Andy and Stef 5-14-25

I'm just going to record. Can you hear me still? Because I think I have a bad cord in my ear, so it's cutting in and out, but I don't care. As long as I can hear you. What did you say? That's right. That's all that matters. Well, look. People have heard enough of my shenanigans. Okay? All they have to do is go to my family's beds and they're like, Holly. You know what I mean? Yeah. Okay. I wanted to ask you, as a pastor, I'm just talking, just out loud, what one system or belief that you inherited, or at least grew up always believing or participating in, that you later realized needed to shift? What paradigm were you indoctrinated with, do you feel like? I don't know how to answer that. When you say, it's humming. I know. I don't think it's, I think it's probably one of the XLRs, but I've tried several. No, it's fine. I got it. You do? Okay. When, I can't help but think, like, when my, when you said. I knew it. Just hold it. Hold it for now. Take it out. When you say. Word. It's like an ice cream cone. Me too. I knew it. Okay. When you say. The only way I, when I hear system, I think family. Really? That's interesting. Okay. When I think of system, I think about, like, societal, our societal hierarchy, right? For example, we have government, then we have smaller municipalities, and whatnot. That's a system. Right. School, right? The way it operates, that's a system. That's an institution. And so, to me, like, the paradigms of belief and systems can sometimes go hand in hand, and sometimes they're separate, but, like, I'll give you an example of my, like, a belief I grew up with about free will. I always believed we had free will. I don't remember why I believed that, because it's not a core memory of how it was introduced to me, but it's definitely something that was innate that I believed, until I had an argument with a Calvinist about Romans 9, 6-24, and that created that crack in that belief. It doesn't mean that I don't still believe that we have free will, but the paradigm definitely was disrupted then, because I never questioned that belief, or never even realized that belief was even there, until it was challenged. And then, once it was challenged, I recognized that not only the belief was there as someone else told me that, versus I didn't believe that myself. You know what I mean? It wasn't organically my choice, but it just, it made me think about it. You know what I mean? So that's kind of what I mean. Okay. Like, something that you grew up, even, or believing about, like, Columbus, for example, is a good one. Knowing, you know, not realizing he's not the first settler and all that. Yeah, but the way that it was introduced was a belief that we never questioned, and we never began with it until otherwise challenged. Well, I mean, I'd say one regard, with regard to God, the first, I've been, I don't know, I want to say I've been very fortunate. I've grown up, even though I grew up in a massively messed up family early on, most everything else that I was part of was a supportive system. And even in my own family, my mom was the supportive rock, even though my dad was a mess, drunk, abusive, all the things you want to put to that. So, church, the church system, for me, was always one that felt very supportive, even when it wasn't great. So, it always had an undercurrent of love to it, even when it wasn't great. I'm getting to, the first time that I recall, the first thing that comes to mind is when I was older, not when I was younger, because when I was younger, exploring faith, exploring God, questioning it, looking at it, was all... Was that encouraged? It was encouraged. It's different than... I think it was probably, and I will give a lot of credit to the teachers I had, and then my youth director, who was very much that way, still is, still a good friend of mine, don't talk to her as much as I'd like, but she's awesome. I think she changed. So, it was very supportive. I know that's where I get my comfort level with people asking questions about their own faith and questioning even things that other people would think are like free will. Some just think, well, that's a given. You just don't even question it, and I'm like, well, why not? So, I grew up in that, even though... I guess I think family, when you say system, because it was such a mess. My family was such a mess, and had to work out of that. But the first time I was really challenged that I remember was later on when I went to seminary. And I went to, there was one guy in my class in seminary that, he was one of those that, you know, he was out to kind of peg everybody. He was wanting to, you know... Like psychoanalyzing everyone? Yeah, and just, well, I just want to know who's the real Christian. He was kind of like that. He would be upset, I think, if he knew I said that about him, maybe, but that's what he was doing. And so, he'd take you to lunch, and he's like, I just... Where are you at? And then he'd kind of come at conversations that way. I didn't know... Yeah, well, it was the first time I ever... I mean, I was so naive about all that stuff. I just was like, well, I'm just going to talk. I don't care. Yeah, let's go to lunch. It's great. Okay, let's go to the Crown and Anchors near the seminary. It's a burger place. And he's talking to me about what I believe, you know, and I talked around. He was talking about, basically, for him, what is, well, who goes to heaven? Which, well, there's a lot of... Was he a seminary professor? No, no, no, no. Oh, a student. Okay, okay, okay. He was a guy in my class. Got it. New to seminary development. Totally changes the way I'm processing this story. