Show Notes
What if the biggest barrier to sharing your faith at work isn’t what you don’t know, but what you think you know?
In this conversation, Dr. Joshua Chatraw and guest host Rev. Tanner Fox explore why sharing your faith at work can feel so intimidating, even for thoughtful, committed Christians. From fear of saying the wrong thing to anxiety about workplace consequences, many believers feel stuck between silence and pressure to perform.
Rather than offering debate tactics or quick apologetics formulas, this episode examines the deeper reasons faith feels risky in public life and how to respond in a way that reflects the depth and beauty of the Gospel.
Episode Resources:
Apologetics at the Cross: An Introduction for Christian Witness: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0310524687/
Telling a Better Story: How to Talk About God in a Skeptical Age: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0310108632/
Augustine of Hippo: The Doubter Who Became a Church Father: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DF4GQY7Z/
Nuance is a podcast of The Collaborative where we wrestle together about living our Christian faith in the public square. Nuance invites Christians to pursue the cultural and economic renewal by living out faith through work every facet of public life, including work, political engagement, the arts, philanthropy, and more.
Each episode, Dr. Case Thorp hosts conversations with Christian thinkers and leaders at the forefront of some of today’s most pressing issues around living a public faith.
Our hope is that Nuance will equip our viewers with knowledge and wisdom to engage our co-workers, neighbors, and the public square in a way that reflects the beauty and grace of the Gospel.
Learn more about The Collaborative:
Website 👉 https://wecolabor.com
Get to know Case 👉 https://collaborativeorlando.com/team/
Episode Transcript
Tanner Fox
What if the biggest barrier to sharing your faith at work isn’t what you don’t know about the Bible, God, and being a disciple of Christ, but what you think you know? Today, we’re here tackling why defending the faith feels so intimidating and how to move past that fear. Friends, welcome to Nuance. My name is Tanner Fox. I’m a pastor at First Pres. I’m also a guest host on this podcast, and today I am delighted to be joined by someone who I have admired from afar for quite some time. Joshua D. Chatraw, I believe he goes by Josh, but he’s an Associate Professor of Divinity and a Billy Graham Chair for Evangelism and Cultural Engagement at Beeson Divinity School. He writes a lot on things of the faith, particularly in apologetics, and so before I give the rest of your rap sheet Joshua, thank you Josh. Thank you so much for making some time with us today.
Josh Chatraw
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Tanner Fox
So like I said, he’s written many books. A few of those would be The Augustine Way, which is a more recent release. He’s also written Surprised by Doubt, Apologetics at the Cross, which is how I found you actually. And among others, including some works on cultural engagement and then also a really fun book that I’ve been reading to my boys at night, Augustine of Hippo. And so we were so glad to get this in the mail not long ago. So he writes to a wide audience, you can see, a scholar in a lot of ways in relation to church history and some of those things, especially Augustine, but also trying to help us connect the dots for today. So Josh, I just briefly, I got your book in the mail recently for my kids, absolutely love it. And we actually named our second son Gus. My wife would not allow me to name him Augustine, but I did sneak Gus in there. And so I’ve been teaching about his namesake through your book. So thanks for writing that, and we’ve been enjoying it.
Josh Chatraw
That’s great, that’s good to hear. I have a nephew by the name of Gus named after Augustine as well. So a little point of contact there. And then, and I’ll just mention that my son who just turned 12, kind of was a bit of my assistant writing that book. And so his name is Hudson and the story is told by a hippo, obviously Augustine of h\Hippo, but there’s a hippo in the story.
Tanner Fox
All right, it’s making a resurgence.
Josh Chatraw
And that’s inspired by my son. So it was kind of a family project there.
Tanner Fox
I love that. How fun. I told a lot of folks before we had Gus that that’s why he was named after St. Augustine of Hippo. And so a lot of folks bought us hippos to enjoy as his primary stuffed animals. So we have a lot of hippos around our house and it’s wonderful. But well, hey, thanks again for joining us. I think the only thing I left out is that you’re in Birmingham right now. Maybe I said that, Beeson Divinity School, married, with two kids. How old are your kiddos?
Josh Chatraw
I have a 16-year-old and a 12-year-old.
Tanner Fox
Awesome, that’s great. And y’all have been in Birmingham for how long?
Josh Chatraw
Two years.
Tanner Fox
Two years. Great. And at the seminary, I actually went to Samford University. So I spent some time in Birmingham as well and considered making Beeson our place to do seminary and then kind of got called back to central Florida, always had a…particularly for the chapel there, it’s a beautiful place, but there’s a lot of other good stuff going on there too. So yeah, that’s great. Tell me a little bit about the work you’re doing right now at Beeson and why it’s exciting.
