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Amy Julia (00:05)
I’m Amy Julia Becker and this is Reimagining the Good Life, a podcast about challenging the assumptions about what makes life good, proclaiming the inherent belovedness of every human being and envisioning a world of belonging where everyone matters. My guest today, John Swinton, is one of my heroes. I’m going to offer some official biographical information in a minute, but to start off, I just want to say how grateful I am for leaders and thinkers like John.
who can combine pastoral care and theological insight and give us just these profoundly deep truths about what it means to be human and to live well. Today we’re talking about the goodness inherent in our humanity, including the goodness inherent within people with disabilities. We discuss how our culture distorts our understanding of beauty, what it means to be made in the image of God, and how we each can be signposts of goodness and live fully.
So now John Swinton’s official bio. John Swinton is the professor in practical theology and pastoral care and chair in divinity and religious studies at the University of Aberdeen. For more than a decade, John worked as a registered mental health nurse. He also worked for a number of years as a hospital and community mental health chaplain alongside people with severe mental health challenges who are moving from the hospital into the community.
In 2004, he founded the University of Aberdeen Center for Spirituality, Health and Disability, and he’s published widely within the area of mental health, dementia, disability theology, spirituality and health care, end of life care, qualitative research and pastoral care. He’s the author of a number of monographs. He is has won lots of prizes and we are just incredibly grateful to have him here and to have him as a guide in his writing, his thinking, his speaking, his teaching.
⁓ as we continue to ask these questions about what it means to live a good life. Before I turn to this conversation, I’m gonna mention two other ways that you can connect with me. One is through Take the Next Step. That’s my podcast in partnership with Hope Heals, which offers conversations for families experiencing disability. We’ll put a link in the show notes so you can also follow that show if you want to learn more about how to take the next step towards a good future with your family.
Also, if you’re interested in the topics that John and I talk about today, my weekly substack newsletter explores what a good life really looks like for individuals, families, and society. We do that through the lens of disability, faith, and culture. I also over there share books, podcasts, movies, and more that I’m loving. So sign up today, join the conversation, the links in the show notes. And now to my conversation with John Swinton.
I am so happy to be here with Professor John Swinton. It is really good to see you again.
John (03:01)
It’s good to see you, Anu.
Amy Julia (03:04)
Well, I was just telling you before we even started recording that when I read an essay you recently wrote for Christianity Today I was almost like knocked over by what felt like the significance of what you had to say. I I took out a pen I started underlining and starring things and then I almost stopped doing that because I was underlining almost every word and so I was like Well, actually the whole thing is what I want to be able to share and of course we will link to that essay
in the show notes of this conversation, but I also just wanted to talk with you about it. And as you said, just to have a conversation and we, you know, we’ll have a couple hundred people listening in. So you start your essay with a story about a young woman who goes to church and has like a troubling encounter with someone who wants to pray for her. So I thought maybe we could start by having you share that story with us.
John (03:56)
That’s good. The story is not an unusual story, unfortunately. ⁓ So my friend, she lives with cerebral palsy and as part of her cerebral palsy she sometimes gets really bad back pain. So she went along to a congregation, which was not her own congregation, but she went along to this congregation and it was a healing service and she went forward for healing.
specifically for her back. But before she could articulate herself or tell the pastor what was going on, he immediately started to try to cast out demons from her and try to heal her from what he thought was whatever he thought, who knows what he thought. And then she was obviously devastated by this. And she went back home again and I had this conversation with her. And it was just a really, really painful situation. I remember the only thing I couldn’t say anything because
It’s obvious what’s wrong with it. The only thing I could say is to her was that, you know, you’ve been through all this stuff, but you know you’re still beloved. And she looked at me and said, yeah, I know I’m still beloved. It didn’t take the pain away, but it kind of put the situation in a slightly different frame. Cause she is beloved.
