As an end of year roundup, I discuss the interviews I did in 2023 that were highlights to me plus share my top 5 reads of the year.
Here are some time-stamps for the episode:
The birth of our daughter (0:32). My three favorite conversations from the last year (1:56). Quarterly guided studies coming up in 2024 (24:42). WAP in 2024 (27:43). My five favorite reads (29:33).
What are your favorite reads of this past year? You can share in the comments below.
If you would like to become a member of Unfeigned Christianity, click here.
Transitional music for this episode has been contributed by Corey Steiner. The opening song is Sunset Drive by Evert Z.
Subscribe to my email list:
Be sure and at least subscribe to our email list as well as the podcast so you don’t miss any future episodes. When you do, we’ll send you our latest eBook absolutely free! It’s called, Reference Book Theology: Why We Struggle to Read the Bible and How to Discover Its Beauty Again.
Stay Up to Date with the Podcast:
On Spotify
On Google Play
Join Unfeigned Christianity to access all our member-only content.
Become a paying member of Unfeigned Christianity and access a full dashboard of resources for Christians wanting culturally aware, biblically nuanced, and Jesus-embodying responses to current-day issues. Try the first 7 days free!
Already a member? Login
A subscription gets you:
✔ Subscriber-only posts and full archives (250+ in all)
✔ Exclusive podcast interviews
✔ The audiobook version of Live Free: Making Sense of Male Sexuality
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey friends, welcome back to unfamed Christianity. I’m your host, Asher Whitmer, and this is the podcast where we sort out and flesh out what it looks like to follow Jesus faithfully in our current cultural moment. This is the last podcast episode of 2023, and so I’m basically just having a bit of a reflection and roundup podcast episode, as well as a look at some of my favorite reads from the last year. Just in case you are needing reading material to start up 2024. First I need to announce and highlight and most of you, if you follow me on social media or are on my email list, you probably already saw we had our fifth child on the 18 December. Our second daughter, Ashira Lasette. I will sing of God’s promise and we have been delighted to have her with us. Everybody, from our oldest child all the way down to our youngest child, which is our first daughter, Avalon. Everybody’s just delighted with her and taken with her. It’s been heartwarming just to even see how the kids are just doting over her.
[00:01:15] Saded we are concluding 2023, and I don’t know what the last year has been like for you, but specifically as it pertains to the podcast and the blog, like what are some highlights that I look back on? There are three particular interviews that I had, actually four, but two of them were around the same topic.
[00:01:55] So to start off with about a year ago, I forget when I published it, I had the interview almost a year ago. It was January of 2023. I interviewed Dallo Cadet about his book in the name of mission work, and I don’t know if you remember that, if you listen to that episode, if you’re familiar with the book, but it’s basically just recounting the abuse, the sexual scandal that happened in Haiti. And I really enjoyed the conversation I had with Dylo, both some of our interaction offline and then also interaction online.
[00:02:39] Just as a spoiler, this is one of my favorite reads of the last year. It’s kind of weird to call it a favorite read because it’s actually a really hard read. But one of the things that I feel this is a book anybody in ministry has got to read. I have lived overseas. I have lived inner city. I have been a part of discipleship ministries. I have walked with people who are going through abuse. I’ve walked with people who are from a different culture, trying to join a church, and facing a lot of confusion around some of the mixed messaging that comes from people. And so more broadly than just the abuse piece of it, and definitely more broadly than just the hate piece of it. I think this is a must read ministry preparation book because he does a good job of interacting with some of the, I was going to say heroism. I don’t know if it’s, I just call it anymore just ethnocentricity. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that word, but just kind of a blindness to how your way of doing things and looking at life is shaped by your particular culture. But not just a blindness to that.
[00:04:09] Almost an arrogance in the sense of like, this is the way it leads to all kinds of problems. He unpacks a number of them in his book, but I really enjoyed my conversation with him. I’ll drop a link to that episode, and not only that, but I received a lot of feedback, saw conversations from people engaging it in a really meaningful way, in the sense of on one hand we were dialos addressing abuse and bringing this to the surface, but on the other hand, I saw a lot of conversations happening around how can things be done better? And so I feel like it was a well done book in presenting.
