Acedia, Purgation, and Faith That Lasts: God in the Desert (Noelle Forlini-Byrte)

00:00:01
Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm doctor James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm doctor James Spencer and I'm joined today by doctor Noel for Leini Bert and she is the author of a book called God in the Desert, a spiritual theology of wilderness in the Old Testament. She's also a part time lecturer at Sanford University. And really enjoyed this book. You all know I'm kind of an Old Testament geek myself, and so I really appreciated this book and am happy to welcome Noel to the podcast. So welcome, Thank you.

00:00:59
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:01:00
Speaker 1: Well, I usually like to start out and just ask authors, you know what prompted this book. This is a really interesting way of approaching the Old Testament. We emerge Old Testament with spiritual formation, spiritual direction, and so I'm just wondering if you can give us a little bit of an insight into what prompted you to go this direction and brought what drew your interest to the wilderness in the Old Testament.

00:01:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been about twenty years in the making, to be honest, I mean I can go all the way back to my first semester spiritual formation class and seminary, and if you're familiar, our professor introduced us to a book called Devotional Classics, which is coming out of the Richard Foster Renovarri movement, and it's a compilation of excerpts from various spiritual writings throughout church history. And in that book, I met Saint John of the Cross for the first time, and Foster did sort of mash up with the Dark Knight of the Soul and Psalm forty two, which, of course, this is a psalm that is asking, you know, questions of where God is and longing to feel God's presence in the way that Psalmist once did. And I remember being in that class and being assigned to lead our class discussion that particular day and there was just something about the topic of darkness in God's absence and the questions that you have about God that are that are real and present and visceral even that felt really true, and that like, here are things that a lot of us feel but don't talk about. And I remember thinking, as a twenty three year old first semester seminarian that this text, this John the Cross and writings like that was a text for me and a topic for me. And I didn't know why. And I had a sense, this sort of intuitive sense, very early, that this is something that maybe not now, but somewhere down the line, that this sort of amalgamation of topics of suffering and darkness and confusion and God's absence would be important somehow in my life. And so fast forward a few years later, and I found myself doing a PhD in All Testament, and the story of Jacob wrestling with God the Javic River found me and it was the topic of my dissertation. And so once again it was darkness, and it was God's absence, and yet somehow God's hyper presence, the God that sometimes feels miles away and then sometimes it other times feels violently present, in ways that change your whole life, and how this particular care to encounter darkness literally and figuratively a lot in his story, and it feels and was a wilderness of sorts. And so I'm living with with that Old Testament text I'm living with at the time taking a doctoral seminar on the cloud of unknowing and learning about the mystics and desert fathers and desert mothers of the early Church and just seeing images that all related to wilderness in some way, like these sort of opposing ideas that all felt true in the life of faith, Like there's darkness, but you get enlightened in darkness too. Sometimes things are they're barren, they're stark, yet there's there's fecundity that is, there's abundance. Is also there's this idea that there's dislocation and exile, but there's homecoming true too, there's betrothal and divorce, and there's consolation, desolation, hunger, satiation, you know, abandonment and nurture and just all these things that wilderness became the image for me over time that represented all that and represented suffering and restlessness and confusion and malaise and stripping away of the things that we rely on usually and I think most provocatively encounter with God. And so I entered wilderness really through darkness, because I think that these are overlapping things and they feel they feel true in the actual lives people have, as opposed to the lives people say that they have. So yeah, yeah, I was just it's you know, what is it the most the most personal is the most universal, right, And that's really where I started.

00:05:47
Speaker 1: So very cool. I you know, as I was reading your book, one of the things that I think I've thought about for a long time is I was never much on preaching. I do it occasionally now, but even when I preach, I mostly just teach and then you draw some application. And as I was reading through your book, one of the things that struck me was this sort of I don't want to call it a hard line, but you talk about the intersection of liturgy and scholarship at one point, and how these two really do need to go together. And what I found myself asking was, you know, as I've done a little bit more I don't know, applicational work, right, trying to apply ex to Jesus, to the church, not just sort of siphoning it off and isolating it from real life. What I find is that merging it to real life, in other words, making the ex of Jesus fit the liturgy is actually the harder task. It's a much more difficult task, and they require each other. But I'm wondering how you think about this, the necessity of scholarship and it's relation to spiritual life. So in other words, and maybe I could just say like this, just so I kind of get my thought clear to you, is I see sometimes I see a lot of sort of pithy devotional content. Yeah, it has the ring of connecting to real life, but is very disconnected from the text. Yeah, and I'm wondering how you think about that relationship.

