#242 | The Spirit of Our Politics with Michael Wear, Pt. 1

The argument of the book is if we are willing to say in politics, Jesus's way is not fit, or I am deliberately, consciously moving away from the way of Jesus because I think I need something else in politics. The crux of the book is arguing that logic does not stay quarantined to your political self. That becomes a discipleship question.

That becomes a formation question.

Everybody, it's time for Apollos Watered, a.

Podcast to saturate your faith with the.

Things of God so that you might saturate your world with the good news of Jesus Christ. My name is Travis Michael Fleming and I am your host.

And today on our show, we're having another one of our.

Deep conversations.

It is true that politics is causing spiritual harm in this country. And a big reason is that is people are going to politics to get their spiritual needs met.

So says Michael Ware in his new book, the Spirit of Politics. How are we to go about living our lives when people are looking at politics to fulfill their spiritual needs?

Whether you're a Republican or Democrat or something in between, we should all pause and get our bearings to discover how we are to go about our politics. I'm not talking about the results of having people vote one way or another, but rather, who are we becoming as a result of engaging in our politics?

That's why I have Michael Wear as today's guest on Apollos Watered.

Michael is the founder, president and CEO of the center for Christianity and Public Life, a nonpartisan nonprofit institution based in our nation's capital with a mission to contend for the credibility of Christian resources in public life for the public good.

For well over a decade, he has served as a trusted resource and advisor for a range of civic leaders on matters of faith and public life, including as a White House and presidential campaign staffer. Michael is the leading voice on building a healthy Civic Pluralism in 21st Century America.

He has argued that the spiritual health and civic character of individuals is deeply tied to the state of our politics and public affairs.

He previously led Public Square Strategies, consulting firm he founded that helps religious organizations, political organizations, businesses, and others effectively navigate the rapidly changing American religious and political landscape.

He's the author of the Spirit of Our Politics, Spiritual Formation, and the Renovation of Public Life, a paradigm shifting book that advocates a vision for spiritual formation in the context of political life. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. Michael, welcome to Apollo's Watered.

It's so great to be with you. Thanks for having me on.

All right, are you ready for the Fast five?

Yeah. Let's do it.

Okay, here we go. I've read the names of your kids and I know how to pronounce them, but what is the common mispronunciation that people have of your daughter's name?

Oh. Oh, man. We've heard a lot of mispronunciation. So my daughters are Saoirse and Ellaria, and I mean. Sayorshaerese. Yeah, Ellaria is easier for.

I mean, it's just easier, but still, folks will stumble over it. But do you know what was really helpful?

There's an actress, Saoirse Ronan, and as she rose in popularity, she would get asked how to pronounce her name on TV shows and that kind of thing. And so people were like, oh, like the actress. And that'll help my daughter out a little bit.

I think I just felt bad for her when she was, like, in kindergarten and trying to spell your name and, like, here's phonetics. Kids.

Yeah, right. No, it's a character building exercise.

This is.

We figured early on we'd build in a real crucible. Yeah.

My oldest daughter is named Eliana, and so it's a little like Ellaria and it's. And people would never get it right. It's Elena. And finally she just started putting on, like, coffee cups at Starbucks as she's gotten older.

She's an adult now, and she would just put like, fred.

It'S not worth it. It's not worth it. Yeah.

All right, number two, the best part of living near D.C. is what?

The free museums, the art museums are just fantastic and great place, especially now. You know, I have a five and a three year old, so to be able to sort of know that you're not going to be. It doesn't cost to kill a few hours in a.

In a museum is. Is really great. I particularly like Italian Renaissance, and there are a number of museums in D.C. baltimore that have decent work to choose from.

All right, well, let's get to the next question, because these are kind of D.C. related questions.

By the way, in one of your bios that I found online, you lived in Northern Virginia, but now I know you're living north of Baltimore, so I know that this is like a competition. Northern Virginia or Maryland?

Oh, goodness me. I mean, it's tough. One of my daughters was born here, the other in Northern Virginia.

You know, our early, earlier years of marriage were in Northern Virginia, but we've raised our kids mostly here. It's tough. You know, I need to go with where I am now, just as a matter of loyalty. And there's a lot to love about Baltimore. It reminds.

My wife and I are both from Buffalo and the people here, the culture here reminds us a lot of home. And so I'll go with Baltimore.

Okay. If you're from Buffalo, are you a Bills fan?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. So who's the best Bills player ever?

Ever?

That's not a question. I just want to know ever. You're. How about this? Who's your favorite player?

