[00:00:10] 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 eludes us. 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, David, I was just thanking you for your book and also lamenting the fact that my beagle puppy got a hold of it this morning, and now that I'm thinking that must have been what she was growling at. My husband came in from taking the kids to school, and. And she was exhausted by that point, probably because she had eaten so much of your book. And she was growling in the other room, and I was like, what is she even growling at? Like, there's nothing happening. And then, anyway, alas, I have the copy that's chewed up on the corners. And anyway, Delilah, we love her, and she is kind of a mess sometimes.
A dog did eat my homework, and I know this is not the first time this has happened. I. So probably some listeners who have heard this before are thinking, why does she not do something with that dog? I'm trying.
I'm trying. But you shared with me you had a friend who had a beagle puppy, and this is not unusual. This is kind of par for the course.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: It's par for the course. We have a little terrier that we got during COVID and she.
She has. She. She. Her. Her issue is much where she would escape. You know, she would run.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: Whole drama to try to get her back in the house and. And all this. But my friend who had the beagle puppy would. Would routinely have to, you know, interrupt meetings or get places late because he said, you know, that little buddy just ate an entire casserole that we've had. We had so high up that we thought there was no possible way he was getting there, and he did. So it's like a challenge or something.
I feel your pain. Yes.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: It's crazy. Her. Delilah is our beagle, and her predecessor, Agnes, was also an escape artist. And so we. I am so familiar with that. Like, it's hard to open. You can't open the front door. You know, people come over and you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, like, someone has to grab the collar, and it's like. Like the whole thing. Right?
[00:02:30] Speaker B: The whole thing. Honestly, she's grown out of that. And we have to remind ourselves sometimes that we were neurotic about the front door or any door because it would become an hour long game. She would always, it was a game that we were going out to try to get her. And like, no, you're under someone else's house, you know, that we've never met. You know, we brought her one time to, on a, like to the beach. And she just, let's just say she introduced herself to the neighbors in some very interesting ways.
[00:02:58] Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes. I actually, I know this is not our topic of conversation for today, but little Aggie, I actually had asked the vet about it at one point because it, she was just doing it so much. I was like, I don't understand. And he said the same thing. He said this is entertainment for her. So it's like a game. But he said also she has kind of the bonus where it's kind of like eating out because she was a beagle mix and beagles, I have learned, kind of always act hungry. Like they can be very full and they will always act hungry. And so she could have eaten dinner literally 30 minutes before. And then whoever brought her back would say, I saw her and she just, oh my goodness. And I lured her to me with, you know, fill in the blank. Whether a neighbor was grilling steak or it was like a cheat, you know, a bag of Cheetos or whatever. And they're like. So the vet was like, it's like entertainment for her but also kind of like going out to eat, you know, like, she just so like, it's like, you like to go out to eat, right? Well, Aggie does do. We're like, oh my goodness.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: And speaking of dogs, my mast have just walked in. Anyway, we're, it's all real life here.
A couple of dog people are going to try and have a conversation today about grace, which I'm, I'm so thrilled about. And David, I really appreciated your new book. The big relief, the urgency of grace for a worn out world.
And I want to start even with this conversation with dogs.
The, the picture I had in my head as I was reading this, a girlfriend of mine sent over. We're, we're Instagram real age. So I know you have, you have a son who's YouTube shorts age. My kids are YouTube shorts age because yes, they don't have TikTok, but it's, you know, the same thing. Anyway, I'm Instagram real age. I'm not YouTube shorts agent. My girlfriend sent me a reel with a woman who the Caption was something about relaxing, you know, just kind of realizing that she was kind of always pent up and just.
It was just very her in various contexts, like, like locations, lowering her shoulders, you know, so maybe she was, you know, working on her computer and then she would notice that her shoulders were close to her ears and. And it was just her, like, you know, set to music, just kind of taking a deep breath and lowering her shoulders. You know, then maybe she was chopping vegetables and she kind of just realized she was, you know, her body was, was acting stressed out, so she would lower her shoulders Anyway, so it had her in several different locations, you know, on video, just taking a moment, taking a deep breath and lowering her shoulders. And I have found myself paying more attention since my friend sent that over to me.
But I also found myself just imagining that and thinking about that scene as I was reading your book.
You talk about a lot of different areas where in my mind they just feel, they feel stressful. You know, there are things that cause our shoulders to rise and, and really we can, you know, kind of breathe this sigh of relief, lower our shoulders and enter into whatever situation we're in more in that posture.
So that's what I was thinking about as I was, I was as, as I was reading your book. But I'd like for you to talk about maybe what you were thinking about when you were writing it. And the phrase that, that caught me even from the very beginning in your book.
I think it's maybe even on page two.
We are all chasing relief.
Can you just talk about that as a pastor? I mean, talk about that as a parent, as a. As an author, someone who's been involved in church ministry for decades. Like, we're all chasing relief. What are you seeing?
[00:06:57] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's such a kind introduction, Alexis. I appreciate it. The.
Yeah. The book was born out of a sense of I always start sort of what's my personal experience of the world before I even get onto those who I'm observing.
And to be just. I'm just a middle aged guy living in a. In the east coast of the United States in 2025, and some would say in sort of a comfortable type of place. Charlottesville, Virginia is very beautiful. And yet I feel acutely or intensely that life is a pressure cooker. And it continues to sort of feel more and more that way as the years go by and more and more is being asked of me as a father, as a employer, as an employee, as a, as. Yes, as a. As someone at the church. And it has the effect.
And I don't know how exactly timely this is. I know that every sort of generation has always felt that they're sort of living at the end of history or at some special stage. But when I talk to my peers, most people seem fairly worn out by the grind of life. It doesn't matter if they're living in, you know, under actual legit, you know, I guess, day to day kind of financial stress or if they're more thinking about, you know, where their children are going to go to college or I don't know what it is, but everyone I talk to is feeling like the, the ladders are getting longer.
And so I thought I wanted to connect that with the faith that I talk about or proclaim on Sundays. And that feeling of wanting relief from the little things, from the big things.
I open the book by trying to tracing just a day in my life, whether that be venting with a colleague, whether that being going to the gym to blow off steam, whether that being unwinding when I get home, whether that being sort of turning my brain off at night by watching such and such thing.
