What if the Holy Spirit is moving outside every gate we've built? A decolonial theologian just changed how I see the church.

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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, and 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 Christian's from becoming more like Christ. Now onto 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 my co host Ashish Varma, but also our special guest oxer Oscar Garcia Johnson. And he's the author of Spirit Outside the Gate Decolonial Numatologies of the American Global South. He's also a professor of theology and Decolonial Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, and so we're excited to have him here today to discuss this book. I was able to read through it before the interview and really enjoyed it. I thought it was just fantastic and resonates with a lot of what Ashish and I have talked about. So We're excited to have you here today, So thanks for being on the show.

00:01:09
Speaker 2: Thank you, uh, Doctor Spencer and Ashish. It's a pleasure to be here and join you in what you are doing through the through these podcasts. So it's a it's a great space.

00:01:23
Speaker 1: Well, maybe to start out, why don't you give us a sense of what led you to write Spirit Outside the Gates and and maybe even how it plays plays against Christ Outside the Gates, you know, as a as sort of a title.

00:01:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's you know we. Usually when I say that we, I'm talking about usually Latina Latino. I asked for a scholars and teach us. Uh. Usually begin with a journey of ourselves. So when I think of myself, even in retrospect, and I present myself, I think of three three pieces of identity. One, I'm an ordained minister of the Christian Church. So I think I write, I believe I do where I am, and where I am is the Church. The church is my primary epistemic location, the place where I where I learn and and and relearn and unlearned, and also where I teach. But that's not my only epistemic location. So I think my first book sort of registers that and the mestista community of the spirit. When i'm I'm I'm leading a denomination with one hundred and fifty churches of all kinds of uh uh you know, ethnic diversities and languages and styles. So that was that was quite an experience for me. Piece number one, so to speak. Then the way I got into this book out of that is being a commuter. I call myself from the church to the academy, always traveling. My day job was working with the church with the nomination, with pastors, litership, formation, new church planting missions, and also the classroom, the classroom where I would see pastors from other arm or leaders from other denominations and traditions, uh and asking questions and bringing the questions from the church to the classroom, and also bringing the questions from the classroom to the church. That commuting in a way generated sort of a research agenda. How do we talk about issues that are expressed in the Bible in particular conitectural ways in their time, historical time that have some of them have been carried by different traditions in the West and outside the West, and are part of our daily lives today. The Christian witness. How do we coexist live together as the body of Christ in a nation state and under certain laws that are not necessarily favoring everybody but have a preferential space for others. So how do we respond with some level of theological coherence and responsible ethics. So that was part of a motivation. So my activity as a as a minister and as a teacher in the church, in the academy and clearly passing through the city the public space, it is that activity that generated the desire for more conversations, for more research oriented to to asking what is this spirit doing in places that and with people that sometimes we're not looking at and necessarily together with, and and so that that conversation is clearly not just happening in my mind, is happening with people along the way, all kinds of individuals, you know, leaders, uh, millennial p KSh colleagues and the institution pastors that have just migrated a year, two years ago, those who have grown in in in the context of the US and Canada, and and so those conversations I think we're the ones triggering a research in which the Spirit can teaches to look at places and people that were not just looking at or when we think of Christian theology.

00:06:11
Speaker 3: Very good, that's great, I think sorry, go ahead.

00:06:15
Speaker 1: Jae, no, go ahead, go ahead.

00:06:17
Speaker 3: Oh, I was thinking in the way that you were describing what raised the questions to you? This desire to move back and forth between the church and the academy fluidly very much goes against the ways that people generally tend to see the relationship.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: We hear, of course that the academy should be ministering to the church, and we hear that the church should care about the conversations going on the academy, but often there's a big wall between them. Have you found in that process, as you've done that that there are barriers you have to overcome in order for your work to be meaningful in the church on one side, but then also your questions brought back to the academy to be seen as sufficiently scholarly.