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it. Okay. No. No, the professors are not like... I was like, that's very inappropriate. No. I mean, he was basically kind of getting at that without getting... And I leaned towards... And I gave him... I started talking about it. I've never really had to, like, I don't know, defend, discuss in that way because it was always on this explorative side. Right. And so now I'm in this conversation and he says, oh, you're... And I gave him an answer. I don't even remember what I said. And he said, oh, you're a universalist. I was just about to say universalist. That's wild. That's so wild. I was about to say he's going to say you're a universalist. And I was... He said that. And in my head I was like, what the hell? What the hell is universalist? I didn't even know. I had never heard that word. I didn't even know what that is. Totally is. Yeah. I get that. And I said... I don't remember what I said. I said, I don't know. I think I... I mean, I was old enough and smart enough to say something like, dude, we're in our first year of seminary. Do you know what you are? I mean, I... You know. Maybe he did. Maybe he did. Maybe he did. Maybe he did. 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I did not stay away from some things that I was evidently supposed to stay away from, like the orthodoxy of putting the disciples on a pedestal. So, I preached a sermon once early on, and I'll do this still sometimes when we talk and how I preached. I used examples of the disciples, but did not put them in a good light, and that was very hard on some of the more orthodox people. You're not supposed to do that. These are Jesus' disciples. The orthodox place is that they are akin to Pope status or something like that, and here I am making them look like an idiot. I mean, I did kind of make them look like a bunch of rural country boys. I kind of think they were. They are. Well, yeah. They were illiterate and probably impoverished. I didn't know I did. I was just being me, but I hit on an underlying assumption that that's not true, and therefore a hypocritical thing to do, even though I still don't think it was. But Stacy, the associate pastor at the time, came in and talked to me about it and said, just so you know, you're pushing on some people. She even said, I don't have any problem with it. You just need to know because I'm your colleague, and we worked, of course, well together. How do you break a system? The other thing that comes to mind when that question comes up is, well, if you're added to a system, then you're breaking it at some level by simply being there. Well, to an extent, but you can absolutely become. I'm not going to go into government. Even then, but if you adapt, if you accept it as it is and you don't want it adjusted, don't adjust, don't change it, then you become part of it, but the system stays intact. No, you've got to be authentically yourself. You've got to be able to do that. But even still, some people, well, again, maybe that's not true. If they're authentically themselves, that still might create a rub, but I think there are some people that are very comfortable with certain systems, and it works for them. Even if I could demonstrate, like our nine-to-five workweek system, for example, right? It's colloquially accepted and understood that that's about the average of what most people are expected to do at the working class anyway, right? Middle or upper, it doesn't matter. That system is still not beneficial to most humans. It's more beneficial to males just because of the male's hormone system, right? Males have a 24-hour hormone cycle, so their energy predictability is more reliable, you know, day to day. Would you say that if all of the underlying things that need to be in place for that to work are there, then it works? And there was a period of time where that was true. That is not the day we live in now. Well, but if it still works, I think it's still a perception. If there's not discomfort to a level of... Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, because I think people can be comfortable and still not, it's not healthy, it's not safe for them, but they may not even notice because they're so used to it. It's like the lobster in a boiling water, right? Right. If the lobster's in the water before you turn the heat up, it may not notice that it's in a sticky situation until it's dire, right? Right. And a lot of systems where people are comfortable, but the word comfort, I think it gets misused because it's more comfortable or familiar than the unknown or the potential disruption that would actually launch them into introspection in the first place. And I think like with the Orthodox thing that you're talking about, it's so ironic to me because the humanity of even Jesus and the disciples is such an important part of the story, and to idolize them as essentially non-human kind of takes away the point. Yeah, but mostly the church historically has struggled with the human side of Jesus. I think we struggle with the human side of ourselves, and that's reflected in the way that we, because we are a reflection of the divine externally, and we mirror each other. And our subconscious belief about that gets played out in the way we create policy and create systems, and I think we have a hard time accepting our full humanity because it involves emotions of discomfort. And so we don't talk about it, and we require or request our leaders to not do that so that nobody has to feel their feelings, and yet we perpetuate harmful systems as a result, and we get stuck in a loop. Right. It's like the whole, like the thing I think about like with the work week thing. The whole assumption on it was leave it to be there. I remember the show, yeah. Or Father Knows Best. Yeah. And the only reason, and of course that's shining the patriarchal thing in a positive light, right? Father Knows Best. Right. And the wife is just cheery and there to just be happy with everybody, and the dad bears all the responsibility. And you get in trouble, well, wait till your father gets home and he'll take care of it. And all of those things were in place to perpetuate that until that no longer worked, until the cost of living got to be such that forced parents to start working to now. Now, both parents have to work two full-time jobs to