It was all euphemisms for looking for some kind of relief, some kind of space, some kind of break from the pressure or from the demand that I was living under. There was interesting Alexis, when you talk about an Instagram reel, someone. Amy Poehler from, you know, Parks and Rec has a new podcast out where she's just, she's talking with friends of hers and one of the questions she asks, every single one, is where do you find relief? And she doesn't say from what. She just, wow. Assuming that Rashida Jones, who she's talking to in the most recent episode, is going to be looking for really. And Rashida gives a great answer. I think she says she likes to watch videos on YouTube of a certain type of kind of like dance routine or something like that, and that that somehow makes her feel better and at ease.
So, yeah, I think when I'm as a person who's interested in like the spiritual condition of my neighbors as well as myself, this desire for relief struck me as something that was pretty rich and an interesting avenue into talking about the grace of God.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: Yeah, thank you so much for that. I have seen Amy Poehler's podcast, but I haven't had the chance to listen yet. But I find that very striking that that is one of the, one of the questions that she asks everyone is where do you find relief? That just. Anyway, I feel like we could do.
Yeah, that's.
That feels Very significant to me.
I want to move on to.
Gosh, I just have, I have so many notes. I'm trying to figure out where, where to go next.
A few of the chapters, let's start there. A few of the chapters that felt really meaningful to me in this context of seeking relief because this is kind of how the, the book is, is laid out is relief from what? So like Amy's question was open ended. And then you give several chapters that say relief from what? And those relief from what's for me, that felt, that felt super meaningful were relief from deserving and relief from regret and relief from rejection and relief from productivity.
And I think it's probably, I mean we're recording this, this will, this will air later, but we're recording this on the day after Easter. And so I feel like starting with this relief from deserving is maybe the kind of most appropriate place to start as far as, you know, probably our context. We were probably both in church services yesterday who proclaimed the, the grace of God as an undeserving thing that we, that we can receive, that we can inherit.
And yet that really doesn't match for most of us, kind of the rest of our lives.
I think for some of us it doesn't match our spiritual lives, our experience of spirituality.
One of the things that I thought was really interesting was you give a definition of preaching and this is probably like many of us have experienced this as like some of the adjectives were derogatory and condescending and self righteous. And I'm like, oh my goodness, like this.
We're the ones preaching this undeserved grace from God. But are we doing it in a way that's self righteous and condescending and all of that stuff? And how, you know, the method to the message doesn't always line up with, with the message. But you talk about grace as relief from deserving and we can talk about spiritual stuff if you want. But I'm wondering again, like, what are your observations about us just generally kind of living in that environment where that is our constant. What do we deserve? I mean this is, it feels like I feel a lot of pressure even.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: Just saying is it's. I think the deserving thing is almost like underneath a lot of the other pressures. And it's one that we don't name as much because it's such a default. Like whether that be those, those people deserve each other. Whether that be I, I deserve more than.
I've worked harder for this. And how dare you threaten to take something away from Me, the, the notion that we are in this kind of like balance sheet of you get good people get the good stuff and bad people get the bad stuff. It just is it. Yeah. Again, I kind of. I think it's almost subliminal.
It goes underneath a lot of the ways that we evaluate the world.
And when you are, you know, when you've misbehaved, you get punishment and when you've done well, you get reward. This is this tit for tat kind of understanding of life.
It feels like a default.
And the ways that technology or just vigilance has made it so that we're very aware of what so and so deserves versus we deserve. And do we even deserve to feel badly about something? You know, I felt when I was beginning the book and talking about all this relief. Some people would look at my life and say, well, he doesn't deserve relief. You know, he's had it easy. And I'm thinking, well, if I've had it this easy and I still feel this much pressure, then maybe.
But also, once we're into who deserves what, you're into a kind of a competition and something that's contested and we all know what that's like, that the, the petri dish of social media in which we are rank ourselves according to likes and stats and, you know, affirmation and this. And that can be really, really oppressive. And I think it takes a toll on a human being no matter who they are.
So I really, I wanted to begin by talking about grace as gift. Gift is, that's, that's a lot of Paul's words from the Bible. He's translated. Grace is often translated as gift or gift is translated as grace.
And how does God give? Who does God give to? And this, what we learn very quickly is that God gives not to the deserving, but to the needy.
And this is a kind of a.
It turns things upside down in the quid pro quo of life that feels, you know, when you're operating according to deserving, we like it because it makes life manageable. We can kind of predict things, but it doesn't, it doesn't do much for, you know, when you've messed up or when you've lost something or when you've simply gotten older and you cannot perform at the same stage way you could before that becomes a real challenge to any kind of understanding of the world that's purely based on deserving. And so I want to take that. That I knew would be a slightly. I'm glad that resonated with you. Because that's a slightly more difficult entry point for folks because it's so. Our understanding of the world is so bathed and deserving that to get past it required a little bit of rhetorical work.
But I think, you know, the Santa Claus view of life, you know, the naughty. Nice list, it's just, it doesn't, it's not much good news for us for those of us who often feel like we don't measure up and that we are more defined by our weaknesses than by our strengths, or at least our lives feel like they're more defined by those things.
So, yeah, one thing we need to understand for sure about God is that God is operating.
Grace operates beyond deserving. That's one of my favorite. My great mentor when I was in my 20s was a woman named Dorothy Martin, who's a Freudian psychoanalyst who loved St. Paul. And she would always talk about what is the force in the world that transcends circular exchange and reciprocity. And a child is usually feels secure to the extent that they've got some kind of relationship in their life where they are not having to transact. I do this for you, you do that for me. If they're securely attached to their mother, for instance, it's because they feel that no matter what they do, their mother's going to be there loving them. And that, that is, that's actually kind of what we talk about when we talk about grace.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Something that I, that was just coming to my mind as you were, as you were talking. So not necessarily when I was reading the book and it's, and it's not in my notes either, but this, you know, kind of, this people getting what they deserve, this. The rain falls on the, on the righteous and the unrighteous. And I think if we think about grace and kind of like grace be our guide, more than deserving be our guide, our motivations for our actions have to change.
So like you're talking, it's not this tit for tat or quid pro quo or even this formulaic way of existence.
I think the recent, I would say, especially with Trump's election and prior to that, Even back to 2015, I was chatting with my kids, we have four kids. And I was saying, you know, when I was growing up, I was kind of raised. The grown ups in my life really had this idea that they wanted to instill in me that I think was good. But it's this old adage of like, cheaters never prosper kind of thing. You're like baloney that's really baloney. You know, and, and, and one time I, I preached a, a sermon. I called it something like Christmas in July or something because it was on the Magnificat. And I'm, you know, reading Mary's words, I'm like, she understood that was just not true. And she's going through and talking about the societal ills that were, you know, she was experiencing, that her people were experiencing in their occupied territory.