[00:05:02] I’m not sure how many of you, how familiar you are with these situations, so forth. I did receive some anonymous, pretty negative attacks. I think I would call them attacks, not at me specifically, but at Dilo. And I’m grateful to have had the buffer of not letting those comments go public.
[00:05:30] I know that there’s criticism out there around it, but I just think it’s pretty important that we have these conversations and not try to hide it and stuff it. We as anabaptists specifically have a long way to go in our church plant ministries. And I say that as someone who has been very much involved in church planting and very much supports, like cares about the church and supports local ministry discipleship. But we have a long way to go, and I think this is a must as a way of growing in health in that direction. So my conversation with Dila was a highlight for me.
[00:06:19] My second highlight was my conversation with Dwight Gingrich, and I actually kind of forget which one came first. Dwight may have actually come, actually, now that I’m thinking about it. If I remember correctly, I think we recorded the interview before the holidays in December, and then it released the end of January. So maybe my conversation with Dwight happened first. But one of the things that I really enjoyed about my conversation with Dwight was Dwight is a scholar. He dives in deep. And there, as I’ve been in Bible college and dive into scripture more around the conversation about divorce and remarriage. There’s been a lot of questions that come up. I come from a background that would have had a, there’s no space for divorce.
[00:07:13] I’m not sure if that’s entirely true. If genuinely like the preachers and pastors that I would have interacted with growing up, if they would have not given any space for divorce.
[00:07:24] But that’s kind of the impression I grew up with, was like, there’s no space for divorce. And then definitely no space. Like, you are living in continual sin if you ever remarry. And as I’ve been in Bible college, we’re not looking at divorce and remarriage specifically, but just studying the Bible more in depth. I’m seeing the text of scripture. I’m like, wait a second. This isn’t as clear cut as I would have thought. And so I had increasing questions, and I’ve enjoyed Dwight’s work kind of unpacking. What does the Bible actually say about divorce marriage? What have Anabaptists historically believed about things like the exception clause in Matthew 19? And so for me, yeah, it was a little bit of confirmation bias.
[00:08:14] I was leaning in a direction. And so when I see what Dwight’s sharing, it’s a lot easier to accept that there’s a lot of questions that I continue to have about the subject I look forward to. I think Dwight is still unpacking that work specifically in the conversation that I released this year. It’s specifically looking at what Jesus says about divorce and remarriage, and he’s going to be working more on what Paul says about divorce and remarriage. And that’s actually, I have even more questions about some of Paul’s writings. So I really enjoyed that conversation in the sense of it was a topic I’m processing a lot. It’s scratching my itch, interacting with questions I’m asking and contemplating with now. There’s been a variety of feedback. When it first released, it was very quickly one of the most listened to episodes that I had had in a long time. At the same time, it was one of the quietest episodes. I hardly heard any feedback from anybody. As the year progressed, I’ve heard more and more feedback, and it’s interesting to me because I think there’s a lot of people processing this conversation, but doing it kind of quietly, I’m not sure if it is. I know of several situations that have been really tough.
[00:09:42] People coming to what seems like an impossible impasse, like they can’t reconcile how to work together with this in their differing beliefs about divorce and remarriage.
[00:10:01] I’ve received some negative feedback on the episode as well.
[00:10:07] A lot of it, I think I’ve said this before, but just so people know, if there’s not a name attached with the comment and if there’s no profile picture, then I don’t really respond to those comments. And so there’s been comments on YouTube that I’ve just kind of ignored because I have no way of knowing if you’re actually a real person or not or whatever, or who you are and any sort of context for such a commenter. And so there’s been a number of comments that it’s fairly negative, kind of harsh, but they didn’t have a profile picture of themselves and no name attached. And so I was like, well, I’m not going to engage that. There’s been a couple, though, that were real people that I could tell, and so I’ve engaged with them a little bit. And I think one of the things that in my observation, some of this comes back to is how we interpret the Bible, like how we understand the Bible. And there is a certain level of rigidity in some views of reading the Bible that I find problematic. Like, I think it’s really tough to reconcile all the different pieces because some of Jesus’teachings look like it does. Like any sort of divorce is committing sexual immorality, is committing adultery. But then Jesus says that he does not permit a man to divorce his wife except for sexual immorality. And so it was like, well, what is considered sexual immorality and what is Jesus contradicting himself? How are we to interpret these passages that look contradictory to a certain. So I think those are valid questions. It’s all a part of the process of biblical interpretation.