Josh Chatraw
Yeah, I mean, I was directing the Center for Public Christianity in Raleigh, North Carolina before we moved here. And it also had a Fellows program that some of your listeners might be familiar with, as far as the work that’s going on in Orlando as well. So some similarities there with the kind of work in faith Fellows program. So that was part of the center. And we really thought we would make another…I was there for five. We thought we’d be there at least for another five. Really, so we loved it. We loved what we were doing. And then I got a call from the dean at Beeson, which was really, I already had my dream job and then somebody else was calling me about a dream job because really Beeson is a place that is so rich historically. Also Beeson’s place where we train Presbyterians and Baptists and Methodists and Anglicans. And we’re all in there together, but we’re together there. We believe in the same gospel. So it’s this kind of rich historical, rich theology. And yet they were wanting to do something with apologetics. And that’s kind of where I’m coming from with apologetics, both a love for the church, which Beeson has and also a deep love for theology and history. And so to be able to kind of be a part of something with really, I think just world-class scholars. I know world-class scholars and to be a part of that. Yeah, it’s really been a dream job and I get to write and disciple kind of the next generation of church leaders. So I really feel honored and privileged to be at Beeson and be at Samford.
Tanner Fox
How incredible. That’s so wonderful. Yeah, it sounds like it made some space for some different things in your life and things that you wanted to continue to pursue and kind of tackle outside of what you were doing in Raleigh. And so I know you even mentioned a little bit of that is writing right now as you’re on a sabbatical and getting to do some extended time writing and things like that. So is there anything that you’re working on right now that you’re really excited about?
Josh Chatraw
Yeah, the book you mentioned before, Apologetics at the Cross, Mark Allen and I wrote that about eight years ago and we’ve just completed a second edition which we’re really excited about. One of the things about the book when it came out eight years ago is it was, I think it was up to date and people were noticing how up to date it was and bringing in a lot of contemporary sources, learning how to read culture and apply the gospel to it. And then just a lot’s happened in eight years. And also, Mark and I have grown, and we’ve learned, and we figured out better ways to teach this, and points that are really important to get across. So that was a great opportunity to go back and to kind of have another go at it, and I’m really excited about that book. The other book I’m working on is a kind of a sequel to a book I wrote called Telling a Better Story and its own ways of life. Even for folks who aren’t religious, and maybe somebody’s listening to this who says like, hey, that religion stuff’s not for me. We all still adopt certain ways of life and we can’t opt out of certain practices and habits and patterns in our life. And one of the unique things about, kind of our moment, is a lot of our ways of life, whether you’re a believer or not, or actually kind of mirror each other. We stream the same things, we are members of the same gems. Our lives actually look in many ways very similar and we’ve adopted similar practices. And yet in this moment, we’re experiencing a deep malaise in our society. And so in some sense, we’re in this mess together and we’re trying to figure it out. And really the book is about saying, what is the way of Christ? How might he speak to all of us, whether you’re a believer or not? How might he be inviting us to a different way to see and a different way to live?
Tanner Fox
I love that. I can’t wait for that to come out. I think that’ll be really helpful. Just to revisit this just for a moment, I remember picking this up because, and our listeners know this name, Tim Keller said this of the book, the most comprehensive, accessible, and up-to-date, as you said, manual on Christian apologetics that I know of, eminently readable and highly recommended. And I remember reading that and I trusted Tim. You know, I think most people do. And then I loved this book so much that I was leading our young adults ministry and I taught a four or six part series on the inside out method and what it looks like for us to engage apologetics and then eventually our church took this book and turned it into a preaching series to try to engage our folks with evangelism. So you have had a pretty significant reach here in Orlando whether you knew that or not but it’s been a joy to work with those resources and I also am just excited about the new ones. But let’s get into this conversation. We’ve said the word apologetics a bunch of times at this point. I think it would be helpful if you would offer us what your definition of apologetics is so that we can kind of have an entry point to the conversation.
Josh Chatraw
Yeah. In essence, apologetics is commending and defending the Christian faith. If theology is about what Christians believe, which I think it is, then apologetics is about why we believe what we believe or why someone else should believe what we believe. And I think that even if somebody doesn’t, I think it’s fine if somebody’s like, I don’t like the word apologetics. I’m not an apologist, but I would just say when your kid comes up one day and says, Hey, why does God allow bad things? At that moment you’re in some sense, an apologist. You’re trying to explain certain things. You’re trying to say why we can still trust God, even if you say, well, we can trust God because look at Jesus. Yeah. Look at the cross. And well, that, in some sense, is commending and in a way defending the faith. So I’m not so much hung up on everyone becoming, you know, official apologists, but I think it’s almost inescapable that in a kind of world that we live in that we’re going to have apologetic questions. Is this a matter of, have we thought about them or have we not? And are we able to give a reason for the hope that’s within us, as 1Peter says, or we haven’t done that kind of thinking and work in our own life?