If you said, well, it's okay Mary, don't worry about it, because cheaters never prosper. You know, people get what they deserve. And if they're, you know, it's like, no, actually that's really not true. You know, a lot of times cheaters prosper quite, you know, quite well. Like they, they move to the top of the ladders and they get all these things. But my point is that sometimes if we, it understanding that deserving doesn't really have anything to do with grace can change our motivations when it comes to our actions. I'm going to do the right thing so that I get good things right. Well, doing the right thing doesn't always mean you'll get good things. Sometimes it means you get fired, you know, sometimes it means you're the whistleblower in that case. Sometimes it means you, sometimes it means you lose a friendship, sometimes it means, you know, whatever or, you know, well, doing the bad things, that doesn't mean you'll get caught. You know, a lot of times that's not the way it is. And so this economy doesn't really work the way that we want it to, you know, sometimes or, you know, so much of we want it to, but so the motivation for our actions, I think then it has to be different. Why am I going to do the kind of the quote right thing or why am I going to, you know, something we'll talk about later is offering hospitality or you know, these non complementary behaviors. I hope will, you know, hope we'll get to you. Like, why would I do that?
Well, because that's what Jesus has modeled, you know, and that's what God does for me. And that's how God shows me love and care and compassion and grace.
And I'm a disciple and so I want to do those things.
Not because I believe I live in an economy where I do good things and I'll get good things, or if I do bad things, I'll get bad things. Like people don't always get what they deserve, good or bad. And so that undercurrent that we, that's there. That deserving undercurrent isn't always true either.
[00:21:24] Speaker B: That's really perceptive. I mean, it's scary too because it's much more controllable, manageable world if people got exactly what they deserve.
But that's also.
And that's great when it comes to our enemies, but when it comes to us, that's where it gets scary because you're right if you're doing something purely to get for earning's sake. Earning is the other word that, I mean that would be more New Testament word, kind of when people talk about earning, God's love earning is.
It doesn't always work out that way. And so are you doing something in order to earn or are you doing something out of love? And those are, those are just very. It's not like they're 100% mutually exclusive, but they're pretty different, you know, like when my kids, if I can tell that they're.
They want something from me, you know, versus they care about me, you know, those two are two different things. When I get the phone call, I remember in college it would always be like my, my parents could tell I was calling because I needed money or to sort of ask for something or if I was calling just to check in to hear how they were doing and to tell.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:22:31] Speaker B: There's very different, that's very different motivation wise. And so if you can get beyond the earning, you find that there's a whole world of love out there.
Yeah, but it's scary because earning means the guardrails are kind of taken off.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: Yeah, no, for sure.
I do want to sit. Like I said, I really enjoyed this chapter. I do want to sit here for a minute because there were a couple of things that you talked about. One, I made a note that it was in this chapter, it may not have been. And the other one I think was.
So we'll start with the one that I think actually was this non complementary behavior. So we've, we've kind of said this quid pro quo, this tip for tat, like you are kind to me and so I am going to return that kindness to you, which goes right along with the same flow that we've been talking about.
But one of the things that you talk about in the book related to grace, and I would say this is a behavior that Christ modeled for us is this non complementary behavior. So expressing showing kindness, compassion, love, whatever that is in situations and with people who are absolutely not showing that towards us. So you gave some really beautiful examples But I'm wondering if you can talk about that in, in this context of grace and deserving.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: Sure. I was. I'm so glad that that resonated. It's really nice when someone does a close read of your book. The complementary behavior is usually, you know, I will mirror your behavior.
You, if you are nice to me, I'll be nice back.
But if you cut me off in traffic, I will basically want to cut you off in traffic. And there's. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of energy to engage in what sociologists call, or I think a quote, a psychologist here calls non complementary behavior. But when it happens, it tends to break the standoff or the detente or the stalemate that often exists. So Hopwood, I think it's Christopher Hopwood, who I quote in there, talks about this non complementary behavior being something that was at the heart of mlk, Martin Luther King or Gandhi. And somehow they were given the wherewithal to not to reciprocate or get drawn into a cycle of grievance or aggression with the people that were mistreating them and to. Instead of mirroring aggression with more aggression, they were.
Nonviolence was, was somehow given to them. And that was a gracious response in that moment. And I tell a story from Invisibilia about people having a backyard barbecue in which an intruder comes and holds a gun to their head. And somehow this one woman is.
And who knows what was going on in her head, but what happened in the moment was she offered this, this guy a glass of wine and then sort of invited him, gave him hospitality when he was literally threatening their lives.
And yet that being the key that unlocks not only repentance or a complete relinquishment of the violence, but he starts to sort of weep and express remorse and he leaves and it becomes a whole different thing. The scene is diffused in this very radical way that I think we catch glimpses of it in our lives occasionally. Most of life is you harm me, I'm going to harm you back, or you are nice to me, I'm going to go out of my way to be nice to you. And so non complimentary behavior feels like grace because it says, I'm not reacting to you in direct proportion to how you've treated me. It unhooks or it kind of like just puts. I would say it puts a stick in the wheel, in the spokes of circular exchange of this for that. And I love it for that reason. I hope. Glad it resonates with people. It's Very, very hard to pull off. And I sometimes think it's the work of the Holy Spirit in the world. But it does happen and it does happen for people that aren't Christians just as much as it does for Christians. But Jesus certainly modeled it.
[00:27:07] Speaker A: Absolutely. And one of the things I think that was, that resonated with me about that story that you just told.
It was brought out in the story as an example. And I understand that that's an extreme example, but it's, it's also a beautiful one. But one of the things that came out is, is that it was pointed out that the woman offered the intruder the glass of wine with no condition.
So it wasn't like if you put the gun down or if you, you know, or if you do this, I won't call the police or you know, whatever it was. It was just, just you know, like you said, we don't know what was going on in her head. But just in that moment it felt like a very pure offer of like.
[00:27:47] Speaker B: I'm sure she wanted to be lowered.
[00:27:49] Speaker A: Absolutely, but she didn it. Right. Right. It was presented as an unconditional offer.