[00:12:10] But as you see in the episode, or if you’re listening to it, as you hear, there’s a broader scope. The first good bit of the episode is just walking through how do we understand scripture? How do we interact with Old Testament texts as it relates to New Testament texts, and how do we let the whole of scripture kind of interpret itself? So I really appreciated how Dwight laid that out and just the work that he’s put into that conversation. So that was a highlight for me. The third highlight I would like to talk about is my conversations with Gregory Coles and Lori Krieg.
[00:12:56] I have followed their work for.
[00:13:00] I was first introduced to them back in 2015, I believe. So what is that, eight years?
[00:13:09] So Lori, I don’t know that she’s published any other book than the one that I will talk about in a bit with her husband. This is also a favorite read of the year. This one was published in 2020, but Greg Coles has published early on. He published single Gay Christian and more recently published no longer strangers. Both of those, I do not have them listed as my top in my top five, but kind of partly because I was trying to get a bit of a variety in my top five.
[00:13:44] They were definitely some of the best books that I’ve read this year. I think out of. I haven’t tallied it up yet. I keep track of my reads on Goodreads and it’s usually pretty strong through March, and then I fall way behind and lose track of it. So I think I’ve read. I think my goal for the year was like 52. I think I’m close to 40, maybe. I don’t know if I’m quite that high. I’ll have to tally it up here before the new year. But what was I going to say out of, let’s say, 35 books?
[00:14:22] I would definitely put Greg’s books in the top ten. They’re must reads. But the reason I really appreciated these conversations is there is in their books and in their perspectives on matters of sexuality and dealing, particularly with their stories dealing with same sex attraction.
[00:14:54] With Gregory Coles, he’s single. He’s committed to celibacy because he believes that marriage, defined in scripture, is for a man and a woman for life. And so since he currently does not have attraction for women, he is committed to celibacy.
[00:15:13] Lori is a same sex attracted woman who happens to be attracted to a man and got married and has a couple kids. And their book, an impossible marriage, stems from just some of the struggles that not just her story, but actually her husband, Matt.
[00:15:39] Just the different baggage that they brought into marriage. And I’ll talk more about the book, but what I really appreciate about them is their commitment to God’s design as laid out in scripture without dehumanizing and condemning people who are facing same sex attraction. Because I find that this is another area of polarized conversation. And there’s actually a lot of history. Obviously, it stems back before my time, late 80s, early 90s, some of the reparative therapy that came into being, where you went through this process of having the gayness kind of transformed out of you or rebuked out of you or whatever, there’s been a lot of damage around that. I think that’s part of what led to the kind of explosion of what is called affirming same sex marriage in the mid 2000s here in the 2010s, basically, is where it’s kind of just kind of ravaged the church to a certain degree.
[00:16:56] I have personally walked with quite a number of people and have heard a lot more than I actually walk with them stories. I’ve had people message me and email me. That was one of the things when I published my book, live free, making sense of male sexuality. One of the big things that began, actually, before I even published it, began coming to me, was guys dealing with same sex attraction. I was just like, whoa. I wasn’t even aware at the time of how many young men, even in our settings, deal our settings. I literally kept that vague. If you are in a church, if you’re in a church of 100 people, there is likely anywhere between one and five people dealing with same sex attraction.
[00:17:47] And if you think about it and then you pause and you think about how people talk about our culture, how people talk about gay people and just anybody sorting through their gender, even people that you meet and you assume, or maybe you don’t assume they are obviously transgender or something like, just the way people talk about that over the pulpit is incredibly alienating to folks listening or two folks dealing with that. And not only is it alienating, it’s damaging. Like, there are a number of people who I know who have walked away from that. And probably I really appreciated the conversations because they were fun conversations. They were good people. They’re obviously used to being interviewed and so forth. They flowed well, obviously they’ve written books, so I just basically set them up with a question and then they can kind of talk from their book or whatever.
[00:18:56] But almost more why they were highlights to me was the feedback I’ve gotten in response to that. Now there’s been a number of people who are really concerned about me, and I don’t really know what to do with that.