00:07:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're you're naming it. You're spelling it out for me. Thank you very much. I mean, you're right on. You know that. That is the question that I begin with in my journey as a scholar in Mestisto community of this period eight post a post modern ecclesiology uh and and and because I'm particularly in that transit and that commuting, I name and the very prolo what you were saying. And I just so we're talking about two thousand and nine year imagine, So in two thousand and nine, I'm describing that as a participant in the and and you know the metaphor of southern California. The traffic here, heavy traffic was the word that I use. I faced heavy traffic in terms of ideology, in terms of of UH mission or preferences, in terms in terms of liturgy, in terms of what kind of doctrine I want, heavy traffic And and when you're in heavy traffic and and driving, you just want to get home. You don't have time to really talk to anybody, and you don't want to talk to anybody. Well, nowadays we have a phone. We're talking to some people, but but your neighbors are are are not necessarily the most hospitable colleagues. You just wanna you just want to get home in that traffic heated journey. And sometimes it's like the movie Crash. I mean, the argument right there is we crash in a way because we don't have time to get in contact and to know each other, so we have to crash and then negotiate that. I think in a way that that heavy traffic, that metropolitan individualism, the pressure of the city, and the competition to make it. You know, we have to do better ministry, we have to do better, appreciate and always this competition doesn't and fragmentation doesn't necessarily help us to see each other as partners of ministries and and and and also uh, in a way, we have to become very selective and what is it that we need to train ourselves. What is it that we need to know in order to communicate and gain and of uh you know, uh, and of attention from particular audiences. Because we have to run a church, we have to run an organization, we have to run a seminary. Uh. Sometimes theological education is in decline. So the wather you're talking about the church in a way saying, well, where am I learning what I need to be a church and not necessarily finding it in the academy and the academy saying what's going on with the church? Why is that going that way? You know, looking looking back and and and and learning from the wealth of wisdom that we have to be better witnesses today. So yeah, that is that is part of the whole of the whole ecology where we are sometimes operating from. And and yet I would say that there's some of us, several of us actually that are trying to breach one with the other because we believe that there are different There is an ecology of knowledge that the church has particular wisdom that the academy needs to learn. The academy has particular wealth of wisdom that the church needs. And the city, so to speak, even if we build the city as a modern project, but the community, the community that is in a way not self identified either as a church or US academy, has also a wealth of knowledge that we all need. And that is That's all part of an intersectionality and inter relationship that I think the spirit does abide. That's why the outside the gates of our preferential you know, our freeway, we're going that way now, well sometimes this perit is going through the through the backstreet and we're not looking.

00:11:42
Speaker 1: You know, in your book, when you talk about numatology, it comes off as a method. It's not it isn't like a systematic theology topic. It's something you're doing like you're doing numatology, and I found it really compelling the way you talk about the spirit in the book. And I'm wondering if you can just kind of give listeners a little bit of a sense of that, because I think that part of the genius of using the Spirit is that unlike Christ or theology proper, or even ecclesiology or something like that, which sort of lend themselves to a much more static image. Whether they are or not, I think is arguable, but they do lend themselves to that It's easier to box Christ in, for instance, than it is to box the Spirit in. And so I think it's just interesting that you choose the spirit. And I'm wondering how you think through discerning the spirit while and allowing the Spirit to guide us into new areas, while also avoiding that any new agenda that I want to pursue I can now justify by saying, well, the Spirit, let me to it. Talk a little bit about that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, if you allow me, I'd love to present what I think, because you know, once it's written, is written, and it's the handle is like a piece of art, I mean, the beholders. So I think I think I'm saying this, I think I'm saying that it is very important to learn to discern the Holy Spirit beyond the boundaries of Western Christianity, not without, but beyond so Western Christianity, Christendom and colonial modernity. This is a this is a sort of a the colonial term, right, is the idea that the great the greatness of modernity didn't happen independently. There were some colonial you know, projects that were funding and were interconnected to a colonial modernity. I mean Europe westerransform and also other places like Africa. The Americas worked on form at the time of the uh discovery of the Atlantic, of the route to the Atlantic, and that is transformation has a colonial relationship with modernity. So that's what we call colonial modernity. So I think, uh, the Spirit is operating and is and is and is UH walking with different communities beyond the boundaries of Western Christianity, colonial modernity, and UH regretfully, within the tradition of the West, Western culture, Western Christianity, we have treated knowledge with UH uh more uh the interest is more uh to to to emphasize the limits than the possibilities.

00:14:56
Speaker 1: Mhm.