And that you know, and that really resonated with me too. And I think in part it did because you have a. I think you have a whole other chapter on control which we may or may not even get to. But, but it resonated with me because it's like we can't control the situation anyway. You know, who, who would anticipate that that would happen? And so offering this kind of these actions, these non complementary behaviors on conditions we can't control anyway, it seems pointless. You know, but if we, but if we do that like you, you just leave the possibilities open for, for however the other person, the person on the receiving end might respond. And you're exactly right that it, it's puts us a stick in the spoke of that circular.
Yeah those circular this for that behaviors.
Yeah yeah, yeah.
[00:28:53] Speaker B: Thinking.
[00:28:53] Speaker A: Yeah yeah, exactly exactly. It reminds me of I think lately and I'm grateful I feel like I saw it happen more maybe during the pandemic when we all. It was just. You didn't have to say you were worn out. Everyone was worn out by the. By the world.
And I feel like I saw more and more people posting things like, you know, encouraging grace in our actions and using this like we don't know what kind of day someone else has had. You know, like this person that you're encountering may have had the worst day of their life and they, and you don't see it on the outside.
And so how could we respond, you know, if we went into that. And again, I don't know if it was in this chapter, but I'll kind of close out this section with this example that you give of the restaurateurs offering extreme hospitality. Now, I will say I have worked in restaurants. I have waited a lot of tables.
My mom did when she was younger, too. We joked. I mean, for years afterwards. I waited tables in college. For years afterwards, I would have dreams about waiting tables. And we would joke. My mom did, too, and we would joke. She was like, isn't it the worst because you wake up and, like, your feet hurt and like you're tired from having worked all night.
But part of waiting tables. And I. I tell my husband all the time, I'm like, I think everyone should have to do this, like, as a. Just as a part of their growing up experience. He never did. He bagged groceries. He says the same thing of bagging groceries, but this is when people used to bag groceries. I'm really. I'm dating us, but.
But, you know, because of that interaction with the public, often waitstaff don't receive hospitality. But we are definitely expected. That's part of it, right? They call it the hospitality industry. This is what, you know, we do is we offer this even when folks are grumpy or even when we're grumpy or grouchy. So anyway, it may or may not be in that chapter, but can you talk a little bit about that in. In this setting? Because that was so great.
[00:31:05] Speaker B: It's Will Guidera who wrote this book called Unreasonable Hospitality, and it's gotten.
It's become a very, very popular book in certain circles. He's a New York City restaurateur who worked with Danny Meyer, who kind of a culinary superstar. Anyway, Will talks about one of the rules of this guy's culinary empire. His hospitality thing was like, basically, when people are at their worst is when you need to treat them even with extra. That's where you need to sort of pour on the hospitality. Instead of revoking your hospitality at the moment that they start acting disrespectfully or even offensively, that may be the time to go the extra mile. And that's a deeply counterintuitive thing. And people find that to be. Well, that's asking too much.
You're putting these, you know, the wait staff in a position to be taken advantage of and to be mistreated themselves. He says, nevertheless, you don't know what someone could be they might have just had someone file for divorce with them. You have to presume, I think it's. You make the charitable assumption is their kind of rule of thumb, meaning if someone is acting like a complete and utter so and so, you assume not that they are singularly malicious and are out to get you, but that they are having the worst day of their lives. And that may not actually be true, but it doesn't matter. In this is the principle by which these restaurants operate. And that kind of hospitality filters down into sort of everything, and it creates a whole culture of, I would say, grace and gratuity, abundance, superabundance that has become kind of become. This guy's whole raison d' etre, is to figure out new ways to make people feel at home and taken care of, like, to push the boundaries of what's possible. And I find that to be resonant and deeply kind of congruent with the understanding of God's grace in the world.
[00:33:12] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. I have a footnote right now. Raison d' etre.
Okay. Do you know what you just did for me?
You gave me a pronunciation.
I read a lot. Like, I read, like, a lot, a lot. Like, I'm a PhD student. I read for the podcast. I read a lot, a lot. But it's one of those situations where you may have had this happen, but where you read something all of the time. And, you know, and usually if I'm reading some. I'm reading a book right now for class. The guy is using all sorts of words that I don't know what they mean, but I always look them up and I write the definitions out and all this. So, like. So I'm like, I get it, but I may not have ever pronounced it out loud or heard anyone pronounce it out loud. So I just.
I just made a mental note.
I just made a mental note of that. I was like, okay, raison d' etre. Raison d' etre. Like, now it's in my brain. So, anyway, so thank you, David. I really appreciate it. Now, the next.
[00:34:04] Speaker B: I could do. Thank you.
[00:34:05] Speaker A: The next time, if I'm in a situation where I have to pronounce it now, I will know. Okay, that felt really. That felt really great to me. My girls, on another side note, read a lot of fantasy books, and so. And a lot of them have names, character names that are, like, kind of unpronounceable, you know, or they're unfamiliar to them, and so they always joke about how they might be reading something, and it's like. And then David and you know, do.
They went to wherever, you know, and I'm like, oh, yeah, no, I totally get that one too. Anyway, okay, now I'm not going to be entirely distracted.
Let's move on to one of, again, one of the other places that really got me, and that is relief from regret.
Again. I just, like, feel my shoulders kind of lowering in this, in this relief of regret. I think this might be the one. You have a lot of stories in your book, which I really appreciated, but this might be the one that started with the library finds.
[00:35:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:08] Speaker A: Is that right?
Talk about that. Because again, so much of what we're talking about is just, it's counterintuitive. And this was one of the things people were complaining going, you can't. You can't do this.
[00:35:19] Speaker B: Yeah. There was a few movement a few years back where public library systems, including New York and Chicago, decided to forgive all the outstanding library debts Lynn finds that people had. And they, there's a they. I quote one of the library managers who said, you know, we realize we're not in the fine collection business. We're in the helping people learn to read and enjoy books business.
And so it meant coming up with money in different ways and sort of figuring out new ways to reclaim lost materials.
But what they found was that when they forgave all these debts or they canceled the debts, many more people came back to the library.
Lots of lost things actually did come back, stuff that had been lost for. I opened that chapter by talking about a book that had been gone for 40 years, and they just start to.
All boats rise in this situation.
But it involved debt, you know, I wanted to talk about. So the way that I think Grace addresses the past and regret is through forgiveness. And that is, you know, Grace and forgiveness are always pretty closely linked.