You know, I mean, right. The easy, the easy answer would be Jim Kelly. You know, I liked Eric Molds a lot growing up. He was, he was our. He was a wide receiver.

He was a lot of fun. My wife loves Fred Jackson, who was our running back, graduated from Coe College and was just like a real good, like blue collar fit for Buffalo.

So those are, those are some good ones. But now, you know, it's all Josh Allen.

You know, Josh has been, is beloved in the city and we're all, we're all sure that he's going to get us a Super bowl. And, you know, the time is coming, so, you know, it's got to happen.

You got a new backup quarterback that we, we supply the quarterbacks to the rest of the league. So. Because I'm a Bears fan, so. Yeah, Justin Fields, I mean, of course Trubisky went to the Steelers and then he's Buffalo Steelers.

Now he's back to Buffalo.

What about, what about Bibi?

Remember that guy?

Oh, yeah. I love. I love Don Beebe. Yeah, of course.

Okay. I had a connection. He almost bought my last house. He did a walk through my last house. Yeah. It's a small world, man. It's just.

It's a weird world because he runs the House of Speed. He start. He's from the area where I pastored.

Okay.

So anyway, I know he's a Buffalo legend, so he's.

He. Absolutely. He absolutely is. I mean, we could go Buffalo.

Oh, yeah.

You know, not everyone wants to hear about the Bills. Let's get to the next question then.

Because you're involved in politics, if you could interview or interact with one politician in all of history, who would it be and why? Doesn't have to just be American, by the way.

You know, I mean, like an easy answer would be, you know, Wilberforce. You know, I think the model of Wilberforce is so salient, you know, for, for our time. And so I think that would be one Lincoln. Right.

I mean, I'll stick with those. Those two. I think those are, those are two. Two good ones. And I mean, it would be fun to get the two of them in a room together. Yeah, that.

That'd be interesting.

Not to be greedy. Not to be greedy in this hypothetical, but, yeah, I'm actually going to up the state. I want. I want Lincoln and Wilberforce.

And you're going to give them to me? Yeah.

Okay, how about this with question number five, because you mentioned having children and taking them to the free museums. So, you know, all the tourist spots. If you could be one of the tourist spots in D.C. which one would it be and why?

Oh, man. You know, there is. I don't know if this qualifies as a tourist spot, but the George Mason Memorial is my favorite memorial in D.C. and it's basically.

It's right next to the Jefferson Memorial. A lot of people just walk right past it would never know.

It's this beautiful sort of, like, park, you know, manicured lawn, it's small benches all around, and there's just a bench where George Mason is sitting there with his legs crossed and, like, reading. I mean, it's just a very peaceful monument. There aren't a lot of tourists that are there. And as the parent of toddlers, just sitting quietly on a.

On a park bench. Sounds pretty. Sounds pretty great. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna go with that.

I'm thinking it's this amazing historical reason of. I'm thinking in my head, I'm like, what did he do? And you're like, yeah, he's sitting.

He looks so peaceful, man. He just looks so peaceful. And I. I could use that in my life these days.

Okay.

Inspiration, really.

Let's get to your book. I want to talk about your book.

I saw a lot of people posting on this online, and when I see a lot of friends posting about a book online, I want to know who the book is and what it's about, and check it out for myself. We do a lot of talk on politics on here. We've had a lot of conversations. We've had Vincent Bacoat on talking about the political disciple.

We've had Russell Moron. We've talked to Pete Wehner. We've talked to several different people about our politics and how we go about it. And your book, though, is.

Is very interesting because you're talking about spiritual formation within it and renovation of public life. You draw a lot on the work of Dallas Willard, one of our heroes. We've talked a lot on Willard or worked with even neurotheology.

It's come out of Willard. I don't know if you know Jim Wilder or not, but he's kind of the heir apparent. So Jim's been on here three times.

I believe Jim's become a good friend. So we, we really do advocate for a lot of Dallas Willard stuff.

But you drew a lot on him and put him into the realm of politics in ways that I didn't necessari understand. And it was interesting looking through your book because it was a challenge. You don't get into how a person votes.

You're kind of the primary question. And what I gathered from it. Give me if I get this wrong, but it's who are we becoming as we engage politics?

Could that be an accurate assessment of the book?

That's right. Yeah, it is.

I view it as a spiritual formation book that has to do with politics, not as a political book that sort of, that sort of, you know, touches on spiritual formation. Yeah.

And you hit some of the prominent views of how Christians, specifically evangelicals, I would say, I mean it goes across the board because you hit pretty much everyone.