00:14:57
Speaker 2: The limits. So in a way, this book is and and I think, let me connect with what you're saying. Yeah in in Unfortunately, I mean, I don't know how we've gotten here because part of I mean my education is in the modern university, suspect and the western modern university. I don't know why we have come to use Jesus as a as a gating, you know, a mechanism, because when we use when when when you see the Gospel, you see a generous Jesus of napaith that that in a way challenges most of the tendencies that we have. Now I can understand we got to is the to the history of Christianity. There are many things happening we really need to understand. What is it actually what makes us a Christianity and identity and all that thing. But the insistence on limits and on borders in knowledge. I think that has been an obsession in the West, and that is easier to achieve with Christology, not necessarily with Jesus of naturer but with Christology, with neumatology and the spirit. To your point, so I'm asking what happens in that book, I'm asking what happens when the church takes Pentecost seriously, not as a miracle of language or an exotic subjective experience, but as a re ordering and theological imagination for ecclesial coexistence what happens. So the book argues really that this spirit is not the possession or the accessory of any center or any power. The spirit leads the church outside the gate, to the crucified, to the displaced, to the rationalize as indigenous and I particularly put example sort of an ethnographic word Afro Latin X. I also work with immigrant women and children and the borderline communities where God's mission is already taking place and we are not necessarily looking at least not looking for wisdom, not looking for what God is doing. We're looking to probably do ministry service, and you know, we're doing something for the people right in that sense, you know, the book is not really a rejection I mean the book, I mean, I don't think people have seen it that way. But there are some people that say this book is very critical of Christian theology. Not necessarily. I don't think it's critical of the project of Christian theology and the activity of Christian theology, even Western or Otherwhile I think the whole idea is to be able to reroute the theological imagination and the theological project, because theology in very very serious ways have been trapped by one dominant theological imagination, what I call the canonical imagination of the West, which leads to a monocultural type of Christianity. So this rerouting, I think it's a reviving from this colonial imagination to a more spirit led witness in the global space from what some you know, indigenous in Africa, they call it terminal knowledges, some knowledges that in a way decide that you are incompetent. And in theory that's we call it terminal knowledge, when terminal degree is when we go to a PhD. But in some places that terminal knowledge is a wounding knowledge. It's a knowledge that will tell you you cannot do this, you cannot be this, you cannot achieve this terminal knowledge. In that sense, it's a discipleship and no to say that there is a dicolonial epistemic. Healing this spirit is healing this spirit, the teacher is healing those who otherwise feel incompetent and sometimes left behind by more formal mission structures. So in that sense, it's moving beyond monocultural nationalist Christianity. In what I call a church without borders, because nation state have borders, but the church, the church has the Spirit and the Gospel, and with the Spirit and the Gospel, the church travels without a pasport around the earth. So in a way, U, that is what I'm trying to do in the book. And the colonial numatology is UH, the UH discipline, if you will, the set of UH cold Christian and principles of the Guide. This conversation that I just mentioned to you.

00:20:05
Speaker 1: So, so what I thought was interesting as I was reading your book, I two texts came to mind. One was when Stephen gave his speech to the Jews who had accused him of, you know, defaming Moses in the Temple in Act seven, and then the deliberation of the Church in Jerusalem after the salvation of the Gentiles and the coming of the Spirit on the Gentiles. And what I found was as I was reflecting on those two texts, is you know, what I felt like your book was doing is resisting closure. It's like, let's not close this down. And you get a different tone of that in Act seven than you do in the Deliberations in Jerusalem. Act seven is a clear prophetic critique. It's it's saying, you've perverted this, you've closed it down so much, and now you're denying and rejecting. You know, you've killed the Messiah. You refuse to see in Jerusalem, you see something very different happening. They're trying to be sensitive to what the Spirit is doing and ultimately yielding to the movement of the Spirit amongst the gentiles and recognizing that they shouldn't be putting more requirements on the gentiles, that they should just let this happen as an expansion of their understanding, as opposed to as a requirement that the Gentiles be pulled back into a box that they understood. And I don't know what you think about those two texts, but that as I was reading through it, that's where my mind went. It's you have this sort of interesting opening up by the Spirit that oftentimes I think we're just closed off too, because we get too enamored with our own sort of settled understandings. And I would use settles I suppose in air quotes.