But to talk about forgiveness, instead of talking about crime or infraction or even sin, I thought it'd be easier to begin by talking about debt, because we always talk about debt being forgiven. And I don't know anyone. I know people who are very hesitant about, you know, too much forgiveness in this arena or that arena or this kind of misbehavior. But I don't know anyone who, if they had a serious debt, a mortgage, student loan payment, wouldn't be psyched to have it forgiven.
And so I, I, that's how I wanted to get to it. And of course, debt usually has some sort of thing you've done in the past. You've, you've, you've borrowed Money that you didn't have, knowing you'd pay it later, but you have.
That's the weight of the past. And then I moved from talking about library funds to that thing. I think it's. It was at.
What was. Was the college.
[00:37:33] Speaker A: Oh, right. Morehouse, maybe.
[00:37:34] Speaker B: Was it Morehouse. Morehouse College. Exactly. Morehouse College. Historically black men's college, where this donor got up and forgave the student loans of the entire graduating class. And the guys who were graduating were thrilled. The people who had graduated the year beforehand or were coming up in the year next were maybe a little less excited because they thought, hey, that's unfair.
But this way of forgiveness, the definition of forgiveness I use, there is a willingness not to hold someone's past against them, and it's very uncomfortable for us.
But it. If you're the person with the past, if you're the person with the debt, if you're the person with the infraction, it's very exciting. So I also find. I don't know if you find this to Alexis, but, like, as a person in middle age, I say that for myself.
[00:38:28] Speaker A: Say, I shouldn't have said, my husband bagged groceries. No, we're there, too.
We're totally there.
[00:38:34] Speaker B: At this point stage of the game, you got kids, you see how other people's lives, choices are playing out, and you can't help but compare or regret things you did and didn't do. And I find it to be emotionally pretty charged for folks in their late 30s and 40s, because you're just.
You have regrets. If you don't have regrets, then either you've got the deepest faith imaginable, or you're kind of lying to yourself, because some people say, oh, I have no regrets because I believe God has worked all things for good, you know?
Well, that's incredible. However, where I'm sitting, yes, I wish I had invested in Bitcoin, you know, or I wish I regret. I regret it because someone did say, hey, you should buy this.
So, yeah, that's how I wanted to get into that. That chapter, that form of grace, which I think is we. We experience forgiveness as grace.
[00:39:30] Speaker A: Yeah. One of the things that. That stood out to me in that was kind of. You mentioned it with the. With the Morehouse grads of, like, the folks who were before them maybe less thrilled. The ones after them, maybe less thrilled. But then also this conversation of, like, you know, will people learn anything from this? You know, what about these graduates who just have their slates wiped clean? But.
So I don't know if it's because I, as you name later in one of the chapters, my husband is. Is Gen X. I am millennial. And millennials, we just. We just feel guilty, right? We just, like, constantly feel guilty. And you talk about that. I read this part out loud to him yesterday, and I was like, this is you. I was like, I don't know if it's all generational, but this is you. Definitely Gen X. They don't have the same kind of guilt factor that millennials do. I thought it was maybe just me. Now I'm like, maybe it's me. Plus, I'm a product of my generation. But either way, I think about the. The books that came back after decades of being gone, and I think.
I don't think we really have to be afraid that if someone experiences forgiveness that they have learned no lesson from their actions or their behaviors. Like, obviously, if someone is returning a library book. Let's just take that anecdote for a second. Someone's returning a library book that they've had for 40 years.
I think this is evidence that this is pressed on them in some kind of way. Like, A, they've held on to it for 40 years. Like, they know where it is, you know, B, when it's time to turn it in. But they, they. They paid attention to the news that this was happening because there's something in them that's kind of been pressing. Probably I'm making some assumptions here, but I don't think they're unreasonable. Like, there's something that's been pressing on them that they're like, it's in the back of their mind, they've got this library book.
And I think it might also be unreasonable to imagine that maybe the reason that they didn't, like, return it before or, you know, confess, do the thing, whatever it is.
Is there some kind of fear?
And I think, you know, there's some kind of fear. Like, I can't afford 40 years worth of library fines. Like, what if this library is not one of those that, like, tops it off at 40 bucks or something like that, you know? Like, I can't afford 40 years worth of stuff. I'll tell you.
Fear of fines or frustration with myself, I guess, kept our family out of the library for years because I was like, I have learned from paying all of these fines that I am not very good at returning books to the library. So I got all my kids the Libby app. I was like, listen, it just takes it back. Like, it will just remove it from your Kindle. And we don't have to worry about it. Fees or fines because we're. I'm not good at that. Like, the library's too close for. It's embarrassing that I'm not that. But I, But I'm. I'm not. I couldn't find a way to get over. It just wasn't at the top of my mind. So I was like, okay, we're going to do this because it will do it for us. You know, it will just take your books back. It just zaps them back. We don't have to worry about it. But there's. I don't know, I think there's also some, some fear involved. Anyway, I'm saying I don't think we have to worry that if we extend forgiveness, whether it's a debt or something else, that whoever made that infraction, whoever did the thing, is not gonna learn something or actually be sorry or have regrets like you're talking about. I don't want people to walk around feeling guilty, but I do want for all of us to learn from our mistakes and learn how to move forward in ways that are more loving and caring and compassionate and all of that.
[00:43:12] Speaker B: Well, I, Yeah, I think that this is the heart of it, though, because when you.
Yeah. When you allow them to simply be forgiven and you don't control how someone responds to that, they might hurt you again. You know, that that might happen. But that's, that's the risk. That's the beauty of it. Because most of the time, oftentimes I think that is not what happens. I think that you have the. More Les Miserables, you know, Jean Valjean being forgiven and then devoting his whole life. These are the hinge points of people's lives.
It could be that there are times when, you know, someone else needs to forgive that person because I, or I can't really. I'm not going to put myself in a position to be re. Victimized again or something like that. And I try to draw those distinctions in the book. But. But yeah, I think by and large the fear about what happens, it certainly. If we talk about God's forgiveness, if it's true forgiveness, it doesn't come with a bunch of fine print about you get two chances and then their third tree strikes and you're out. I think that that's human thinking. I think that the glory and beauty and genius of otherworldly, you know, divinity of the grace of God is that somehow it, it, it's.
It doesn't have. There's no fine print. It's not it's not a bunch of catches. There's not a bunch of if you don't do it, then such. If you don't respond in the way that I dictate, then it'll be revoked. So.