Tanner Fox
Yeah. In seminary, I feel like the most common definition I heard was like a reasonable defense of the faith, was the way folks tended to talk about it, but it seemed like there was some emotions wrapped up in that, like it felt like a reasonable argument…let’s get in an argument, I want to argue, you know, it would start to ramp up…and I think what was a gift from a lot of your resources, I felt like, you know, especially your inside out method, as we’ll talk about a little bit later, but so much of it has a lot to do with common ground to get going and to have spaces where you can invite conversation and not so much defense, not so much argument in order to try to, because it just becomes comparative, it feels like at some point and all of a sudden someone’s trying to win something, which I don’t know how helpful that is, but, before we get to all that, you tell me, from your experience, obviously I’ve done a ton of work in this stuff, why do think apologetics is so frightening to folks? Why are people so scared that they literally would do anything but do that?
Josh Chatraw
Yeah, and I mean, I get it. I mean, I get this. I think we need me to be honest. I mean, we don’t want to be that guy or that girl. I mean, Charles Taylor says, Canadian philosopher, says something like, and I’m going to not get this quoted exactly right. I don’t have it in front of me. But he says something like, kind of our mode of engagement many times is I have three reasons why you’re completely wrong and immoral and dangerous. Now let’s have a conversation. In other words, it feels overly aggressive and it can feel like, man, I just don’t want to be a jerk. I don’t want to be that guy. And especially if we think about in the workplace with people we need to work with, people we’re going to see every day, you know, we don’t want to come in there like in the wild, wild west. Like we feel like we’re, we take out our six shooters or whatever they’re called and start firing away at people. and so there is a tendency for people to avoid apologetics because of its association with that. And I’m very sympathetic with that. It can leave a bad taste in your mouth. I don’t think that’s what it has to be.
Tanner Fox
Yeah.
Josh Chatraw
And that’s why I say for some people, the word has just become something that, you know, it’s like, it makes you uncomfortable, don’t use the word. That’s fine. But we still need to think about how to talk about, how to talk to people who have questions, who are skeptical, who are seeking how to talk to people within the church who are doubting or deconstruct. How do we have these conversations? And so, yeah, I’m not so keen on this for just the everyday person. I’m not keen on like requiring them to wear that label. But the kind of essence of what I think it really is, is really important. So I don’t think it’s anything to be scared about. It’s actually something that can give you more confidence to engage people, to actually minister to them. One of my favorite kind of metaphors that Augustine would often use, we’ve already mentioned Augustine on here and I’m sure we will again, but that, you know, he very much viewed himself as administering the medicine, the cure of souls. And so you see people who are hurting, seeing people who were made to love God and know him and were restless and they’re restless because they haven’t found the rest in God and this could change everything. Then there’s a kind of compassion that at times will mean you need to resist them, you need to challenge them, but ultimately it’s for their good. And so kind of the motivation is this is the medicine we all need. This is the medicine I need. And I’m a broken sinner who’s taken it and found, this actually helps. And so then I’m, kind of, I want to transform some of the metaphors where we think about the apologist as, you know, a shooter versus the apologist as someone who’s administering the balm of Christ. And I think that those metaphors are really important and it changes how we think about what this is that we’re doing and hopefully makes that more inviting to folks who are listening.
Tanner Fox
Yeah, one that I’ve enjoyed as well that kind of flipped the script for me was the idea of if people are wandering in a desert without any water, what would it look like to offer them a cold glass of water as a metaphor for sharing the good news of the gospel? Like it’s something desperately needed. It’s something to long for. And I think that you’re telling a better storybook has a lot to do with that in terms of just saying people live into and out of stories. That’s the way folks want to engage the world. So if we’re framing our teaching, even with using words like defense or thinking about it as Wild West Cowboys, then maybe we’re gonna go about it in a way that isn’t necessarily all that helpful. So maybe even that’s a good starting point to transform that perspective. I think that’s great. So you’ve been doing this for quite some time. I mean, you can’t, you don’t look that old to me. So I don’t know exactly how long you’ve been doing it, but maybe you started when you were 12 or 13? I don’t know.
Josh Chatraw
Thanks. Yeah.
Tanner Fox
But you’ve seen a lot. You said you’re going to update, you’re updating this version of Apologetics at the Cross. I’d love to hear, you know, as you’ve been proclaiming biblical truth and standing on the goodness of the gospel for so long, what are the hot button secular and social things that you feel like are going on? And maybe even how has some of that changed in the last 10 years since you came out with this other book?