But some of the people that you talked about in here, you do talk about John MacArthur, you do talk a little bit about Albert Mueller and, and how they have, I don't want to say how they have gone about politics, but how many people have followed their lead and their understanding of polit takes to release their engagement toward it on, on specific issues. And you try to advocate for something different because you're saying it's not in some game.

There's so many different factors that, that really help us to understand how it has gone over time.

But one of the things that you start off in the book that I thought was actually pretty telling, and I quoted this at the very onset of our conversation, is you talk about how people are basically using the church to get their political needs met and they're going to politics to get their spiritual needs met. That caught my attention right off the bat. So I'd like you to explain what you mean by that.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot that could be said there. I mean, let me take the second aspect first, which is that people are going to politics to get spiritual needs met.

And politics has become a kind of reservoir for so many of our hatreds, loves, aspirations, resentments.

And politics has become a place where we seek for self expression in a way that crowds out the ability for politics to be about self governance and the limited but essential, you know, jurisdiction of politics. Now Christians, I talk in the book about something I term political therapeutic deism.

And this of course is a riff off of Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist's term moral therapeutic deism, political therapeutic deism is essentially a set of beliefs in which religious language imagery doesn't have to be Christian, but religious language imagery terms are used as leverage to provide a sort of divine affirmation for one's own politics. Religion is sort of leveraged as a supplement for one's own sort of political beliefs. And we just have that. We have quite a bit of that.

And it's a destructive thing to our politics, but it's destructive to the church as well. Now, the other side, you know, I use a phrase in the book called politics sensitive churches.

Of course, in the 80s and 90s, we had Seeker sensitive churches. And what secret sensitive meant, my sort of understanding and sort of summary of is the idea was that you could build church.

You could build what the local church does, how it presents itself, what it focuses on in a way that is sort of tilted towards and centers those who would not identify as committed Christians, but are, but are seeking people that we could bring in. And to be clear, I think the secret sensitive movement, you know, provided some great, great things.

What we're seeing though, and this again is not every church, but we are seeing politics sensitive churches.

And these are churches that are constructing what they do, how they present themselves to either appeal to a particular political set or make clear that they are. They don't want a certain kind of politics in the church.

And you know, what I would argue again, without casting disparagements on anybody, is it's a really dangerous place to be when you're centering the activity of the local church on anything other than the person of Jesus Christ. And, you know, I think Tim Alberta.

And we have some, some disagreements, but I think Tim Alberta's reporting over the last four or five years on how this has played out in local churches I think is important for us to consider.

I remember reading that article and it really fit the narrative of what we were seeing is that the churches that tried to obey the state for the health or the greater good of the people that were there closed trying to still preach the reality of the gospel.

It was, it was quite substantial. Why the other guy, his church never really grew substantially, right?

Yeah, yeah.

We are seeing that in the politization. And I think we can't remove ourselves from politics. We can't just stick our heads in the sand and say that it doesn't play.

I think there has been a stream of Christianity that said, hey, let's just focus on Jesus. Let's just leave politics for itself. You address a little bit of that in the book.

And it is fascinating though, because while I've seen Christians say, hey, I don't want to be involved in this yet you see so many Christians that are. I mean, they have taken it religiously. And I wanted to draw on what you actually mentioned with the political therapeutic deism.

You had five points which what you meant by that to explain it. You said, God is on my political party side. My views on political issues are a leading indicator that I'm a true Christian.

Three, my actions in politics are justified in lights of God's general approval of my politics, which is pretty freaky. Four, I do not understand how other, quote, Christians could vote for my candidate's opponent. I've actually heard people say that.

And it is clear and obvious which political issues are most important to God.

Yeah.

Now those themselves, some people are listening right now and they're saying, wait a minute, what's wrong with any of that? That's where I'm at right now. But we've seen that that's not necessarily shape from the Scripture. It is something that has come in over time.

You also talk about a moral framework in the middle of this. Can you elaborate on that? Moral framework? I think moral knowledge is what you called it.

Well, yeah, so. Right. So this is. They're all related topics.

So disappearance of moral knowledge is probably arguably, you know, Willard's principal, Dallas, Willard's principal sort of academic focus. So he had been working on a book on this subject for years.

He didn't complete it before he passed, but several of his, his doctoral students did, did finish the book. And so there's an, there's an academic book that was published I think in the last five, seven years on the disappearance of moral knowledge.

And to summarize, Willard, Willard's argument is that in the post World War II era, gatekeepers of knowledge, principally academia, but also other decision makers, believe that and acted as if moral and religious knowledge did not count as publicly available knowledge, that moral knowledge was not fit to be taught by public institutions of knowledge.

