#133-B: Debriefing Lisa Sharon Harper on race, monarchy & forgiveness

Just in time for Christmas comes a wild ride of a B-Side. Looking back at our interview with Lisa Sharon Harper, Tryphena and I reflected on themes of forgiveness and reparations, the gift of tongues as Indigenous celebration, how the monarcy dehumanizes people, the emotional impact on Europeans of that dehumanization, the myth of an American Christian nation and more. We were both deeply impacted by Lisa’s book Fortune and so we sounded off, big time.

For maximum impact, make sure you listen to the source episode, #133: How race broke the world (with Lisa Sharon Harper)

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Transcription

Jonathan Puddle  00:00

Hey friends, welcome back to another Puddcast B-Side. Hey, Try.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  00:03

Hey, Jonathan.

Jonathan Puddle  00:05

So we, we had we were like, "Hey, let's do this B-Side right after, Lisa, after we spoke with Lisa and then we were both kind of like, Nope, this can't happen... this." We, we're like, shredded, on the inside. And then we tried again. And we try to anyway, here we are. Here we finally are.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  00:28

We actually logged into the Zoom call last time, we...

Jonathan Puddle  00:31

We fully logged in and it just wasn't the right thing to do that day.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  00:36

No, no.

Jonathan Puddle  00:39

I, I don't know if I've ever been more nervous for an interview than interviewing Lisa. Like early in my podcast career, I would just get nervous because it was new, and I would get the jitters. But then I just got really comfortable with just who I am and what I do.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  00:53

What made you...

Jonathan Puddle  00:54

OK, well, this is the problem. Because it's like white-man nervousness. This is the same thing that I ran into with Christina Cleveland, where... And Christina had called it out on her her social like that week, where it's like, "White people are nervous to have conversations, because the high stakes for them is that they're going to use the wrong language and make some micro aggressions and other things and feel stupid." Feeling stupid, and not large and in charge is the high stakes loss that white people rock up to these conversations with. Meanwhile, people of color are trying to not be murdered.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  01:38

Mhmmm.

Jonathan Puddle  01:40

And so even as I feel nervous, I've got this in the back of my head going okay. What are you used to? In your social spaces? And how did that happen? And what and and what was the cost to other people over 500 years, for you to feel large and in charge and large and in charge by default. It's also a masculine issue, right? It's not just a race issue. I remember once sitting in a meeting with two male colleagues who were both director-level and a female colleague, who was kind of like a lower tier on the ladder of nonsense. And, and she, she was the subject matter expert. And we went round and round for like, probably 35 minutes before she could get her voice in.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  02:39

Wow.

Jonathan Puddle  02:40

And we all felt so bad, because the guys, we were not like, we were not a-holes. We were just having fun being bulldog men in in a brainstormy-negotiating context. And so we're shooting each other down, we're going back and forth, where all this kind of high energy, male talk. And I think I don't know, I think it changed me, it changed me forever. I felt so ashamed of not having created a more welcoming space for her in that. And that was probably five years ago, that I've tried to pay attention to who's not speaking in the room, like you right now.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  03:25

[laughs] Like, I think it's interesting, we're hearing your heart behind it, because we kind of debriefed a little bit in the days leading up to the interview of just how intense it felt in both of our bodies. One, reading her book Fortune, is so powerful, but absolutely ripped us both wide open. But then also just the obvious of we came about it from different places, right? As a white male or as a woman of color. But even as a woman of color. I'm a brown woman of color, I'm an Indian woman of color, that's different than being a black woman of color. Right, and just being aware of the weight that that carries and how all of us are coming in from different positions of privilege. So yeah, it was heavy going into it. And also, between you and I being newer in our podcasting journey together, of figuring out okay, so how do we do this together as a white male and a woman of color, and we've talked about this before, where like, this plays out in messy ways in my own marriage, and we're like, because I'm married to a lovely white man, man. And it's it's messy, right? Going this in spaces where you have other races present. And not everything said is really flattering. We were laughing. So Jonathan and I shared the same copy of the book to read. And so I read it first and he was making fun... well, not making fun, making loving fun... it was a note that if I underlined it, you didn't underline it because you were underlining different things, different things in the books were speaking to us.

Jonathan Puddle  05:09

That was just so fascinating to me. It never even crossed my mind. Well, first of all, I, I often read books highlighted by a friend of mine, because he lends me books, and I love his highlighting method. It's so fascinating. And so as soon as I picked up the copy that when you gave it back, I was like, oh, cool, I'll get to see how Tryphena highlights and, and like, it'd be fascinating to see the insight into her mind.

Jonathan Puddle  05:31

And it was confusing to me. She's laughing very hard, and it's pulled her face away from the microphone. It was so fascinating. Like, we fully just underlined the different... even like you underlined one, the sentences at one end of a paragraph, and I underlined the ones at the other end... pretty consistently all throughout the book. But again, that makes sense to me. Like because there's things that like she she is obviously inhabiting her space, writing to people with similar experiences to her. But she's also writing to a wide public and white audience, like she's written this book for a great many different audiences.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  05:31

[laughs]

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  06:21

Yeah.

