#135: The necessity, perils and possibilities of deconstruction (with Brad Jersak)
The wonderfully wise and gentle Brad Jersak returns to the show, with a guest co-host! This special episode was recorded live when I was visiting Jonathan Martin recently, and we co-interviewed Brad about his latest book, Out of the Embers: Faith After the Great Deconstruction. We reflected on the historical precedence of faith deconstruction, observing that it is both a current move of God in our time as well as an ancient tradition of idol smashing. We discussed the harm we can do to others in our deconstruction journey, and how deconstruction can liberate from toxicity while also being incredibly painful and destabilizing. We talk about the importance of not replacing one form of fundamentalism with another, and moving from alienation to communion. Brad left us with a ton of practical tools on how you can connect with God and feel God’s love, right now, wherever and whoever you are.
Order Out of the Embers: Faith After the Great Deconstruction, by Bradley Jersak.
Learn more about Brad’s work at bradjersak.com
Follow Brad on Instagram and Twitter.
Register for my one-day You Are Enough seminars in Finland, May 6 & May 13 2023.
Grab my latest book, Mornings with God: Daily Bible Devotional for Men (good for women too)
Check out my trauma-informed 30-day devotional, You Are Enough: Learning to Love Yourself the Way God Loves You.
Support the show and my other work, at jonathanpuddle.com/support
Find every book or resource I’ve talked about recently on my Amazon storefront, in Canada, the United States or the United Kingdom.
Related Episodes
Transcription
Jonathan Puddle 00:09
Hey friends, welcome back to The Puddcast, with me, Jonathan Puddle. This is episode 135. Well, I have great news, good news and bad news. Start with the bad news: Tryphena is not with us this episode. The good news is that Jonathan Martin is here instead. That's kind of backwards, I helped Jonathan co-host his show; I was with my good friend, Jonathan Martin, end of last year, down in Indiana. And my visit overlapped a scheduled interview that he had with Brad Jersak, who many of you will know I'm a huge fan of his work. And he's really informed my theology and my life a lot. And so I had the great pleasure of co-hosting an episode of The Zeitcast, Jonathan's show, as we interviewed Brad. So we all agreed we had such a great time doing that together that we are co-airing that interview with Brad, you'll find it on The Zeitcast, and this episode right here on The Puddcast. So thrilled to make that happen. Now, Tryphena will be back with us, she's going to do a B-Side with me on this interview. So don't worry, you'll get to hear her insights and thoughts again, very soon. And the great news, I am starting some in person live events. I am launching my brand new You Are Enough one-day seminars in Finland in May of this year. So if you live in Helsinki or Jyväskylä, or anywhere near those or you live maybe elsewhere in Northern Europe and you just want to come on out, well, then you should do that. I am going to be teaching from my book and new material that is not in the book. I've been reflecting a lot on how trauma impacts our spiritual life. And how these bodies that we have won't allow us to get close to something that doesn't feel safe for us, even if that thing is God. Which is amazing, because God gave us these bodies; God values our safety, he values moving at our pace, and he is patient and kind and gentle. So I'll be teaching all that kind of stuff. And I would really love for you to consider coming out. You can find all the details at JonathanPuddle.com/seminar. I would love to see you there. All right, let's get into this interview with the one and only Dr. Bradley Jersak all about faith after the great deconstruction.
Jonathan Martin 02:41
I can't think of anybody who's theology has informed me more and in that really wonderful way, and this is not like that, you know, weird way when you're saying like your own theology is good or something. No it's that way, that it's, Brad's always the person that this sort of deepest, most intuitive experiences of God that you don't have language for. It's like you you write something, whatever you're talking about. It's like, oh, that that's it. That's it. That's the thing that I knew but didn't know how to put my finger on and couldn't have expressed. It's like you express with revelatory clarity. And so I really can't say enough about... beyond your friendship, just how much your work and your wisdom continue to impact my journey.
Bradley Jersak 03:28
Well, I don't even know what to say. Thank you. About that.
Jonathan Puddle 03:32
And I echo that exactly. That's, that's, that's the Brad Jersak experience for us, is oh, oh, that's what that's called.
Jonathan Martin 03:39
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 03:40
Huh. Okay, good. Okay, good.
Jonathan Martin 03:42
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 03:43
Now I can take a deep breath. And now I can now I can keep going. And
Bradley Jersak 03:48
I gotta get you to tell my wife this this.
Jonathan Puddle 03:52
Yes, yes. Well, mutually on that point...
Jonathan Martin 03:56
We'll happily write letters of recommendation.
Jonathan Puddle 04:00
And you do it with such humility, Brad. Like that's what I what I love is that you lay out this this audaciously beautiful truth that resonates with every part of my soul. And then you tack on something like "Or at least that's what makes sense to me." Like, Well, okay, then me too.
Jonathan Martin 04:17
It's also not to just because the goal of Brad is not to embarrass you, but one of the things I love well, you know, that's so true about Brad's voice being such a tender voice not just wise, but tender. One of the things I find most interesting and this has been true about the podcasts we've done because we've talked about big stuff, hell and judgment and atonement and you know, all the big ideas. I don't know anybody else, who I feel like is able to talk about these things that also of course, are deeply held beliefs of mine now, but where people are less defensive, it's like, you... I feel like Brad is the person who gets the shields down. Like anybody else who is like to say some of the things that we talk about, folks are gonna kind of like have dukes up, but with Brad, even if they're not even, they're not convinced, even if they're not sure it's like, especially with some experience of Jesus, then it's like, I kind of recognize that voice. I don't know what to do with this.
Jonathan Puddle 05:18
Yeah, and I think I mean, you know, we've been both been reading your, you know, your new book today. And I had a profound encounter with the Spirit. And part of the reason I think, right off the bat is you start this book, you know, without any "rah rah" cheerleading for deconstruction, quite the opposite. You know, you tell a devastating story about your life. And I mean, I saw myself in those pages, and I saw a lot of people I know in those pages, and the sacredness of like this is this can be a horror, this can be a devastating experience to have your faith foundation suddenly begin to crumble due to no action or fault of your own. And we can talk about this in so many different ways, as you lay out, right, like, we are going to come to a lot of different aspects of this as you do in the book. But to start with this very sacred, stable, before we say anything, let's talk about the trauma and the pain of it.
Jonathan Martin 06:21
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 06:22
And you didn't have to do that. I don't think but you did. And it's a beautiful place to start.
06:27
Why? Yeah, and I did need, I felt the need to. And it also, you know, part of it, you know, Jonathan comes from here too (the tall Jonathan), where there are aspects where it was through a fault of my own, you know, like my responses to the trauma around me caused trauma to others. And then I can't I have to lay awake at night, remembering those aspects and knowing that I've not, you know, that there's harm done in these journeys too, and that I'm complicit in that and it's like, but I would crawl in a hole and never say anything again. That would be safer. Except that I do feel an obligation to pay forward the mercy that was shown me. That's my only qualification, actually, is is that the people who came and walked with me were just so incredibly kind and and if I'll pay that forward until someone disqualifies me, I guess. But I did my best to disqualify me. So here we are.
Jonathan Martin 07:38
Well, it I love how you how you said that, Brad. I mean, because I think that's part of the for me is the power of this book is that the D word as you say, and, and I know we've had some conversations even in this space before, but about language, words that we use, I'm, of course, I'm with you, in terms of deconstruction has understandably at this point kind of become the catch-all word that people know generally what you mean when you say it. So like, I like how you both parse that and critique that a bit, but also like, okay, yeah, we're starting from this premise of this journey of deconstruction. But I feel like it's so important, the work that you're doing here, in terms of the conversations about deconstruction, so weirdly, can become detached in the sense of like, I don't know, we're like we're not being deconstructed. We're not taking ourselves apart. We're not like pulling those threads. So the way that you thread the needle, in terms of talking about your own experience, experiencing harm, feeling responsibility, like all that stuff, is part of what makes this so compelling, because it's like it's so strange to me sometimes—even though I do it, too—the way, we can kind of cut ourselves, like our deep selves, off from this conversation where like, it's like this very cerebral thing. So I love that, that the the book starts in a very rawly personal way.