Amy Julia (05:15)
Yeah, I was ⁓ struck you wrote that I think, you know, about this story and as you said, all the other stories that we could tell that might reinforce them. When the church sees disability solely as something to be fixed, rather than something that can be honored and received, it obscures the truth of creation’s goodness and distorts the image of God, which are pretty big claims, Creation and the image of God are pretty foundational. So
I thought maybe we could start with why would churchgoers see disability as something to be fixed, like specifically churchgoers, because we have that ⁓ sentiment out in kind of the world outside the church for sure, but why would churchgoers in particular perhaps see that? And then we’ll get onto why that’s a problem.
John (06:02)
Well church goers are part of society and society has a particular understanding of what beauty and perfection is which is very often fed to us back through media, social media or whatever media you’re using. Perfection is understood as, know, you look beautiful according to the criterion that culture lays down, you’re of a certain size, a certain shape. And so even before we get into church we’re being told certain things about what beautiful is, what normal is.
And then we get into church and we assume that these things have been taught outside, or least we don’t, we maybe accept them uncritically. And so when we are faced with somebody who is different, I’m not sure cultural language is to say, well, you know, clearly this person is not beautiful by the way I think they are, or not perfect with I think. So there must be something wrong. And what do you do when there’s something wrong? You try to fix it. Why you try to fix it? Because…
We kind of live in a biomedical culture that likes to fix things. We don’t like to live with mysteries. We want to turn mysteries into puzzles and try to solve them. And so we draw upon our resources and say, well, there must be something wrong here. And then maybe we will look at the healing miracles of Jesus and say, well, think Jesus is obviously doing the same thing as a doctor. So therefore, prayer is also doing the same thing. And so we end up confused about what Jesus was doing.
but also confused about what beauty is, what perfection is, what normality is. ⁓ And if you step into that situation and begin to say, well, actually, ⁓ you know, the body of Christ says that ⁓ difference is what marks the body, not that we’re all the same, that we’re all different, then things become even more confusing for people. So that’s why it is. It’s just a confusion of messages that we don’t get the opportunity to.
often to sit back and reflect on why we think the way that we do.
Amy Julia (08:01)
I so appreciate that. loved the way you said it. I wrote this down. We turn mysteries into puzzles and try to solve them. And so that sense of, again, humans as problems to be fixed or puzzles to be solved rather than to use your language. ⁓ You’re talking about disability, but I think this might be said more broadly about our humanity, something that can be honored and received. And I wonder like ⁓ what posture or what kind of different lens would ⁓ help us
to ⁓ do that honoring and receiving, like where does that come from, particularly a kind of perspective of the Christian faith?
John (08:40)
think it does come from the idea of the image of God depending on how you frame that. very often because we live in what Stephen Post has called a hypercognitive culture whereby you know we to reason over relationships, friendships, community. So it’s always really important what you think and what you can do with your mind. We oftentimes assume that that must be what the image of God is. God’s really really clever so therefore we have a kind of
echo of that cleverness in ourselves. But when you look at the Genesis account of creation, God creates human beings obviously and He creates everything. The only difference that you notice in the Genesis account is that God decides to speak to Adam. It’s the same spirit that fills all the rest of Adam, it’s the whole of creation, but it’s only Adam that God decides to talk to.
which to me would indicate that the image of God is not something that we have within ourselves, it’s something we reflect in our relationship with others. So it’s not determined by our neurological structures, it’s determined by the grace of God. And God chooses that, so that seems to be a really helpful way of loving your neighbor. In beginning of John’s gospel, John says, the light of God is given to all human beings. So like there’s something of the divine in all of us.
That idea of the image of God within every human being just gives us that place of connection. Despite whatever differences we may have, there’s always that point of connection because we’re all held in the same spirit. Spirit with the smallest rather than sort of the largest.