Jonathan Puddle  06:22

And you and I are turning up with multiple different audiences in ourselves.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  06:29

It was, yeah, it was just a fascinating entry point. And then we had to have the conversations of realizing... you and I have had, like nauseating, like many conversations about race, not nauseating, but just ad-nauseam. And so I didn't think this would be a big deal, because I'm like, okay, like, one of my good friends, like, we've talked about all the things, you know, most of my life experiences, I know most yours... like, you know, we're good. And then I personally in my body began to spiral and like, I'm having this conversation with a white male present, who, and you were like being honest about your nerves going into it. And I'm like, Okay, so, and I'm making this up in my head. I'm like, now I'm worried about his fragility, like what has happened? And I'm like, Oh, my goodness, I messaged Jonathan. I'm like, This can't be like... like, what... What are we talking about? Like, Well, Jonathan can't be talking the whole time. But also, I can't be the one talking because you didn't just bring me in as like your token person of color, like, co-host. And I'm like, I spiiiiraled. But,

Jonathan Puddle  07:30

but most of that, I think you didn't spell that explicitly. I kind of heard you say all of that but I think what you said was like, "I am wrestling with doing this with a white man." But you but I was like, Yeah, okay, like I get I I understand what's being unsaid, I think.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  07:46

But it was good. All that to say, okay, so how was the actual interview for us?

Jonathan Puddle  07:51

So Lisa rocks up and preaches the gospel.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  07:53

Oh, my goodness.

Jonathan Puddle  07:56

I was shook.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  07:58

Yeah.

Jonathan Puddle  08:02

Yeah, I was, I was so moved. I felt like such an honor. I felt like I was so fumbly. And I, you know, I felt this, like, I felt this need to give dignity and honor in some way, not knowing how to do that. Or if it would even be received, if that's even appropriate. If, you know, if that was centering my discomfort? And but I felt like she was so gracious. And so not needing to impress anybody. And so just sharing the truth of fire, and air and water and love and life and like what this earth needs to be repaired. And I mean, it's lots of different things have stuck with me. One of the one of the biggest things I think, is when she gets into the forgiveness piece.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  08:59

Yeah.

Jonathan Puddle  09:00

You know, wisely wisely, contextualizing that with the entire story first. But basically saying in terms of reparations, those who have been oppressed cannot look to the oppressor to make them whole again.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  09:19

Yeah.

Jonathan Puddle  09:21

That's not to say that the oppressor doesn't have a role in truth-telling and make obviously truth telling and making things right and coming humbly and saying what can we do to make this right but like, that's a separate thing. Like that was so helpful for me to have that spelled out in like, razor-sharp precision, you know, as, as an offender. This is what you do, to make right your sins. As someone who is a victim of oppression, this is what we do, you do, to get free of the poison of this. And so there's talk about forgiveness, there's talk about reconciliation, there's talk about reparations, there's talk about all these things in the right proper places. And again, the part that really just struck home for me. I suppose because it's a principle that lifts beyond race because I don't feel racially oppressed. That's not been my part of the story. But that that piece that we cannot, no one can look to their abuser, their oppressor, the wrongdoer to make them whole again. We can demand justice, we can expect that person to do their work. But only God can heal, and make whole and return what was lost. And that that was very powerful to me. I'm sure some people could hear that could hear me saying that still, "Oh great. Sounds like he's glad to just be let off the hook." I don't think that's where I'm coming from.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  11:07

No.

Jonathan Puddle  11:07

I mean, I'm just thinking through my own interpersonal relationships and thinking, you know, I've sat in unforgiveness over with people, because I want what was lost what was taken for me to be restored. And I've had to learn that I can't turn to the one who took it to give it back. I can only turn to God.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  11:24

Yeah.

Jonathan Puddle  11:25

But and I've learned that because Lisa told it to me. So that was a big learning point for me, in addition to all the race history, that was, like you said, truly, hard. In my body, to read page after page after page.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  11:46

Yeah, it was. It was like drinking from a firehose, right. Like I felt and I think you and I had made the decision in advance of just like, we want to free her up to just talk as much as possible. And she did. And I'm so grateful for it, because hearing her articulate some of the thoughts out loud, versus just having read them, was so healing and mind blowing to listen to. But yeah, the part about forgiveness what I took away from it, because like, I thought her conversation about reparations was so timely especially as like we're, you know, globally having this conversation about the monarchy and all of that. But even just in our own country, in terms of Indigenous lives, and our land, what that looks like. But what I loved about... what I personally needed to hear from her, was the emphasis she had on agency. I have agency for my healing and for my wholeness, and I don't need you. So you can go now.