The problem, of course, is that we live in a moral universe and we make moral decisions every day at the individual level, but also at the societal level.

If you excise consideration as moral knowledge as having authority, you don't, as we're seeing now, you don't strip out from the public square moral assertions. So I would argue that the relativism of the 90s is dead.

Like if you're a, if you're a Christian worldview expert, if you think that the principal ideological sort of opponent of Christianity is relativism, still, I'd encourage you to just read the newspaper and assess the kinds of conversations people are having now. People are not wary of making moral assertions.

What is part of what is making our public square so fractious, so full of conflict, so full of bloviation, is that people don't think that their moral assertions have any moral authority. And that leads to a real crisis.

And importantly for Willard, the disappearance of moral knowledge shares some similarities with those who would say we live in a post Christian society would use that term. I don't like using that term. Willard didn't like using that term, though there are some exceptions for both of us.

But for Willard, it was important as he describes how the disappearance of moral knowledge has come to be.

It's not something that was imposed from the outside, from the secular world on Christians, Christians participated too participated in and contributed to the disappearance of moral knowledge. It's, it's just the air we breathe.

And that helps, I think, I mean, a, I think it's true, but B, it also helps the disappearance of moral knowledge from turning into one more culture war narrative. Because that, that's just not, that's just not the history that, that's not what, what has been happening here.

So churches, Christians should be asking themselves where they see the disappearance of moral knowledge in, in their lives in our churches. And I would argue that politics is a primary location of where you can.

See that you've said so much. The fact that we've kind of seen the end of the bankruptcy of relativism, that even that it's.

As one, I remember one apologist said years ago, he said it's a tolerance trap, right? Everything's accepted except those who won't accept.

You know, everything is tolerated except intolerance, which is its own view, and it's contradictory. And I think more and more people are catching up on that.

The question now is everyone does have a moral framework which they operate from, and it's not formed in a vacuum. This is why I get frustrated when I see any Supreme Court justice that's being interviewed. Is your faith going to influence you?

Well, it formed who partly formed who I am. We can't remove that. We all have that. To say that there is a completely neutral public sphere is, is ridiculous. It's not.

It's filled with value judgments all over. What we're seeing, though, things that have historically been depending on what era of history you want to draw from, but biblically were not moral.

You know, adultery, I mean, they were immoral, adultery, sexuality, different aspects of it, how it manifested itself, but we're seeing now that's considered. It's almost like the new morality that you, you, you have to say that.

So this is where we get into the political part, because in some respect, politics has shown that relativism is bankrupt because people are taking moral frameworks and they're using it all the time.

However, in the middle of this, I find that Christians are very, very confused because they've been told on a variety of different moral choices, whether we're talking about abortion, whether we're talking about homosexuality, gay marriage, but yet you rarely hear him talk about helping people with AIDS or the poor or. And this is where I remember being in an urban environment at church.

I said there's aspects of the gospel in each one of the parties and that one wants to take an understanding of morality, but at the same time the other one wants to be able to help people that are in the midst of difficulty and to help equality and injustice and all these pieces. And it's such a shame to see them fragmented like that.

However, what you have done is you talk about how a political culture has not been what it's supposed to be and you actually have this quote. Our political culture is both infecting the culture of our churches and making it more difficult to see.

The ways of our faith can help us reject and renew our toxic politics. The very antidote our faith provides is made anathema because it threatens what we really actually trust. All right, you have to explain that.

What you just read is one of the good sort of summaries of the book. We actually don't think that the way of Jesus holds up in politics and public life.

And so for all of the high minded doctrinal sort of statements having a high view of this or that.

The.

The real challenge is the way of Jesus fit for the moment of crisis, for the moment when the pressure is on, not when you're in the classroom answering a Series of doctrinal statements and nodding your head yes, who are you? In the thick of the moment, I tell a story. There's a Barna did this two part question.

The first part is on a question that's been debated for literally millennia among Christians in this sort of ignore the answer. The answer to this doesn't matter in this context.

But the question is essentially, would you use violence to, to protect your property or your family in the face of like an assailant? And something like 75% of Christian adults answered, yes, I would to that question. And that's fine.

Again, we could debate pacifism and nonviolence and all that sort of thing. The second question, the follow up question was essentially, do you think Jesus would agree with.

With your previous answer, do you think Jesus would agree with your approach? And the numbers essentially flip. So only about 25% would say that Jesus would agree with what I just said. At that point.