00:21:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, thank you, thank you for that, games, I mean, I appreciate that. And if this the reading of the book suggests the same kind of biblical narratives to people written and I think I've done my job. I think I've done my job. Thank you, I mean honestly, and you are absolutely right. Just think about what you just said. I mean, on the one hand, is dealing with those who holds, you know, quote unquote holds the keys of of of authority. I mean they have the authority, they have a keys of truth. Yeah, and saying I mean, how dare you? How dare your kid dis close when it's not even yours with Jesus in a way, it was such a challenge. And on the other hand, you see a community which is part of creation of God saying that you know the God of creation, and this is Paul all over the place. The God of Creation is also your God. And this is the way to relate to this God in a way that is affirming to your humanity, to who you are and who you can become in Jesus. So in that sense, I want to suggest that this book is deeply evangelical in the sense of the evangel it is and bringing the Pentecost because I put the Pentecosts on and Babel the Tower Babel side by side to say there are two logics here and we see it in the scripture. One tries to control, tries to monopolize, tries to you know, put together here and put borders and all that things, that gaining thing. And on the other you have a pentecost. Now, the pentacost is not I mean the way I presaid it. How that is, It's clear, it's not cosmetic diversity. For me, it is not cosmetic labor. It is about re ordering communal life and the power of the spirit. And that reordering is fell as disruptive if even when you read the text is disruptive because we're used to this. We have the perspective of elite Jerusalem theologians, so to speak. And you have the Roman coloniality and and the Hellenistic holders of tradition and and and the second century Judaism you have, you have all that, and yet when you when the spirit comes, like like the prophet Joel says, upon every fledg, no matter who you are, oh, that is disruptive because in a way, you know, re orders the possibility of living together as the body of Christ. And that's the story across the the New Testament.

00:24:57
Speaker 3: I would say, yeah, I think it's interesting when we look at a line share of the Gospel's counts that Jesus is often pushing on the religious leaders. He's pushing against the Pharisees, pushing against the Sadducees. Arguably, the entire Sermon on the Mount is his way of saying to a group of marginalized Jewish people, these things that you've been bound to by the Pharisees, by the Sadducees are false. They're false boundaries. And then at the same time he's talking to those people when he says, Okay, you guys want to exclude these people who have had various problems, perhaps perhaps one of them is even murder, right, a horrific thing, But I want to remind you that you've also hated, right. And I see and God sees these as in the sense not in the sense of actions being equal under consequences, but actions cool in the sense of both setting themselves in opposition to a way that God is trying to commend to people. Right, So he's pushing against things and people that have set themselves up as gates. So then we take Jesus and we make him into that sort of a gate. Very ironic, I think, right, very very antithetical to who Jesus is. What is it specifically do you think about the spirit that prevents us from doing that? Is is it something about the spirit? Is it something just about traditions? Is it something about us as people?

00:26:42
Speaker 1: What do you see?

00:26:44
Speaker 2: Yeah? Okay, let me first probably tag piggyback on the gate on the Gate conversation. Clearly, that's like James mentioned of the big very beginning, and this is not something I made up. I mean, we have a beautiful book called Christ Outside the Gate by Orlando Costas, and that book grew out of a sermon he was pretty because it was an evangelist, wasn't it was a missiologist, theologian and evangelist, and he was preachy on Hebrews. Uh. You know that Christ died outside the gate and and and and outside the gate of the city, so you know that's that place where the damned of society were living. You know, he joined that crowd, and that's where salvation happened in this such a reological you know way, that's that's the sermon that he preached, and then the book grew up. I think I'm I'm adding only that. And he was part of a of a time where Christology was so important for liberation, so to speak. But I think that many pneumatologists of our time, like thinking of Veali Matic Arcanaan my my, my colleague at Fuller Seminar, and even Amos John another Asian American, uh Pentacostal theologian, have have clearly said whatever Christ was was in the spirit. We cannot separate Jesus and the Spirit. And we have James Donn from from New Testament studies, you know, helping us do that. And so I think it is important to see actually the Trinity, and we have a lot of work in in in that since Augustine and and others you know, and the Trinity, uh, Jesus, I mean the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are are a family, are a whole. They are an incarnational of Divine presence, that is a month us. But particularly in the realm of in our own realm of mission the earth, I mean, Jesus and the Spirit have have an activity. And whatever Jesus is doing, the Spirit is enabling Jesus and is with Jesus, and is Jesus is true the Spirit that is continuing his ministry on earth. If even after a sansion, Acts Chapter one, then Act chapter two, all the way through our time. So in that sense, outside the gate is not outside of God. I just want to make that clear. When I use outside the gate, I'm trying to point out where the spirit exposes false security of the center uh and sometimes the distortions of truth, which is what Jesus in a way was saying. In a way, when you're talking about Matthew five, you've heard, but that is not that that what you heard is completely wrong, It is insufficient, it's not the whole story. There's more to it than what you've heard and being concealed by tradition, rabbinic tradition, and in those cases, and on the one hand, rabbinic traditions, and on the other hand, people listening to those rabbinic traditions saying I cannot do it that way, so I'll do it my own way. You have popular traditions, you have a rabbinic tradition on the one hand, and popular tradition, and both of them are generating ways of seeing God using God and and and the law the Torah. And so Jesus comes and say, well, let me, let me, let me, let me say that you've heard. But I tell you, and and and they tell you, is not how we're going to do it individually. How we're going to do it in community, in community with God, my Father, and the Spirit, in community with each other, and in community with people that are looking at us and will become part of that. Is that the prisonly prayer of John seventeen. The people that will belong to our own community. So in that say, in that sense that outside the gate, it's more a signal to where God and the Spirit particularly is is is doing great things when we're not looking. Uh. The Gospel repeatedly move us to our rejected places. Jesus suffers outside the gate, Penticos scatters linguistic control, and mission crosses boundaries constantly. We see that, uh in the in the scripture. So I think you used to go back a little bit to the former question. The colonial pneumatology is really about discernment, not relativism. I'm not a relativist. I think that is in a when you when you become a relativist, you you're not only affect the other, you affect yourself because you can become highly tribal. And that's a problem. So it does not mean that the spirit is the only is. It does not mean that every spirit, so to speak, is the holy spirit of life. It doesn't mean that. It means that the Church must continue to learn to discern the spirit without assuming that the wist that particularly communities that are in the located in certain privilege and power, that colonial legacies and particularly forms of Christianity, have the monopoly of faithful perception. It is about perception. It is that we still need to be opened to learning pretty much who God is time by time, moment by moment. We have data, we have information that leaders to that, but we have to remain open and wonder two to quote card Park and wonder, to be surprised and to be responsive and responsible. Responsive to God is responsible to our neighbor and our creation. I would say that in that sense, UH, the colony aneumatology is an effort to UH to UH to help us walk with dispirite in places and in ways of knowing that are not necessarily the ones emphasized in Western Christianity.