afford what back in the day one parent could do working a full-time job and the other staying at home. Or like, I think of the, to think of just a disruption show, My Three Sons. You remember that one? I don't, I don't, I didn't watch it. I know what song it's on now. Well, I've never watched it. Yeah. Has it had a disruptive quality because where was the mom? Yeah, yeah. And what happened to the mom? Well, you kind of see that as, whoa, subtly, right? It was being subversive. I mean, he was being subversive with that show. No one knew it, which is why it was subversive. They were disrupting the system to the extent that they could. Is that true? Well, in a way, yeah. Well, in a way, I think that goes back to when we were talking about interpretation and how it's written for certain types of people, right? So, like in a modern day, if we're trying, like, or even for me, when I'm trying, when I'm trying to get a message that I know is going to be controversial, and I used to be terrible at this. You go back and look at my Facebook history. It's just a mess, okay? I was loud and wrong, okay? But I now know that if I have something to say that I think needs to be said or is important and something we should discuss but I know it's uncomfortable, and I know who my audience is and I know how they think or how they were raised to think, I will sometimes change the language or make it more poetic or put it in a more kind of vague way to where it's not as harsh like you were talking about. But it's subtle. It's not obvious what I'm trying to do, what I'm trying to get them to think about, but it's still getting them to think anyway. And I wonder if a lot of the poetic language in the Bible that is sometimes taken literally is really just a way to talk to those people in a way that it would resonate for them. But for us, reading it either literally or poetically, we're taking away difference because not just our culture and our context. Well, that's funny you bring that up. This is not what you were just saying. But when you say, if someone is reading, if it's clearly a poem in the Bible. Like psalms, right? Or a song or a poem. Yeah. If you're not, or even a hymn, the hymn in Philippians, it's clearly a hymn. And we're not reading. If someone asks me, do you read the Bible literally? My answer is yes. And I'm not saying I literally read the Bible. I read the Bible literally. And when it's a poem, it's a poem. Well, how do you determine between the two then? That's up to us. That's the challenge we have. We have to, that's why professors need jobs to do that work and help us with that. Spend the time on it, but we don't have time to. And that means that that changes over time, too. The Bible, I know we read it, and where we look at things isn't static. It's changing. But that right there is disruptive statement to a large swath of Christianity. It's a disruptive statement to say what I just said. Which is so crazy to me because I hear those same Christians typically, and I'm making a generalized statement, but a lot of the Christians that will have an issue with controversial topics either in service or online or just being talked about by any leader in a church because it's disruptive and uncomfortable, right? A lot of those same people will, I lost my train of thought. I have no idea where I was going with that. What did you say right before that? I'll get it. My statement about reading the Bible as discerning between what's poetry and what's not and what is a disruptive statement to a large swath of Christianity. That was the last thing I said. Okay, so when it comes to cherry picking and deciding on how those same interpretations, literal or non-literal, affect policy and how we treat other people as far as their rights are concerned, that's when we get into sticking points because the same people that will have an issue with talking about something controversial are the same ones that are usually taking those scriptures as literal and then not thinking about it again and not going to a professor or going to someone to discern it because might makes right, right? And I think that's what a sticking point sometimes gets when it comes to Jesus versus Yahweh or God. No matter whether you're a Holy Trinity, all three are separate believer or if you are, they're all one and the same but they're just distinctions. When you look at the character of Jesus as it's, I would still think, colloquially accepted amongst most Christians, the character of Jesus is often personified as someone very similar to a radical anti-establishment person that would talk about controversial things a lot, who would flip tables, who was not going along with just the status quo of what was happening at the time but still had a gentle nature but hung out with everyone that they said was controversial. And then we have a Yahweh character that, you know, Old Testament is a lot more dictator-like, right? You have that rules and regulations. And despite in the Gospels where the promise of Him coming to demolish the world, I'm stuttering over that, but you know when people will say, well, Jesus came and that's what made us not have to eat shellfish or worry about the shellfish issue in the Torah, right? Or in the old law. But then there's in Matthew, I did not come to uphold the law. Right, exactly. I didn't come to abolish the law, I came to uphold it. So then you're like, okay, well, does that mean the law still exists? And you have, you know, Paul's letters and how the law applies to, you know what I mean? So all of that interpretation is still coming from such a hypocritical lens for believers. And back to your question about how we disrupt those systems, because those are loops too, right? They're cognitive dissonance loops based on what we've been taught as authority and how we show up in society as a modern-day hierarchy and how that process helps us to look at Jesus as a human and Jesus as a community-type character, Jesus as someone who wasn't necessarily hierarchical