Jonathan Puddle  12:45

That's right.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  12:46

And I was like, Oh, it actually is really empowering. Part of the conversation I've been having with different girlfriends, just even right now around the whole #ChurchToo movement. And as we hear of pastor and pastor, you know, scandal and scandal breaking of sexual and spiritual abuse and ritual abuse within the church, is we end up in the space of being very victim minded. And like, absolutely, you were victimized, like your power in so many ways were stripped and so much garbage and shit has happened to you. But we often stay in that place of "Woe is me." versus actually and like, in some ways that's actually so dehumanizing to women as often happened to women are not delegitimizing men who have been abused. Where it then becomes all "Women don't have power," because it's been stripped from you. But actually, no, like, the act of forgiveness is reclaiming your agency and your power that yeah, really hard, horrible shit has happened, but that's not going to define you. And you have a God like she said it like I have a God who's gonna move heaven and earth and democracy, for me. But I don't need it from you. Because even like even when she spoke about reparations, with the American church, right? As the American church really became the cornerstone for the marketplace for, for so many slaves from Africa, she's like, even if you gave back like, she, I don't remember the number she had thrown out. But it was peanuts, right? For each life. It's like, each person is getting like $5 back or something like ridiculous like that. And like you can't actually pay back people the harm that's happened to them.

Jonathan Puddle  14:31

Exactly.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  14:32

Right? So that was really like the agency part was really powerful to me. And then even she continued, she talked about the Lord's Prayer. About "Our Father" being actually a call for justice and just like almost like a battle cry. Which just again reminded me the power of why we need to be hearing and learning theology from different people groups, from different genders, from people who've walked different lives than ours. Because how often have I heard that and it's been taught as like, a lullaby. As like a comforting like, you know, story where or prayer with no historical context.

Jonathan Puddle  15:18

Almost every time she turned to scripture in that book and told a story, it was completely different than the way I'd ever heard it told.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  15:29

Yeah.

Jonathan Puddle  15:29

I was like, I haven't heard the gospel, until I've heard it from you.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  15:32

Yeah.

Jonathan Puddle  15:33

I have not opened the Bible until you opened it to me. So yes, 100%.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  15:38

That's exactly it. Like she did you remember that? Like, the comment she made about the gift of tongues.

Jonathan Puddle  15:44

The gift of tongues, they're the first thing Spirit does is grant everyone their indigenous languages in the context of empire where there's one language. And gives everybody else the ability to, like people the ability to understand.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  15:55

Yeah, yeah, she's like, she's like, Acts 2 shows us what happens when God's reign is unleashed on Earth: tongues are loose, and colonized people forced to speak one common trade language, suddenly speak each other's Indigenous language, and they understand each other.

Jonathan Puddle  16:10

I was floored.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  16:12

I can just sit there for years and never and like, not fully unpack what like the level of weight of what you just said.

Jonathan Puddle  16:20

I have heard so many sermons... I have been in the charismatic church for the last 23 years and have never once heard someone point out that these were Indigenous languages.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  16:40

Yes! That was really healing to me, there was something really powerful about that. Because we've always talked about... not always, but I've heard the gifts of gift of tongues being spoken as like a it's a manifestation of the Spirit on your life, if like, if you are so blessed. If there is enough favor on your life, right? But just even as a second generation immigrant, like so much of my indigenous language, like my mother tongue has been lost. Because I don't speak it as much I was, I would come home from school. And it wasn't cool to speak it anymore. Right? Now I'm married in a relationship where the other person doesn't speak it. So it's just, you lose it. And so there's been so much assimilation that's happened for the sake of fitting in versus like, actually, no, what the Spirit is doing... when the Spirit like has freedom to move is actually calling like that back out of you. Is calling your authentic original heart back. I don't know, I'm I don't know if I'm articulating that in the way that it's in my head.

Jonathan Puddle  17:51

Sounds beautiful.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  17:52

But I've been wrestling a lot lately. This is a little bit of a tangent. This is I guess this is what the B-side is right? Is how often we in our evangelical faith, have created everything to be a testimony, right? Like everything goes from point A to point B, this is who I was before Christ, and this is who I am now. And so even like on a really like superficial level, like Tryphena in high school was super ratchet and talked a lot of shit and hung out with only boys and all these things. So when Jesus came in her life, look at how healed up she got. And now, you know, she's more like she's quote unquote, more put together. She's more white, is what happened. Right? Like, I learned how to play in the white evangelical world and how I mean, like, yes, there was healing and why okay, why did Tryphena not have friends that were girls? Like there was healing that needed to happen. But I'm realizing now in my 30s, I'm like, Oh, so much of like, I'm returning to the high school Tryphena a little bit, because so much of that creating of a testimony was losing who I am authentically who I was created to be, and kind of putting on that mask so I fit into this evangelical bubble. Anyway. So that's like, that is my tangent, but just realizing, like I just found what she said about like the Spirit... when the Spirit's unleashed, it's actually calling you back to that original place of creation, felt really beautiful. It also changes. Like, how does that change your perspective on the Tower of Babel?