00:33:49
Speaker 3: I think, let me, let me give you a suggestion and tell me what you think about it, because I think some people what you've hit on it's the heart of their fear. It's the fear of relativism. Right that once we lose the sort of careful controls, then people say whatever they want.

00:34:11
Speaker 2: Right.

00:34:13
Speaker 3: My hunch is that when we have that inclination first, there's an element of fear tied into that. I want to set that fear aside for a moment. Feel free to bring it back if you want to, But I want to say that there's a second element, and that second element is there's a method, and that method. While methods are helpful, they're also deeply bound to peoples and traditions and places, and so that when we create certain kinds of boundaries that we find non negotiable, we find them as the hard lines that we use to protect. We're deeply tying any talk about the work of God in this world, not actually to Jesus, but rather to that method that's bound to a people in a place and a time. It's just that that aspect is invisible to us. But conversely, what I hear you saying is that what we need to do is grab a hold of the person of Jesus. And we do that precisely by grabbing a hold of the person of the very Holy Spirit of this Jesus, and that spirit can confound the ways that we think, right, it can surprise us because that spirit doesn't bound to the same traditional and mental and thought structures that we sometimes don't realize that we are. Is that fair to what you're saying? And if not, please correct it, you.

00:35:46
Speaker 2: Know, in a way I mean, I mean one of the things that is clear. I mean Christ is the mediator between God and us. Nobody can call Jesus Lord without spirit. So there is a mediation even between us and Christ. And I think somebody like Augustine too, you know, to call some some some of the of the sources of of of different traditions in the West. Uh clearly understood that the that the spirit is the is the is the relating agent of love, God, love, Jesus, Who's love in the spirit, the loving connections I speak in a way, yes, I think, and I'm going back to James again. It is uh easier to build a boxed Christology than a boxed New mythology. There is a reason why.

00:36:58
Speaker 4: For for several centuries, even the Christian in in in the history of the Christian of Christian in the West, there was no allusion to the spirit.

00:37:10
Speaker 2: There was sort of a how do we put our hands around that? That's complicated, it's it's not what I'm going to say. On the other hand, in the modern era, we've said, oh, but we've got to say something because all and we've said some some some good things, some of the things are not necessarily as good, like like theology is that way. That's why you need discernment, and you need practice, you need you need orthodoxy, but you need autopractice, and you need autopathos the way to fill also a god and sense God the way. So I think it is it is appropriate it said to say that, and you mentioned fear and method. I even wrote a book lately twenty sixteen called Embracing Fear was more my public telogy book, by the way, and we don't need to get into that book because that book is more into our current set of events. But the part of the arguments of that book is we need to reclaim the tradition of fear the Lord more than the tradition of fear Empire. And that calls to Martyrian the witness. So yes, we all need to deal with our fears. And I would suggest in a spiritual posture with desert Christianity. And that's our spirituality. That not just surrendering our personal fears, even our cultural fears, even our religious fears. It's important but also to embrace the fear of the Lord and let the fear of the Lord guide us to and let me use the word method that you use to waste, because method is away to weighs of recognizing the cloud of witnesses, the traditions that we have received. We canna simply trash them. That would be another form of suicide, that would be ridiculous. But carrying those traditions walk as disciples attentive to God here and now and moving forward. That attentiveness is the very method of being a disciple of Jesus. Is not certain knowledge, is not accumulated data. It is a posture of learning from God, with God, and because of God, how to move forward. Sometimes our witness today may look like even heretical to people fifty years ago, but it is our generational call today as long as we do it in deep discernment and and you know, really having in our hearts that we're trying to be as faithful as we can with whatever we have right now. We need to be able to defend and not individually, that will have to be defended collectively as the body of jesuscribe. So that's in a way the the pressure and and and if I'm mistaken, I'm always open to be corrects, you know.