Bradley Jersak 09:04
Yeah, there's... you know, you do have this, this spectrum, right. So I've been thinking about it that way. On one end of the spectrum, I did experience what we've called deconstruction and other things as liberation, as as enlightenment, as growing up, as maturity. So like, the good parts of it, I really get that and I talk to people who were like, Why are you so hard on deconstruction? This is the best thing that's ever happened to me. And I'm like, I know exactly what you mean. But I also know the other end of the spectrum, where I didn't choose it, I underwent it and others who are undergoing it don't need cheerleaders, they need someone to put an arm around them and show some empathy. Because, you know, the deconstructionist movement can sometimes be like a spotter in a gym saying "Yes, you can do it you can do it" and and meanwhile, there's the poor guy or woman is, is like actually, this is not a benchpress, this is a steamroller. And I don't know why I'm alive anymore. So, so I wanted... So you've got the two ends, right, you've got the liberation side, and then you've got the trauma side. And then we've also got the voluntary part where I'm purposely letting go of stuff. And we've got the involuntary part where it's just hitting me like, like a brick in the head. And then we've got these kind of two responses to it, where you've got the hand wringing pastors trying to herd their people back into the church, or through a door they're never going to return through. But on the other hand, then you've got the deconstructionists who are a bit too happy clappy for what I needed anyway. And, well, all of that to say it's complex, because we're complex. And real people need to be heard a story at a time. And even their story, like mine is going to include both angles, I think. Most people.
Jonathan Puddle 10:59
Okay, so this is also fascinating to me, because it's deeply personal. And I resonate with everything you just said. Very, very much so, right? There's parts that felt like I'd chosen it and parts that felt profoundly like I had not chosen. Brian [Zahnd] said to me on my show, last year, nobody wakes up in the morning and decides to have a crisis of faith.
Bradley Jersak 11:19
Right.
Jonathan Puddle 11:20
But, but you're also then teasing this out to a bigger thing, I think, because you're looking kind of across the whole landscape of Western faith, Western culture. You coined this term, The Great Deconstruction.
Bradley Jersak 11:33
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 11:35
Can you.. can you... what, why? And what are the factors that you're looking at? I agree with you. But I'm interested to see, to hear what that comes from...
Bradley Jersak 11:43
Yes.
Jonathan Puddle 11:43
Where that lands.
Bradley Jersak 11:44
Oh, that's a good question. So I guess there's a couple things going on there. Maybe the most obvious one is we do have these other eras where movements became so big, we called them great, right. So the Great Reformation, or the Great Awakening. I suppose we didn't call the enlightenment, the great enlightenment, but it was the same sort. And so this has now whatever is going on, it's now hit some kind of threshold, where I think it's fair to call it an era, fair to call it a movement, fair to call it a giant shift in and even though it's like, super complex, and there's a lot of voices and so on. It's a thing, put it that way. And then what I've tried to do is, at one time, maybe I would have said, "Look it. Deconstruction is specifically what Jacques Derrida was doing in the 60s. And that's not what we're doing. So..." and I'm like, what if I take the opposite approach and say, if we're talking about dismantling constructs, then that's a much bigger historical project that goes back to Moses and, and the Golden Calf, it goes back to Jesus and saying, You need to be born again. It goes to the early church fathers who said that there is a God... that the reality of God is beyond every construct of God, and that these constructs are idols that get in your way. Then I, you know, as you know, I think, yeah, from the enlightenment on we've got, we've got great critics of Christianity like Voltaire, and, and Nietzsche, but we've also got great critics within Christianity of Christendom, like Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky, and all of them are like these guides that we can read, like, Oh, these are the experts, who I employ for the book, because I think the biggest error we could make is doing this in a half assed way.
Jonathan Martin 13:57
Yeah.
Bradley Jersak 13:58
If you just sort of play with it, and it be, it gets left as a trendy new industry to write memes about, we're actually going to, you know, we're going to undermine where we need to get to. And part of that then, seeing this great deconstruction as, as the birth pains of something important means that deconstruction is a birth canal, and we must not get stuck in the birth canal. And we have to ask, where's this going? And if this were only like, stage two of a seven stage journey, I would want some experts to tell me about that who have the 30,000 foot view.
Jonathan Martin 14:44
Yeah.
Bradley Jersak 14:44
That's why I'm interested in in the Seven Sleepers in part two of my book because they had the big, they see the big picture in terms of like 200-year movements. And if we don't pause at least to be mindful of what they noticed then then our little trendy deconstruction can end up just being like a kite that cut it string and now got devoured by a tree—and that's it. And frankly, that's the people I meet a lot, you know. So I do know those who've been super liberated by letting go of toxic images of God. I'm part of, I hope I'm an agent of helping them do that. But I also am the one that gets the notes from like, DMs from the psych wards, saying, "I was a missionary, I was a pastor, I lost my church, I lost my family, I lost Jesus, I lost faith, and now I've even lost meaning. And I don't know what to do."
Jonathan Puddle 15:42
Yeah.
Bradley Jersak 15:42
I'm like, Well, you need to, you know, I don't know, have a living connection. How do I get that?
Jonathan Martin 15:47
Yeah.
Bradley Jersak 15:48
You mean, you never had that? Of course you have that. Well I don't... you know like, so there's so the language that gets used a lot is bereft. I'm bereft. And I'm like, Okay, well, I think I better not be your answer man here. But I can at least say, I'm hurting with you. And I will take this seriously, even if you're just being accused of being a backslider. Or if you're not a good testimony for the deconstruction movement, which is so incredibly evangelical in some ways. Still, you know.
Jonathan Martin 16:18
Indeed!
Jonathan Puddle 16:20
We've been talking about this all weekend, all week here.
Bradley Jersak 16:22
Really? Do tell. Let me hear it from your end.
Jonathan Puddle 16:26
I think we've agreed that much of our conversation here must remain private. [laughter] For all of our future careers. But there's this, there's this shift, where some some folks that have become vocal in this space, have just kind of it really seems swapped one one form of fundamentalism for another.
Bradley Jersak 16:46
Yes.
Jonathan Puddle 16:47
And, you know, and we hesitate to even acknowledge that or talk about it. You know, I was reading your words where you were Kierkegaard is is fearlessly skewering everybody.
Bradley Jersak 16:59
Yeah.
Jonathan Martin 16:59
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 17:00
And I'm like, I am not fearlessly skewering everybody. I am fearful of the things to say on the subject. Because it feels like if I don't, if I don't tow the right kind of public line about how great everything in deconstruction is, I get canceled, I get labeled in some way. But there but there seems to be a streak of unkindness, of nastiness, in some of this space, that you know that we're both sitting here going, "Well, that... well, that's not it."
Bradley Jersak 17:35
No, it's the same, it is the fundamentalist spirit still, isn't it? We you can go from right to left or conservative to progressive but if you're just... You know, one example was one of our Twitter friends, he had done a survey of 3000 Christians in both progressive and conservative churches. And he had laid out a in the survey, he presented a few lines from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew Five about loving your enemies, about forgiveness. And in the conservative churches, it was something like, I I'm quite sure I'm close on this, something like 72% of conservative said, "This sounds like you expect me to compromise with evil."
Jonathan Martin 18:24
Wow.
Bradley Jersak 18:25
The words of Jesus! And then the progressives were like, 76%, "This, this sounds like you're expecting me to be complicit with injustice."
Bradley Jersak 18:37
So these are active church-going Christians, who on a scale of three out of four, were wanted to retain some kind of retributive theology and practice. And so yeah, my experience is that you can go from out of, you know, just change sides without changing spirits. And that's, that's a huge problem. And if gee... and if the Red Letters are repulsive, then I don't... you know, maybe Christianity is done or something. Jesus isn't.
Jonathan Puddle 18:37
Wow.