Jonathan Puddle  19:22

Interesting. I've certainly, I've certainly heard those linked many times in exegesis, right? Where God supposedly, you know, the story that we have is that God scattered the people and confused their languages to prevent them building a tower to heaven. That part at the end, it all begins to fall apart because I'm like, Okay, this makes no kinds of no kind of sense. Like we're told talking about ziggurats right? That that are pretty cool to see today 8000 years later, but they're not going to reach the heavens, as if God has even physically, like, geo-located upwards. I don't I don't know. Really what to do with that. I need Lisa to come and teach me. You know whe need, we need we... you know who we need? We need Wil Gafney. We need Wil Gafney to come and teach us, this. If you don't know Wil Gafney, oh she gonna change your life. She is one of the foremost womanist Bible scholars.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  20:43

OK.

Jonathan Puddle  20:45

Wil, I think it's short for a Wilda.

Jonathan Puddle  20:50

We've indirected a little bit on Twitter. Friends, if you've got an in with Wil Gafney, I would love to bring her to the show and teach us. But yeah, yeah, I have been thinking about this. Return to indigenous as well. Even even as a white person trying to figure out you know, what, when when Propaganda was on the show, we were talking a little bit about some of this. Like, why is it that white people adopted this superiority idea? Anybody else could have adopted that. But it was us.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  20:50

Gafney.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  21:29

Yeah.

Jonathan Puddle  21:31

I had said to Prop, you know, why, how? It's like, how did we get empire? So how do we get stuck into this empirical way of thinking? In Europe. And I thought that was quite interesting that Lisa basically draws a straight line from the Roman Empire to the British Empire. And I mean, the other the other European empires also, but certainly the British Empire was the, the Empire to beat. And what, and what have I lost in that? And what have my people lost in that? And one of the things that she pointed out, was this, this deadening of emotion, this killing of emotion that Europeans did to themselves in order to continue subjugating people. You know, what it costs the human soul to, to opress someone else to the horrific degrees that people were oppressed, murdered, raped, systematically. And she talked about this, I forget the term I highlighted it, but basically this idea of, of like, shutting off your emotions.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  22:42

Yeah.

Jonathan Puddle  22:43

And I was so so, hit by that, like, hit in my belly, like, punched in the guts when I read that, because so much of my story has been trying to be an emotional person in a-nonemotional... with a non emotional upbringing. Growing up in a white English influenced, stiff upper lip, stoic, masculine patriarchal culture. You know, I think somebody could do an analysis of maybe stoicism not not in the whole philosophy of stoicism, but just like even in the sense of the emotional hardness, the coldness, the hardening of the heart, that has been normal in so many European cultures. And then and then, like visibly not normal in many other cultures, right? Like, like, you can see this contrast. And it'd be fascinating to see at what point the hardening of the human heart became normal within any one people group. And what then happened as a result of that.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  23:58

Yeah.

Jonathan Puddle  23:59

So that's just that's just me in my in my bit going well, what does it mean for me to where are the Britons and the Anglo Saxons and all the different people that I'm descended from? What What? What was their original blessing that they laid down, over the course of generations to try and be God and rule over the human race?

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  24:25

Yeah. That's good.

Jonathan Puddle  24:28

I have no idea.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  24:29

And then how... oh sorry, go on.

Jonathan Puddle  24:31

No, no.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  24:35

I love that cause I love that she talked about how there was loss on both sides, right. And I think it's true any homogenous culture, we're missing out on the beauty that other cultures can bring. And when you are constantly when you are having to oppress another people group, which we don't believe we are created innately to do, then you are dying to part of yourself. And I'm curious to even when you go into stoicism, how that plays into our faith. Because in the white evangelical world, like how often are we taught, like not to listen to our heart, and our emotions are of the devil? And all of that, right, like, it's why we're so hell bent on like apologetics and like, you know, just like we need to have everything to have a nice, neat bow. We've, we've lost our ability to have mystery and have unknown. And to sit with that. Dave Connis, we're interviewing him in a little bit, but he just did a prayer recently. Oh, my goodness, I apologize. I can't remember the name of the woman he wrote it with. And he wrote it for children with an illustration and it was all about like, "God, I'm sitting in my sadness. And it's okay for me to just to be sad right now." And how often as Christians, do we not want to be honest about our emotions, let alone bring them to God? Let alone just actually want to sit in them.

Jonathan Puddle  26:00

Yes. But like, the outward display of passionate emotion was literally one of the signs that white conquerors used. "Oh, look at these savages..."

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  26:17

uncivilized people...