00:40:42
Speaker 1: No, it's interesting when I was so when I was reading through the book and just thinking about it, and I used to work with a gentleman who is a Taoist, and so he had kind of challenged me. I was in seminary at the time. He challenged me to read the dow Dejing, and I became sort of fascinated with the image of water that is in the two de Jing, this notion that water is fluid and that it moves and it's not captive. It sort of adapts to whatever container it's in, whatever you know, space it's in. It tends to erode the rocks. I mean, all this stuff was in you know, the sort of Eastern Chinese philosophy, and it's much more prominent there than it is in a lot of the Western philosophy that we read. But it just struck me when I was thinking about the Holy Spirit, that the Holy Spirit is far more like the Eastern understanding of the Tauadajing and the water and this fluidness and this posture that those traditions are asking us to have, which is to be more mobile and flexible and malleable to context, not to be I understand the fear toward relativism, but that's not the call. The call is to be sort of in the pocket while still be being malleable within the pocket, right, And so I just found that imagery to fit really really well with the Holy Spirit and something that we don't do particularly well, I think, especially in the West, of being that sort of malleable character, having that adaptability, being willing and open to consider even that something else faithful is going on in this community over here when it doesn't look like us. And so there is a radical openness I think that you're calling for in the book. But I never took it as a relativism. I took it as a let's recognize our limitations, let's recognize our inability to understand all things, and let's also recognize that God is a is way smarter than we are. Right, we just read the back half of the Book of Job. When we start to understand that God has it on us right, And so there's a sense in which thinking that we have God pinned down is. I wrote to unpublished essay at one point, just reflecting on some of my employment experiences, and I titled that God's cubicles in the basement and we've stolen a stapler, And so anybody who's watched the office Space will understand that reference. But the idea was that we tend to take God and put him in this sort of small space and expect him to serve our agendas, serve our needs, and act the way we anticipate he's supposed to act. But that's not really what God does. God's the one who does the surprising. God's the one who determines how God acts, and God is going to do that in a multitude of different ways outside of us, And so we just have to be really open to that, not open to anything, which I think sort of is probably more what people are concerned with when we think about relativism. But I would just I wonder what I wonder if you'd agree with it. So all that preamble just to say this, my tendency is to think that we have a maturity problem. I would go to something like Hebrews five fourteen. Right, you've reached this mature state, and from this mature state now you can discern good and evil. Discernment requires maturity. And if we're not even willing to engage in discernment, I think it doesn't necessarily draw in to question the method or the perspective. It draws into question our own maturity. That just sort of was ringing in my head as I was reading.

00:44:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great way to put it. I mean, that's a way to really have a conversation on daily life about about these kind of materials. And thank you for that. I'm preaching this Sunday, so that's anthing gone it.

00:44:52
Speaker 1: All yours.

00:44:53
Speaker 2: And by the way, in my church you have clinical psychologists and things like that, so they will really top that that that topic. Let me react to the first thing to the question now I'm asking. I think if I even wrote a chapter because I really wanted to be I know, I acknowledged that spiritsiday Is is technical and and it's introducing disciplines for theologians that are are sort of a I mean, I've never been exposed, so I try to be as a front as I could, as pedagogical as I could. I put a glossary. I even wrote a chapter, chapter eleven that color disclaiming UH theology meaning this is what I'm not. I'm not saying this, and I'm saying this so that to clarify that. And I think that is important at least UH and and so one of the and that chapter, I I just try to help the reader to say, look, traditionally since the color time, since fourteen nine into where we had the Christian missions arriving at at the America's tortile island or the different communities aren't calling it. The question was really not so much about God, but was about the other. I mean, who are these folks? Who are this? Who are this this I won't even call it people who are these? And and then because they look so different than us, we really need to ask, I mean, what's going on? Then we saw the ritual that we saw their whatever we could understand I'm talking about I'm talking about five centuries ago, right in the moment where Ivarian I mean Spanish and Portuguese. Later on it's going to be British and Dodge, are you know, bringing this this helenic heleness their own framework and say, well, but this is so different. And the same time some of the things that they believe is very similar. But they don't even have a language how to call God. So all this happened, and the question was, Okay, they're so different because because because because the devil is with them. So the question is where is the devil in what they do? It was never where is God? So what I'm doing in this book is I'm not denying that the devil is in different rituals, but I'm saying that God is all suppressing in the form of the spirit of life in those places.