Josh Chatraw
Yeah, I mean, this isn’t going to surprise, I think, anyone listening. I mean, it’s the moral issues today. I think 20 years ago, you show up on a campus and people are more likely wanting, or 20 or 30 years ago, more likely wanting to debate maybe evolution and science and faith and these types of questions. Yeah, how old the earth is, these types of things. I think now more it’s like, who are you telling me I can’t sleep with? And those, and the moral issues of judgment and Hell. And are you telling me that God isn’t gonna allow me to love and fall in my heart? I think these are the types of moral issues that, yeah. I mean, I don’t think that they’ve necessarily changed in 10 years, but I think in 20 or 30 years, we see that more clearly. I mean, the violence in the Bible is another one. Again, this isn’t, this is about the kind of plausibility of a God that we don’t like, rather than can I make some kind of argument from design? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with certain types of traditional arguments from design. I’m just saying, as far as scratching where people are itching, these aren’t in the forefront of what they’re feeling right now.
Josh Chatraw
Just one more on the moral kind of category is the hypocrisy in the church, or at least the perceived hypocrisy in the church. And so those are the kind of big issues that I see, the moral issues. Both people don’t like the Bible, people don’t like the kind of certain elements of Christian doctrine, and then they don’t like what they see from the church and people within the church.
Tanner Fox
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense, especially if you’re preaching something that’s going to impede someone’s way of their own heart, or, you know, as you kind of just mentioned, kind of trying to redirect these longings, which I think is why, maybe that’s why St. Augustine’s making such a comeback right now. Not that he ever went away, but it feels like even in reformed circles, like we’re much more willing to talk about his work because of the way he talks so often about these disordered loves and the ways in which we are, there’s something going on in the operating system that connects to deeper parts of us than we might know, and the more that we’re willing and wanting to follow the ways of the flesh into those desires, things are going to, you know, go a certain way, and the way of Christ is a different way than that. And so I wonder if maybe you’d share a word about that. I know you have a book on it, and I actually haven’t read that one, but how do you see some of those ideas connecting to what’s going on in the secular world?
Josh Chatraw
Well, so those are some of the challenges. And then I would say, as far some of the opportunities you were leaning into it, I think underneath what you were saying about Augustine and why there’s some interest there in certain circles is there’s this kind of recognition that something isn’t right. And if I can lean in on Augustine in one of his big works, City of God, in the 19th book, it’s what we would call chapters today, he called it books. We’ll just say chapters. In the 19th chapter, he talks about how humans are made in our nature because we’re made by God, that we’re gonna feel pain and want to not feel pain. And that’s actually a gift. Like when we say, I want to be happy, he says, he agrees with philosophers in the ancient world that everyone wants to be happy. And the fact that we feel unhappy and we’re restless is actually a kind of gift. It’s a kind of grace. It’s a kind of grim grace because something’s not right. And we’re meant to kind of search out, okay, what’s not right. So I think that here’s the opportunity, is that, there’s a kind of sense right now by many people that our ways of life aren’t working. Our normal isn’t working. I’ll put it like this. My dad and my brother told me how to play golf. And there’s only one problem with that. They didn’t really know how to play golf. So, sorry, Dad and Ben. But they were both self-taught. They knew how to play. We knew the rules, but they were self-taught. And then therefore I was worried that was going to be the problem.
You know, I grew up for about two years, no lessons. I’m a teenager just kind of mimicking what they’re doing. And of course I have all these glitches and hitches in my swing. Something’s not right. Like something’s not right here and I can feel it. I’m going off course. I don’t know. I don’t know quite what it is. And I think we can look around at our world and say, something isn’t right here. And particularly this, you know, cultural moment, the depths of this despair have reached an alarmingly high level in Western nations and in the United States. Loneliness has been declared an epidemic by the surgeon general and multiple international health leaders. The student mental health crisis is very prevalent, being on the campus of a university, but then talking to my colleagues at other places. Now the popularity of books such as The Anxious Generation or another recent one, Scrolling Ourselves to Death. I mean, we are experiencing these kinds of breaks in the fabric of our communities, and yet at the same time we have more technology. We’re incredibly affluent. And yet at the same time we’re anxious and lonely and angry and sad. And so, the world is at our fingertips and we’re not happy. So what is going on? I think this raises certain questions. And what I’m sensing when I go out there and I talk to people is whether it’s high school students or college students or people in their 20s or 30s, people who are kind of mid-career or beginning of their career, all the way up is there’s a real kind of desire to cope, find a way to cope. And of course, the health and wellness industry has stepped right into this. And yet it’s actually just making people, in many cases, just more kind of frenzied, kind of, I’ve got to do this, I got to get in shape, I’ve got to work harder, I got to find a better vacation, I’ve got to do this. And then it’s often leading to burnout and a kind of numbness. And there’s a real opportunity in all of this. Not to say that, okay, Christianity works in the sense that, okay, the chaos of life just goes away. No, no, no. But Christianity works in that it gives us a way to live through the kind of chaos that we’re experiencing. It gives us hope through the chaos. Because if Christianity is true, it’s actually going… What Christians say is there’s a fabric to reality. There’s a way of life that we’re called to live and following Christ, that’s going to change things.