Jonathan Martin 19:17
Well, the I have, incidentally I have heard a number of pastors expressly preach against the words of Jesus, expressly preach against the words of Jesus. So like, I've certainly kind of seen that. But I feel like, you know, in general Brad, I feel like part of the gift of this book, and I don't think I realized, I mean, again, in one in one, we were talking about it all the time, but I don't think I've heard anybody quite do this the way that you're doing it here. To be able to say deconstruction is not monolithic. The same thing is not happening to everybody everywhere. And there's all these strands to it. So on the one hand, or have there been cultural, a very culturally conditioned, oppressive rather than liberative kind of Christianity that some people are feeling and actually becoming set free from?
Bradley Jersak 20:11
Yes!
Jonathan Martin 20:11
Yes. Are some folks bitter and hurt and angry and kind of burning it down like, Sure. And there's just so many different shades, it's so helpful for me the way that then you just nuanced the deconstruction thing to where there's not this expectation that we're always talking about the same thing, because we're really, we're really not. And I don't think I realized just how much my soul was craving some nuance in this conversation.
Bradley Jersak 20:39
Yeah, I'm totally with you. It's, it's because like, on any given day, you know, even in my own heart, it's like, wow, I feel like, I feel like I'm a new man. And then the next day is like, I just feel like a pile of crap, you know? And it's, well, what's going on here? Right. And so, so to think that we could, like, define deconstruction as, like you called it a monolithic kind of thing is, and maybe the only solution to that really, is to say, let me... tell me your story. Tell me your story. And all... and I can listen with a non-judgmental ear.
Jonathan Martin 21:23
Yeah.
Bradley Jersak 21:25
Including like, to those who felt the need to leave I have a chapter on be-leavers with L E A V E R S where the only faithful move was to get out of dodge, you know. And, and I understand that, and I don't need them to be church members ever again, frankly. But I do want them to move from alienation to communion.
Jonathan Martin 21:47
Yes. Oh, that's so good. Yeah, it feels like Brad, it's what... And yet I feel like in on the continuum, it's like you're acknowledging all these different kinds of experiences, you talked about your own experience in such a vulnerable way. One of the things that I love so much about how you're able to do that is especially where there's a ton of, there's so much pain and trauma, what you're decidedly not saying in any way, which is something I do worry about a little bit when everything's like "how great deconstruction is" this idea that it's another predetermined, another kind of Calvinism that says like, "yeah, God ordained your pain and trauma, to teach you a lesson." Like, we don't want to do that.
Bradley Jersak 22:36
No!
Jonathan Martin 22:36
But I still think overall, like in the grand balance, I think, if I'm curious if you think this, this statement is fair. I still feel like while acknowledging all the complexities, you generally acknowledge a kind of movement, a kind of initiative of the Spirit in this deconstruction thing, where it's certainly much more a sense of, there is an invitation for people to come into a richer, fuller experience of God and being human, as opposed to some version of, "this is the great falling away, people have... are losing their minds or whatever." I feel like it just keeps calling... the book keeps calling us back to the Spirit's initiative in the midst of all these things, without saying that the Spirit is somehow directly causing all of these painful realities.
Bradley Jersak 23:23
Yeah, that's really good. Speaking, you know, now look who's nuanced, right? Well done, man. That was... because like, so. So just to echo back what I heard you say, it's like, so God is not about causing the trauma that we're experiencing. But he's in us, he's with us, through the trauma in a redemptive way that this is going somewhere if we'll go with him. And so that's why, you know, I, they wouldn't let me have three subtitles, but one of them that I wanted, was, was "The necessity, the perils and the possibilities of of deconstruction." So I see it as necessity is basically here's here are the facts of life. It's not like God is making it necessary. It's just life, the necessities of life include deconstructive / reconstructive.... I, let's use other words, for a moment. Let's say Richard Rohr, he would talk about the disorientation / reorientation, that's an that's just necessary in the same way, breathing and eating and taking a trip to the can is is necessary. It's, you don't, there's not an option. You have to go through this. You have to go through this, just as surely as you have to go through puberty or whatever, or death or death. But then, I'm also saying, yeah, and there's perils to that right. If you are listening to the wrong voices, if you are if you're getting... if your trauma is becoming your identity...
Jonathan Martin 25:01
Yeah.
Bradley Jersak 25:02
If your, if your journey is away from, is away from life and love and light, that's that's pretty perilous. That's bad. But where you're what you're saying is the Spirit's in this and that's what I would call the possibility or you've called the invitation which is even even a better word. I just wanted three peas because it's I'm an old Baptist. But yeah, the Spirit is what is so what is what is the Spirit inviting us to do? It's like the Spirit's like a midwife in this birthing process just saying like when to breathe, push, you know. And I connected that a lot with you know, Valarie Kaur's book, See No Stranger. She's this wonderful Sikh activist who is talking about a revolution of love. And she uses the same metaphor for you know, there, that the darkness, the darkness that we even experience in this and both personally and socially, because this isn't just an individual issue. She would say, with the darkness of maybe a womb and not a tomb. Or it could be either.
Jonathan Martin 26:11
Yeah.
Bradley Jersak 26:11
And let's, that's why I think we actually do need to write about it a bit is like, is do I have, if I have any agency in this?
Jonathan Martin 26:19
Yes.
Bradley Jersak 26:21
Then I would love to, I would love for it to be a womb that leads to new life. And it can be and I'm seeing it for a lot of people. So that's, that's a Holy Spirit move, in my opinion. That also means de... de... dethroning the way like let's say, white Christian nationalism. Or these, like false, false gods that are actually an embarrassment to faith, those have to come down. But a lot of people, they're just trying to get through the day.
Jonathan Martin 26:57
That's right. That's right. I'm wondering, in some ways, Brad, and this is this is a really open-ended question. One I really, I especially love being able to ask you because I feel like you've been such a wise guide through all these issues for me. Sometimes what I wonder is, even though deconstruction exists on a continuum and includes any and all kinds of experiences and ways of, you know, processing, like for any of us the ways we process, pain and trauma, some responses might be more healthy, some might be less healthy. Okay. But I wonder if in some ways, if overall, there is this sense of, there is a movement of the Spirit that is pushing us towards freedom, maybe in some really important ways. I do wonder if there's also the sense too, I think all the time about, you know, in John, the whole "perfect love casts out fear." But when so many of us have had a faith system that's so fear-based to the core, you take that out of us. And especially the further that goes, like we don't, I think a lot of times, we don't know how to run without that. Okay, so maybe I don't believe the way I used to about eternal conscious torment and some of these things, and that's a needed shift. But now why, why do I make decisions? Or how do I make decisions about how to love my neighbor or have any kind of boundaries in my life at all that might be healthy? I think a lot of us really are struggling with, okay, maybe I feel liberated from something, but not really having the resources to know what to do now,
Jonathan Puddle 28:40
I've heard these stories about the Welsh Revival, where all these all these rough men changed their ways. And since they were no longer cursing at their donkeys, the donkeys didn't understand what they're being asked to do anymore.
Jonathan Martin 28:56
Wow.
Bradley Jersak 28:56
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 28:58
And I feel that inside myself, at times, where I'm like, Oh, I don't feel I don't feel stricken with a sense of my own disgustingness as much as I used to. Certainly stricken by my capacity to hurt others. Yes, that... and I think I'm allowed to be honest about that.
Bradley Jersak 29:18
Yup, yup.
Jonathan Puddle 29:19
But without this driving mechanism of fear, you know, it's almost like it's almost like agoraphobia. Like, like, this field is too big and open.
Bradley Jersak 29:30
It's exactly that. It's spiritual agoraphobia. That's such a good analogy. Like what do I do with this open space? It's terrifying. Um, what comes to mind right away is a passage from Brothers Karamazov, that's called the Grand Inquisitor. And the other is Romans 6:1. So first of all, the Grand Inquisitor is a story, a short story within a big novel about how a Grand Inquisitor during the Spanish Inquisition finds out Jesus is in town and has healed a little girl. And so he arrests him, and he interrogates him. But the interrogation is really him just giving Jesus a lecture about how the freedom that Christ brought was... we can't handle it. And so the church had to take into its own hands saying yes to the three temptations of Satan in the wilderness.