in establishments and government and all of that stuff and would talk about these kinds of beautiful things versus the law and order side of, well, you can't question your maker, right? The Roman sign section, right? You can't question God. You shouldn't go ask these questions. Because that's very deeply ingrained in a lot of Christians' belief systems, even if they weren't indoctrinated. There's still a part that you don't question authority. And if God is the authority or if Jesus is the authority and Jesus would have welcomed the stranger, Jesus would have absolutely fed the kids in school and wouldn't have cut school lunches. Yeah, Jesus absolutely would have sat down and broke bread with a lesbian, right? But they don't necessarily see Yahweh as doing that. And I think there's some compartmentalization on a subconscious level how we struggle with those things because I feel like we see Jesus as such a different character than an authoritative God. And even in churches where they know that Jesus is still the Son of God but also Jesus is God, there's still that separation. And at the same time, we also personify God because we don't have any other way to imagine what a deity is other than a superhuman, right? But we still won't give even God or even Jesus human qualities, right? And then we demonize our own humanity even though we're human because if we would actually embrace our own humanity and our feelings and our emotions, we could move past them enough in this discomfort stuff to come together and do the stuff Jesus asked us to do, right? Yes. Yeah. Well, what I want to say is... Do you think that... Well, what I want to say is one of the reasons that there is... One of the reasons that there is this resistance to disruption is that the fear that, well, we need something that is corporately understood so that we can function. And the fear is that if there's disruption, we will have nothing that's corporately understood so we can function. Does that make sense? Yeah. Like for us to... There needs to be some underlying assumptions if I say to you, let's go to lunch. The underlying assumption is, well, we'll drive cars to get there or we'll carpool or we're... Yeah, it won't be the Four Seasons, like a billion dollar per person. Right. There's some assumptions around that. And if we didn't have those, then we couldn't go to lunch. I don't know if that's so right or not. No, no. Actually, I think... I'm trying to get at the fear. I think you're making a great... The fear is about... Well, I think the fear is the unknown in general sense. In general sense, yes. But I think we're seeing that actually right now in our society publicly because we're losing checks and balances and our assumptions of what is our... How do we operate under what's seeming to be coming lawlessness, right? And I mean that just in a general sense. That creates instability, destabilization. When you start to realize that none of us can really agree on a consensus of what's real and what's true and it can cause cognitive dissonance and your brain can kind of melt down. I mean, I went through that twice. It's very similar to when people go through kind of deconstruction of their own indoctrination. And that feeling alone is scary, but because it's so tied to identity, because we build... We base who we are a lot on what we've been taught and how we show up in society and how society responds to us. We don't often really resonate with who we really are because we're busy and distracted. And when you have to actually come face to face with yourself and your feelings about stuff, it's really uncomfortable. And we don't have practice as a society doing that. I mean, that's why mental health and all of that was so taboo. You couldn't even talk about the fact that you had a shrink, you know, 30 years ago. And men can't even talk about feelings without ridicule, right? Women are told that we're just too emotional and we are all feelings, but we're still shamed for feelings. Even though we are allowed, quote, to... We're still told that we're weak because of it or just, you know, super extra. Or every time I cry at a commercial, people roll their eyes like, come on, girl, get it together. But I'm a sensitive person and I'm authentic. But I think that's the hardest part is people are so afraid of their own emotions, which is their humanity. And when we don't talk about Jesus and the disciples as humans, because while he was divine and they have made no human errors, he was still a human that was in a body that experienced emotions because that's where the fear lies is because it's a physical sensation that feels so uncomfortable. We don't even spend time long enough to even identify what it is, let alone why we're feeling it. No, I know. So it gets dumped down and then it comes back up when these same topics get approached. Yeah. Because it just reminds us of how we feel and we don't know what to do with it. Well, and I would say that there's a lot of people have never done it. No, well, of course not. And the ones that are more willing are those that have had to do it and have seen what can come of that and are more willing. What I want to say is I feel like I'm a little more willing to, even though I have the same reactions and I get defensive at times, I'm more willing to look at it and go back and try to learn from that than many because I was forced to at a young age. Yeah. I think that's where a lot of empathy comes from. And I either had to do that or I was forced. It was either that or kill myself. There was no in-between. Well, and for the in-between is drugs and alcohol and a lot of people live in that space, right? Because that's the escape of the feeling of the feelings. So I think when you talk about the church, I think the assumption, I don't know, I want to say the assumption of the church that people have is I just want to come and be safe here. Well, it's privilege too, though, because just like you said, you were forced to. Had you not had a