And so I think it’s a real opportunity to start with those kind of existential elements to say, hey, actually, you should try Christianity on, you should try this out. And then to come back and say, yeah, but is it true? And then certainly, like traditional apologetics and historical arguments for the resurrection, I think all of those things can be really helpful as kind of support beams along the way. But I think the real kind of the way I see people really kind of opening up is when you speak to those existential realities and we learn how to do that.
Tanner Fox
Yeah, so they’re asking the question, does it work more so than they’re asking, like, is it true? Maybe.
Josh Chatraw
Yeah, yeah. And I think whatever we think about that, right, we can offer some critiques on that. And I think those are fair. I think one way to approach that would be to say something like, you’re asking the wrong question. That not my way to approach it. I’m just saying that is one way to do it. Typically, my way is to say, yeah, I’ve got some stuff for you here. Like come and taste and see. And by the way, it works because it’s true. And that’s why it works. What I’m not saying is just like, because it works, it is true. Now, I’m saying the other thing. I’m saying the opposite, right? Because it is true, because it is actually speaking to the very fabric of creation. It’s actually in some sense going to work. We need to put quotation marks around works, right? Because the promise of so many things is kind of a quick fix. And Christianity is not that, it’s not saying all your problems will go away. But that’s one of the benefits of Christianity because it speaks with a kind of realism to life. So it’s not just trying to sell you a bunch of stuff. It’s saying, yeah, this life is going to still be hard. And because there’s this thing called sin and the fall and yet there’s hope within this, there’s ways to kind of live within a fallen world. That’s actually a life worth living. So, yeah.
Tanner Fox
Yeah. I was just gonna say Christianity has categories for that, right? Like we have categories to allow joy and sorrow to coexist and that’s not antithetical to the way that we think about things. We actually think it’s kind of par for the course. That there’s always going to be the undercurrent of both brokenness and hope and…I think that a lot of the Psalms of lament are the best at holding those sorts of things together. I used to tell people that lament has so much to do with holding grief and hope both in high esteem, that they both matter somehow in our experience. And I think to your point on how people are engaging the world, I said to my buddies something funny on Instagram the other day that it was some scientific mindfulness collab where they were like, actually people are reporting that one day off a week from work has been really good for their mental health. And it’s just like, you know what? Someone thought of that a while ago and they named it Sabbath. Wasn’t me, just an idea. It’s been around, you could totally try it out. But I think there are things like that that people are saying, huh, there’s these ancient ways, or I think it’s Jeremiah 6:16 that says, stand at the crossroads and look, ask where the ancient way is and walk in it and you will find rest for your souls. And then the next verse says, and they wouldn’t walk in it. I’m like, that kind of feels like our world. We got this stuff right here and we’ve got ancient paths that are well trodden by, you know, folks who have engaged a life that fits in this fabric, like you’re talking about. And yet there’s this real decision point of like, you, will you walk in it? Not just in its one out of its six practices or whatever, but because you believe that it’s true. And so I think that’s a great way to say it.
Josh Chatraw
Yeah. And it does feel like, and I think this is sometimes what’s misunderstood with what I’m trying to do is you don’t want to walk in it because it feels like death. Right? I mean, because that guy that you’re following is hanging on the cross. I mean, that’s why I don’t want to walk in it. And it’s like, yeah. But to die is to live. Right. And that’s a path. But what you have, I think what I’m trying to show is if you try to get around a kind of dying, if you try to live where you’re the master of your own fate, if you’re the captain of your own ship, if you try to live in any other way, it actually ends up where you’re trying to live, but you die because you’re trying to live on your own terms. So if you actually die to yourself, you actually find life. The other way is you try to live by your own kind of powers and abilities and you try to rise up as a kind of king and then you’re going to fall and it’s just a matter of time, but we all know that right, and we all know like hey death isn’t simply something that’s looming it’s something that’s looming with a shadow and we feel it every day and so it seems to me a lot of what we’re trying to do is trying to escape that shadow but it ain’t going anywhere and we’re not escaping it.
And Blaise Pascal, the 17th century Frenchman, he called it, when we do that, is diversions. We just fill our life with diversions to try not to think about it. And I’m just wanting to say, actually, as the book of Ecclesiastes teaches, there’s something where we actually learn wisdom by thinking about death. In a society that doesn’t want to think about death, that wants to control everything, death has this way to give us wisdom, which actually fits with the Bible that says the beginning of wisdom is what? The fear of the Lord. It’s a kind of humility. We realize our dependence. We realize our vulnerability. And then once you realize that, you can actually begin, perhaps, living. But if we try to block that out, then we are actually…but that’s where the crunch comes in. That’s where the…I don’t want to die. I don’t want to give these things up because I’m just going to hold on to them.