[00:19:18] I’m not affirming same sex marriage. That’s not where I go.
[00:19:26] I’m not walking away from God’s design for sexuality.
[00:19:32] But I know that the vast majority of conservative anabaptist churches need a better way of walking with people.
[00:19:44] I don’t think people are near as aware of how many mixed orientation marriages exist in their bodies, maybe sound weird, like in their congregations, in their local body of people. And that is an incredible. There’s all kinds of things that are lonely journeys, but one of the loneliest is when you find yourself in a mixed orientation marriage. And how do you navigate that? Because almost everything intimate can be triggering at times, and so that’s really challenging. And just kind of hearing some of the feedback of people closeted, same sex attracted people who were grateful that a conversation like that is being had.
[00:20:34] For me, it was reassuring because there is a lot of reputation on the line by sharing some of that.
[00:20:49] There have been a lot of people who conclude things about me that simply aren’t true.
[00:20:55] Just because I had so and so on the podcast or just because I titled, like, one of the podcast episodes was titled the name of Greg Cole’s book single Gay Christian. And so in my email, when I released that episode, I just titled it that. And a lot of people took issue with that and didn’t even listen to the episode.
[00:21:22] When I know that that’s happening, when I see people unsubscribing from things, this happened when I address. I mean, yeah, there’s a number of issues that I address, and I see that kind of downward trend of people no longer reading or engaging.
[00:21:43] It’s encouraging when I hear how, oh, that actually was really me. There have been some messages that have brought me to tears, just people’s testimonies of loneliness and struggle. I think the thing that moved me to tears was, first of all, just how behind the eight ball is that the saying behind the eight ball? Behind the curveball? Behind the curve we are on this conversation.
[00:22:13] And the pain, the confusion, frustration, even, that some people have walked through, and then also just a sense of relief of just like, oh, this does matter. This is a conversation that, even though it’s not popular, like, it needs to be had. And so that was, I guess you could say, a highlight of the last year. So one of the things I wanted to let you guys know of before we go too much further is that members of unfinished Christianity get access to over. Currently there’s over 300 posts, podcasts in the archives that you receive access to that nonmembers don’t have access to. But then typically, we continue, try to continue with the regular flow of future content and some of what that is looking like. So in the past, what that looks like is members get access to courses like finding my place in God’s story, creating sexually healthy romance, expanded versions of podcast interviews with some of my guests, deep dive essays, stuff like that. As we go forward, we’re going to be shifting some things up just a little bit, and the members will continue to receive access to deep dive essays, to expanded podcast episodes. But then I’m also going to do a monthly q and a post where I specifically respond to questions. And some of this is, I do get a fair amount of questions kind of collected over time.
[00:23:53] It’s tough to know which ones to address because some of them, they’re often kind of somewhat all over the map. And so if you are a member, you get to submit questions and vote on question on which questions that I should respond to. I’ll probably pick like five top five questions to respond to. One of the things I’m going to reengage.
[00:24:19] I started this a couple years ago and then over the time of our move in 2022, and basically all of 2023 did not work on it. But I’m reengaging my book, unfolding faith. And so you’re going to get firsthand look at that manuscript as the chapters as I release those. So that’s for the basic membership, and then for the more advanced membership, you get the access to past courses. But we’re going to also do quarterly guided studies. And for the first quarter, we’re looking at becoming a healthy disciple of Christ. And that is just kind of deep dive into dealing with habitual sin, how to read the Bible and understand what it means. Just kind of a bit of an overview. Emotional mental health and well being, working through issues of our past, discovering identity and purpose, and then cultivating a biblical worldview and confronting unchristlike attitudes and postures in our own heart. So the first three months of 2024 are going to be deep diving into that. Some of this content is in prep for releasing my video course for live free making sense of male sexuality. We produced a video course that accompanies that, that facilitates small groups, and that’s going to be releasing later in the quarter, in this first quarter, but later on in this first quarter. And so as a part of that, not only do you get access to the guided study, but you also get a significantly discounted price for that upcoming course. If you’re interested at all in becoming a member right now till the end of the year, you can receive access to the unpaid Christianity membership at a pretty steep discount. So for the basic right now it’s $7 a month. If you sign up for the annual, like you pay twelve months at a time, you get an additional 16% off. So it comes out to like five eightyat if you sign up for the advanced, which gets you access to the guided study discount on free course and, oh, a monthly live Zoom chat. I forgot to mention that we’re going to do a monthly live Zoom chat for anybody who can make it who wants to. That is $15. And then again, if you sign up for the annual version, pay twelve months in advance. You get that 16% off. I think it comes to twelve something a month. Plus, at the end of this episode, I’m going to give you the top five reads of 2023. And if you become an annual member of the advanced membership, so you pay for twelve months, I will send you a copy of your choice of those five books. If you haven’t happened to read them already, that’s just kind of extra. It’s a way to support unpaid Christianity. It’s also a way to go deeper.