00:07:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's tricky because I've seen it done as you have in different ways. So one way is the very low hanging, shallow fruit of application without exegesus, you know, to where I just said this in classed this morning. A text without a context is a pretext for it to mean anything you want it to me, And that's really dangerous. And so you know, these sort of pithy things that we put on greeting cards and on throw pillows divorced from truly dealing with the Biblical text as it needs to be dealt with is dangerous and shallow. And what is equally dangerous too, though, I think is I've said in church is that you know, I was trained as a seminarian, as a doctoral student to really do the opposite of what I just said, to really dig into the context, to really dig into the world underneath the text and to the exclusion of the soul, to the exclusion of the heart. And I have sat in church services well intentioned with people I love behind the pulpit and have walked away going I have no idea how this is relevant to my soul. I have no idea how this is forming me. This feels like a lecture and I don't And moreover, I don't even know who you are behind the pulpit, much less who God is. So I think that and who God is like pursuing me and wanting me to be So I think that there's a danger too that we hide behind our scholarship because we don't know how to go about the deep soul work, or we're afraid to or you know, I'm not a pastor, so I can say this. So somewhat judgmentally without any kind of repercussion for myself, but you know, without any vulnerability at all. And so I could understand only as a lay person, but I could understand that the perception of danger in letting you your congregants in too much. So I just feel that both of those postures, both of those opposites really have made me feel lonely. You know, I've walked away from church or Bible City or whatever it might be, feeling just malnourished. And so I think about, like, how might I pursue the discipline and it is an academic discipline of spiritual formation with the same degree of I hope, excellence and rigor in learning. Who are the seminal voices in this field and what were they about and what have they given to us? I'll say that Robert Mulholland's shape by the word using scripture or the power of scripture and spiritual formation has changed my life because he was a New Testament scholar that was his training, who was equally robust in this other discipline, and he brought them together. And so just how can we bring them together and also do it in the way that formation is intended as not just an academic discipline, although it is that, but to really let it do what it's supposed to do, which is to excavate the soul and draw us closer to God. So I think about just trying really deeply in my own life to bring as the Wesleyans would say, knowledge and vital piety together, and to be whether it's in class or in my writing or whatever it might be, as honest as I can. I share a little bit of my own story in the book, and also to say that, like, these are not perfect things, and I can offer a list of practices and have and do and will, but these are things, all of them that just position us before God, and we don't have really much control over what they do to us. We are dependent upon God for God to do that work. All we do is position ourselves before the God before whom we are laid there.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So, I mean, I think, as I think back through your book, one of the things that I really appreciated was the tension you're able to sort of hold together without smoothing out the uncomfortable parts. So, I mean, I think about the chapter on Hagar and the way you deal with Abram and Sarah and the way they treat this woman. And you don't say, look, these people are now evil and we should frame we should demonize them, right, But you also, I think appropriately recognize these are not the people who are supposed to venerate. We can recognize their faith, and Hebrews eleven, as you mentioned, does that. But then we also have to really pay attention of the Old Testament record. We can't just take that little sliver of testimony, which the New Testament isn't giving a robust ex to Jesus of that narrative. They're pinpointing a very specific action, and so there's a narrowing that happens in the New Testament, especially in Hebrews eleven. And when we get to the Old Testament, we have to read this sort of broader stroke and recognize that there is a tension here, that there are things we need to wrestle with and recognize, and that this is in some way commensurate with the way that our lives look as opposed to being sort of a a pristine model that we're supposed to live up to. But I really appreciated the way you were able to deal with some of those really sentimental narratives in a way that respected some of that sentiment but also really challenged it and drew out some other aspects of those pieces.