And I guess my argument is, like, hey, look around the modern world. One way to describe the enlightenment is this, is this quest for control and control of everything. The quest to be our Kings without dependency and communion with God and with others. And how’s that working out for us? And so, what some of my questions, and I think this plays out in the workplace, and kind of is, it’s to be like, Hey, how’s it going? You know, how’s life going? How are things working for you? And actually learning how to get into conversations about life. And I think there’s this moment where this is the scary part where we thought like, I’ve got this gospel bit here. I’ve got this part about heaven over here. I’ve got this part about Jesus. And then we have life. And I don’t know how to bring those together.
That’s failure in discipleship. That’s a failure in our preaching. That’s a failure in…If we’re not bringing the gospel to our lives, what we’re experiencing in our own lives as believers, something’s gone wrong with our own discipleship. If we think these things are just far apart, and I think that’s where the kind of work and faith curriculum and these kinds of programs, it’s bringing everything together. So we should be able to talk about kind of day in and day out and how to do that in the presence of God and in light of the gospel. And then once you learn how to do that, that’s half the battle because now you’re actually always thinking in those categories. And so then when it comes time to actually have a conversation, you can have a conversation about that person’s life and how the gospel might make a difference. But if we don’t know how to do that ourselves, it’s just kind of like, it’s this awkward bit, right? Where it’s like, yeah, well, Jesus, you know, Jesus is in Heaven and it’s, we just haven’t connected it.
And so I often talk about discipleship and evangelism are really just, they’re connected, they need to be intertwined in how we think about them, how we teach them.
Tanner Fox
Yeah, if we’re living a disintegrated experience between the rest of things and this faith we hold, which I think the Christian tradition has some…we messed some things up maybe along the way in terms of making an engagement with a relationship with Christ so individualistic, so primarily future-oriented. You have all these pieces that are just like, if you told someone like, do you think you need all of Jesus for all of life? They’d be like, I think I need some of Jesus for the end of life, you know, like that’s kind of more the model. But to help them, like with the coherence, maybe to help those things be brought together so that I hear you saying as we have conversations, we’re not so worried about being wrong. I think you mentioned earlier in terms of whether or not people engage in apologetics and stuff like that, they don’t want to be “that guy.” I think I engage a lot of people who are like, I can’t imagine. Like if this is, I tell people this, the most important thing about me and then I get into conversation, I don’t know how to talk about it. That would be the most embarrassing embarrassment that I’ve had to kind of deal. And so I think they’re, enter those conversations, trying not to offend, but also trying not to be wrong. But it’s because they haven’t done the work of coherence that says like, this isn’t something that I have to work super hard to talk about. It’s a part of my story. Or I think about it like when I want a different car and then I see that car everywhere. It’s just like, you know, as soon as I wanted a Jeep Wrangler, there were Jeep Wranglers all over Orlando. And all of sudden, if I can create a coherence in the Christian story of my own, then all of sudden I can’t not see it. I can’t walk around and just be like, oh, maybe it doesn’t exist here. It’s just like, no, it totally does. And that’s what I think telling a better story, I thought you did such a great job with that work as it works through the various situations or moral circumstance or whatever that people are into and inviting people in to have a conversation about the gospel in light of this particular experience.
I loved that because it was just like there are endless inroads to these, you conversations. There really are, you know, a lot of people are asking how do I even start? You know, how, and it’s like, look for some pain in someone’s life. Look for the angst. Look for the things aren’t quite right, as you just said. And then just start, you know, poking around and gently, but poking around.
Josh Chatraw
Yeah, I think part of our problem is that…the acids of efficiency have really eaten through our ability to attend to each other. And so, I mean, we gotta get things done, right? I mean, and so if we treat…
Okay, so in our technological age, right, like I open up my phone and I just get things. I mean, I’m here, it’s all built around me, but it’s also like, I can text somebody, right, and it’s just so much more efficient than talking to them on the phone. I can email them and I haven’t violated their personal space, they can get back to me when they want, and it’s just efficient, straight to the point.
And we begin to imagine because of our technological tools, that’s the good life. But what does a more efficient relationship with my wife look like? Like, if I came in and Tracy was like, can we keep things more efficient now? What it means is a more shallow relationship with my wife. What does a more efficient relationship with my kids look like? It means a bad relationship with my kids. That’s what it means, right?