disruptive situation that would even provoke that, you might be in the same boat. You might still be, you know. Yeah. So let me qualify that. I would say for middle, upper middle class, even wealthy congregations, I just want to go and be safe and feel good. Well, and we all do, right? Those that are, for poor, for those in the poverty class that are in church, they want to go and take it to the man, which is why there's a lot of railing against in the cultures of those churches because that's what the group is wanting, means. I don't know if I'm making sense. Well, yeah. I mean, it's activism, right? Like, I could be in my job in a month if for a full month I preached that we are the oppressors and everyone come down front and confess that right now. And if you don't come down front and confess it right now, you can leave. I wouldn't last that long. No. That's a disruption that is way out of view. It is a disruption, but it's not opportunity. I don't believe that about people, so it's not like I would say that. I'm just giving an example. No, I get that. That's a weird example. No, no, no. It was. I apologize. I apologize. I apologize. I agree. I've been thinking about that a long time. Before we wrap up, how do you wrestle with, or maybe you don't, but I definitely wrestle with it all the time. But I understand it from a tax exempt. I know there's a lot of rules around that when it comes to politics and preaching about politics or taking a stance as a church, as a tax exempt organization, any direction on politics. I get that. But what I have a hard time understanding is how the church, as a Reformation tool to truth, right? I mean, to me, the church is supposed to be a community resource, an opportunity to bring people closer to truth and to love and to Christ, right? That's the little c church, right, the big group. And everything that is happening in what we label as politics is people's lives, right? Because politics, all that is, is the laws and systems that govern our lives. And there is a vast majority of people in any country that has a system of government, politics, that are affected negatively by the laws in place in the land, right? A lot of those people are people in communities, whether it's faith communities or not, with other people that aren't affected as much or at all, right? And I mean, even in our church, as an example, it's not super obvious who those people are, who are the outliers or not, because it's not overt. But there are people in mid-sized churches that are affected spiritually, relationally, and physically of their health by things that are constantly happening. And we are constantly talking about outside of the walls of this church amongst each other. How do we reconcile being the church and being Christ-centered and being loving and love as a verb sense if we can't talk about the things that are affecting the people we're supposed to serve? For example, as a Matthew 25 church, we are supposed to basically be witnessing and supporting those outliers that are often the ones affected by big decisions in societal municipalities, right? If we don't understand the plight of the people we are supposed to serve, then we could cause harm, right? It's like when you go to a homeless shelter and with all the best intentions, you bring, you know, mac and cheese and you bring meat, but the homeless people don't have a stove or milk or butter or refrigerator, right? Best of intentions, but also probably more harmful and wasteful of those materials, right? And I see that happening in our church and many churches that we have a huge resource and we have a platform and we have influence as we quote Christian church in a Christian majority, despite not agreeing at all on the same type of Christianity. It is still a privileged position as a group. And at the same time, there are people within our own communities that are deeply affected by the stuff that's happening every day outside our walls, and we are not supposed to be able to talk about it. I feel that that harms so much more than helps. How do you wrestle with that as not only as a leader of a church, but as an employee that has so many other things involved, not just your own livelihood, but the livelihood of other people? If you mess up and you cause a PR crisis for the church, what does that do for everyone? How do you wrestle with that? That's a big question. My bad. It's really simple. You avoid it like everyone else, right? Stuff it down. Don't think about it. I've done it. How do you think Jesus wrestled? Actually, that's a better question because you might not have the answer, but how do you think, because we know he flipped tables, right? Jesus is interesting. How did he handle that? The flip table deal is used a lot, and it's not that it shouldn't be used as an example. It's really the only example I can actually remember. It's the only one where he really loses it. Yeah. I mean, he kind of loses it with his disciples at times, but those conversations are contextual, so it's hard to know how upset he really was, but he was clearly upset with the flipping tables. I don't want to necessarily downplay it, but I think it would be more of an example if he flipped tables every week and the gospels had him flipping tables everywhere he went. It was one time where he lost his cool because the tables were always there. It's not like that stuff wasn't happening. I almost take that story as the day Jesus lost his cool instead of taking that and then generalizing it across a wide swath of, you see, Jesus was against the entire institution. Well, he wasn't, and he was. I mean, he was a very smart disruptor. He was not dumb, which is why people couldn't get a finger on him. Even the Romans, when it came out, they said, we see he's done no wrong, and they still said crucify him. I mean, it was just as interesting. God, there's a whole lot to that. What happened after he lost it? Jesus in the story, what comes next. Well, did he ever acknowledge... I don't remember. He