00:13:54
Speaker 2: Thank you. The Hagar story is one that has followed me in a way that most stories have not. And I almost didn't put that into the book because I've I've written so much about Hagar already that I felt like I had nothing else to say. And it just came to me. And that's that I wrote that chapter in a in an afternoon. I mean, it just came. And you know, I think I look at biblical characters and in this case, Abraham and Sarah in the way that I look at myself and the people in my own life. And you know, when when I was younger, I was more apt to think in black and white ways about myself, and I so deeply wanted to be the good person in my own story. And you know, conversely, the people that have hurt me, I so deeply wanted to say, you're the bad guy in the story of my life. And because what does that do for me? It helps me to sleep at night self righteously and to still allow myself to be a good person. And the more that I've grown and aged. Really, the more that I've aged, I see that we're complex people. That I am I'm sure the mentor in someone's life and the person who has I hope been helpful to someone. And I'm probably the villain in someone else's story too, And we are mixtures of darkness and light, And so why would not the characters in the biblical text be that as well? And so I think just holding up a mirror and saying, here the places where Yeah, Abraham is the friend of God. He is, you know, he is, depending on how to read Genesis twenty two in particular, I mean, historically it's been read as this is the pinnacle of his faith. I mean there's there's certainly counter readings that complicate that, right sure, But to see that, like he he does things that are positive and faithful and things that are really really destructive, and so do I and you know, so do we all. And to look at that honestly and to say, God, please help me to see those places in myself and be willing to look at them and willing to deal with them. It is an aspect I think of grace and that I offer to myself and offer to characters in the text too, So.

00:16:39
Speaker 1: I don't want to get too far off on a tangent, but you brought up Genesis twenty two, and I had a question when I was reading your book or an idea, and so I hadn't really reflected on the Haggar story the way that you did. So obviously there's the connection with her going out into the wilderness, hearing from God, you know, almost being you know, we could say, exiled from her place, her normal home place, you know. Abraham and Sarah I push her out because they don't there's tension there and they don't want to deal with this tension, and then God sees her. What I found really fascinating was in reading your interpretation of the Hagar narrative was how I began to think differently about Genesis twenty two. I you know, you always catch that, okay, Ishmael's gone now, right, So this would have been the second time that Hagar and Ishmael are sent away, right, They sent her away twice, once when it's just her and then once when it's Ishmael. I'm correct about that. I think, yeah, it always gets mixed up and then so you always catch that, okay, Ishmael's gone, Isaac's the only one left. And now this is this act of sacrifice in Genesis twenty two that Abram's going to be tested. Is he going to give this his only son to the Lord? What I don't think I caught in all of that was the dynamics between those initial narratives where he's trying to push Hagar out, push Hagar in Ishmail out, and now himself being challenged to say, like, if you want to raise the tension, how do we raise it? How does this? How do how does Genesis twenty two function in light of those other two narratives. So I don't know whether you have any insights on that, but that was one of those things that it raised a question in my mind and I wanted to ask you about it.

00:18:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, you're right that Hagar and Ishmael are are cast out. They are cast out twice. This is, you know, what we call on the ltestiamate doublets, the same story, same basic story, told twice in slightly different ways. Maybe it's different authors, who knows, and the sort of pathos of that. I mean, these are stories that raise the emotional bar higher and higher and you see that really what Abraham is left with is just the one son. And the text is very very clear as it piles adjectives onto take your son, take your only son, take the son that you love. Just in that very first verse, I think it is that just really describes the pathos of giving up this thing that you wanted so desperately and being willing to do that, and the sort of effect on potential effect on Sarah as well. I mean, that's the last that we really hear from her is the previous story. And the rabbis would say about Sarah that she dropped dead after this moment, that that's why we don't hear from hers is after this story, that it just killed her. So the emotion, So there's emotional on every side, even in the rabbinic literature that talks about this. And you know what we do with that story, whether we take it to be a story about critiquing human sacrifice and other religions, whether we take that as a story of different authors where Elahim requires one thing and y always requires another, and this is how this is getting worked out. There's a lot about the compositional history of that particular text. Yes, but the pathos is there, certainly, and just the requirement to give the very last thing that you want to give, the very last thing that you have to give, the dream that you've always wanted, and to be willing to see to that and submit that. You know, read in a positive light, I can empathize with dreams that you want to keep.