Amy Julia (10:24)
Well, and to some degree, that sense of like approaching one another with wonder, ⁓ you know, again, on that sense of you’re a mystery, not in the sense of you can’t be known, but in the sense of these differences that nevertheless can, I mean, and we have this language in the Gospel of John too, yeah, reflect the glory of God, perhaps in ways that I’m not accustomed to. And I think this is that you said that, ⁓
You know, we have these kind of idealized human norms when it comes to bodies and beauty and this image of human that is not necessarily reflective of the image of God. ⁓ And I guess, are there ways in which it’s helpful to think about an ideal human or a good human? ⁓ Certainly there’s a lot in the Bible that says,
that we will be deceived by our understandings as humans of what it means to be good and beautiful. And so I don’t know if it’s like throw those categories out altogether or here’s a different way to think about the goodness and beauty that we can receive in one another. I’m curious what you think.
John (11:35)
think the Paul says the true image of God is in Jesus. So the only the only perfect person is Jesus. Everybody else after that is doing something else. Still love, still lovable, but not perfect in that sense. But John Hull, a really interesting English practical theologian who died a few years ago, he was blind. He went blind ⁓ late on in his life in his 50s. And so he
He discovered, that’s the end trend, he called this, the world of blindness. You because as a sighted person, you’re always looking out at the world. But as a blind person, you’re kind of inwards. And he found that he had to begin to rediscover the world by, for example, he said, you know, his children he would never see again, but through his hands, which now are not just things for picking things up, they’re actually sensory devices for making sense of the world. He discovers things about his kids he never saw before, the bumps in their head, shape of their face.
And his conclusion from his experience of plainness was that, well, first of all, ascited people tend to colonize normality. But, you know, yes, they assume that the only way that you can understand the world is by looking outside and seeing it. And he says that’s one way of looking at the world, but actually there are many others. But to get back to your question, his solution was that actually there is no single way of being a human being.
There are multiple ways of being a human being. And it’s only if we listen to these different ways of being human that we can understand what it means to live as a human being. So if you can’t see, you bring something to the table of the way that human beings are. If you can’t speak, you bring something to the table. If you can speak, you bring something to the table. And when we bring all these things to the table of humanness, we begin to see actually there’s a richness there that
you mess if you’re looking for a central norm.
Amy Julia (13:39)
I’m struck by just that sense of kind of multiplicity and diversity and as you just said, the ⁓ richness that comes when we actually are, instead of being kind of frightened by that, say, I wonder what God might be doing here. One of the things in this essay that I really loved is you’re pretty centered on just those early creation accounts in Genesis. You go back to the Garden of Eden and one of the things you point out is that the word
perfect is not ever used. often refer back to, I think, the Garden of Eden in like our both Christian and cultural mythology as a perfect place. But instead of the word perfect, the word good, which in Hebrew is tov, is there. And I’m curious if you could just talk about like, why does it matter that creation is deemed good but not perfect?
John (14:32)
Because it means that we are ⁓ coming to understand who we are rather than simply being told who we are or what we are. We’re discovering, mean life’s a bit of a journey in that sense. We’re discovering who we are, we’re discovering what it means to be in relationship. Adam was lonely. That’s a really strange thing. The perfect garden, well, we assume to be the perfect garden of Eden, and yet you have loneliness and have a mode of suffering even there.
And so by looking at that way, and it’s clear that, you know, when you look at the way that God makes things and the that God forms things, it’s always an unfolding of things. It’s not that the garden even would just, here’s perfection and everything’s there. Even there it was unfolding. know, Adam has to find a partner. He moves from being lonely to somebody.
in relationship with them. So that movement, that sense of unfolding, think, is captured by creation was very good because the world is a wonderful place, but it’s not perfect in the sense that perfect tends to freeze the hermeneutic. It stops things.
Amy Julia (15:49)
I thought at one point you talked about how it was relational rather than idealistic. And I do think that sense of, A, just like looking for the good rather than perfection, it does involve like an openness to whatever might come rather than having to just hold something exactly as it is right now. And I want to talk about why this kind of matters for disabled people and really for all humans, but I’m just going to quote you again here first.
If the image of God is equated with cognitive or physical function, then all human beings are in effect growing out of that image as we age and our bodies and minds decline. So again, if I could just kind of throw that quote back at you, but also ask why this idea of ⁓ goodness rather than perfection matters in our lived experience right now.