Jonathan Puddle 30:27
Wow.
Bradley Jersak 30:28
And he accuses Jesus of giving us an unmanageable freedom. And so the church now has had to say, No, we're going to operate like the kingdoms of this world, and we are going to use control and fear because that's what the market demands.
Jonathan Martin 30:42
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 30:43
Wow.
Bradley Jersak 30:44
It's, it's, it's worth just reading that section. It even sells as its own short story, but it's unbelievable, because it is then a critique of the church, right? But it's also able to distinguish Jesus from the church. And it's, it's meant to to invite the church to repent of those things. But he does identify a very real problem. Dostoevsky is so good at this, he will take characters who are opposed to his own personal views and he will get he will present them not as strawmen, but the very strongest arguments. Well, then let's just shift to Romans 6:1. He, Paul, is Paul has been sharing this kind of grace. An agoraphobic level of grace in Christ that whatever Adam has done to screw us over Christ has undone. And but then his opponents are going to object and he, he tells us their objection, What shall we then just sin that grace may abound? Because they don't know what else to do right? Now, I'm free then I may as well just go do this and that. And I've heard pastors say that, it's like, if I didn't believe in eternal conscious torment, I would just go screw around, I would have affairs, I would do... and like, and they go through all the litany of hedonism that they, their heart's not been won! I'm like you, you. You mean, you need help to behave, to be a good person? Like even humanists are better than that. So, but we've been deep. And so Paul says, so I'm not going to present an answer now. But I think Paul does in Romans 6, and it has something to do with, look it, I'm not saying it's either live in terror, or anything goes. I'm saying the grace I'm talking about is fearless. But it involves identifying with the death and resurrection of Jesus, identifying with metamorphosis, identifying with that kenosis and theosis, which is like I'm, I'm crucifying the demands of my ego, and I am now surrendering my life and will to the care of this loving God who's leading me somewhere. So so we don't go from grace to anything goes, we go from, or fear to anything goes, we go from from fear to a, to a surrender to grace, that is about death and resurrection. And that's why I do think we need to double down on deconstruction, so we get all the way to death.
Jonathan Puddle 33:17
Wow.
Bradley Jersak 33:19
Yeah.
Jonathan Martin 33:21
That's so that's so powerful. I'm wondering Brad, this is one things I really... it's funny, I like the kind of thing that I've thought of this a number of times, like I'd love to ask you about but then having this conversation, even a couple of examples, that you use there, say like, and I thought this come up in a couple of different ways now. So like the, that notion of the person who would say which again, I get that, "If I didn't have eternal conscious torment to believe in, then I would do X, Y, and Z." So that's, that's still very, that's very much what's in you to do. It's what you want to do. But there's this external restraints on the reason you're not doing it. For me, somehow there's a link between something like that, or when we see people who are in a certain kind of fundamentalism, where they're insiders and outsiders, good guys and bad guys. Almost this, you know, childish, Western sort of white hats and black hats, like everybody, everything's just very binary, very black and white. Like, it's all like, just extremely rigid. People change their minds entirely, in terms of what they believe about God, what they believe about theology. And yet still, it's insiders and outsiders. We know that we're an us because we have a them, on down the line on down the line. I think this whole deconstruction conversation keeps making me just wonder just how little, what we ostensibly believe, what we think about God, what that has to do with like, with almost anything. It's like we're, we're discipled we're formed in these ways that are like in our bones. And I wonder if in some ways like where we shift on the continuum of how we think about God might not be as big as we thought, you know, when it maybe it's more like the the these habits, these practices, these ways that we live are much more determinative, and like the people that we really are. Does that make sense?
Bradley Jersak 35:18
Yeah, it does make sense. Yeah, what, where I'm like, what do we really believe?
Jonathan Martin 35:24
Yeah.
Bradley Jersak 35:25
Yeah. And how do I how do you know what I really believe? Well, it's not going to be a doctrinal statement I compose, which is another construct. It's going to be a way of being. And and not just doctrinal constructs, but ideological ones. And that's where I'm thinking about, let's say, what, what needs to be the one thing that needs to be deconstructed is the Left / Right spectrum itself. The whole spectrum is the world's system that depends on us/them.
Jonathan Martin 35:57
Yeah.
Bradley Jersak 35:58
And how do you? So here's the hard question, I think we need to spend some decades on: how do you transcend that spectrum but stay engaged?
Jonathan Puddle 36:07
Yup.
Jonathan Martin 36:07
Ooh.
Bradley Jersak 36:07
Right? Because I can just like say, Well, I'm not Left or Right, I'm Center. Well no, you're still on the spectrum, then.
Jonathan Martin 36:08
That's right.
Bradley Jersak 36:13
And now you've got a new one called, you know, the establishment versus the populace or what..., so okay, if I can exit that spectrum and deconstruct it, well, I am deconstructing it when I identify it as a... script of us/thems all the way across that requires an other.
Jonathan Martin 36:36
Yeah
Bradley Jersak 36:37
Who I can exclude. But if I can come off of that, that still begs the question, How will I do justice in this world? If I follow Jesus to do that, I am going to coincidentally look like someone on the left or right at any given moment. But it's only a coincidence.
Jonathan Puddle 36:56
Wow.
Bradley Jersak 36:57
Because sometimes Christ calls us to welcome strangers. And maybe the Left is better at that. Or sometimes Christ calls us to advocate for for a certain vulnerable group, and maybe the Right is doing that, somewhere, right? And, and you're, oh, you're on the right, you're on the left, and I'm like, Well, jeez, no it's not about that. I'm a follower of Jesus. But I... And I think what we're gonna have to do is just say, as long as I stay engaged, people will mistake me for someone on the spectrum. And they will... and when they do, they'll give me a script. And when I fail to follow their script, they will stab me in the back. And I see this all the time. Right? And it's like, that's just how it is. And I guess that's the cruciform life. That's picking up your cross. And following Jesus.
Jonathan Puddle 37:49
I'm thinking of you know, "The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and this is what you said," you know, John in the wilderness, you know, it's kind of like, you people aren't happy either way.
Bradley Jersak 37:59
Yeah, that's it. John, John came neither eating nor drinking and you said he had a demon, you know. Or whatever they said about him and not. It was the piper, right?
Jonathan Puddle 38:09
The... Yeah.
Jonathan Martin 38:12
Yes.
Bradley Jersak 38:12
And who's, yeah, I, that text we probably need to return there. Because we have concluded that, that, you know, my wife has led a congregation over nine months, a nine month process to becoming a fully affirming congregation. What she's found out is that, like, on the one hand, there are some who just were not happy about it. And then the other hand, there's others who will never be happy about it. So "Oh, I get it. It's never good enough. Is it?" Nope. So just as faithfully as they can, they've actually really walked beautifully as a congregation and made it about, if Jesus is the center and this is his table, whose he inviting? Everyone. Okay, let's do that. And so they I, they've, I would say, it sounds crass, but they've successfully become an affirming congregation without blowing the church up. But they did it, right, they did it through the gospel, rather than through ideology. And she's had to put some effort into ensuring that ideology doesn't co-opt the journey.
Jonathan Puddle 39:23
Wow.
Bradley Jersak 39:24
That's one example of that I can give you be like, let's say, she takes she says, this will take nine months for me to talk to everyone in the church about all their questions and concerns. And I'm going to take those nine months, and she did. But there were some who would be like, "Smash the patriarchy! We just need to tell people what to do." And she's like "Smash...? Telling people what to do *is* the patriarchy, whether you have a penis or breasts." You know? like that's...
Jonathan Puddle 39:53
Yes.
Bradley Jersak 39:54
And, and people got it. They did get it. They're like, Oh, okay, so we're not going to just continue doing a top down, my way or the highway, thing because *that's* the patriarchy. "Oh!"
Jonathan Martin 40:06
Yeah.