didn't. It went on. I mean, it didn't address it further. But I find a lot of things fascinating about Jesus's ministry. One is he didn't have much to say about the Roman government that was the oppressor. They were the big dog in the room everywhere they went, and his people were being oppressed. And he didn't have a whole lot to say about it. I don't take that to mean that, therefore, we should have nothing to do with government. But he didn't. When he got a set of leaders, it was the religious leaders of his own people. That's who he was talking about. And that's who he was kind of pushing on. And yet he wasn't against... I mean, he taught in the temple. I mean, he was not disassociated from... Well, he knew he was in a system that was not something you could just... It's like how I feel all the time. The system's too big for just me to override the system. I know in order for me to navigate through a system not built for me at all, I have to accept that I'm still a part of the system, and I have to work with it before I can at least try and come up with a system that is better than it to get out of and transition to, right? I have to at least work with what I've got and slowly find ways out of it. But that's the answer to the question you asked. I mean, I think churches are the same way. They work with what they have, and they do what they can in the places that they have influence. And knowing... I wrestle with it all the time. I mean, of course I do. I look out at a church where we are not unanimous in agreement as to whether our government is doing right or wrong for us. But that's obvious. I get that. Well, see, I'm not even fascinated by it. It totally makes sense to me. Well, it makes sense to me, but what fascinates me about it is that how... So I'm trying to answer your question, but it's a struggle question for me. Because I look out at that and I say, so what does that mean for what... What is Jesus doing with us? That's my question, I guess. It's not answering your question, but... But that's the question I ask, which is not... So I don't ask. Maybe I just don't ask it. But I think it's... What makes sense to me is why people would agree or think everything's okay or don't see as much of the issues. It's kind of like how I've seen a conversation online a lot lately, especially with divorce rates rising and single women choosing to be single. I see this conversation happening among men usually, but women too, about how grandmas weren't getting divorced, grandmas weren't trying to work. And I'm like, no, no, no. Why do you think we had the women's liberation? It's because women were told not to talk about their family and domestic issues. They were told, we don't share your dirty laundry. And there wasn't social media. No one could be venting about their real struggles to say, hey, is this normal? This doesn't feel right. Because I'm guaranteeing there are people that are starting to feel like this system is not feeling right to me. They don't know why because they've been told that's your role, that's what you're supposed to do. Everyone else does it perfectly fine without complaining. I think it's the without complaining part that we've been disillusioned to believe because we didn't have the access to those stories. And now that we have another generation of women that were experiencing similar issues with domestic life and the way it was very needed to be set up, they're able to talk about it more. And so now younger generations are more aware of the dynamic under that kind of 1950s structure and how it has been very negatively oppressing women. But without those stories, people are not aware, even the women that continue to, you know, follow in their grandmother's footsteps, they have no idea even what parenting involves because no one's discouraged to talk about the bad and the good about your actual experience, right? And I think we see that here in the church is people are not aware as much. The people I think that care and that are willing to be more open-minded about it, especially that want to help but just don't see it, those people are probably not sitting in social media circles or public circles where they're sharing the stories of these people. And why would you if it's upsetting because if you do look on the news, it's nothing but bad news and frustrating. So why wouldn't you avoid it if you could? Because there's just too much going on anyway. We've got jobs and families. I just want to get through the day. Yeah, and I've even had family members say, why do you worry about what's happening on the other side? Just worry about your own problems. You've got enough going on. But it's all connected, right? If I'm not aware of the experiences of other people, especially people I'm trying to help, it's a butterfly effect. Everything I do has an effect on other people, small or large. And as a church body, if we're not able to hear the experiences of the people affected by the decisions that we're all participating in, then we'll stay in that system, right? We'll stay in that cycle of divisive, you know, separated church. Right. I think that's the work. I think at least that's the way I look at it. That's the further answer to when I say I look out at this congregation and I see people on all kind of places on whatever issue you want to name, how you feel about the current administration. And to me, I think my first calling is to help us wrestle with that. And even that is slow. It's slow. Well, that's also the incentive. Like, why would I need to be concerned with what's happening over there? And I've heard that conversation from well-meaning people. It's not that, like, especially I've heard the phrase, that's a young people's problem a lot, right? And I don't think they mean it in a, like, dismissive way. I think it's, I think there's fatigue. And I think there's also why do I, as a person who's not part of that group, who's not part of the younger group that has more access to and time, and I don't