John (16:41)
Well, on the image of God point, think it’s important because, you know, the way that life unfolds for all human beings is you’re growing and you’re shaped and you’re formed, but at the same time, you’re logically, you’re always declining. And that comes to a sharp focus when it comes to the lives of people with dementia, where, know, that that commons of growth has not only stopped, but begins to deteriorate. So if you assume that the image of God is just the neurological
configurations you have at any moment in history, then you’re always moving away from it. There’s no stability in that. I don’t see anything in the way that the image of God is talked about in scripture that says it fades away and comes back or disappears, like it’s there. And it’s there because God holds it there. So I think that’s why. And the thing about that is it means that the image of God is always determined by God.
It’s always held by God. It’s never determined by something that you or I have. So it’s not capacity in that sense. It’s always held and determined by God. And that’s the beautiful thing about that is that, you know, we go through whatever storms you go through in your life, physical, psychological, whatever it is, but you’re always held by God. And that image is always held by you. That relationship is always held. Even when you can’t hold it yourself, God holds onto you.
Amy Julia (18:05)
I’m struck by just thinking about what you just said about dementia and the earlier story you told about John Hunn blindness by the idea that the goodness remains in who we are regardless of our circumstances. And I guess what I’m wrestling with a little bit is the question of whether what we call decline, physical or mental, can be a part. Is that separate from?
Goodness, is it a part of the goodness of God? mean, again, the story of John knowing his children’s faces by ⁓ touch rather than by sight is so beautiful, right? And I know you’ve written really beautifully actually about exactly what you just said, that idea that we are held in the memory of God, even when we do not have memories of ourselves and of our own experience. so ⁓ I guess what I’m really getting at is like, how do we understand the suffering that can accompany disability? ⁓
and that idea of kind of cognitive or physical decline in relation to this idea that God’s goodness remains.
John (19:11)
Well, I make a point of never trying to explain suffering. Because I think as soon as we start to explain suffering, it will make it worse. So if part of the question is why is there suffering, have no idea. But what I can say in relation to disability is people with disabilities are not more fallen than human beings. We all suffer. And there’s no particular reason why a person shouldn’t suffer. My friend, Paceo Apolze,
She really does suffer with her back. But she doesn’t suffer with a cerebral palsy unless people make her suffer with a cerebral palsy and people do do that. And so I think we all share in the sufferings of the world, we all share in the sufferings of crisis, Paul points out. The key point is that the suffering that people with disability experience is not any different from anybody else. says really clearly, everybody has sinned and fallen short of
the glory of God. And so we’re all in that together. And we all carry whatever bodies we have into that complex fallen world. But that doesn’t make us more fallen than other people.
Amy Julia (20:24)
Yeah, I’m curious whether thinking, I guess it seems like in the popular imagination, and again, this can happen pretty easily within the church as well, disability is almost conflated with such suffering, like they’re seen as equivalent ⁓ or, and distinct from the rest of us, whatever that might mean. And I’m wondering what that conflation does, like to our understanding of what it means to be human, to the way we treat each other. ⁓
to an understanding of hope ⁓ and the possibilities of God being at work. I’m just curious what you think putting, like why it’s so important that we kind of separate the suffering and the disability, ⁓ even though they are still going to overlap because of humanity.
John (21:11)
Suffering is a complicated word. We to describe it to all sorts of different things. So if you take the life of somebody who lives with Down syndrome, for example, and somebody ⁓ who says this person is clearly suffering, what does that mean? It means that they don’t have the cognitive equipment or the aesthetic
that society thinks is attractive and thinks is good. So therefore they’re not like me. So therefore they must be suffering. And most importantly, they’re not quite as clever as I am. So therefore they must be suffering because of that. And of course that’s all nonsense. unless you define a good life with just being smart. I hang around back at home time so it doesn’t quite work out that way. ⁓
When somebody says somebody with a disability suffers, it usually means they have something I don’t want or something that frightens me or something that I’m terrified in case maybe that’ll happen to me in the future. know, again, going to dementia, people say, oh, people with dementia really are suffering. think some people are suffering, but many people know, many people live well with dementia. But when you say people with dementia really are suffering, you’re really saying that
I’m terrified because that could be me in the future. So that’s the reasons why people ascribe suffering to disability. Sometimes because it’s there, but very often because people are fearful.