Jonathan Puddle  26:18

"Look how uncivilized they are." You know, even if we just roll a couple of 100, 100 years back in British culture, it's like oh, to be earnest about something is like the most offensively uncontrolled flaw in the human soul. To care. To have a passion. It fills me with anger because that's all of my stuff... and all of the stuff that I've been working with but...

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  26:50

But it still plays out right? Like you and I are both technically stay at home parents and how much garbage is there about that? Because you've chosen to put a child's emotional... I don't and I'm not saying people who are not stay at home parents don't put their children's emotional health at the forefront. But even just that, right? It's like, oh, well, you're earnest about your children. You're passionate about your children. And it's like, oh, like, how sad is that? You're missing out on... anyways, that's a whole... we got lot of tangents today. We're not gonna go there. Let's...

Jonathan Puddle  27:18

We're gonna park that one.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  27:20

Yeah, let's put that on the parking lot.

Jonathan Puddle  27:21

For Tryphena to go and do her work. Privately. [laughs] Okay, the thing about like, basically, again, I know I'm talking about all this from from the oppressor perspective because that's me. And that's my ancestry. This whole thing about like, being God, like that, again, hit me, right between the eyes. Where she's like, you've got a culture that that determined they got to choose who lived on land. And what human was and what human wasn't? What can we say about someone with that authority, but they think that they are God? And I'm like, yes, that feels accurate.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  28:04

Yeah.

Jonathan Puddle  28:05

And then what if what happens with okay, I'm gonna go here.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  28:11

Go.

Jonathan Puddle  28:12

What happens with monarchy?

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  28:14

Haha!

Jonathan Puddle  28:14

Because I, I have real compassion for anyone who's feeling their own pain, and their own turmoil. Maybe because they love them in the context of you loved the monarchy, in England, or you love it still. Loved the Queen. That's fine. Your human sense of pain and confusion around that is whatever, fine. I respect it. I respect people who are... Tryphena is saying no. She's whispering "Nope." I respect when people are in pain, I have empathy and compassion for their pain. However, I don't think it is healthy for a human being to act or be put into a role where I mean, okay, what are the claims of monarchy? Divine right? Representatives of God?

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  29:18

They're the head of the church...

Jonathan Puddle  29:19

I mean, that's particularly in England, it's not always the same everywhere, but often the head of the church and I've, I It's all made sense to me. It's I've had no beef with it. And it's all made sense to me. And, you know, the, the spiritual circles I've rolled in, are very interested in seeing Jesus as King and His Royal beauty and authority. And it's all about the Kingdom of God coming down to this earth. And, and then I'm like, But what about the Monarchy and like, yeah, that's just a picture to remind us of this.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  29:54

Nuh-uh.

Jonathan Puddle  29:55

And I'm like, that, that worked for me before, but it's not working anymore. I'm like, no, no, this is now reminding me that it cannot be a human. This is reminding me.... this is doing the exact opposite of what you're saying it's meant to do. It doesn't work. It doesn't, it results in the poison that kills people. People die. Millions of people die.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  30:22

Millions of people die. Oh my goodness. So I struggle with the monarchy. So much. I struggle with the British monarchy, in particular, and this is from someone who, like, don't get me wrong. I woke up I watched the weddings at god forsaken hours. Like, I grew up in a home and a culture where as much as we were a very colonized people group we had so much love for the monarchy. I like remember sitting in my parents bed watching Diana's like funeral. Like there was so much awe and reverence and mourning around it. I just...

Jonathan Puddle  31:05

Is it because it's a fairy tale.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  31:07

It is. It's totally the fairy tale. Oh my goodness, I will be 100% honest. Okay, this is like, you want to know how like this is Tryphena's ratchetness right here? I've had a really rough couple of weeks. Last night I'm lying in bed. It's like 9:30 I'm like I'm done with the world. I put on like a Hallmark movie of like a prince meeting like a random. Like, why is this what my mind is going to? I so want to numb out with absolute garbage. Anyways. So listen, I'm all for the fairy tale, whatever. We were watching, we were watching part of the funeral of the Queen recently. Partially because I was like, the kids are going to talk about it at school, I want you to... like it's happening live right now. Let's watch it, let's have a conversation. And we're watching it. And we are, you know, they're enamored by like the crown that's sitting on top of the casket and the septer and all of that. And so I'm like, "Alright, guys, you want to you want to talk about that crown?" So we're going to systematically talk about every jewel on that crown, and what country it has been stolen from, and the millions and billions of dollars that have been ravaged from that country, and the concentration camps that have been built in nations all around the world under her rule still. So yes, like, okay, it's beautiful to like, we can celebrate the opulence and you know, the jewels and the figurehead and okay, it can represent a beautiful fairy tale. But the other side of that fairy tale? Is death for people. And that's the part I really struggle with. Right? And we talk about this whole like, well, they're appointed by God, and they have this divine right... so what they have like a different level of Holy Spirit than the rest of us? Like, do we not say that we don't believe in a junior Holy Spirit, but yet we're saying that we're willing to say that somebody has closer access to God. Which then okay, so let's ask the question about our churches. Because do we not treat our lead pastors like monarchs in our lives who have like higher access to God? And okay, sorry, no, that's another thing that Tryphena needs to process on her own. But, yeah, I really struggle with the monarchy right now.