[00:27:27] It’s really a community, a place for digging deeper into some of these current issues that we face in life. And what does it look like to follow Jesus faithfully in them? I’d like to leave this before I dive into my favorite reads, the top reads of the last year. I’d like to leave you with an acronym. It’s not original with me, but it is an acronym that stands for watch and pray. Wap. Wa p. WAP 24. Watch and pray in 2024. And I don’t mean be passive, but rather Jesus. When he’s being tempted in the garden, right before his crucifixion, he is agonizing so much that he sweats blood and he comes back and the disciples are just sleeping and he kind of rebukes them for that. He’s like, could you not watch with me? Could you not pray for an hour? Watch and pray. He commands them to watch and pray so that they are not led into temptation. And so I think there is going to be. There always has been. But there’s going to be new temptations that we are presented with in 2024. And the way we are alert and the way that we navigate through them in a healthy way, a way that honors God, is if we’re watching and praying our way through it. I don’t mean sit and pray. Watch and pray. You’re walking through life.
[00:28:59] Watch, be alert and pray for God to direct us, for God to move, for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Because arguing about things, first of all, we don’t do well at talking together, but then I don’t think we’re going to convince each other through arguments either. So we need to watch and pray. We need God to discern our own hearts and our own minds. We need God to give us wisdom, to know how to read and interact with people as we go throughout life. Watch and pray. Wap in 2024, the top five reads. I’ll give you five reads. I’m going to give just a couple honorable mentions. I already gave some with Greg Coles. His books are definitely honorable mentions. I also read it’s an older book by Eugene Peterson. I wanted to say Andrew Peterson, Eugene Peterson Thunder, Reverse Thunder. It’s a book on Revelation and then Michael Gorman’s book on Revelation.
[00:30:01] Rediscovering revelation. I can’t remember the title of it.
[00:30:06] I should have gotten that as I was setting up and stuff. I was like, I had selected my top five and then I was realizing, oh, there’s actually a lot of books that should be honorable mentions, and one of them is Gorman’s book on Revelation. It’s a great book.
[00:30:25] Another honorable mention is a book I’m currently listening to on audible, and that is Jill Duggar’s book. Counting the cost, that’s definitely a good book. A good read, particularly if you’re familiar with the Duggars, if you’re familiar with the IBLP, the Gothard movement and teachings and so forth, and come from or are familiar with the purity culture. It’s a fascinating read and I think if we’re going to have conversations about purity culture, then it behooves us to engage people who come from that. And so I highly recommend Jill Duggar’s book. I’m not the whole way through it, but so far it’s been really good and kind of eye opening for me. Someone who definitely read some books that would have been considered purity culture but did not grow up in a strong Gothard world or even purity culture world, definitely grew up in a patriarchal world.
[00:31:23] But there’s just a lot of stuff that people talk about. Chaperones on dates different, not having any form of dancing or movement, constantly calling out things as being overly sensual. That’s not the world I grew up in. And so there’s a lot about it that I don’t really identify with, but I found it really insightful learning more about that and understanding, particularly Jill Duggar’s journey. So those are definitely some honorable mentions. But here are my top five of the year. Now, I tried to split it up a little bit into different types of reading. I am a fan of reading widely and broadly.