Bradley Jersak 40:06
So the means of getting there, they really were able to, to manage it. But boy that took soul strength on her behalf, I'm very proud of her and I'm proud of her church, because because they went for it. It was great.
Jonathan Puddle 40:20
What you just what you just said there, you know, in terms of Eden's process being gospel-centric and and resisting ideology. I think that's exactly what you just identified as this, how do we how do we do this faithful work without landing on these spectrums that you know, these left and right camps that that need to be deconstructed. Eden... and then you just said Eden went and talked to everybody.
Bradley Jersak 40:47
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 40:47
And that that is slow, intimate, communal work.
Jonathan Martin 40:50
Yeah.
Bradley Jersak 40:51
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 40:51
Do you think it can be done at scale? Or has to... does it have to be intimate and small?
Bradley Jersak 40:59
Ummm, well, this, this raises a question about like, does does a church have to be done, intimate and small, so that you don't get to a size that requires structures that are intrinsically problematic?
Jonathan Martin 41:14
Wow.
Bradley Jersak 41:14
So yeah, in her case, it looked like, and it was wild, because it was during COVID. So she would be outside on our deck, one person at a time, one couple at a time. And also, she wasn't trying to coerce or convince anything, she would say, "Just talk, tell me how you're feeling? What are your concerns? What are your questions?" And and she was like, brutal in terms of not reacting to them. And she said, almost all of them just talked themselves out of, out of like a problem. And she's like, and they're like, Oh, thank you so much. You've really helped me and all they did was work it through for themselves, but they needed a non-judgemental ear to hear. And it was it was pretty funny. Like, how little, how little she had to impose her will on anything. It was... cause imposing your will is the patriarchy. She has a nose for that. And it really helped, her name's Eden by the way, for those who don't know. So Eden Jersak. And her her friend, Sarah Pickering, they're co-pastors at a church called The Bridge. And yeah, so they did you know, I must say this probably spent several years just talking "open table," talking inclusion, but then it's when they asked her if she'd like to come on staff, she said, "Only if I can start this nine month process." They're like, unanimously went for it. And they may be lost one couple. But could you do that in a church of 1000? I don't know. Can you even have a church of 1000? Is that a church? Is that? I suppose it is... it's a kind of church.
Bradley Jersak 41:20
I think that's the question though. Like, I think you're absolutely right to say that, to ask that. Yeah.
Jonathan Martin 42:57
I'm so glad that you told that story. Because it's such a, it's such a concrete, real one. Real lives, real relationships in a community.
Bradley Jersak 43:09
Yep.
Jonathan Martin 43:10
It makes me think of a move I really appreciate in the book, when, you know, later in the book, the where you talk about Howard Thurman, kind of get into Black Church witness in that way, that feels so important to me for this... many reasons, but this is a lot of it. I think we have to own the ways—and incidentally, I still don't think these ideas were like wrong or unimportant. When I think about the certain a tradition that's informed me, maybe best embodied and very powerful. Through people like Stanley Hauerwas, that go down the line. But I think this notion of you know, the ways the Kingdom of God, the Kindom of God, the community of God, whatever language you want to use is very different from the structures of the world. Like all of that's, like so important. But I feel like exactly where it's important to tell the kinds of stories like you just did about Eden and the church, when we talk about Howard Thurman, we think about the Black Church in general in America—is that there is a real temptation to, you know, what you describe is kind of disengaging, like being above the fray. And in so many ways, I think for a lot of us in sort of various well, just all kinds of white evangelical ish, like, I've like, that's often the move. It's like, so maybe we move beyond, you know, fundamentalism, like we have known it, but then it becomes this sort of, like, well, we we've withdrawn from these things altogether. And it seems like we need those voices and that counter witness that, that calls it, you know, puts our feet to the fire. You know? Like, you know, you actually don't get to escape the world. You got to live in it in some way. Like what are you going to do with with all this new information, right?
Bradley Jersak 45:01
Yeah. I and that, I mean, you can't help but stay engaged if you're, if you're in that in the world of those that Jesus chose to hang out with, right? And I'll give you an example of this. When I was a young, I was a youth pastor. And we were part of something called Living & Faithful Evangelism, with the Mennonites. So I had a reputation of hanging out with the church growth people, the evangelical wing of the of the Mennonites, they didn't seem to realize I had bought into the nonviolent activism. They kind of didn't trust that, especially like, so the local folks from Mennonite Central Committee who I think are, may be among the best relief and development organizations in the world. They were worried about the my influence a little bit. So they're like, "We want you to come see what we're doing in Haiti and Jamaica." And I'm like, I would love to, I'm like, if I can take my wife and they're like, "Okay." So we go down to Haiti. And, and we ended up in a situation where a local MCC, a Haitian national, who worked as a community organizer with MCC, was was taken while we were there. And he was hogtied and beaten very badly. And they were intending to kill him on that night. So I went with our hosts and we had to stand outside the shack where this little police station where it was really... military. It was thugs who'd become the military, right? And they were gonna kill them. And we heard a rumor that you could, you could bribe them for maybe 200 bucks and get someone free. And they're like, "No, not in this case, we're gonna get drunk and kill him tonight." That's what like, they literally just told us that. And meanwhile they did permanent damage to his hearing and things like that. So I'm sitting there. And I'm like, I recognize then that when MCC in our conference was being accused of being political, and evangelical wing really was part of that, the accusers and they were saying MCC, you should just get on with the gospel and not get entangled politically. Well, here, I'm standing in front of the police station, and these guys have M16s, and had been trained in America, the School of the Americas, when it existed, and I just realized, you don't even have a choice. I can either abandon the man. Or I can stay here. Now, I don't want to sound like a hero in this, I was just along for the ride, and I was putting all my energy into not shitting myself. But the guy who was with me is saying you're going to stand before Jesus Christ someday, and you're going to have to give an account of today. And you're going to have to give an account to your children of what you do. And meanwhile, the guy is like shaking, and he's got his machine gun. And I'm like, I think we could get killed here. Well, it I mean, I suppose to some outsider that might have seen like "getting political." But engagement was either you turn from love, or you stay and get in a place of risk. And so that really cleared a lot up for me in a few minutes there. By the way, we just saw a series of miracles, in that case, where the guy was finally released.
Jonathan Martin 48:31
Wow.
Bradley Jersak 48:31
And part of the miracle was the guts of the people I was with. But anyway. So you know if I can just go retreat, then to my suburban home, and I ignore the homeless down in my city. Or if I turn off my responsibility to the immigrants, and the refugees who are coming in, and if I just don't get involved in what's happening in the world, then okay, I suppose I could do that. But to stay engaged, you will probably look political. And so guys like Howard Thurman would look political. I'm like, "No, no, that's the gospel!" That's not even an offshoot of the gospel. It's not all a corollary of the gospel. It's... following Jesus is is that kind of engagement. It is engagement. So.
Jonathan Puddle 49:26
Yeah, until our, until our kingdoms, are the Kingdom of our God, until our nations are the Kingdom of our God. It's only going to be a matter of time, right, until the gospel runs afoul of power structure.
Bradley Jersak 49:41
Yeah, it's inevitable. Yeah. So I do want to mention something, um, I am I'm struggling today to remember a name. It's this wonderful woman who she was part of our our conversation that I was at in New Orleans. And she's an elder elder, really an elder in the Black Church, just a wonderful woman and activist. I feel like her name is Lisa. And she said, she made this warning to me. And that just, I think it caused all of our hearts to to clench. Because she said, "If if in your deconstruction, you walk away from 'the church' as this nebulous thing because it's full of white nationalism, and it's bigoted, without investigating the life and gospel that's happening in the Black Church, then walking away is still an act of white nationalism."
Jonathan Martin 50:47
Yeah.
Bradley Jersak 50:47
I'm like ooh....
Jonathan Puddle 50:49
Wow.