Jonathan Puddle  33:19

Yeah.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  33:19

And anyways. I feel like you're thinking something, Jonathan.

Jonathan Puddle  33:25

No, I'm... No, I'm with you 100%. I actually, I pulled up this quote, for something unrelated but it's it's fitting. From The Crown, the first season, when young Elizabeth is wrestling with, with her future, and she's talking to her grandmother. And Mary says, Queen Mary, says "Monarchy is God's sacred mission to grace and dignify the earth. To give ordinary people an ideal to strive towards, an example of nobility and duty to raise them in their wretched lives." And this is a sound like, Okay, so I've got 101 problems with all of that. Then she says, "Monarchy is a calling from God." Okay, so now... so many layers of bias. "This is why you are crowned in an abbey, not a government building. Why you are anointed, not appointed. It's an archbishop that puts the crown on your head, not a minister or public servant, which means that you are answerable to God in your duty, not the public." And it just, I feel like we've taken so many things, and woven them all together to make a really complicated knotty mess, right?

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  34:52

Yeah. Because shouldn't we all be accountable to God in everything that we do? But also, aren't we all representations of the image of God? So aren't we then also responsible to each other? Like...

Jonathan Puddle  35:03

Exactly. Like, like the way that we are responsible to God is responsible to one another.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  35:09

Exactly.

Jonathan Puddle  35:10

Right? Paul says "Love Your love your God. Love the Lord your God with you know the first." Good, okay, okay, hold on. The Old Testament commandments, right? We have all these and Jesus is tested by these people and he says Yeah Is this the first of the greatest one is to love your God with all your heart and mind and soul. The second one is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. Paul later says there is one commandment, to love your neighbor. I know I preached on this at your church. So I'm literally preaching to the choir, that Paul has figured out that the way we love and honor God is by loving and honoring our neighbors as ourselves. And it just feels like we've created all of these false dichotomies and pitch them all against one another and woven all these things together to justify all these kinds of things. To lift us out of our wretched lives, because heaven forbid, we got honest about our pain. Heaven forbid, we got honest and cried out to God for justice and mercy. Instead of human leaders, people we've appointed... church pastors. Yeah, we do like exactly the same thing. I've wrestled with this regarding the Pope, you know? I, I've benefited a lot from coming into Catholicism or a lot of Catholic stuff later in life. But I can't get behind this particular personification, role, authority... at all.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  36:50

And then just even the idea of like, okay, so to lift us up out of our wretched lives? Who determines whose life is wretched?

Jonathan Puddle  36:57

Mmhhm.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  36:58

Right. What is that? Like? I would beg to say that many of these quote unquote, uncivilized nations that existed before the monarchy came and lifted them out of their wretched lives, were actually doing a lot better. I think our lands were doing a lot better. So...

Jonathan Puddle  37:14

Categorically, right. Like, we know this. We know this from from First Nations farming practices in North America. This is not to say that everyone had everything figured out.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  37:27

No, no.

Jonathan Puddle  37:28

But there was a kind of thriving, a kind of equilibrium. I love Lisa brought that up about libraries and universities and the incredible sort of social wealth of numerous African nations that, you know, barely gets time of day in anyone's understanding of world history.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  37:58

Yeah. I was having a conversation with a friend recently about Christianity in India and how so often, it is viewed as this Western religion, right. But actually, it has been around for 1000s and 1000s of years. In India, if we look back in like the archives of history where did like we have stories of Holy Spirit falling in India way before like Azusa and all the things that happen?

Jonathan Puddle  38:26

That's awesome!

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  38:27

Right, like, you have stories of St. Thomas there. And I'm just like, how many things have happened, whether it was in parts of Africa, parts of Asia, where we have deminished what has already been happening spiritually, intellectually, all of that? Because it wasn't done in a white way, or didn't come from a white people group. One of the things I love that Lisa talked about was when she brought back Genesis 1:26, right? The whole let us make humankind in Our image, according to our likeness and let it let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air. And how for all of us, as humankind to have inherent dignity, there's that call and capacity of stewardship, like you're called to lead and have dominion over and not in some weird, like tyrannical monarchy ish ways... Sorry, I don't mean to call it weird. But what does it look like for us to actually kind of going back to agency, from the very beginning, this conversation, What's it look like to actually enable people to have agency and power over their own lives?

Jonathan Puddle  39:38

Mhmm, yes.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  39:40

Versus we're sitting around waiting for the monarchy or the white church or you know, someone to tell us how to do it better.