Amy Julia (22:52)
So I’m thinking about, well, this is another point you make in your essay, which you’ve kind of stated here. The vision of the image of God as a relational gift rather than a functional capacity opens the door to a more profound understanding of humaneness. And I think you’ve already explained a lot about that. But I’m thinking about the kind of practical ramifications for people who might be listening to this podcast or who read your essay or some of your other work and say, okay, I want to live that way.
I’m on board with what you’re saying and I want that, but what does it look like for Christians to embrace and embody an understanding of the image of God as a relational gift ⁓ and all of the implications of that as we’ve been talking about?
John (23:35)
Well, it affects the way that you look at the world. Because the kind of language you use determines what you think you see and what you think you see determines how you respond to it. So if you’re talking about people with disabilities as suffering, that’s what you’ll see and that’s how you respond. How do you respond to suffering very often? You avoid it. You move away from it. Or you create ways of distancing yourself by using terms like… ⁓
Schizophrenic, whatever the term is, distance you from that. And so the simplest thing, or simplest beginning point is to mind your language. Be very careful about the way that you talk about people. And the way I always like to think about it is make sure you’re always giving people back their names. Because one of the things that happens in mental health and in disability is people get a diagnosis or get a definition of disability and it swallows them up.
That becomes all that people can see, all people can think about it. the simplest way to overcome that is always remember to call somebody by name. If you don’t know them by name, don’t call them a disabled person, call them a person by name. And once you start watching your own language and the way that it shapes and forms your worldview, then other options for friendship, for community, for all sorts of things open up. So I think these small things of noticing at the beginning point for a
bigger things of transformation.
Amy Julia (25:05)
I was just thinking when you said that about that idea of God speaking to Adam and the significance of the words that we speak over one another, again, that they can actually reflect that image of God in relationship to one another, or they can distort it by making us into objects of whatever, of pity or of distance.
John (25:32)
That’s really, really important because if you think about that story, ⁓ God gives Adam responsibility for naming the creatures of the earth. And so this strange thing with big ears and small legs that bounces up and down, Adam says, you’re a rabbit. We have the same power. Through our language, we can bring things into existence.
or take people out of existence, just by the way that we speak of it. It’s like a weird primal responsibility that we’re given to name things properly. And I think that story, how powerful that is, misnaming is devastating.
Amy Julia (26:15)
Yeah, that’s so helpful. And I know there lots of debates about kind of language in disability circles, but I know also for me that when Penny was first born and diagnosed with Down syndrome, the language I had had kind of inherited from our culture was that she that I had a Down syndrome baby. And I knew in my soul, like there’s something wrong with that language. Like I don’t this is not feel accurate. And pretty quickly.
someone said baby with Down syndrome. there’s just a little flip that happens in order for you to honor her as a baby and describe her as someone who has Down syndrome, rather than to use those words Down syndrome, essentially to like push away the babyness, the fact that she is yours ⁓ and related to you. And that shift was ⁓ hugely important.
John (27:08)
Yeah. And it’s really subtle. I you’d hardly notice it, but then the impact is just huge.
Amy Julia (27:15)
Yeah, so anyway, I just I appreciate that. And I’m thinking again, you’ve talked about relationality ⁓ instead of kind of this idealistic vision of our humanity. You also write in this essay about the cost of interdependence, which I think is another aspect of this relational aspect of being in the image of God and even the idea of like the body of Christ as diverse and needing different parts in order to actually function as a body. So could you talk a little bit about that idea of like the cost of interdependence?
What does it cost us?
John (27:46)
it can cost you a lot because you know, particularly if you’re a carer, which can be extremely difficult, extremely costly way of being with the person that you love. mean, last year, so the year before last, my mom died. She was 99. Going to make it 100. So sorry, was disappointed. Exactly. she, but we decided early on that
Amy Julia (28:07)
good long life though.