Bradley Jersak 50:50
So to me, that was like super profound, and that's why I did ask Felicia Murrell to help me work out... because I'm like, if, when I think of Christianity, or the church in America, I do tend to think about it as this self disqualifying movement, that I have no time for anymore. And then she comes along and says, so I guess the Black Church doesn't exist eh? Whoops! I guess, I guess there's no good Christian leaders out there anymore. So I guess, I guess, Howard Thurman doesn't count. Does he? Or Beatrice King or whoever, right? And, like, Okay, that's a good point. And so I did start looking and that's what I'm talking about, Out of the Embers. I'm like, okay, something's burnt to the ground. But I see some live embers here. That could actually be the beginnings of a real faith movement. Nevermind everybody else. For me at least.
Jonathan Martin 51:44
I just wanted to affirm like, and I saw that the event of course, that's I love Phil Jeansonne and that church. And Lisa Sharon Harper, I think that was, right?
Bradley Jersak 51:49
Right! That's it. Lisa Sharon Harper.
Jonathan Martin 52:00
Yeah, like her her stuff... cause she has she has a riff in general that I found to be, and I feel like this can be abrasive for people who are used to thinking about deconstruction a certain way, but I think it's so helpful. This notion that "Hey, okay, if if the real Jesus, if the actual Jesus is, in-fact, a brown skinned man persecuted by the Empire, you are conceding to white nationalism, you're conceding to white supremacy that their version of Jesus is Jesus" You know, you say like, this is what Jesus says, and you walk away you're accepting their definition of who Jesus is and what Jesus did. I find that to be an incredibly devastating and haunting point. Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 52:44
We've just had, we've just recorded with Lisa for for my show, and it'll be up in a little bit, but I felt like I'd never even heard the Gospel before, until I heard it from from her.
Bradley Jersak 52:57
I know we're supposed to be promoting my book, but like, you, people gotta get her book, The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right. Does that doesn't sound like someone who's despaired of her faith, or walked away from Jesus. And so if we're going to talk deconstructionists there she is, she's deconstructing something.
Jonathan Martin 53:20
Yeah.
Bradley Jersak 53:21
And I'm just, I admire that so much. I I'm it's funny too, because up in Canada, we have the issue around the indigenous people right now. My daughter in-law is half Cree and we've had this terrible, you know, the residential school stuff. And while the church's involvement as agents of that genocide, inexcusable and they need to own it completely. There, there is a forgetfulness that the philosophy behind it was actually European progressivism.
Jonathan Puddle 54:05
That's right.
Bradley Jersak 54:06
Where the same people who said Christianity is superstitious and we need to behead them, and guillotines in Paris. That ideology is the same one that said, "These indigenous people are backward and superstitious. And we need to we need to rub their culture out in the name of progressivism." I'm looking at that and and so what happens then is you've got some people. Um, I feel I feel like there's two camps. One camp is is like, Jesus is a white, European, and bad so let's go burn the churches down. Meanwhile, these First Nations people are the ones who built the churches, and attend these churches because they identify Jesus with the brown Jesus of Galilee. And so that's an interesting dynamic that I cover at some point later in the book.
Jonathan Puddle 55:08
That truth telling, you know, that the church needs to do in terms of its complicity historically in these things. You know, there's room in that truth telling to say, "Oh, and also, this was Antichrist through and through from the beginning."
Bradley Jersak 55:24
Yes.
Jonathan Puddle 55:25
Not only did we do evil, we'd had no idea in whose name we thought we were doing it.
Bradley Jersak 55:32
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 55:33
Which is what kind of brings me back to, you know, when I watch even in the last, you know, five, six years, we've seen some of these kind of more celebrity type figures, worship leaders, well known Christians walking away from the faith. And, and I've listened and I sit down, listen to their stories, and the God that they describe wanting to nothing to do with. And I'm like, Yeah, you should have nothing to do with that God.
Bradley Jersak 55:56
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um, it's funny too, because, because then the actual God is, is very much alive and well, and at work. And there's light shining through and I'm so proud of my friends down at, you know, I'm part of a 12 step group now since 2009. And, you know, these guys are so fun, because they, you know, they, half of them are ex-Christians. Of the ex-Christians, half are ex-pastors. And a few of them maybe have hung on to their faith, but some are like, "Well, I'm an agnostic. Now I'm a heretic now. Pagan now." These are words they use.
Jonathan Martin 56:36
Yeah.
Bradley Jersak 56:37
And then in the midst of that, they're like, but we've, but I'm like, well, then tell me about your higher power. If he's not, you know, who you thought he was. And they're like, "Well, he's loving, caring, relational, responsive, forgiving." I'm like, Oh, I know that God, and they're like, and I don't know who or what he is anymore. But I know this: he's in me, and he's bigger than me. And he's here, and he's transforming us. Well talk about the humility of Jesus, if his J name has been so besmurched that people walk away from it, he's not walking away from them. And he's, he's quite fine to be known as the light, or love, or life. And, and I, I'm so impressed with him that these folks are like, "And you know what? When I act as if he's there, or she's there, or whatever it is there," you know, that's how they talk. "I'm being set free." So the liberation is still happening apart from their old construct, because they didn't rid of him, they got rid of a construct.
Jonathan Martin 57:42
That's so wonderful, Brad. It makes it all you know, it makes me, it makes me think about because I feel like this is such a careful distinction. And I love that, I love that you are walking that line even in how you describe that, you know, the language has shifted. But in reality, here are folks who very much are still in touch with a higher power of love and God's not offended, you know they still think that we get God's name wrong? That kind of thing. Something though I do feel like is that I've just been sitting with for a bit here and well, real quick story. A couple of weeks ago, I literally have never preached from this text before, I was preaching the lectionary texts.. and that's how it goes, I need to preach the Gospel text from the lectionary, so we'll see what happens. And it's the story of the, the persistent widow and the unjust judge. And one of as I'm thinking about that story, I'm thinking about you know in the last few years in Oklahoma. Being in community with Madeline Jones, Julius Jones' mom and Antoinette his sister, Julius has been on death row in Oklahoma for over 20 years. I was thinking about how much Madeline more than anybody I can think of embodies that spirit of the of the persistent widow. She's the one who kept knocking and knocking and knocking and it's so funny there's this texture in the story you know, the judge is afraid of, of the woman and it's something that there's a line word in Greek more literally almost be like, he's afraid she's gonna give him a black eye, like he's intimidated because she's so persistent. And in what I've seen in Madeline's life and over 20 years, like not giving into despair, continued like, something just kind of clicked in me this idea that to to despair, to relinquish hope altogether, sometimes I think, really is a kind of privilege, where people who really are on the underside of a thing, like for Madeline it would never be an option to give up hope for her son, it's just not something you can do. And I think sometimes, and not saying that away with any like any, you know, jaggedness or condemnation, but some of us maybe can forget that there is a kind of luxury to being able to say I just, I'm just done with everything. I'm done with hope, like indulge that kind of despair. Not everybody is able to do that.
Jonathan Puddle 1:00:02
Absolutely. Howard Thurman has has, I think, a quote on "I'm never surprised by evil. I'm a follower of Jesus." And it hit me. Because I am surprised by evil.
Jonathan Martin 1:00:12
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 1:00:12
And I thought what a privileged position. You know, I must have lived, to not... to be shocked and surprised when things go poorly. When injustice happens in the world. I was, I was deeply humbled.
Bradley Jersak 1:00:25
Yeah, I, that that's a reality where we can turn the channel, right? And some, I can forget about how hard it is to... if you're a person of colour who has to assess every pub you go into, as to whether you're safe. And I don't even have to think about that. And that, but that is it is what it is, you know, the reality is I can, I'll go to bed tonight and I don't have to think about things that people in war torn countries have to think about. But I just better not make any assumptions, you know, about being a good guy or something like that, or why you know, why I'm in this place of privilege. I do think that there's a sense in which that's what Philippians 2 is about, that were though he was, "Though being God, in nature, Christ," where we use the word kenosis, emptied Himself, I think it's sort of like he set aside privilege and...
Jonathan Puddle 1:01:36
Though fully aware of his social location...
Bradley Jersak 1:01:38
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 1:01:39
...Jesus set aside his privilege...