Jonathan Puddle  39:49

Totally. Totally. Yeah, I love what you're saying there too about the church. The history of Christianity... How about we just say, the history of God's work amongst humans.

Jonathan Puddle  39:49

Yeah, yeah. That's good.

Jonathan Puddle  40:11

Because, you know, there's such, ah, I'm just, you know, we go through deconstruction of our faith. And we have to work out what's really there. And then and part of that, and maybe preceding that, for some it depends, you know, is this decolonizing process as well, then of our faith. And over and over again, when I listen to Black Americans, not all but some of these particular prophetic voices like Lisa, I am, I'm, I'm reminded that America has never been a Christian nation. And I, I completely reject that premise anyway, and it's, it's such a flawed... The whole concept for logical argument is... but it's so pervasive. And it's exported over and over and over and over again, and then re-imported elsewhere in the world, and regurgitated and fed back... and then living in Europe, and the number of African refugees or Middle Eastern refugees, who would come to Finland or other European places as a stepping stone to get to America. And being Canadian, was this weird thing to be like... Yeah, just stay here in Finland, you guys, it's way better. But I wanted to read this. I think I think you saw, we might have talked about it. This thing from David Bentley Hart the other day, he just, he just went off on this podcast. But he said, "I honestly believe that America uniquely is the land where Christianity went to die. And that the proof that it died here is that it could be so easily supplanted by a completely different religion, also called Christianity, and yet no one noticed the absurdity of it."

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  42:25

Wow.

Jonathan Puddle  42:26

And he goes on to say, "Christians have always betrayed Christianity, and they've always misunderstood it." Okay. So fair point, like, this is this has happened in every kind of movement, that this to a degree, but what's happened in America is unique. "Christians have always assumed in a casual way that Christianity was meant to affirm whatever it was that we wanted to be validated." Okay, so Christianity turns out to be on a surface level, a really great tool for empires, and monarchies and so on and so forth. Right. It gives you all this great language that you can mess with. And he goes on, "But I don't think there's ever been another culture that could so sublimely corrupt, and so sublimely efface the original Gospel and replace it with something else... With a counterfeit that's not just a dissemblance but almost a polar opposite in the way that American religious culture did to Christianity. I don't know what else to say about America." He says, "We're the most religious country in the developed world, supposedly, but it's definitely not Christianity that forms our religious consciousness."

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  43:37

Wow. Wow.

Jonathan Puddle  43:42

And I couldn't agree more. Yeah,...

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  43:44

And I would...oh, sorry, go on.

Jonathan Puddle  43:45

No, no, go ahead.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  43:47

As I would even lump Canada in there. Like, I know, we have a different political climate. And we would argue that we are less of a Christian culture, but look at our national anthem, we still choose to invoke God's name in that right? Like, we still, I think we have we have this piety about us that's like, "Oh, we're not the States." But I look at a lot of the theological stuff we pump out and it's very similar...

Jonathan Puddle  44:07

The fact that we're not the States is fully the basis of our our value. That's a separate issue that Canadians need to explore.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  44:16

Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan Puddle  44:16

And it's gonna require embracing Indigenous peoples and Indigenous values to figure out what this land is for.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  44:24

What's interesting about America because America was so like, the little I know about their history, it was so hell bent on removing the monarchy and ensure like they're, they're not like, you know, they're not part of the Commonwealth. They are their own independent nation yet, in so many ways, have reestablished...

Jonathan Puddle  44:45

I mean, I think I think America and I know like most of my audience is American and so if, if some of you feel like we're both of us are really speaking out of turn here, please message us privately and let's have a conversation. But from my understanding of reading a lot lot of American history and a lot of Canadian history, there's this philosophical thing where America essentially just, the founders, and again, this is not ahhh, this is so interesting because it's not just any one person's fault. It's not one person's idea. It's it's kind of what happens, and then what doesn't get stopped. And it's like a momentum, you're wanna talk about the invisible hand of capitalism? This is the invisible hand that crushed all the people living on this land in the first place. And America was essentially steamrolled. And it was like a total erasure of where we came from, and who was here, and we are going to build something new. That didn't happen in Canada, Canada was settled by canoe. And there's a lot of trouble and a lot of pain in Canadian history that I'm not denying. But where America was essentially settled by the wheel, and the speed of a roaring machine, Canada was settled, kind of on horseback and on canoe in a way that changed... because because that's the that's the way this land had to be navigated. That is the the only way this land is lived is communally. Because it's, you know, it's cold, and it's wild. And, again, we come back to this point that the Indigenous folk here had figured out how to live in this land, and figured out how to share, how to trade, how to navigate waterways, how this land was meant to be lived on. And then we came and determined new ways. But in the United States, that erasure was more complete than anywhere else. And I think and Lisa also points us out in the book that, again, for white people, when you lose where it is you came from, all you're left with is just this myth of whiteness. That we all just sprung up, or have always been here, I guess it's more than truth, that we've always been here. "Of course, we don't come from anywhere. We're just the edifice of power." But then you're completely untethered from any kind of meaningful value system, and tradition, and your heart.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  47:29