But what, and I’m not saying email and texting are all bad. I’m just saying once technology becomes, it kind of forms us to saying, you know, efficient, we’ve got, we’re busy, we got to get things done. We’re always on call. Then the ability to actually attend to somebody, we don’t have the patience or the curiosity. And so I think one of the things, and this is probably one of the things that has been magnified since, in my mind, and it came out in some of the edits we made in Apologetics at the Cross to the second edition is that I think we don’t have the attention span because we’ve lost the ability to commune with each other. And that is connected to our ability to commune with God too. So in the beginning, Genesis, right, were called to commune with God, to commune with others and commune with nature, commune with the world. And when our relationship with God, when that communion is severed, everything kind of unravels. And I think one of the things we’re seeing with technology is as we make technology to try to be more like us, we’re actually becoming more like our technology. And that’s Psalm 115, that’s Psalm 135. We’re becoming like the idols we worship. And so this has a…
Tanner Fox
Yeah, those who make them become like them. That makes me want to throw up.
Josh Chatraw
This is becoming, this is pretty profound as far as we think about, you know, when I’ve talked to some crowds about what I’m, vision here is they’re like, man, that’s timely. What you’re talking about is entering in relationships and attending to people. And man, I don’t know, that’s gonna take too much time. I mean, sometimes, I’ve had people basically say this, other times I sense this is what they’re thinking, but that’s gonna take time. And it’s just a lot easier for some people to think about evangelism or apologetics as like, I’ve got three reasons why I’m right and you’re wrong, or I’ve got four steps to God. Oftentimes the younger generation, they don’t want us to do that, that feels inauthentic. But at the same time, we don’t, even if I can throw myself in there with the younger generation, which might be a stretch at this point, but at the same time, we’re busy. And if we’re honest, it’s like we want relationships, we want communion without, but we want them to be efficient. We want them to be on our terms. And I think that this, you know, if there’s a flaw in what I’m doing, it is that maybe we’re not these kinds of people right now. Maybe we don’t have the attention span. Maybe we don’t have a kind of holy curiosity to…maybe we feel like we’ve got to convert a hundred rather than just bear witness to one. And maybe we’re thinking about mass followers rather than how to care for the people in front of us. And so this is again why I want to say the kind of vision that I’m suggesting is as much about being the right kind of apologist, the right type of people who have been so formed by the gospel that we’re able to have a holy curiosity, we’re able to have a non-anxious presence, we’re able to attend, we’re people who have a hope. And so people might ask us about our hope in the midst of suffering. And so again, the kind of work that’s being done, the gospel all of life, the kind of fellows programs, the kind of deep discipleship is really attached to us being the right type of people who could actually attend to other people with a kind of holy curiosity.
Tanner Fox
Well, yeah, let’s talk as we kind of draw near to ending this first episode. As I said before, I’ve used your stuff in a number of ways. I’ve taught it. And I think one of the things that stood out was both the way you talk about Paul at the Areopagus and Acts and as you relate that to the inside out vision of things. So just to kind of orient people and then I’d love to hear you talk about, the idea is that Paul kind of engages a space with a holy curiosity, but also a firm grip on the truth of God’s word. And at the Areopagus, he looks around and says, men, I see that you’re very religious. And he’s done the homework, right? He’s put in the time to know what are the cultural idols and these sorts of things. And then is able to, you know, I had an old professor say like spit in the soup, you know, just like, just put them off edge just a little bit by at the end saying, but you do have a statue to an unknown God. And that’s interesting. And maybe what you don’t know, like maybe what’s unknown to you is known to me. And what if this changes everything? And that is a, you know, that’s Tanner’s version, of what you’d find in the scripture. But I love that because I think that is a great text to help me us understand your methodology in terms of inside out. Again, maybe it’s had some variations or changes since I’ve read it. But tell us a little bit about, you know, give me the elevator pitch on the way that you would go about this sort of bridge building, engaging in apologetic connotations based on kind of the cultural experiences that you’re engaging with other peoples.
Josh Chatraw
Yeah, it’s rooted in, I mean, I think Act 17 is a great example of, you know, of a New Testament text that you see, you see this kind of thing done. And I could refer to some other places. I won’t go there for the sake of time. I will just mention a contemporary theologian, the British pastor theologian, John Stott, who coined this term double listening. And I think you see a kind of double listening with Paul in Act 17.He’s no friend of idolatry. We know that from Romans 1. He’s not like, oh, I’m kind of neutral, right? Is there a third way with idolatry? No, there’s no third way with idolatry. The wrath of God is coming for these things, Romans 1, right? We know that about Paul, but in Acts 17, he goes to Athens, he sees the idolatry of the city, but he’s listening. He’s very careful to listen, to look.
You know, what are the kind of opportunities? Do I challenge? How do I speak into this space? You know, he starts off by saying, I see you’re very religious in many ways, which is like, what is this the same Paul? And he’s going to go on to critique their idolatry. the way he does it is just fascinating. But he’s listened to their aspirations. He’s done this listening there, but he’s also done the listening to the word of God. And so even though he’s not quoting the Old Testament, that’s how he witnesses to the Jews at the beginning of Acts 17 when he goes to the synagogue. But you can actually see a kind of Genesis 1 through 3 framework for what he’s doing. So that’s the substructure. And then he can come in. Now that he’s listened, then he can step into their world, say what he agrees. So here’s the inside out. He goes inside their world. And he says, you have these certain kinds of aspirations, right? You’re religious. You’re worshiping.