00:47:47
Speaker 5: To how can we discern what the spirit is doing there, just like what we're discerning and what Spirit was doing and the and the pre Socratic uh, you know communities, So we we we have a more easy way to say, oh, God may be operating through Plato and Socrates that we have through some of the ancient.

00:48:09
Speaker 2: You know, wisdom tellers of the indigenous community. And that is in part because we've been codified. We've been trained to ask certain questions and not ask other questions. So that I'm opening to your point, I'm opening the conversation to say, let's look for God. Also I'm saying that we should not ask the other question, but are saying I wanted to add this other question, and you may be surprised that you may find God operating, the Spirit operating there in ways that you never thought possible. And I think that's a generous theological posture that we need in our time because in a way, this this opens up the possibility of cold humanity, of living together with other people without pre judging and assassinating the character, and the possibility of all these people's futures among ourselves.

00:49:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I hear in that way of you describing it sort of implicitly, that there needs to be a letting go of this hierarchical dimension of I have I'm teacher. You don't have I give to you your student, right, and maybe even in the teacher the actual teacher relationship that needs to be loosened. Because the example you gave, I think was a really helpful one with just the poor question. Instead of asking just where's the devil, ask where's God? Where's the spirit at work? Because the flip side of that is that oftentimes in those same colonial works, these people who ostensibly were doing what they were doing as divine mandate, as they saw it, to give people God through giving them maturity, were themselves doing some pretty despicable things, right, su that one could easily ask in return, where's where's the devil.

00:50:05
Speaker 2: In what you're doing?

00:50:06
Speaker 4: Right?

00:50:09
Speaker 3: Which should give us a moment to pause. I think, right, if it's if it's unilaterally one directional, that's where we're starting to allow certain gatekeeping to prevent us from seeing that the spirits at work outside the gate of what we were doing, right, and that we too are learners, We too are teacher, not just teachers, but receiving. Is that fair?

00:50:33
Speaker 2: Yeah? And also I think now you made me think about the proposition of games about maturity, and I'm meaning any study that you do in enlightenment, uh, you know, philosophy and enlightenment theology is the sense that within the Western European imagination, social imagination, you know, we've become mature humans right here in this particular okay, geopolitical too, this particular location, because we have this tradition, we have these religious legacies, we have these are industrial and we can call it today technological advances that demonstrate that are human and this is a civilizational thing that we are mature civilization versus these other places that are underdeveloped in a way sub humans. They need They're like kids that need development. Once that posture is adopted. Uh, this is a very self referential posture. And I think there's a there's a biblical you know principle there have you seen people all.

00:52:01
Speaker 3: Uh?

00:52:03
Speaker 2: I know it more in Spanish English? Actually have you seen people that believe their wives.

00:52:12
Speaker 5: Is?

00:52:12
Speaker 2: There? Is there not more hope in a foolige, those who think that they don't know God than in somebody who thinks they are wise in their own ways. This is very dangerous, you know, assuming maturity in that way, because I would argue from I'm I'm a I'm a fan of this spirituality. I mean the fathers and the mother the maturity that they show through humility, through openness, through service, to acknowledgement that they were so little in comparison to who God is and what God does that there there are. Their posture is always a pasture of what is it Lord? What is it? Have mercy? And me I'm not understanding. So it's a learn ignorance so to speak, that enabled you to be to act because maturity, I want to suggest I want to take it even further. Maturity more than a thinking, is an acting, it's a relating. You relate to others. And they will they will say, this is a mature relationship, that a mature person because I am built up, I am affumed, I am uplifted. I become the best version of myself when I am with this community or with this individual. I want to suggest that that's part of maturity more than my self perception. And I think that's a that's an issue that we have, that's an issue that we have, James very very much.