00:21:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's just I think what struck me and that again as I sort of read your purgation chapter, your purging chapter, which I kind of like we can turn to next. But I just think there's a beautiful symmetry in this idea that Abram and Sarah are consistently trying to push out Hagar and take away the things that mattered to her. And so the test that God puts Abram through is the consequence of his actions in relation to Hagar and Ishmael. Like, yes, God tells him to send Ishmael away, and it's okay, but the reality is that there they've already pushed them out. They've pushed Hagar out, and there was no concern for her losing anything, and now all of a sudden, Abram is put to the test in this and I just it struck me that those narratives are probably more closely tied together than just the superficial Ishmael's gone and the only Isaac remains. So I definitely appreciate it about that chapter.

00:22:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Yeah.

00:22:05
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the purging chapter, because I thought that was really Again, as I sort of read through the Purging chapter, what started to come to my mind is, so I look through the you know, you do the wilderness peace as a place of testing. You reference Deuteronomy eight, all those you know, sort of texts that many people are familiar with that you know, man does not live on bread alone, but not everywhere. That comes from the mouth of the Lord. And you know, the Israelites are sent out into the wilderness as a test so they can learn to follow the commands of the Lord. But then you get into Hoseiah and you have this much harsher language in Hoseiah. It's very strong prophetic language where God is going to send his people into the wilderness. He's going to send them out, and you talk about it in terms of purging, and so I'm just I'm interested to hear you kind of walk through that a bit. And then I'll pepper in a few questions along the way.

00:23:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, I should say the Hoseah chapter was the first chapter I wrote for the book, and it was the hardest, certainly for the reasons that you're naming the hardest to get right, I don't know that I did the hardest. To Gosh, how many minefields can I can I step over or step on potential lad So I offer that with a great deal of fear and trepidation. I would say, you know, Hoseah, the idea that God is bringing them to the wilderness is not unique to Hoseah. I mean Exodus thirteen talks about this, that God caused them. And I won't geek out too much here, but the Hebrew nuance there is in the verb is in fact causative. It is God's agency that does this. It's not circumstances, it's not happenstance. It is God's decision. And so it makes sense to me then that Joseiah too might function similarly in this way. And I think the thing that helped me a little bit to soften some of the Biblical language is to go to the Christian mystic mystical tradition, so use the word purgation, and that is a part of the mystical tradition of what we call the scholars called the threefold way of purgation, illumination, and contemplation. And it's kind of across the board. The mystics are weird and wonderful, and I learned to love them, and seminary and doctor work too, but they are all wanting to have the end of union with God and a lover and beloved meeting one another, and so speaking these really impassioned and sometimes uncomfortable ways about the relationship between God and the believer, and purgation is a part of that. And in that tradition, purgation is this kind of stripping way of all the things that a believer might normally rely upon, all of the I forget who whose language this is. It might be Henry Allen. The self made props that we all, that we all hold on to. Those those are different for all of us. You know, we are not in Hoseiah's day and time. We are not Israelites in the eighth century who are pursuing idols or who are reliant on maybe political frenemies to help them when times are hard. That's not who we are, because it's not our context, But what are the the self made props that I'm reliant upon? You know, I just this is not Bible, but it's it's I think it's somewhat relevant. I just read Gertu's Faust for the first time a few months ago, and that has stayed with me in such a sobering way. What is the thing? I mean, it's it's it's on the face of its particular story, it's, you know, a man who sells his soul to the devil for infinite knowledge. But boy, I read that and it sits on my shelf, and I think to myself, I could see myself doing some version of that, some form of that, whatever that looks like. Of I really want to know all the things, and so what is what is the idol in my life? What are the things that I really need to relinquish? And perhaps when I'm in some sort of stark situation, when my dreams have been crushed, when you know, some terrible thing has happened to me, and whatever that might be, whatever it is that gets me to wake up and to pay attention and to see that God is really wanting me deeply, and he's wanting me in this beloved way that this latter portion of Josea two is dealing with. He's wanting to have that sort of romantic in the sense of adventure and of closeness with me and I have one foot in and one foot out often, and the Israelites are a picture of that. So I think, I think to answer your question going back to Christian tradition and maybe not imposing on Hooseiah too, but using it as a conversation partner with it, Yeah, helps me a little bit. But to be honest, Yeah, Joseiah too is really hard. And you know, I do fear. I do fear the reader here and his or her vitriol perhaps sense I don't know.