Bradley Jersak 1:01:42
Yes. And he takes the form of a servant. But when it says the form it it's not saying like, it's not a disguise. In fact, it's an unveiling of God as servant, but so formed out of being it's not just a mask that he's slumming it, to pretend to something. Actually, he's unveiling the very nature of God as...
Jonathan Puddle 1:02:04
He's not culturally appropriating the guise of a slave to prove a theological point.
Bradley Jersak 1:02:10
That's right. That's right. Yep.
Jonathan Martin 1:02:15
Brad I'm wondering if... I love that so much, the maybe in terms of just bringing a couple things full circle. And I feel like this is you know, as much as I love your, your theological work, your way of processing through these things, one of the places where I just, I feel like you eat, and that you do best, and I love that this happened so much through the book, which by the way, I felt very ridiculous to go straight into praising the book so much, and never actually say, the name of the book, is "Out of the Embers: Faith After the Great Deconstruction." That seems worth saying! Should have done that a long time ago. I'll be plugging this in all kind of different ways. But it's so important. But I love that throughout the book, where as yes, you're, you know, you're dealing with academic stuff, that philosophical stuff. Yeah, there's the the memoir element in terms of your own story. I love how all throughout the book, you're weaving in stories of people that you know, and conversations that are happening in real time where people who are all over this continuum of this Great Deconstruction conversation, how they're experiencing pain, loss, hope. I would love in whatever direction you want to go with this just for you to if you could tell us just a couple of stories right now that are especially pressing on you, in terms of real people who are in the thick of this, and how maybe they're connecting with God, maybe they're finding meaning, working their way through this, like, what are you seeing right now? And hearing through these stories, that's just really grabbing a hold of you?
Bradley Jersak 1:03:54
So do you mean from the book or outside of the book? What's your? Okay... Yeah, so, um, so one that I, you know, one that I mentioned in the book is, is this guy who had been... he was a Christian, I think he was a pastor, but he, in part, had, he was part of a multi-campus, kind of megachurch. And he had some profile in it, and I don't know why his deconstruction was so messy. And why, for him, it was a freefall, but he ended up in a pretty dire situation where... and one of the metaphors I use in the book is about like a mastectomy. My mom went through mastectomy. And so cancer had to go for him in terms of spiritual... his spiritual tradition was cancerous. But he lost so much meaning that he was bereft. And it was funny because in the midst of that, when he no longer believed in Jesus at all, he, he... from crisis care and suicidal ideations, he cried out to God, but the word that came out was "Jesus". And it shocked him that that's what came out of his mouth. And it reminded... Jonathan, you'll know this really well, it reminded me of the U2 song, "Jesus help us... it's a fucked up world." You know. And then, the moment he cried out to Jesus, he heard back, and what he heard was my name. And it's not because I'm an expert on any of this stuff. But I think God just knew that if that guy reached out to me that day, I wouldn't ignore it. Because I do ignore, like, I get too many inquiries, right? But that day, I didn't, you know, and so now he is on a pathway of like, what is it to have a living connection? How can I have this? How can I have this. And my godfather said, just start with empathy, and tell him, "You already have it. In fact, you called out to God and you used the name Jesus. And then you heard back from him, so you don't have to grope for living connection, it's you have identified it in your darkest place." And isn't that cool that he didn't have to get himself out to a place of light, in order to have an encounter with, with the living God. It's like in the abyss, that's where you... that's where he met him. Andd I connect that with this Russian proverb I love so much because I've messed with it. The Russian proverb is, "When when you think you've hit the bottom, you'll hear a knock from below." The way I've messed with it is I've said, and it's Jesus knocking. He will always be beneath us, undergirding us, even at the very, very bottom. And sometimes we just need to get to the very bottom.
Jonathan Martin 1:07:12
Yeah.
Bradley Jersak 1:07:13
So that'd be one example where I'm the guy who lost everything. And then out of the embers, an important word to me, this is inexplicable, it is inexplicable, how he got there, and how he is coming out of there. And also, that it's not magical. He didn't... this hasn't been tied off with a bow, this is going to be years of recovery, if he does. But there was God, so that was cool. That'd be one example. The other was the other example from the book that's precious to me is this, you know, this woman who contacted me, her and her husband were moving from the UK to to the Northeast. And she had very, very serious trauma. And she's just like, "Well, what do I do with this?" And meanwhile, I'm writing about liberation at that moment. And she starts pinging me on the phone. And I'm just like, Well, yeah, yeah, you know, this is trauma, you need to get a therapist. And so maybe when you get over to America, get a therapist, and she's like wouldn't drop it. And finally, I felt like God was speaking to me and said, "Would you, I want to touch her right now! Like, would you just tell her, turn to Jesus, tell him how you feel and see what he says." And then for the next few hours, she went into some kind of profound encounter with God where I mean, that involved like, the trauma was shaking out of her body. Now, I'm not, I would never say do that instead of trauma therapy, that got her to trauma therapy. But it was like a very real encounter of the living God. That's what I said earlier in the show. It's like, how do we facilitate a place where God is real to us? So for this guy who calls out to Jesus, when he didn't even mean to... for this woman who had a sudden encounter with, with in body trauma, just because like I impatiently told her to go ask Jesus. That's fascinating to me. I wish it wasn't so random. It doesn't even have to be. Maybe there are ways to orient ourselves towards that kind of mercy on purpose. You know, I'm always worried about making technologies though, that never goes well.
Jonathan Puddle 1:09:39
I mean, not to boil down the ocean, but I think this is the thing. God is either, God is either real and present, or isn't. And we've been talking about this again, the last couple of days. People are hungry and desperate for a genuine connection with with God, with the divine love, with the light, with Jesus.
Bradley Jersak 1:10:00
Yes.
Jonathan Puddle 1:10:02
I know you don't want to be overly prescriptive. And yes, it's personal. But if someone is listening, and they're just desperate, and they don't know what to do next, I mean, what would your... what would your few words of encouragement be, Brad?
Bradley Jersak 1:10:16
Um, yeah, so I'll do two layers. So the most immediate layer is I just go into that kind of listening prayer where I close my eyes. I picture his face. Maybe I'm constructing it, but I bring my cares there. And I say, "Jesus... part of me feels this way." And then as best you can be brutally honest, hear how I feel, even if it's like angry, or sad, or whatever. Psalm 6, Psalm 13, if you need words for it, those two songs will give you words. But if you know exactly what you're feeling, just tell him and then give him the benefit of responding. And it really is that simple. If God is real, and he's in you. If he says, "Cast all your cares on me, because I care for you. Call on me, and I will answer you." Then, my experience is that he does. Now, I can... So that's one layer. The other layer is just I know, we're not all wired exactly that way. So at one point in the book, I talk about, like, well, this needs to work for everyone. God will work with everyone if he's alive. And so I talk about the, you know, the way of the Via Activa. You know, that's the way of, if you meet God in in the act of life, of reaching out to the poor, you can meet him there. I meet him with the addict. I meet him with the homeless, I meet him with the disabled, all the time, easily. Easily! Because he said, so. Matthew 25, right. But there's also the Via Positiva, maybe you love to read and listen to podcasts and think about God and talk about. You do know! Tell... don't tell me what you've read about God. Tell me, I bet you if I pray with somebody... Not I bet you, I know this is the case. If I just ask God, would you remind them of a time when you they actually met you? I've never met someone who hasn't, you know. An atheist. I was in jail, and my twin sister died. And I, that's the first time I ever prayed. And I felt like she was there with me. I'm like, okay, there you go. Third, you know, Via Creativa, you know, and that is some people that they're not going to really access this kind of living connection, unless it's but then suddenly, through art, through knitting, for goodness sake, through whatever creative output works for you, you know, then do that, right? And then the Via Negativa, that's the way, the negative way. That is tell me what God isn't. God isn't angry. God isn't a mean father. God isn't a vengeful punitive judge. And then you what you're doing there is you're clearing the way. So these kinds of ways of orienting, I think, at least set us up for the possibility that he's there. And at some point, I think it's not on us. I think God, like I'll tell God, this, "This is not on us, this is on you."