You recognize you might be wrong because you recognize that you might be missing something with this alter to the unknown God. And yet also think about what you’re doing, right? You’re kind of doing this kind of religious activity where you think you can purchase God. You’re building these things thinking you can get your way. But actually that’s incoherent because if there is a God, if there’s an ultimate God, then in what sense could we serve him? In what sense could we bargain with him? It’s incoherent. In other words, he’s saying, your own terms. This doesn’t even make sense. And so he stepped in. He’s looking at aspirations. He’s looking at that. Yeah, OK, you want to worship. OK, you recognize this. But he’s also stepping in and offering what imminent philosophers would call an imminent critique, critiquing on their own terms. And then he goes, as is his pattern, he goes to Jesus.
And he says, well, actually, what you’re looking for in this altar to the unknown God, let me proclaim to you. And so he goes to Jesus, he goes to say, hey, there’s coming a time where Jesus is coming back. He’s been resurrected from the dead. He’s going to come back to judge you for this idolatry. So there’s an edge there, no doubt about it. And we need to keep that edge. But the kind of approach that we’re calling inside out is where you’re able to step in, understand people, listen. Well do the work of listening and say hey, something you’re saying here I agree with, but here you’re saying something that actually doesn’t make sense. Let’s talk about that, or can we talk more about this? You know, you’re saying on the one hand that you know everybody should just, this is kind of a contemporary version of some of this, you be you, but on the other hand you have these deep moral convictions and if somebody doesn’t do what you think you want to cancel them? How do we, you know, Charles Taylor calls this our massive inarticulacy problem is like what do we do with this on one hand? We have these incredibly high moral aspirations and on the other hand we’re wanting to say everyone should just be free to be able to do what they want, to do and be who they want to be, and look within. And so that doesn’t cohere. And then to be able to say, OK, hey, how does the gospel change this or what is the reality of Christ? How does it speak to this? How does it offer a better way forward that there is actually a kind of moral fabric to the universe? And that’s why you feel compelled to say hey, there is such a thing as injustice and justice. And those are good instincts and positive instincts. On the other hand, if you don’t have anything to ground that, then it just becomes your version of justice against somebody else’s version of justice. And then we will end up doing really bad things to each other and saying really bad things to each other because we’re kind of, everyone does what’s right in their own eyes. And so is there another way forward?
Well, yeah, the gospel gives us another way, which says, you know, as C.S. Lewis said, the great joke is that we’re all at fault. And once you can say that we’re all to blame, we’ve all done wrong. That’s in The Great Divorce. Once you can say that, then you can actually start living because you can find forgiveness and you can find a way to forgive others because you realize you’ve been forgiven by Christ. And that radically will change a community and that’ll radically change your life.
And so it’s this ability to kind of step in and have a conversation and to be able to say, yes, I agree with this. There’s aspirations there. I agree. But the way you’re trying to work this out has problems. Same thing. You want to be happy? Well, yeah. Who doesn’t? OK. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be happy. Let’s talk about how we get there over the long haul.
Tanner Fox
Yeah, that’s so helpful. And yeah, I think this is a great place to kind of close out this first section because I think we’ve talked a lot about the method. We’ve talked a lot about the landscape. What are you seeing? What are you noticing? And then what’s a way that you and your co-author, remind me his name.
Josh Chatraw
Mark Allen with Apologetics at the Cross. Yeah, and we also wrote The Augustine Way together. So we’ve combined up on a couple books.
Tanner Fox
Awesome. So cool. But yeah, I think there is a practical nature to what y’all have done. And so that’s what we would love to talk about in this next episode. So kind of connecting the Sunday conversations, the conversations around faith to the Monday morning, you know, how do we more personally engage this world? How do we feel prepared to move into this world? That’s what we’ll be talking about this next week. Josh, thank you so much just for the candid nature of how you’re sharing too, because I think this is, you live in this world all the time, and so I know when it is your world, it can be a space that comes with a lot of joys, but also frustrations and all sorts of things, but I just feel like you shared with a lot of honesty about the ways that you’re seeing what’s going on, and yeah, appreciate your time and your attention to all of this sort of stuff, great.
Well, like I said at the beginning, I’m Tanner. We’re so glad to have you here at Nuance, where we’re trying to figure out the connective tissue between all that God has for us and all that’s going on in the world around us and places where we live, work, play. So be sure to like and subscribe, share this with your friends. We’d love to continue to grow this community as we have these conversations that we think can be helpful as we’re trying to live faithful lives in the public sphere. So again, Josh, thanks so much and we’ll see you next time.