00:28:23
Speaker 1: No, I mean I think as I read through it. This has always been something. I think it's something that Old Testament theologians always struggle with, is you know, what is God doing here? And how do we think about a punishing God? And sometimes I try to explain it, and I think this softens the language way too much, but sometimes it helps people get their head around it. It's like when my son was younger, he used to have his iPhone or whatever, and he'd sit in the tub and he'd have the iPhone on the side of the tub, and I would tell him, I'm like, if you continue to do that, at some point that phone ends up in that water, right, But it didn't no matter how much I warned, and he continued to do it, and eventually the phone fell in the water.

00:29:03
Speaker 2: Right.

00:29:04
Speaker 1: So we get the rice out, we dried it out, it's all good. But he learns a lesson. Right, Yeah, Well, I didn't throw the phone in the water, but it was the natural consequence of the behavior, like getting to that line and working through it. And so when I read that Hoseah too, my mind was going back to and I don't think there's any formal relation between these two texts, but the comments regarding the husband's responsibility within a marriage in Exodus twenty one. Ye know that resonated in my head as I was reading those passages and Hoseah and your reflection on them, because it's like, look what he's taking away. He's taking away the provision and security that a husband is to provide a wife. But in this case it's because the wife has been unfaithful that these things she's no longer deserving of these things. And even then, as God comes back and shows mercy. We see the ongoing faithfulness of God despite his that purging. Yeah, you know, he comes back and sort of is tender and so he's long suffering with us. But no, I thought it was a really effective chapter. And I think that when I was reading it, one of the concepts I really loved that you pulled out that I had I was unfamiliar with. I'm not even sure I'm going to pronounce it right, but the aciitia oh.

00:30:28
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, that concept, And I'd like you'd explained a little bit.

00:30:35
Speaker 1: But that concept I think made sense for me of a lot of the tensions that we feel, and it gets around to what you're talking about, the idols and what we really depend on. I think, so maybe talk a little bit about that if you don't mind.

00:30:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, Asidia is a concept that comes out of the desert tradition. So I'm linking that mostly with the desert fathers mothers and potentially with the Hagar story, but it absolutely applies here too. Yeah. So when Christianity gets legalized under Constantine in the early three hundreds, it becomes you know, church and states so to speak, come together, and it becomes much easier to become a Christian, and Christianity becomes cultural in many ways. And so there were those men and women who felt Christians, who felt like the opulence of the church is no longer representative of the Jesus who suffered and died, and so they fled to the wilderness. And when they fled to the wilderness, they encountered all of these temptations what ancient desert fathers and mothers called i guessimoy. That is, the thoughts that assail you, you know, lust or the desire to go back to where you came from, the desire to give up. Uh. And so you know, there's all this advice in the desert tradition about how to deal with that. But one thing that that often happened, and the result of being in this this desert space that was stark and it was remote, was just the desire to kind of give up, the desire to get just a kind of weariness at the heat of the day. And it really is connected to the noon. The noonday demon is is one way in which it's referred to. It's that that demon that whatever that demon is for you, for the individual that assails you, and that says this life that you're leading that is austere, uh, and it costs you something isn't worth it, and so that that sets in. And sometimes it takes something significant in your life to wake you up and to lead you back to a place of impassioned love for God. So I think, yeah, I think that's very very relevant. I'm I just turned forty three, and I feel the weariness of midlife very deeply and have been a Christian for a long time and can and can understand that in a very lived kind of way. Even though I'm not a monk or desert mother, but I in my own way, I can understand, Gosh, the world is not what I thought it was, and I might just want to give up and just do what everybody else does, you know. So I think it's a clear and present danger for a lot of us.

00:33:50
Speaker 1: So I will say I mean, I think it resonated with me in a few different ways. It was number one, you know, I started thinking about my own life and saying, I haven't had any major tragedies. I think my wife and I have been really blessed in that way. We just haven't had any major tragedies. But there is something to be said for death by a thousand cuts. And at this point, you know, at forty eight, we've you know, we have three, three biological kids. We just adopted a five year old. You know, careers are going different directions, that kind of stuff. Like you just have the grind of that day to day and sometimes you sit back and you go, man, it'd be a lot easier not to be faithful at this point, right, Just you could, you know, I could make this work so much easier. And I do think that that is the sort of complacency that draws in because we don't see the immediate effect or the effect that we want maybe of being faithful. We want we want life to get better, and we we we labor under the impression that being faithful should being blessing. And I think more maybe more specifically, faithfulness should bring the blessing that we expect, you know, yeah, not the one that God surprises us with, but the one that we actually want. And yeah, So I just really resonated with that concept and felt like it fit the tone that you were trying to strike in the book, which I think is the world isn't quite right, yeah, and this is where we live and we should not ignore what's not right about it. Well, at the same time, we can't surrender to what's not right about it either.

