can create these communities of humility that surrounding Jesus, that's going to mean a whole lot in our cities and our communities, because we'll speak up for justice. We will represent the downtrodden. We will work in our own way for things to be better. And I think that's a ground up movement, not against politics, although some of us may actually work in those worlds. But the same idea, though, is that it's a spirit empowered movement that I'm talking about. So that might be slightly different than what you asked, but I think it's worth it on the local level and for us to lean into these kinds of concepts. [00:54:50] Speaker A: No, that's great. And the last ask I have, again, optional, because I didn't prep you beforehand. [00:54:58] Speaker B: It's okay. [00:54:59] Speaker A: Is I'm wondering if you will offer just a prayer in closing of this conversation for us. This book, I received it this week and read it this week. And I would say I don't want the ideas in this and the ways that I felt and the notes that I took to leave. I think, you know, as we think about humility in the life of Jesus, submitting to God, deliberately seeking peace and mutuality, those feel like kind of high and lofty things, but I think we can see from Jesus incarnation that they are very earthly things that we can do, and I don't want those to leave us. So maybe if you would offer a prayer in closing, that would just call on God to keep these things near to us. [00:56:02] Speaker B: Yes, that's very kind of you. Thank you. Yes, let's pray. Dear God, we give you thanks because you are good and your mercies endure forever. I thank you, God, for the work you have done in the world, how you sent your one and only Son, Jesus, so that we could have life, have it abundantly. And Jesus, thank you for sending your spirit to live in us and among us so we could be the people we ought to be. So I pray, Father, Son, Spirit, that you would strengthen us, fortify us, that we could live lives dependent on you. That would be truly humble lives that would show that we know you are the source of our strength and that in living that way, we could be truly lovers of our neighbors, where we would advocate and strive for peace and mutuality in a world that's broken and fragmented and hurting even among Christians. So we pray for your grace. You oppose the proud, but give grace to the humble. So we are praying for that grace. In the name of Jesus, amen. [00:57:16] Speaker A: Amen. Thank you so much, Dennis. It is. [00:57:19] Speaker B: Thank you. [00:57:20] Speaker A: Always a joy to chat with you. The name of the book, what's the release date on this, Dennis? [00:57:27] Speaker B: November 7. [00:57:29] Speaker A: Okay, perfect. So it just came out. [00:57:31] Speaker B: Just came out. [00:57:31] Speaker A: Good. By the time this airs, it will have been out maybe for about a month or so. This is humility illuminated the biblical path back to Christian character by Dennis Edwards. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. [00:57:46] Speaker B: It's my pleasure, Alexis. [00:57:49] 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 Bussetti. Be sure to give us a review on iTunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app. You can also visit [email protected].