Yeah. Which brings us back to just the death of our emotions and our soul in the process. It's so interesting, like, I love the history. I love learning the history of how our nations came to be, or just even how our theology came to be, because, like, nothing ever happens in a vacuum, right? And I can see how even when you talk about the States being created on like, the invention of the wheel, and you know, being steamrolled in so many ways, and Canada being settled by the canoe, you still see how that plays out in our countries in today, right? Like, even our own political climate, like we're still slow to make changes. And there's a beauty to that, there's a harm to that, right? Like, even if you look at in our churches, we're very slow to like, move things too quickly, versus the friends and the family that I have in the States. It's, it's like, well, no, we're just gonna, we're gonna, we have an idea. We're gonna move it, we're gonna move, right. And so you see how this, like this culture gets created, and it stays and it permeates in so many different ways.

Jonathan Puddle  48:32

So many thoughts.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  48:34

Yeah.

Jonathan Puddle  48:36

But I was, I was so thankful to connect with Lisa. I was so it was, it was quite a profound experience for me. And I was really grateful to share it with you.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  48:46

Thanks, Jonathan. And I you honestly, like it felt really humbling to be able to have the conversation and to hear her heart and her wisdom. And it also just gave me hope I'm like, Okay, so the three of us can sit and have this conversation from all of our different places in the world. You know, there's, there's beauty for the world we're building for our next generations.

Jonathan Puddle  49:09

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, so hope filled. That's true. Thank you for saying, so hope-filled. She embodies hope and life and joy.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  49:20

Yeah.

Jonathan Puddle  49:21

While, not holding anything back.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  49:24

No. And she talks about that, right? The trauma that exists in the black body. And just like even like the trauma that existed in fortunes, but like your her ancestors bodies and how she has to had to work through the trauma that lived in her body from the generations before her, just all of it. So to be able to walk through the hard content and the intensity on a daily basis, but to still embody joy? Yeah, like that, to me was just so powerful.

Jonathan Puddle  49:53

Yes, amen. Amen.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  49:57

Amen. Well, I'm I'm curious what all of our listeners have to say like, what their thoughts are on it, on the episode cuz she was just mind blowing so, you know.

Jonathan Puddle  50:07

Please tell us what you thought of Lisa, tell us what you thought of these meandering reflections.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  50:15

Yeah.J what spoke to you because I think it's gonna look so different from a for all of us.

Jonathan Puddle  50:20

Okay, the other thing that I had that was so moving to me was, do you remember when Brandt Jean's brother forgave the guy had killed him? It was like this video kind of went viral maybe four years ago, or three years ago. And and see all these people in my feed were so blessed. Like, look at this, this is amazing... forgiveness! And a lot of other people elsewhere in my progressive circles, especially my black circles, were like, we don't want to see any more Black people letting White people off the hook.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  50:59

Yeah, yeah. Okay. I do remember this. Yeah.

Jonathan Puddle  51:02

And it was like, oh, I was so confused. I had just again, it was such a again, I didn't know what it's like to live outside this body. And I just, I thought she carried such wisdom and dignity to explain the problem. When forgiveness is offered, to the oppressor, as some kind of gift. I mean, that's, that's the language I've been taught to forgive, "Give someone a gift they don't deserve."

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  51:32

Yeah.

Jonathan Puddle  51:33

Like, I'm gonna give my damn self a gift of freedom and dignity. And say goodbye, I'm having nothing to do with you anymore. And that's how I get free. I needed that. I was like, can you if you could just explain all things to me. I feel like it'd be better. Lisa Sharon Harper, the legend.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  51:59

Oh my goodness. She's amazing. I mean, I've always loved her from afar, but now I'm like, oh my goodness. Forgiveness. Okay, but that doesn't it doesn't that even change just the way you live your life and the way you parent? Like this whole like will tell someone your sorry. And then like, Well, do you forgive them? Or do you not forgive them? Look, how many times did my kids like they're like "Well, I'm sorry. Well, I forgive you" like,

Jonathan Puddle  52:19

absolutely. I preached on this on Sunday. And I literally started with so we probably heard about forgiveness from here. Right? And it's literally our parents being like, go and forgive them, please. Mm hmm. Because the parent's just tired and wants the fighting to stop.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  52:36

100%

Jonathan Puddle  52:36

But, but this is completely not what forgiveness is.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  52:40

No.

Jonathan Puddle  52:42

So yes, that's a separate topic. But anyway, I was just I was so I was so thankful. I guess I've been following her for like four or five years as well. And I was just like, so blessed.

Tryphena Perumalla-Gagnon  52:51

Yeah, she was amazing.