John (28:15)
we were keeping her at home because my wife’s a nurse, my sister’s a midwife, although we didn’t need a midwife for the 99 year old woman. And so we all took shifts and turned to look after her and we kept her at home for about three years before she died. And I remember being there one Saturday and I’d been there for eight for a long time. And I was thinking, if only I could get out for an hour, my life would be completely different.
Because you just get trapped in that space where much as you love the person you’re with, and they may be a bit demanding, but you just have to get out there. I think that that kind of sense of ⁓ commitment to an individual, but at the same time, the pain and difficulty and awkwardness that comes from that is profoundly important. Of course, the solution is quite straightforward. All you need is somebody to give you a couple hours of relief.
For something to give you the gift of time to set with the person so that you can do your thing. So respite, even for short periods of time, is a beautiful gift that helps people to deal with the complexities of relationships.
Amy Julia (29:27)
When I read in your essay about this idea that interdependence does cost us, right? Like we can talk about the beauty of it and the gifts that we give each other. And we can also talk about the fact that it’s hard to be, especially for those of us who are functionally able to be relatively autonomous in our bodies and minds, at least right now. I wonder whether what it made me think about is whether we are people like me and most of my life.
who have kind of been striving and I think been taught to strive for autonomy and for ⁓ individual expression and ⁓ achievement and recognition. I just wonder whether all of that striving is really an attempt to not have to pay the cost of interdependence. And again, I think about what I lose out on when I try not to pay that cost.
John (30:20)
But it’s very much a Western thing. It’s a way that our culture functions. I’m doing a piece of research just now looking at dementia care across cultures. we’re working with an indigenous community in Panama and the African Caribbean community in the United Kingdom. And the subtitle for this study is We Take Care of a Roa.
And it’s looking at the differences in ways that families function in relation to care, in this case, the care of people with dementia. And then the Panamanian community, Guna people are working with it. The thought, well, first of all, they don’t have any care homes, right? But the thought that you take your ⁓ loved one out of your community and put them somewhere else is just not even on people’s minds. ⁓
So they take care of their own. So same with the African Caribbean community for a number of different reasons. However, when we think about what was on within Western context, that tends to be the norm is to put the person into a home, take them out of family and put them in their home. So you’re living in a culture where to say that autonomy is ⁓ perhaps to be questioned is a really unusual thing to suggest. To suggest that actually,
your own ⁓ well-being or your own life trajectory, that career, that life, should be sacrificed for somebody else. It just sounds bizarre. But that’s just because it sounds bizarre. It’s because that’s where we live. I suspect that if we lived in first century Mediterranean culture, we would be thinking quite differently about the role of community and the role of community and who we are as persons.
Amy Julia (32:12)
I remember I wrote an essay about ⁓ prenatal testing and not having the same prenatal testing after Penny was born for my other kids because I realized what it would mean for us that we would happily receive a child with Down syndrome. And I remember getting lots of comments that really said, you are being irresponsible and ⁓ you’re putting a burden on your other children. You’re putting a burden on the rest of society.
But I also remember this comment from a woman who is living in America but is culturally from the Philippines and said, I don’t know what you all are talking about. Babies come into your family and you take care of them and they’re your family. that, mean, it was just this completely different cultural mindset. And, you know, obviously there are some good things about Western culture, but there’s also a lot that we have to learn.
especially when it comes to community and care and the relational aspects of our humanity ⁓ being really diminished when we don’t have not just the not just the capacity to care for one another, but even just the cost of caring what you were describing. I don’t know. There’s something about I don’t think God wants sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice. But I do think that love in.
includes sacrifice by definition. mean, again, even you gave the example of Adam in the garden having being opened up, literally ⁓ wounded in order for his, you know, helpmate and partner to be created for Eve to be created. And just that sense of like they’re being pain and, you know, we could even say suffering that’s there in this good garden because of what it means to be called to be in relation with one another and not these isolated individuals.