But you get into people's deepest things because we love it when it comes to ourselves. I think forgiveness, I think we get much, much more skeptical when it comes to the person who has taken out the video or the book that we've been dying to read all these years. You know, like, well, that person needs to pay that fine, but me, you.
[00:45:10] Speaker A: Know, you know, I, it was an honest mistake. Right. Obviously.
[00:45:14] Speaker B: I think that's by the way, brilliant to get your kids that app because my wife and I, we're terrible at it too.
And we just accepted this about ourselves. Like we're not going to be big library people because we, we, we tried and we've.
[00:45:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:27] Speaker B: It's just so, so hard. It just means we end up buying too many books.
[00:45:31] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:45:32] Speaker B: Then we like donate them or try to figure out exchange things that use bookstores to get new stuff. But it's, that's another way to go. And that is, that's not a great way either. That'll bankrupt you real fast.
[00:45:43] Speaker A: To be clear, we do both. Okay, so it's like a both and situation at our house. Thankfully my kids are like, they have love affairs with half price books and thrift books, you know, so when we can't, you know, find stuff and so anyway, my girls actually just went to Goodwill this weekend and they were so proud of the book haul they got because it was even cheaper than some of those other ones.
[00:46:04] Speaker B: But.
[00:46:05] Speaker A: Yeah, but it's, it's a thing. I mean, I don't know why it's so hard, but it's, it is really hard.
I think it's related. I just realized that these, these were like the first three chapters anyway. The rest of book has got great stuff too, but something that these are, these are so hard, David. They make me uncomfortable talking about them. But this rejection was definitely one of the, one of the hardest. I think partially because it surprised me. I don't know why it surprised me, how universal it felt when you were talking about it. I was like, wait a minute, everybody doesn't like this.
Like, like everybody kind of has this aversion to rejection. I, I mean, I have. You're an author. I won't put you on the spot as an author, but I would say have. I have heard other authors write and talk about how rejection is just part of the business, like, it's just part of the craft, it's part of the job that if they're not, you know, don't make themselves become in some ways comfortable with rejection, like, they wouldn't ever publish because it's kind of more rejections than it is acceptances.
And.
And all of that feels really hard. So I'm wondering, like, what's the insight there? Like, why does it suck so bad? Why?
Because it's not just that. It's not just like a formal rejection letter. It's, you know, I was watching a show the other night, and this girl asked out this woman, asked out this man at her job, and he rejected her. And as the audience, we knew it was going to happen, that he was going to reject her. And, you know, and that was like the whole rest of, like the next episode or two maybe, was that she didn't even know how to interact with him at work anymore because it was a very simple. She asked him to dinner and he basically just said, yeah, no, no, thank you. And it was just like, oh. And we could feel it, you know.
[00:48:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Hearing you describe it, I get a knot in my stomach. Yeah, well, the relief from rejection is favor. And I think that that's God's favor. Like that no matter how you feel about yourself, that's not the final word when it comes to God. And so that was my.
And I tell a story in there of some own rejections. And I don't think you ever totally. If you're a writer. I mean, this might be inside baseball, but I think people in general are more sensitive than they let on. But writers tend to have sensitive temperaments. And you work on something for a couple of years, you put yourself out there, you said, here, judge this. You know, it's a very, very.
As a Christian, I would say that I have to have a lot of prayer time and a lot of. I need to hear to be in a church that's going to tell me that my ultimate standing does not depend on whether or not I'm accepted or rejected by my peers or by so and so who. I, who's who. I've given like, almost godlike weight in my own life.
So I. I want to. I do want to find that when people. The experience of grace is akin to. To acceptance in the midst of rejection, so. Or when you feel. Feel most rejectable and someone loves you, if someone accepts you, someone favors you in some way, that is very akin to grace, and that is relief. And that's what we're all Craving. But gosh, if, if, if someone figures out the way to short circuit or kind of, kind of negotiate around this jockeying for approval, that goes on as any, any creative endeavor. I mean, the thing is like, I think, you know, I work at a church part time too, in addition to my writing. And I preach once every four to six weeks and you know, a sermon, those are so, they're incredible. But. And sometimes you'll get an amazing feedback on it. Sometimes you'll get a rejection or you'll get some sort of terrible criticism, but you have another one the next week. You know, when you're writing a book or putting out a movie, for example, God forbid, I mean, that's like once every five years. The stakes are just really high. And so it can be absolutely crushing. So how do you detach from the gift that you've been given that you're trying to give the world in such a way that it's not your, your, you're not on trial yourself?
That is I think the great task of the, of any kind of life, any kind of creative life.
But you, if you desensitize yourself, you're going to also cut off parts of yourself that are doing that are necessary to do the writing in the first place.
So it's a bit of a double bind.
And in today's attention economy, the publishers all depend on the author's sort of selling the book themselves. And so it's a curse. But I think it's also a tremendous privilege. So for me, it's always remembering that I'm loved by God. No matter whatever response there is to this book, even a book about relief, I feel judgment about but then also son of some kind of acceptance or returning to God in whatever when I feel the critical voices, that's. That's really at the heart of my, my faith.
Not everyone, I know some people would. Are going to resonate with different avenues of grace more. But the rejection acceptance piece where rejection favor, not acceptance, not tolerance, but favor as opposed to rejection is a very visceral stuff, as you sort of say.
[00:52:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I, this wasn't in the book, I don't think. But as you were talking, you did, you did allude to it. You kind of mentioned it like it's, it's about ourselves. So I'm wondering, like in my mind I was relating it to like, I think Brene Brown gives us this definition of shame of like I'm bad, you know, And I think sometimes even though it's not related to doing something bad, it's like you may be, you may be doing something good or neutral, but someone doesn't receive it or they reject it. And so like it's like, well, it's my work, but it feels like me, you know, or it was my action, but it feels like me. I, I remember when I, when my kids were toddlers, we have, we have twins or our oldest. And so we just kind of like jumped, you know, in the deep end of parenting with two infants and then two toddlers.
And I remember back then that some of friends of mine in these mom groups, you know, there was this thing, I don't know, I don't know what parents of young kids are saying right now, but back then they were, we had, there was like a trend where a lot of parents were trying to say no less.
Like, trying to say the word no less.