00:35:36
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think the implication with Asdia and with the whole of the wilderness experience is the exact opposite of what we kind of began talking about, which is the shallow faith. And I think that the wilderness and Assidia and all of these concepts inside of this book and inside of the wilderness traditions plural implies a deep faith. It implies a weathered faith, It implies a lived in faith because these are questions that get raised because you're living with God. So I would I would take some encouragement, I think from that.

00:36:23
Speaker 1: So I have another sort of curveball question. So this is the danger of me liking the Old Testament. And so as I was reading through the Wilderness work that you're doing, and you know, seeing how the war the wilderness is so formative, and how it sort of strips you down to your bar essence. It takes away the things that you would ordinarily depend on. And I think Deuteronomy AD is really crucial to this. You know, when God warns the Israelites that when they go into the land and they have this prosperity and they're living there that they not forget God and say it is my strength, of my power that has gotten me all this wealth. Yeah, right, that sort of temptation the wilderness pulls all that back. My mind immediately went to the Garden of Eden, this beautiful place of provision and abundance, is where it all sort of begins to fall apart. And I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on how those two sort of fit together as almost mirror images where what we see, you know how what we see in the garden is sort of the opposite of what we're seeing in the wilderness.

00:37:35
Speaker 2: Yeah. Gosh. Deuteronomy eight, I think, for me, is a text that I really kind of hate because it really forces me to look at grace.

00:37:59
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:38:01
Speaker 2: Likewise, the Garden story forces me to look at grace, what is given, what is provided. Yeah. I had this moment not I'm to my shame, not long ago, where I was driving around Birmingham where I live, and you know, those those moments in the car are moments where you know, what you really think about life kind of just comes at you because there's no distraction, no one talking to you, and I thought to myself, I really don't like grace. I really like I really want to believe that my hard work has paid off. Yeah, I really want to think that kind of you. You were sort of talking earlier. You didn't use this phrasing, but it's it's that it's this retributive justice idea of if I pursue covenant, whatever that looks like in a New Testament or in a Christian sense, now, if I pursue God in the right ways, then God will bless me. And that's a very shallow, black and white way of looking at the world. In the Book of job right pushes against that, our own lives push against that. But there's something in me that really wants that to be the case, because that allows me to put a quarter in a machine and get a candy bar out.

00:39:24
Speaker 1: You know, that's right.

00:39:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think both the garden and the wilderness shows us that whatever is, whatever is that is good, is not what I have procured for myself. And it's it's the moments that God has given me things that I have not worked for, that have taught me that and so that there can be, in this very strange way, a kind of garden inside of the wilderness when when you discover that it has been grace all along, you know, And I think, and I think that you realize too, like what is it that you really value? And what are is hard work the idol in my life? Oh, I think it's one of them. You know. I'm an ang Ram three and I will absolutely outwork you. We like I will, I will achieve the goals. And that's one thing I've learned over the last few years especially, is I had this moment I'll just share this in my own personal life where I set out loud and I'm so ashamed of this, but I set out loud to someone, well, I'll be there because this is the most important thing in my life. And as I said that, I thought, what are you doing? Like that is so wrong? That is and that that's such a shallow thing. And so just really learning just like the the thing in me, even that push against grace and that requires me, I think, to live in wilderness so that I can see the abundance of the garden. Yeah.

00:41:12
Speaker 1: One of the just as you're talking there, one of my one of my favorite texts for Samuel twelve, where Samuel they've asked Samuel to give him a king, and Samuel comes back, you know, God has told them, hey, they're rejecting me, not you give him the king they're asking for. And Samuel comes back, and he says, if you will fear the Lord and keep your commandments, it will go well with you. You you know, you have to fear him, but your king also has to fear them. And and it comes to mind because as you're as you're talking about the grace necessary in the garden and in the wilderness, there's a governing dynamic that God said in place that doesn't change. It's this dependence on Him that are our best strategy is always obedience. That the fear of the Lord is what we are supposed to do, regardless of our situation, and that that's what I think we're supposed to see is missing in the garden, and it's what we begin to learn in the wilderness.