Jonathan Martin 1:13:34
Yeah.
Bradley Jersak 1:13:34
So if you're real, I'll tell you what, you prove it. I'm not going to prove it. But here's what I'll bring to the table. I will watch for moments of grace. I have a fun one to tell you about. This is just very positive. I've been reading the Sikh scriptures, and they're beautiful, they're like Song of Solomon. They're about grace, that one glance of grace washes your sins away. That it's not about rituals and fasting and pilgrimages, it's about turning towards love. This is what's in their scriptures, right. So I'm buying something from my phone in the mall from a guy with a turban. And I started asking, like, "Do you have any services that are in English?" And like, no, no, we are singing our scriptures in our own language, and I'm like, "Ohhkay." And I said, because I've been reading translations, and I'm loving it. And he said, "Oh, what are you learning from your translations?" And, and I said, well, I was reading about how our soul is like a bride to God. And God's the husband. I love that. That's like, that's what I believe. And he's like, "Oh, you're giving me goosebumps." And I'm like, what happened there? Oh, we had an exchange of grace. So, when I'm talking about experiencing God, I'm hugely thinking about what's happening in my heart when I pray at night. When I feel God. If my wife talks about it 100 percent of her stories of encounters with God are in those engagements with other people. So that just... we've got something for introverts, we've got something for extroverts. God's everywhere. So so like, boy, that was a long answer, but like so. So if we will leave it to God, if we'll orient ourselves towards the light, if we'll be attentive for moments of grace. And if we let God do his thing, instead of prescribing how it has to look this, I think we'll see people making connections.
Jonathan Puddle 1:15:33
Amen.
Jonathan Martin 1:15:35
Amen. Brad it's so yeah, it's so... well, yet again, what an incredibly powerful conversation. I think the and it's such a gifting that you carry and I love because I think it... nothing here is prescriptive. There's not a one size fits all answer for anyone. But this nudge, to call out to God. This, this, this nudge that God will meet us where we are. And I feel like one of the, one of the gifts that you most carry is just helping people to step into those moments. It just feels right and appropriate, in whatever direction you want to go for this. And Jonathan I love so much that you specifically frame this is for people who are feeling... because I feel like it's so present that active disorientation, that sense of the whirlwind, I think we're all kind of in and out of. Brad, wherever you want to take this, I would just love it if you would take us into a moment of that kind of attentiveness, awareness, prayer connection, however you want to do it, but maybe like for those who are listening right now, just to take us in that kind of moment. Where maybe, to hear in that way, to see and that way to feel in that way could be could be possible.
Bradley Jersak 1:16:57
Yeah, for sure. I would love to do that. Um, I did a listening prayer exercise one time previously. I'm going to come at this one a little different. I'm gonna give you a quick backstory. A young woman came to a conference, it was a retreat we were doing. And she, the day she became a Christian, she was 14 years old, the day she became a Christian her her body fell apart into a kind of chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. That day. And she lost her entire youth to it. She was mostly bedridden from 14 years old to when I met her, she's about 21. And she was she was from Quebec. And she's like, I don't I don't even know what to do with this. And I'm like, I didn't know what to do with it either. So I said, but what I can do is, I can probably hold your hand and cry with you. And so let's just do that. And so this will be a two-part exercise. So the first part I want to this is what I did with her and for those who are hurting today. I'm going to pray Psalm 6, and you're welcome to pray it with me, but I'll do it for you if you want. And this is for people who are in a place of desolation. Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger. Or discipline me in your wrath, because that's kind of what I expect. Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am faint. Heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony. My soul is in deep anguish. How long, Lord? How long? Turn, Lord and deliver me. Save me because of your unfailing love. Among the dead no one proclaims your name. Who praises you from the grave? I am worn out from my groaning. All night long I flood my bed with weeping and I drench my coach with tears. My eyes grow weak with sorrow. They fail because of all my foes. Away from me, all you who do evil for the Lord has heard my weeping. The Lord has heard my cry for mercy. The Lord accepts my prayer. And all my enemies: depression, anxiety, panic, fear, shame, anguish. They will be overwhelmed. They will turn back and be put to shame. And now Psalm 13. How long Oh Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts? Day after day I have sorrow in my heart. How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me! Answer me, Lord. Give light to my eyes or I will sleep in death. And I may as well. And my enemy will say, "I have overcome them." My foes will rejoice that I fall. But you know what? I'm going to trust in your unfailing love. My heart is going to rejoice in your salvation. I will sing the Lord's praise. Because I bet, I just hope, maybe out of the ashes, you'll be good to me. Now the second part of our exercise, I just want you to, I want you to think about kind of kneeling, sitting, whatever, even in despondency or defeat at the foot of the Cross. And we look at the one who is the cross-shaped God. Who's the intersection of pure goodness and absolute affliction. We look to that one. And he says, "I know, I know. I really, I know. I know." And he didn't just suffer like us, he suffered what we suffered. He suffers, what we suffer directly. Because our affliction nails us to his heart there on the cross, and out of his wounds, Lord, I pray that healing love would flow into my brothers and sisters today. Anywhere they need it. Where they've experienced trauma, where they've experienced abandonment, where they've experienced accusation even in their, in their, in their deconstruction that they've they've fallen into alienation. Anybody like that, that needs your touch today. And we're going to do... this will be interesting, instead of him be hanging on the cross, the one with those wounded hands comes to you now. And I asked that he'd lay his wounded hands on your heart and on your wounds, and that he would draw out the toxins of spiritual abuse, of disillusionment, of disappointment with God. And of, of every foul thing that's associated with, that's been associated in misrepresenting Jesus to you. And that he would pour in healing light, into your heart, into your wounds, that he'd flush you fresh and clean, from head to toe, body, soul and spirit. And then maybe, maybe, just maybe you could fall into his arms for a big hug. And I'm gonna just leave people there in that hug. And maybe you, the others are feeling great today. But maybe you could do that vicariously for someone and hold their pain, and trust for them because they can't even look at it yet. That's good intercession. Get a hug from Jesus for them. Amen. Amen. Well, if God is alive at all, and answers any prayers, I think, I think those ones matter to him. And I'll trust that.
Jonathan Puddle 1:23:33
Amen. Ooof, I can tell you, Jonathan Martin, and I were very moist about the eyes. We were pretty much in tears at the end of that time with Brad. I really, as Jonathan and we said, can't recommend this book enough. Out of the Embers: Faith After the Great Deconstruction. You'll find it linked in the show notes. You'll find it in my Amazon store. amazon.com/shop/jonathanpuddle, you'll find it wherever you find good books. Bradley Jersak, Out of the Embers: Faith After the Great Deconstruction. Ooooh man. It's like where do you go from here? Well, I'll tell you practically, Tryphena and I will be back in a couple of weeks with a B-Side to this interview. So we're gonna go a level deeper, if we can. Also want to give a reminder about my seminars in Finland: if you live in Helsinki or Jyväskylä, or nearby, please consider joining me in May. The 6th of May Helsinki, the 13th of May Jyväskylä, and we will be practicing how to love ourselves, how to move towards ourselves in compassion, how to feel God's presence and His love and appropriate it for ourselves. This is not like working for our salvation or earning God's love. God's love is there. But trauma, as Brad touched on, can hold us back from experiencing the fullness of God's love. So join me in Finland. You can find out more on that at JonathanPuddle.com/seminar. It's also linked in the show notes, of course. And I want to give a shout-out to Sarah, and Marcus, and Rhonda, and Lena, who have all recently come on as patrons or changed their, increased their giving. I just want to give a huge shout-out to all of those, and to everybody else who supports me via Patreon. Thank you! Friends, if you want to underwrite this work, it means a lot to me. JonathanPuddle.com/support, you'll find a number of options there for ongoing support or for one-time gifts. And if you want to become a patron of the show, patreon.com/jonathanpuddle. Thank you so much for listening. Grace and peace to you.