If you're a pastor, like, who cares about the theological. Again, I'm speaking somewhat facetiously, but who cares about the doctrinal theological assessment?

The real crux of the issue there is that you have Christians who are consciously saying, if I was in this situation, what Jesus would have me do is not the thing that is fit for me to do. What Jesus's way is not the best way for me. What Jesus would say about this, that's a, that's a detached sort of like ethereal thing.

But I have to live this life unlike Jesus. Right? Like, I mean, so you get all kinds of questions about incarnation, all kinds. We run into that in politics all of the time.

And the argument of the book is, if we are willing to say in politics, Jesus's way is not fit, or I am deliberately, consciously moving away from the way of Jesus because I think I need something else. In politics, the crux of the book is arguing that logic does not stay quarantined to your political self.

That becomes a discipleship question, that becomes a formation question. The person who is willing to say that in politics, Jesus's way is not up to the task.

I have come to learn and believe that in almost every case I might offer vaguely for some exception. If you are willing to operate on that logic in politics, there are other areas of your life in which you're operating on that logic.

You might be a, you might be a business owner who at the end of the year is looking at your accounting books and going, you know, I don't think this is going to work unless I budget the numbers, move Some numbers around. And, you know, everyone else, everyone else in my, in my field, they do it too. So I'm not really, I'm not really acting worse than anybody else.

And, you know, actually I employ a lot of people. Like I, I, my, my business is actually like a, like a public good. And imagine all the people that would be hurt if my business went under.

And, you know, next year I'll make sure that I don't end up in this place. But really, honestly, it's for the kingdom that I need to move these, these numbers around.

And you just get into this and so, so that is the argument of the book, is that our political life is not quarantined off from the life that we're living with Jesus.

And unless we as Christians and unless the church is able to position politics as within and under the gospel, as opposed to above and superior to it or outside and irrelevant to it, then that is not just going to result in negative consequences for our politics and our public life, though I think that is happening. It is a death knell to discipleship. It's a death knell to formation into Christlikeness.

Well, I think you have hit the proverbial nail on the head. It is interesting to me that your description of that, how our politics trumps our faith in some respect when push comes to shove.

And it's not just our politics, it's a variety of areas of life in business, financial pieces like that. I actually had that happen to me in a, in a way that was outside of the context of the United States.

I was in Liberia and I was asked to preach, and my question was, is what do you want me to preach on? And they said the Seven Deadly Sins, which I thought was an odd subject to preach on.

And it was a denomination that was there, one of the most conservative in all of Liberia. And I figured they knew better than I did. They'd heard that series, that I preached it and I decided to go with it. But I wanted to know why.

And I said, well, can you tell me why? And they said, well, in the Liberian civil war that I think it lasted like 30 years. I mean, it was pretty bad.

Yeah.

He said that our denomination, which is the most conservative in all Liberia, supplied 60% of the soldiers that committed such atrocities. And we can't figure out why. This is what we're talking about here.

Yes.

Is that how deep is your formation? Go into the core of who you are. And I think what you're stating and you're showing is for many of us Our formation doesn't go that deep.

Yeah, it.

There is a doctrinal or propositional adherence, but there's not an inner adherence to the depth of our being when it.

Because our other cultural values weigh out like comfort, wealth, status, they outweigh the moral conviction that we have because it threatens our comfort. And that is not. That's not fun. That's not fun at all. And again, by the way, we haven't talked about parties yet. We haven't talked about any of this.

We're just talking about Jesus.

Yes.

And formation. Getting down to the heart of who we are at our core. Because that's what you're talking about. You refer to whole life discipleship.

And again, you're using Willard. My question, and I want to help our people with this, because there might be some people out there that are not familiar with Dallas Willard.

Yeah.

And why you're referring to him so much? I mean, he's with Jesus now and been for about 11 years.

I actually just got his biography that you had referenced by Gary Moon, and I've been reading that, so I thought that was kind of fun because I'm. I'm reading some of him.

Gary did a wonderful job on that. Yeah.

But why is Dallas Willard such an example to draw from? And why is he important to this conversation?

For so many reasons. The first is just personal. He just dramatically influenced my life.

My first meeting when I started working at the White House was my first meeting with an external stakeholder was with Gary Haugen. Gary Haugen is the CEO of International Justice Mission. And after that meeting, Gary sent me the Divine Conspiracy.

And I'd never heard of Willard before. And honestly, I thought it was kind of a cruel joke because Divine Conspiracy is a pretty dense read for, ostensibly a trade. A trade book. It's not.