00:53:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, it goes to the narrative of the I think it's the religious leader. I can't remember what they call him, a pharisee or saduty, but you know he praised God, thank you for not making me like these sinners and prostitutes and uh, and then you know the centers and the tax collectors are there, you know, actually praying for a pentance. And if you just looked at that narrative and you sat back and said which of these is mature, you're probably not picking the religious leader. There's a there's a self referential sort of righteousness that he applies to himself that doesn't scream maturity. These other these other people who are actually confessing their sins and who are aligned with what with God and God's order have a different understanding, a different level of understanding of what it means to be mature, and that that maturity comes in our to some degree, in our agreement with God. And so yeah, I think that's a really important crucial point. It isn't about embodying a certain tradition. That's not what makes you mature. It's it's it's something deeper than that, it's something more significant than that, And I think that's why it leaves us open to some of these other questions. Yeah, well, man, this has been a really interesting conversation. We are We could probably go for another hour, but we're not going to, so we'll close it out with this. But everyone, i'd really encourage you to get this book, and it's really a fantastic book. I think you'll enjoy it if you get it, and we'll have a link to the to it in the in the show notes. We're also this is an IVP book and so we get a twenty percent discount if you order off of the IVP website. So i'd encourage you to do that again. The link will be in the show notes, Oscar. Is there anywhere else that people can come and find your work outside of the book. You want to have a website, you have a substack or anything fun like that.

00:55:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think if they go to my web page and a foot seminary, but also in Facebook and Instagram for example. In the land twenty twenty six, I wrote a book lately called The Colonial Love in Times of Hatred h and that was the tone right there is particularly how can we how can we do very crystallogical cost christology? It was forty ways to follow Jesus Today? So I'm as a matter of fact, let me if you tell me where to I'll send you a couple of copies because I think that's that's what we're talking about discipleship here. How do we land all this in ways? And this is actually meant for individuals as well, not just for communitycause I understand how life works and in the city. So okay, let's begin one on one here, but let's move beyond that. So that's where it begins and it hits how can I really follow Jesus today with all the complexities that we have in particularly with an environment that I have to take a disposition or disposition I forced to go beyond what even and I feel it's right. But if I'm not here or there, I'm out of the game. So how do we take control of our lives in God and become a faithful witness today and to the point that you can affect and if you will, infect those who seems to be disoriented in ways that are more affirmative and constructive. So in that sense, for couple, I did forty videos of uh. I think it was uh five minutes and and and the forty forty days of length about this dicolonial love in terms of hatred because it was one per day. That's you can find a lot. And I did that in English. Well, I write more in English and in Spanish. I'm trying to do a series of seven volumes of sort of a systematic in Spanish and volume tree right now, and it's taking me a while to do that. But that is available in English. I engage in Spanish, English and Portuguese and and so h fuller page and I can send you also my my fath uh Facebook and Instagram account. You're fine, something.

00:58:10
Speaker 1: Excellent and give the name of the Lent series again, the Lent for fuller uh, the the when you were just talking about the forty day.

00:58:21
Speaker 2: One okay for on a seconds, Uh, it's called The Colonial Love in Times of Hatred.

00:58:27
Speaker 1: The Colonial Love in Times of Hatred?

00:58:29
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, forty Ways to follow Jesus Today. Excellent, and I'm very I'm very encouraged with that book because I'm talking to those of the the you know, divided divided by faith and divided by public, to say, okay, well, let's let's let's leave a little bit of those camps and let's go let's come here. Let's let's focus on Jesus for a moment. That's all I'm saying. What happened after that? You know, it's out of my power, but let's let's come here, am out of who you are. Let's come here, Let's focus on Jesus, thank it through, and then do what he do you want with it?

00:59:07
Speaker 1: Very cool, Well, Oscar, we really appreciate you being here. Man. This is a great conversation. I love the book Spirit Outside the Gate. I'm going to check out some of your other stuff. I actually read The Mestizo Community of the Spirit and so I read that earlier when it came out, so really appreciated that book as well. But Spirit Outside the Gates was refreshing. I enjoyed it, and so just encourage everybody to read it as well. And yeah, just thanks for being here. Really appreciate you being here.

00:59:34
Speaker 2: Well, I fell at home. Your your great host, and I will say, partners and colleagues and I a mile what you do and we need more of this.

00:59:44
Speaker 1: Well hopefully we'll be doing it, continue doing more of that. Yeah, all right, everybody, Well, thanks, thanks everybody, and we'll catch you 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.