Like citing, I don't know, some kind of research probably or something. But, but like, what effect is it having on like the self esteem of our children? You. So like, they are my, for my girls, it was always, they're going to kill me, but they don't listen to podcast anyway. But like they're, they were always like digging in the house plants. Like there was dirt everywhere all the time.
And I'm like, this is not okay. Like you're, you're throwing dirt around. What am I supposed to tell them if I don't tell them no? You know, one of the things was we don't, we don't, you know, we don't tell them something dangerous. And then we might use the word danger. You know, they try and stick a knife in the light socket or in the light socket. How old am I anyway? In the electrical outlet, you know, we say danger instead of no because this, no builds this. It's, it's a rejection. Like, you know, it's like a rejection. And I'm like, but the actions are not great. That doesn't mean my toddlers aren't lovely and wonderful and amazing human beings. But they're doing these actions that like, aren't great for them or for other people anyway. So they would just like say no less. And, and I'm just like, is this because rejection? Because I think that feeling of rejection really is so strong, kind of no matter what age or stage we are, no matter what the action is. You know, I think that that kind of feeling of rejection, it is, it's visceral and it's like, well, just because my kids are like throwing dirt doesn't mean they're bad people. They're not bad people. I just don't want to mess in the living room, you know?
[00:54:47] Speaker B: Yeah. What can I do to drive a wedge between their actions and their selves, you know? Yeah, I think, yeah, get to the point for some of us because I, I totally, by the way, recognize that impulse that, that was, that's always, that's around big time in the sort of gentle parenting school. And yeah, sometimes you say when they've never heard no, then when they go out into the sort of the quote unquote real world, then any know that here's going to be just monumental.
You don't want that either. You want some resilience.
But gosh, what can I do as a writer? What can I do as a pastor? What can I do as a person to sort of differentiate between the, the actions a person may take and their core self and their dignity?
I don't think it's, I don't think it's anyone's completely figured that out. But I know that the only way I can survive as a writer and as a preacher and as a person in the sort of somewhat semi public eye is to be around people that remind me that I'm different. There's a distinction between my work and my output, my creative work and my personhood and also people that know me apart from those things.
And, and, and I kind of come to. That's where my faith plays in, where I, I know that God matters more. What matters more to God than what I can do or produce is who I am and, and, and just my, my presence. You know, that's a, that's grace. But I have to, I, I'm so programmed for the opposite that I have to come to it every single week. And I never really move beyond my need for it.
So that's why I, that's why. That's another beautiful thing about grace. It's generative, but it's also regenerative. Like you have to come back to it over and over again. The moment you think you've completely grasped it, your actions are going to show. You're going to get crushed by that next review. And you think, well, maybe I'm actually not quite. Maybe I don't believe this on the level I thought I did. And is there a preacher in my life who can, who can sort of continue to give me the goods of the gospel in a way that will touch down in my, in my actual heart?
[00:57:03] Speaker A: Yeah, you segued perfectly, even though you didn't know where I wanted to go next.
And this may be the last big, you know, big topic we get to tackle today, although the rest of them are fabulous as well.
You talked about what you produce, you know, and it was that chapter on play on relief from productivity again, that just totally resonated with me.
Years and years ago, I heard a peer refer to herself as task oriented. Like, it was a label that she put on herself. I'm task oriented. And I owned that. Like, I was like, oh, yeah, that's good. Me too. Like, I'm task oriented because it. It described so much of, like, how I went about my daily life. I love a list. Like, I like a lot of lists, actually.
I like. I like a good list. I like.
I'm all about systems. They just like, make me feel really great when I can kind of process through these systems.
As a student, I like an A, you know, Like, I'm. I'm all about that. I like. I don't particularly love, like, a. Like a writing assignment, but I love having written one, you know, having completed one.
I have a couple of workouts that are that way for me, where I'm like, I hate this right now. And everything about me is screaming on the inside. But when I'm done, you know, even the mentally, like, I kind of check it off or I see my Fitbit light up and I'm like, oh, that feels. You know, it feels great.
And sometimes I'll end my introduction to this section by. With an admission to say, sometimes I convince myself this is. This is so great. And also weird. Sometimes I convince myself that this productivity is play for me because I'm like, oh, but it's fun. You know, some of the things I described weren't fun, but some of the things I described are fun, you know, like. Like reading books for the podcast. This is totally fun. Like, I love it and it's productive because it keeps this, you know, it keeps this thing that we have here going, you know, like, would I. And it's all. It's kind of an excuse for me to read these books. But. But it's like, yes, but you're doing them, like, on deadlines and, you know, all of this. And so there is a productive aspect of it, even if I think it's fun. And I would say not that reading books for the podcast isn't fun. Going on record saying that it totally is, but I don't think it classifies as play, you know, like, this is a different.
This is a different thing, and it's something that I have. Yeah, I've just historically struggled with it.
With just like, play for this, for the sake of play. I'm trying to get better.
Being a parent has helped me with that in a lot of ways. Like, I just. I did karaoke with my kids the other night on YouTube because they were doing it, you know, and everybody's singing into the remote and, you know, there's absolutely nothing productive about that. It was just fun. Except for when they were all laughing at me because I didn't know the melody to these, you know, songs. But.
[01:00:12] Speaker B: But it was.
[01:00:12] Speaker A: It was fun. It was play. But historically, I've just.
I have just.
Yeah, it just doesn't come. Doesn't feel like it comes terribly naturally to me. But even so, like, I recognize it as one way that. Is that we can gain this relief from just having to feel productive all the time.
[01:00:33] Speaker B: Gosh.
Yeah. I quote Oliver Berkman in the book who talks about the.
You don't begin each day in a kind of a productivity debt that you then, throughout the day, have to work off in order to feel like you can go to sleep and actually rest. But a lot of people, in our minds, we do feel like we begin the day in the red. And at the end of the day, I need to be able to. I need to have something to show for it. I need to be able to tell my wife about all the stuff I got to do. The way that I moved the ball forward.
And that, unfortunately, has become a pretty.
If it's already built into the human system or whatever kind of Western kind of schema that we were brought up in. Because I relate to everything you've just said, Alexis.
If you sort of put capitalism on top of that and. And all these other systems that. Where you have to feel like you're behind the ball in order to do anything, I think you create a really, really neurotic and unhappy population.
And so productivity. I mean, my way in was to talk about youth ministry and that we would try to do games that had no purpose whatsoever. And they were, you know, stuffing marshmallows in your mouth as many as you can, or just silly, silly things, shaving cream type stuff.