Not an academic publisher. And I thought, you know, what are you. What are you doing sending this to me? I'm working 14, 16 hours a day. Don't have time for this. But my.

My pastor back in Buffalo recommended the book in a. In a little blog post. And I thought, okay, if my pastor back home is recommending it. And Gary's. Gary sent it to me. I better read it.

And it changed my life. It was like a second spiritual awakening in my life. And so it shaped my. How I view the world, my work, and my personal life.

Just my wife and I have just made a lot of decisions flowing from Dallas's teaching of scripture and the kingdom. And so that would be the first thing.

The second thing, you know, Willard is someone who was active and teaching in the 80s and the 90s and the first decade of the aughts. And he is someone who never took his eye off the ball. There's not a serious scandal to his name.

There's not a period of time where he traded in his authority as a Christian teacher, sort of cultural or political cachet. He is someone who was not perfect, the last thing Dallas would have ever wanted. And he was very clear about this. A sort of like Willard, sort of.

He wanted to introduce him, bring people to Jesus.

He is someone in a time of such cynicism and a time in which I think a lot of young people in particular are asking, does anyone really believe this stuff? Is this all just a cultural power play? Christianity, all of it? Dallas is someone whose life provides evidence that there really is a there there.

And that was important to me. I came to faith as a 15 year old after reading Romans and that was a principal sort of question I had. And I think it's critical culturally.

The last thing I'll say, and I'll be quick here is Dallas's teaching, I think, and his ideas had really profound social implications. And if you dig deep into his writing, his essays. Well, actually, I shouldn't say you need to dig too deep.

If you just read with an attentiveness, you'll see him gesture towards the social and even the political. I found it to be helpful to put Dallas's ideas in conversation because he wasn't a player in partisan debates. There's not a.

He as a person is not readily offensive to the left or the right or the, you know, and so there is a, there is a, a way in which his ideas are consistent with the aims of the book.

And you have him all over the book. I mean, you really do.

Yeah, and very, very openly. I mean, I mean this is. The book is an application of Dallas, Willard's ideas to politics in public life.

And by the way, just real quickly, I should have said this at the beginning. Willard, professor of Philosophy, University of Southern California, was there for almost 50 years. At times he was a chair of the department.

He also was a Christian pastor, teacher, author. He wrote the Divine Conspiracy. He also wrote Spirit of the Disciplines, Renovation of the Heart, the Allure of Gentleness, Knowing Christ Today.

And then as I mentioned, Disappearance of Moral Knowledge. And many of the chapters of this book are oriented specifically around particular chapter, particular books or chapters of books that he wrote.

That's helpful. The more that you know, Willard's thought, it helps you understand more of the contours of your own.

In the book, I do want to talk about, as we do talk about faith and we, we are talking about Christians involved in politics. We have to talk about the different approaches that Christians traditionally have had.

Yeah.

Whether that's to the right or even to the left. And you give some nomenclature and some ways of describing these.

I, I shouldn't say contours, but these ideas or approaches to the gospel, how they've been conceptualized, and you do so more from a political standpoint. You don't do it from a theological standpoint per se. It's not a theological book.

I could show you probably historically how those have been created and theologically. And it comes down to how you frame your understanding of the gospel and how it's created.

However, you're the first person that I've seen actually, unless Dallas done that. Dallas has done this and I'm just not aware of it. Where you do talk about the gospel of sin management and our politics.

That's actually one of the chapter titles. Yes, I've heard that before. Yours is just. I've heard this even when I was preaching that, oh, it's just a gospel of sin management.

I was very offended by that. However, in retrospect, over time I started to see that that was exactly correct because it wasn't anchored within the biblical story properly.

And when you don't have a restoration of all things, when you don't have the proper understanding of creation, you only have a focus of fallen redemption. It does become a gospel of sin management or it can become. I know that there are some have managed to buck that trend.

I want to know though, what you refer to as a gospel or what you mean by a gospel of sin management or. And could it be described barcode faith?

Yeah, yeah. So, right. And it's just so, so important to say at the outset. Right. Like the Lord uses all kinds of imperfections, including our own.

And, and so I think the, the spirit with which Willard talks about these things is not a condemning one, is not one of sort of throwing away. His argument is that these are incomplete gospels. They make discipleship non essential. That is what he would say.

And so barcode faith, the way I describe it in the spirit of our politics is I relate it. The day I turned 15, I went to Wegmans, the local supermarket in Buffalo. Wegmans is from western New York. Everyone worked there growing up.

And I became a cashier. And as a cashier they have all these sort of metrics including scans per minute.