00:42:08
Speaker 2: You know.

00:42:09
Speaker 1: And so I think that's just such a resonant theme throughout scripture, but we often miss it because I like you, I agree with you. Yeah, I don't like grace. I want to earn it.

00:42:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I.

00:42:21
Speaker 1: Have this sort of misplaced understanding in my head that I probably could you know, I'm yeah, I'm in any of your gram eight. So it's like, no, that's a good challenge, right, let me earn it all right, Yeah, but that's not the way it works. And so yeah, that's great. Well, we're getting close to the end of time. And I usually ask guests like one kind of final question just to get their take on it. So you don't have to answer it from your book, you don't have to answer it from anything we talked about. But what do you think the church needs to do in today's world in order to that maybe it's not doing right now now to be and make more faithful disciples for Christ.

00:43:07
Speaker 2: I think one of the things of two things really, I sort of joke that the most dangerous or the most like self confident person in the world is a twenty three year old seminarian and the second most self confident person in the world is a twenty four year old seminarian. And I think that like what we need, at least in part, is a real willingness to be humble, and with that humility comes not assuming that you have the answers, and so underneath that I think is I'm willing to ask questions. You know, this whole book about wilderness supposes that, as you said, life is not exactly what we thought it was going to be. It's maybe not what we wanted it to be. And why is that? And there are a lot of people, I think that are afraid to ask the why questions of and about God, And so I think, you know, one way that we move from a shallow, self assured faith is to really engage God with honesty. You know, we are we are our proper selves and prayer often, and I think we should come to God with honesty and trust that God will will meet us there and alongside that, not hide behind whatever talents tools exit Jesus that we want to cling to, and realize that that spiritual formation and biblical studies are fully important and needed, and we will do ourselves. Know, there's a lot of harm if we don't allow God to excavate our ideas of who God is and who we are to.

00:45:13
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, we didn't get to your final chapter, but I really appreciated your treatment of the psalm and praying through it and the Olipha bait and gimmel, you know, sort of structure of that it was really helpful, and I agree with you. I love the most arrogant person as a twenty three year old seminary, and I think I was that most arrogant person at one point.

00:45:37
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:45:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's really funny, you know, when you think back on it, I'm sure you've had this experience as well, but it's like I'm a fraction of the arrogance I was back then. Yeah, I think I know. Sometimes we had this phenomenon. We give student surveys, you know, we do a Bible knowledge exam, and you kind of get their perception of how well they thought they knew their Bible, and it almost always went down at the end of their senior years. And I was like, yeah, that's absolutely probably a good thing.

00:46:07
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:46:07
Speaker 1: You know, you should feel like as you go on, you understand this in some ways more deeply and more richly than you ever have, But you should also have a really deep sense that you have no idea what's going on most of the time.

00:46:23
Speaker 2: That's absolutely right. My husband and I have this conversation all the time with each other. Absolutely yeah.

00:46:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it just I think it speaks to the humility that God cultivates in our lives, like as soon as we think we have him down, you know, I've got my systematic theology of daily living nailed down, and then some you know, here's the here's the curve ball, and you go, yeah, that's not right. I didn't right, that's right.

00:46:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it pre supposes being awake to life, right, like having your eyes open to the world.

00:46:54
Speaker 1: So yeah, well it's been fantastic. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your thoughts. I'd really encourage folks to get the book. Again. The title is God in the Desert, a Spiritual Theology of Wilderness in the Old Testament, and we really just scratch the service, I think on a lot of the topics that you address in the book today. So I encourage folks to go get it. This is an IVP title. IVP gives Thinking Christian listeners a twenty percent discount, So if you link out and buy it on the IVP Press site, that link will be in the show notes, and you put in the discount code that's also in the show notes, you'll get this book for twenty percent off. So i'd encourage you to do that. And yeah, Noell, just really appreciate you being on and thanks so much for being here.

00:47:38
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, James. It's been a pleasure, all.

00:47:41
Speaker 1: Right, everybody, Thanks for sticking with us, Thanks for listening. Go out get the book and learn a little bit more about how to deal with God in the wilderness. We'll take care everybody, and we'll see on the next episode of Thinking Christian. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.