But today, middle schoolers, I have one of my own. It's a very tough sell to have any kind of extracurricular that doesn't develop some kind of skill in some marketable way, or at least that will contribute to their getting into college.
And that's sad. And I think that that also is not just sad. I think it's dangerous because it contributes to what we were talking about in the last section but more and more of a sense I'm only worth what I can produce. I'm only worth what I can.
How I can increase the bottom line in some way.
And so play in my mind is freedom.
Play is the question of what would you do if you didn't have to do anything? Or what is it that you do that you would do even if it didn't produce?
It may produce. You may love reading and it may have this extra fruit where you get to interview people and talk to. But left to your own devices, if what is the sort of non instrumental activities in your life that you can enjoy for the sake of just doing them? Delight. Delight is the term that Augustine uses and I think it's a Christian term through and through. Like God has given us certain gifts but also certain delights. Like what, what delights us?
And that is usually some form of play. Because sometimes people think of play as like, oh, I don't like games or I don't, I don't like basketball or I'm not athletic or I don't, I don't like to play video games or something like that, but play. You can have a playful attitude towards anything.
You can have a playful attitude towards your studies, you can have a playful attitude towards your work.
I think that it very quickly can become a competition or proving things if you don't watch out. But you can even have a playful attitude towards church.
I think youth ministry can be. Is usually really powerful if you can have a space where there's delight and humor that's in the context of God's love and grace. Like that's very potent and very increasingly countercultural.
So yeah, I don't think it comes naturally, but I think that we've all experienced times when we play has happened and it's not a side hustle, it's not some sort of new thing we can master. It's something we do just because we enjoy doing it and that it feels like grace to a world that, that is increasingly come to view to evaluate actions and time through the lens of productivity.
Like what would. What if you were wasting time by doing something that was unproductive? Like. Well, the best parts of childhood are usually not the productive parts. They're usually the silly stuff. They're the play, they're the sleepovers, they're the. All the things that don't find their way onto a resume or in a college transcription, a transcript.
I don't know. Those are some of my thoughts about it because I'm very caught up in this Subject, because I've got kids who are at 14, 12, and 8, and I want to continue to cultivate what delights them.
Of course, as a parent, I have to balance that with the stuff that they just have to do.
But if they adopt my mindset of this productivity debt that you start every day in, that's. That's a slave. That's kind of like a slavery type of way of looking at the world and.
Sorry, that's. That's. That's in enslaved. What is. What I mean to say, like, you were just. You were only your to do list or your to done list. I don't know what. How people want to talk about it, but I. I think that's not a great way to live, and it's certainly not a very gracious way to live.
[01:05:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Like I said, my kids have helped.
Have helped me with that quite a bit.
[01:05:51] Speaker B: Your dog, I wonder if your dog has.
[01:05:52] Speaker A: Oh, love to play.
That's what I will tell my husband all the time. I tease him. I'm like, you love that beagle so much. And he's like, she's great. She's playful. That's what he says. She's playful. She wakes up, I think, with a. With a play deficit. I think she feels like. Like the first thing she does is like, go for the ball. We're like, Delilah, like, you literally just got up. You haven't even had breakfast yet. And she, like, finds it and she wants to know where it is because she just wants someone to throw it, you know, My kids have recently taken up, like, this Mario Kart habit. In the afternoons or in the evenings.
My husband and I will take the dogs for a walk and come back, and we can hear them outside playing Mario Kart inside. And that brings me joy, actually, just hearing their delight and play.
I just love it so much. I just love it so much.
[01:06:42] Speaker B: Mart has that effect for some reason. It's silly enough that it doesn't become a huge competition thing. People just have fun with it.
[01:06:49] Speaker A: No, it's inkblots and it's banana peels, and it's, you know, it's. It's all the things.
David, I'm so appreciative of our time together. I'm wondering if you would close us out with. With anything that. Any kind of final thoughts that you might want to offer to listeners who.
Who kind of like Amy Poehler's guests were seeking. Seeking relief from fill in the blank. Probably a lot of blanks. And we have ways that we're doing that, but Just to us understanding that it said that this search is a universal and daily one.
So anyway, so wide open, anything that you might want to, that you might want to leave us with as we close this conversation out.
[01:07:38] Speaker B: What a wonderful question.
I would say to folks that if your faith isn't a source of relief to you, to look again, to look a little closer. Because we can turn even our religious, our spiritual lives into productivity things.
We can turn them away from forgiveness and grace. I think that the wellspring of delight in God is the understanding of how God delights in us and God has forgiven us and God shows us grace even when we least deserve it. So my prayer for this book is not that it's just a book, it's full of words and I hopefully that there's some potency to them. But. But I think God is the one who brings to bear grace in our lives and that that can be sustaining and exciting and inspiring.
So I really, I think when we lose the grace aspect of our faith, faith turns into a burden and it can sometimes even become a weapon. But when the grace of God is at the center, which I think is Jesus Christ, I see it as a wellspring of love and service and hope and mercy in a world that is worn out. So I have kind of some global hopes for this book. I mean, I really do want it to be something.
I want the book not only to minister relief, I want it to look like relief even in the physical form that it takes.
But I think Polar's question is a good one. Where do you find relief? And how does that relate to God and knowing that God is in the business of bringing relief, even to those who've gotten it wrong, who've gone about relief the wrong way. I don't want this to become a new law or a new ladder where I'm just not doing. I'm not even doing my Christianity right, I'm not doing my spiritual life right. I think that the great good news at the heart of the Christian faith is that even when we get it wrong, especially when we do, God shows up. And God doesn't show up with a wagging finger, but with, you know, delight, forgiveness, love, favor, all of those things. I really want to. Not to leave people with a note of challenge or questioning, but with the, the beautiful and sustaining good news of the gospel, which is that even you, even, even you. And even in that situation where you feel that God is as is no longer present, that is the place where God yearns to be to show you super abundant grace.
[01:10:46] Speaker A: Amen. Thank you so much David.
Again, the book my looking at my torn up copy right here courtesy of Delilah. The Beagle Book is the Big the Urgency of Grace for a Worn Out World. And I will have a link for where folks can grab a copy of that in the Show Notes. Again, thanks so much David for being with me.
[01:11:06] Speaker B: Thanks so much for having me, Alex. I appreciate it.
[01:11:10] 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 Buscetti. Be sure to give us a review on itunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app. You can also Visit
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