John (34:06)
Yeah, that’s right. And yeah, and I think from a Christian perspective, it’s really important we think about that because, take for example, the way that Paul speaks, Paul is all about we. He very rarely talks about, he does occasionally address some people because they have a particular need, but it’s all about we, it’s all about the body of Christ, it’s all about interconnecting them, it’s all about belonging. It’s funny, there’s a really interesting New Testament scholar called Susan Eastman.
I’ve written a paper by her recently and the she described Paul’s articulation of relationships or people. says, ⁓ for Paul, bodies are bridges rather than barriers. your body is there to bridge into other people. It’s not the barrier that stands apart. It’s actually something that is intended for relationship and intended for belonging. ⁓ And so in other words,
When we read the Gospels and when we read the Scriptures, underlying that is a very different worldview that we sometimes miss.
Amy Julia (35:13)
Yeah, often miss, I think. But I’m curious about, again, we talked a little bit about maybe what individuals can do and naming ⁓ and paying attention to others. And I’m thinking also about the church more broadly and changing a posture towards people with disabilities. You write the church must learn to hear and resist this distortion, like the distortion of the image of God.
If God’s creation is good, then every life within it, regardless of capacity, cognition, or conformity is already good. How does the church learn to hear, that would be the first piece, and resist this distortion that our culture ⁓ offers us?
John (35:58)
John says quite clearly, God so loved the world that he gave us Jesus. So it doesn’t say God so loved any particular aspect, God so loves the world. So the world that we live in is loved by God. And everybody within that world is loved by God. And so I think by beginning with Jesus, and I mean that literally, the idea that God so loved the world that he gave us Jesus, then that
That gives us a good solace, a beginning point for seeing the world differently. know, Carol Barr many years ago wrote a little essay called The Strange New World Within the Bible. And then he made the case that the Bible is not intended just to give you set of rules and ethics and morals to live by. It’s actually intended to introduce you to a strange world that you couldn’t see without it.
⁓ When you read the stories of Paul and Moses and Jesus and David, you discover they’re your stories. And you look out in the world, nothing’s really changed, but everything’s changed because your story’s changed. And so when you reflect or meditate on the idea that God so loves the world and therefore calls you to love the world and everything within it, then I think that’s a ⁓ theological foundation for genuinely
loving your neighbor and genuinely loving God, self and neighbor. So you’ve got to love yourself in the midst of that as well.
Amy Julia (37:36)
I love that description of just the strange world that we’re invited into through scripture. I think a lot about Jesus’s words in general and especially the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes as this statement of spiritual reality less than either a promise or a warning, just like, no, this is how it is, guys. Like, this is just how it goes. ⁓ And…
We live most of our lives, if we can, trying to resist so much of spiritual reality, and yet that invitation into it can also open up so much ⁓ for us and for those around us. And again, I think learning how to ⁓ recognize the ways that I bring the quote unquote, truths of my culture into my reading of scripture, rather than letting the truth of scripture be my lens onto my culture.
It’s kind of like ⁓ learning how to see from the spiritual reality that God offers us first, instead of from the experience of, ⁓ I know what beauty is, I know what goodness is. ⁓ There’s a different way that we’re offered.
John (38:47)
Yeah, you kind of have to have, you know, like bifocal vision, a more division that it was to see the reality of culture. The thing is that, you know, we do live in a world that’s broken. And at the same time, be able to see the signs of the new kingdom as they’re emerging. I think as Christians, as disciples, we need to be able to hold both of these things. You know, to take yourself out of culture because then we can’t. But you also don’t want to be overwhelmed by culture.
So holding that tension the way that you look at both of these things at the same time is difficult, but I think that’s what we’re called to do.
Amy Julia (39:25)
Well, I think again, that idea of goodness rather than perfection might help us in that ⁓ instead of saying the only way I should do it is the ideal way or the perfect way. But ⁓ to say I want to participate in the goodness of God, of God’s creation and of God’s relationality. And there will be some pain and some messiness along the way of that. ⁓ And that doesn’t change the goodness.
⁓ or the invitation into it. I don’t know that seems pretty freeing to me.