And so you get on the good registers, like the express lanes if you have a high scan per minute rate.

And so when you're a cashier, you're just like, wherever the barcode is, like, I just want to find it, scan it, get in the bag, get people out the door.

And Willard in Divine Conspiracy says many people have a barcode faith, which is that so long as you have the right label slapped on you, God, the sort of. The divine scanner will read you as a Christian and you will go to the Good Place and everyone else will end up in the bad place.

And it really doesn't matter if. If you're a bag of. If you're a bag of pretzels. If the green bean sticker got.

Got, you know, misplaced and slapped on the pretzel bag, you found a loophole. God, the divine bar scanner has to read the barcode that's on you and you'll go to the good Place.

And he said, this is what theology has become in some sectors, which is to be a Christian means that you have provided mental assent to a few key lines of doctrine.

And so long as you have done that, you could have the worst kind of character possible, but you'll go to the good place and others will go to the bad place. And Willard said, this is developed to the extent which is as widely recognized.

You can't say anything categorical, you can't say anything definitive. You can't say anything that would distinguish the character of a Christian from the character of anybody else in the book.

In Divine Conspiracy, he talks about gospels of sin management on the left and the right. And I sort of play with those ideas a bit. And I talk about the Fixer Gospel and the Toolbox Gospel.

And just real quickly, the Fixer Gospel essentially refers to, I'm Italian. Willard did not. Don't put this on Willard. Willard. I wouldn't be surprised if he never watched a gangster movie.

I.

In my fallen Italianness, I have watched a couple. In these movies, there is often a fixer. And the fixer is the guy that the protagonist calls in to get the body off the floor.

Someone's killed in a living room, there's blood on the carpet. The mobster calls his fixer. You gotta clean this up. It's gotta be done by three, by five in the morning, before people arrive, whatever.

And the important thing, one of the important things about. There's almost always a line in the movie that. That says something like, I don't care how you get it done, just fix the problem.

And then I Don't want to hear from you again. And the Fixer Gospel is one that essentially uses Jesus as, as a sort of eschatological widget. He solves the sin problem. What do you need?

I need my sin problem solved. Who solves it? Jesus. Let's call him in. He'll take care of the problem. And then anything after that is, is, is not non essential.

And so there's like a deep concern among some theological strains about any talk of being a Christian, meaning that your behavior might change because that's viewed as works and that's viewed as being justified by works and not by faith. And as Willard describes. Well, what does that do?

That makes anything that Paul writes in Colossians about taking off the old self with its practices and putting on the new self that is being renewed in the knowledge of the image of Jesus Christ. It makes, it makes all of that non essential. You could be a Christian and not do that because practices have nothing to do with saving faith.

I also talk about the Toolbox Gospel and you know, in the book I talk about these, sort of associate the Fixer Gospel on the right, the Toolbox Gospel on the left. What I hope people recognize is that it really is a horseshoe. I mean, with very subtle tweaks, they're really kind of end up in the same place.

But the Toolbox Gospel is really about going to Christianity and its resources to affirm one's own and advance one's own social agenda. So you have something you want to get done in the social sphere. Well, I wonder if there's a scripture that might support my case.

I, I wonder if there's something in Christian history that might bolster a sort of the argument that I'm gonna make anyways. Right? Like that's, it's, it's not. The toolbox is Christianity, not politics. Politics is outside the toolbox.

Politics is the thing that you're oriented towards. Christianity is just the thing that you carry with you in case you might need it at some point.

Here's the, here's the point to, to tie directly to politics. It took me a very long time. You know, I've been, I've been working in politics since before I was an adult.

And it took me a very long time to understand and see if you think that what it means to be a Christian is to hold the right views on a limited set of social or doctrinal topics.

It is really no surprise then that what it means to be a Christian, what it means to have a Christian politics is that you're willing to nod your head yes on a limited set of policy issues. And it doesn't matter how you advance those policy issues. It doesn't matter what your character is.

It doesn't even really matter if your position on those issues comports with reality at all. It doesn't matter if your position on those issues, if your motivation is to help people or not. You just have the right answer.

And that's what it means to have a Christian politics. The two are tied. And we just gave a pretty decent summary of the third chapter of the Spirit of Our Politics.

After hearing this conversation, I want to ask you the question, what is your view of being a Christian in politics?

Now, I know that conversations like this can get really annoying because many of us just want to be told what to do and how to do it and what's the best way to go forward in a way that honors God. And I know many people, many Christians, have taken that exact path.