know. But I think I see even more of that comfort zone, that privilege, unattentioned and unaware, where they don't see an incentive on how anything they could do would actually help that at this point. And I think it's because we all still have this individual mindset, where as individuals, the problem's too big, I don't know what I can do, and I don't know enough about it to want to put myself in a position to feel so helpless. Because that's what's happening in Gaza, I hear a lot, where people don't want to look anymore, and they don't want to read about it because they feel helpless. Because we are looking at it as one individual, and unless we have, like, 20 people that are like, hey, let's rally and do something, we feel helpless. And I think we're just so used to still being individuals and not realizing that I'm one part of the equation. I have my role, and these are my gifts and my talents, and here's the other people that care just as much as I do, but they have better talents than me. And we could actually do something together. But our countries separated us, very much so, on individualism. So we don't lean on each other, we don't ask for help, and we don't communicate in those types of ways, right? Right. Even when we offer help, right, it's very, hey, let me know if you need any help, or call me if you need anything. And then sometimes that's not what they mean, right? Even if their intentions are, I want to show you that I care, and yes, I'm willing, but sometimes they just mean, I hope you're okay, right? Yeah. But they see it as your problem. I would say one of the things that I'm... Until it's dire, and then they all show up. Well, yes, when it's dire. And that's what the problem is, is we can't wait until it's dire. We have to care early on, yeah, because that's how it gets dire, is we ask for help, we try to practice asking for help, but if they don't see it as severe as we do, and I struggle with that because I often see the pattern before anyone else does. So I'm like, I promise, I hope I'm not wrong, but I promise I know where this is heading, and if we do something at this point, we might prevent more harm, but they can't see it yet. Like, societally, we're heading towards the complete dysfunction of society. It's where we're headed. And what's crazy is I don't think that this is not new. This is just a revelation of what has always been. It's just more obvious now. It's just the next round of reset. Mm-hmm, yeah. It's a great reset. It's what it is. Whether you're for what's going on or against what's going on, we're heading towards that, unless something else disrupts from that, which could, World War III would disrupt it. I personally think we're already in World War III. It just doesn't look like it does in the movies. There's no Hiroshima bomb or Pearl Harbor. So the – oh, I lost my train of thought. What I wanted to say was – crap. It happened to me earlier, but only once, though, which is pretty good for me, honestly. No offense. Sorry. I can't remember. Well, the mass reset and the disruption. Again, disruption is, to me, the solution. The problem is no one understands – most people that haven't been used to disruption like I have don't understand why that's necessary to what that looks like because it's different for everybody, right? Because what disrupts me might not disrupt the next and vice versa. But it's kind of like the question I asked you at the very beginning. Had you not been presented with an opportunity to look at what universalism is and why and whatever, had you been someone that had only been a Calvinist, you might not have ever changed your paradigm, right? Nothing would have changed. And in hindsight, that could have led to who knows what. So it's clear that disruption, especially when it's unexpected, that causes you to look at things differently and you go, hmm. It's not that. That's happening all the time. It's what happens after you feel discomfort. What do you do with it? And that's where I think the church as a whole, one, we don't know what to do with our feelings. And we don't know what to do afterwards. And we don't know how to hold space for each other through disruption, right? Because we feel uncomfortable when someone else emotes. We feel uncomfortable when someone else feels uncomfortable. And I think that's the work is recognizing that whether you agree with what's going on, whether you like it or not, disruption is the catalyst to change. And change is inevitable, and change is often necessary when you start to see old systems no longer holding up, no longer functioning for the majority, which they probably never were meant to function for the majority anyway, but especially when it's obvious that they are only functioning for a select minority. Disruption is inevitable. It's what you do with that discomfort and move forward that keeps you from going back in the same cycle and creating a similar system. I do feel like the church, I feel like this church can be a place where we are willing to do, to help with what do you do with the disruption. I think there's an ability in this church to do that, not across the board, but I think it's there. One of the things I was going to say, it's not tracking with what we just said, but I want to say it, is that I feel like I, it's going to sound like I'm criticizing myself. I think I'm sometimes naive in this way. I tend to kind of function, if I can put people together, then what happens from that happens. For example, having the refugee families as part of our Easter egg day, in my head I was like, this puts two completely different cultures of people together in the same event. I naively thought that would move to something. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't, but it didn't in the way that I kind of thought it would. Meaning, I thought, oh, all our members that come there are going to form friends with these people and it's going to go to all these, but that's the naive kind of thing. No, we come and we clump together in our comfortable groups with the people we know because that's how we work. I watched that and I'm like, duh, why didn't I know that? People like you push on what I would call my naivety, my naiveness. I don't even think that's that. I love that you said that because that's where I'm at a lot. We need to do different things with this. We can't just have people come. We have to guide how it goes. But at the same time, what you're good at is that it's inspired action. You acted on inspired action. To me, the idea or the inspiration was from God. You got hung up on what it's going to look like the result. That's what I think is when you are, in my opinion, co-creating with God and you get an idea, an inspired idea that you feel is aligned, and I believe that you were correct on that. Getting hung up on the outcome of it or what it looks like or how that happens is sometimes what can create either going back into the loop, right, because you're projecting subconscious expectations, and that informs your behavior. But you still planted seeds, but it still set things in motion because literally the children's ministry is working with Gateway of Grace. I mean, it may be the delay, but I think that's for other people. When we feel helpless, we feel like we have to, like you, here's the idea, here's what's going to happen, and this will create this thing. And when it doesn't initially, or even I'm that way too, like even the first three years, it doesn't have the fruits that you think it will, but you felt, well, but this was the right decision, right? I think we have to be willing to act on inspired action and let God do what God's supposed to do with it and let the expectations go out the door because expectations are the form of suffering. Because if we plant seeds on alignment, and I think that's what I've seen, even when we were having capital campaign conversations, I understand why we're in this mentality. It's societal and it's cultural, but it's a lack mentality. It's, well, what if we don't get this much money or what if this or what if that? You know the what if questions are a place of fear, right, a little bit? And it's understandable. I ask them all the time. I know. I know you do. I love you, but I know. But at the same time, it makes sense. You have to be that kind of person to a degree because the stakes are higher. When you make decisions, even if it's an aligned decision, you know that God will sometimes disrupt whether you like it or not. And at the end of the day, it's for a good reason. But sometimes something bad happens. Like if you had to make a decision that you knew was aligned that affected someone's livelihood, that is a lot for you because you care and because you feel responsible for not just the flock, but your team that has their income. But people like me, I mean, I have a ton of skin in the game, but at the same time, I don't have as much to lose. I'm the kind of person that can challenge those things because I don't have to be the one that it falls on, right? I can have that. But the problem is no one wants to listen to me as much because I'm loud and direct and obnoxious and impulsive, and I have to work on my delivery sometimes too, right? But to your point, I don't think it was naive at all, and I do think eventually that connection, that networking choice, that multi-functional decision, because even the decisions I make are layered. The decision was naive. I think I was a little naive. Expectations? Yeah, and expectations. The other thing— We don't have any more time. I'm going to need to stop because I've got five minutes. Yeah, me too. I'm going to need to hang on. The other big pattern that I assume you know is the swing between kind of progressive and conservative and liberal and fundamental. Well, it's almost like we've got almost a direct line, but I would almost never know because I don't— We're in this conservative swing right now. Having come out of a more progressive swing, and it will go back, and it will vacillate. That's the pattern. Well, and it's always— Well, because the pattern, to me, the pattern is more like a— The five-feet pivot is like a spiral staircase, right? Like a DNA strand, okay? Instead of a loop, I think we revisit the same themes as we raise our conscious perspective of it, and we learn more. But it's almost—I'm not saying it's a cosmic test or it's an intentional, like God's saying, okay, here's a test. Now that you've learned more, we're going to go through this similar experience that might look like the same thing, but it's got some differences. Are you going to make a different choice? Kind of like a choose-your-own-adventure book. And I don't think it's like a— Again, I don't think it's God's testing us. I also love those things. But I think it's the way, from a science perspective, it's the way that you are— I agree with you on the swing. I think that is the pattern, but it's not the same pattern each time because as we learn more and we change our perspective, we learn more of the other side. We're doing a loop, but it's from an elevated perspective. We're going through the same themes, but we're doing it from a more evolved space, right? Because if you look at society, it's the same loop over and over, it's the same theme, but it's from higher levels of consciousness and perspective. And we've learned more. When you know better, you do better, right? So I think we will always be vacillating into these discomfort cycles, right? Each cycle— I mean, it's kind of like it follows the cycle of the earth. We hibernate. We go through the fall, but it's a rough time. I mean, we have that, and that's humanity. The prayer is that we survive it. Well, I don't even want to survive. I want to thrive. That's what I think is— survival mode, I think is— I think it's great. But survival mode is still a lack of mentality and that puts us back in the same loop, not an elevated part on the DNA strand. That's a whole other conversation. Yeah. Okay, end. Good job.