John (39:56)
Yeah, I think it is. I just go back to something I said the other day. The thing about suffering in the world is, I’d say it’s better not explained. But what the scripture does do is it gives us ways of resistance and hopelessness in the midst of suffering. It gives us language like lamentation where we can articulate the reality of the pain of the world.
But at the same the context of worship. It gives us a community that absorbs suffering because Jesus absorbs suffering in the cross. it becomes part of how we understand the world to absorb that and to find the goodness even in the midst of the mess that we find ourselves. It gives us a certain kind of friendship. that know, suffering is real, but can be resisted.
Amy Julia (40:45)
I appreciate that so much and I’m curious just as we kind of wrap up this conversation whether you have seen places where some of these things have have happened kind of you know signposts that point towards that ultimate reality of what it looks like to live in the fullness of the image of God or the fullness of the body of Christ. ⁓ Especially when it comes to disability or you know cognitive or physical. I’m just wondering if there are
any places where you have seen that or glimpsed that being lived out.
John (41:22)
I I’ve seen it more in people than I have in communities. And I think there are a lot of really interesting communities where you begin to see that. The Larsh communities are a bit like that. The Camp Hill communities can be a bit like that. But most of the time when I encounter lived articulation of the things that I think the gospel is about, it’s in people. It’s more in individuals who then influence other people. the individual becomes an
in that sense, but not the social media type thing. But I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a community that really has excelled. But I do know a lot of communities that try really, really hard. And I think that’s probably the best thing you can do.
Amy Julia (42:07)
I appreciate that. And I think also about what’s distinctive about a large community or a Camp Hill is there’s some measure of separation that is embedded in those communities. And again, I think that’s a beautiful kind of signpost or example, or like we go to Hope Hills Camp in the summer and we’ve got four days of feeling like we really are living this out. And then we have 361 days in which we think, oh wait, remember that?
But I also think it’s good to go back out ⁓ into the world and our churches and to say, ⁓ as you said, yeah, we’re just gonna try, we’re not gonna get it all right. ⁓ And yet there is again, like goodness and beauty that we’re participating in, in some ways all the more so by being ⁓ back out in the world.
John (42:59)
Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. these communities like Larsh, they are really important because they are signposted, the reminders of certain things. But like Andy’s saying, it’s meant to point us towards somewhere else in order that we can take these lessons and implement them somewhere else. But that sign is pointing towards.
Amy Julia (43:22)
Well, thank you for doing the work of also ⁓ pointing us towards something else that is, think, ⁓ deep and good and true and beautiful, that also is a disrupts my patterns of thinking, ⁓ especially if I’m not stopping to ask what the lens of spiritual reality ⁓ and the goodness of God might give me. Thank you. Lovely to see you too.
John (43:47)
Love it to see you.
Amy Julia (43:51)
you
Thanks as always for listening to this episode of Reimagining the Good Life. I’m excited for the episodes to come. I’m going to be talking with Sharon Hottie Miller on self-forgetfulness and Kelly Kapec on human limitations and Leo Libresco Sargent on the dignity of dependents. I also want to remind you that my weekly newsletter is where I dive deeper into the ideas we talked about today and share the books, essays, and more that I’m excited about. You can subscribe to that through the link in the show notes. And it is always
really helpful if you are the ones who tell other people about this podcast. You can do that by rating or reviewing the show. You could, of course, do it by just sharing it with your friends and the people around you who might be interested in this conversation. I also love hearing from you. Please know that you can send questions or suggestions my way. One of you just last time sent me the suggestion of an author and a book that you were reading, and I have asked for a review copy and I’m checking it out. So I do pay attention.
please tap the send us a text link at the end of the show notes, or you can just email me at amyjuliabeckerwriter at gmail.com. I want to thank Jake Hansen for editing this podcast and Amber Beery, my assistant, doing everything else to make sure it happens. I hope this conversation helps you to challenge assumptions, proclaim the belovedness of every human being, and envision a world of belonging where everyone matters. Let’s reimagine the good life together.