But I think politics is more than simply ticking the box on a variety of issues that a candidate agrees to take in order to get your vote. I think that there's something deeper there. In fact, I think Jesus wants to sanctify our politics.

I'm very much aware that when people talk about politics, they don't want to bring religion into it. But you can't. You can't remove your faith from your politics. But your politics is simply more than just a litmus test.

It's simply more than what a political party's particular platform is. There's so many different intricacies involved, not just the issues, but the very people.

And that actually goes against the grain of what many people are telling us today. And that's why I found this conversation so fascinating.

To have someone who was a political insider, who's also a Christian, who wants to help us to understand the best way to approach our politics in a way that honors Christ. And I'm not talking about the lowest common denominator. I'm talking about so much more, because it comes down to being a discipleship issue.

I'm not saying you have to vote one way or the other.

I'm saying is we have to develop a set of criteria and lenses beyond just the litmus test of the issues itself, but actually look at the people involved and what that's doing and accomplishing for our faith and for the flourishing of society. I can't wait for you to hear the next part of the conversation with Michael Ware that's coming up next week.

And conversations like this are not just for Your entertainment. We want to help inform you so that you can be further conformed to the image of Christ.

That's why we're here, because, you know, there's a lot of things that are at work within our world. Some things that I like to call the deep structures of church, the deep structures of faith.

I mean there's the things that we say that we believe, we say that we believe the Bible. My question is always, when I hear someone say that, my follow up question is always, well, what do you believe about the Bible?

Almost every religious group that I've ever interacted with that is Christian or at least boasts some aspect of Christianity in their, their, their documents says we believe the Bible.

Well, I want to know what you believe about the Bible and how does the Bible and your faith particularly, which is shown in the Bible, shape your everyday life? And I often think that when people say that the Bible is shaping them, it's actually not the Bible.

But there are other cultural factors that shape how they see and interact with the world.

And we want to be able to help you identify that so that you can truly be confident to the image of Christ and seek his kingdom in all things, so that other people might come to know who he is. That's why we created this ministry. It's much more than a podcast. We have our academy, we've developed the first class, we just finished that one.

We're getting ready to launch up for our second one.

And we have so many more that we want to create and we want to be able to help equip Christians and leaders all over the world world for those who are dying on the vine, who have a holy discontent with the status quo and recognize that things as we have done them are not working any longer. The cultural topography has shifted. That's why we created this.

Because we couldn't find seminaries, Bible colleges or churches that are willing to actually teach the stuff that people are dealing with in the everyday lives.

And I'm not talking about just the hot button issues, because the hot button issues are actually when you trace them back, actually go back into other key issues that the church has failed to address over time or false teaching or incomplete teaching. Actually called these cause these things to creep up. I mean that's really what's at the, the onus of what we're doing. And that's why we're here.

Because we want to help you. We want to help you accomplish the mission that God has for you where you are.

We want to be able to equip you Further equip you, because you do have a holy discontent with the status quo, because you recognize the stuff that's going on out there right now isn't working anymore. And we want to see you make a huge difference where you are.

And I come at this not as someone who's just a theorist, but who's seen it happen by the grace of God, I've been able to revive three different churches, to be able to reconstruct them almost from the ground up, to help them to understand what God has for them.

And that means going to the word of God, proclaiming Jesus as the Christ, but examining these deep structures so that Christ can be sovereign over those and.

Transform those as well.

And we can't do this ministry without your engagement. In fact, we need to raise $8,000 in order to accomplish these next, this next set of our evolution.

And that's why we're looking for donors who are willing to give $5 a month, $20 a month, $100 a month, $250 a month. And they say, hey, I want to be a watering partner with you. I want to help equip pastors and see churches transformed.

I want to be able to stand alongside you and say, no more. No more status quo. But we want to see Jesus as Lord of every.

And if that's your heartbeat, if that's your passion, if that's where you're at, then simply click the link in your show notes because we would love to be able to have you partner with us that as we seek to renew the church in the west, to be able to see pastors and churches transformed, encouraged, revitalized, where they're at, because many of them are struggling right now.

These faithful servants have weathered so many different cultural onslaughts, demonic onslaughts, things that are coming at them all the time, and they're barely hanging on. And they need you.

They need you to be able to give them the resources that they need, to be able to be renewed where they are so that they can continue to stand forth for Christ where they are at.

If that's your heartbeat, simply click that link in your show notes, partner with us, and know that God is using people like you to not only help the church survive here in America, but so that it can thrive in America and around the world. I want to thank you in advance. I also want to thank our Apollos Water team for helping us to water the world.

This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollos Water. Stay watered, everybody.