[00:32:16] Reading allows you, first of all, it curates and cultivates your imagination and being able to understand more complex issues and also see things from different angles. So I’m a fan of reading fiction. I’m a fan of reading classics. I’ll be honest, classics can be hard for me to get into because you spend the first part of a book, the first hundred pages, like setting the stage sometimes so. Sometimes classics. The way of writing has evolved over the years, and so sometimes classics for my borderline add brain, sometimes classics move too slowly. But I like to force myself into classics every now and then, actually, in full transparency. I have not read a classic this year, and it’s tough to get into any. I don’t know if Sherlock Holmes is considered a classic. I did read some Sherlock Holmes, but I do enjoy fiction. I think fiction rounds us out, curates our imagination. I also think we should read deep theology books. I think we should read older theology books, early church writings. I think we should read new books, particularly, I guess, as someone who dives into topics as a teacher and church leader, I think we can stay abreast with the times if we’re engaging some of the current trends of thought. And the thing about reading is, it’s a free way to learn, right? Like, you can learn from other people’s mistakes or experiences without going through those mistakes or even without. Obviously, you pay for the book, but without paying, like, an extraordinary fee to get some training. And so I’m a fan of reading and reading and reading, and I hope to continue that, particularly because I think I should be able to graduate from Bible college in the next year. So that’ll free me up to read things of interest instead of assignments, which assignments have been great, but here is my first, my fifth favorite book of the year.
[00:34:31] Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine. I’m not sure how many of you have read that book.
[00:34:37] I thought the book was.
[00:34:41] Let me see. Pull it up here. Who is the author?
[00:34:44] At first, I was thinking that was a Friedrich Bachmann book, but it is a Gail Honeyman book.
[00:34:54] Eleanor Olifenz is completely fine. Basically, it’s a story about this lady. It’s from her perspective. And as the story, like, first it’s kind of this posture of, like, life is just normal. And then as she’s interacting with other people, they kind of clue her in that actually, that’s not normal or that’s concerning. And as the story unfolds, you discover there’s some mental illness going on in her own life. And I really resonated with it as someone who has journeyed that myself, like, living several years with things and then realized kind of feeling like I’m coming to the surface. And all of a sudden I read a book here or listen to an interview here, and it’s like giving me language for, oh, several panic attacks a week isn’t normal. That’s not just something we’re supposed to just endear through in faith and just different ways in which I realize I’m not mentally well.
[00:36:01] That’s a part of my story, that’s a part of my journey. And so I really resonated with it. It’s a light read. You can read it easily. Sometimes it’s even humorous.
[00:36:13] I think some people were critical of the humor around mental illness.
[00:36:20] I don’t know everybody that was critical. I read a few different Twitter threads and Facebook threads and stuff. I obviously don’t know what their stories are. They sort of struck me as people who maybe have never dealt with mental illness themselves but are concerned. Like, want to be thoughtful of people. As someone who’s walked through that, I found some of it genuinely entertaining and amusing.
[00:36:45] I can’t tell you the relief that it feels to just discover, just acknowledging what you’re experiencing is not normal. Like that alone. To be able to put that, say that of it, that’s not normal, it just opens up a whole new world of hope. It’s like, oh, that’s not normal. Like, on one hand, it’s like, why is that hopeful? Why is that relieving? And it’s because in the moment you think something’s wrong with you. Like, you think somehow you should be able to endure this more. Something’s whatever. But to discover, like, oh, there’s actually maybe things happening outside that are affecting this and it’s not normal. And there’s options for moving forward into a place of health and wholeness.
[00:37:29] So it’s relieving. And there is maybe as dark or amusing as it might be, like, there is some humor in some of the perspectives and ways of looking at things. I thought Gail Hyman did a fairly well job. So that was one of my favorite reads of the last year. Number four. I already talked about his book, but dialo cadets, in the name of mission, I talked. I’m presenting these as my favorite reads. This was a tough read.
[00:38:05] It’s a strenuous read. There were a lot of emotions that went through me as I read this read. But I think it’s a needed read, a must read, particularly if you are going to be involved in ministry, which all of us should be involved in discipleship and walking with people as they come to know Christ and so forth. And so I think it’s a must read. And just to clarify, yes, it’s about sexual abuse, it’s about scandal in missions, but I actually think it’s longevity. The value in the longevity of it is the analysis of mythology, of how to do discipleship. So the specific situation will ebb and flow over time, right? Like some people will not be familiar with who Cam is or whatever. Some people will come from corners of the world where they’d be appalled that such a thing would happen, but still would tend to approach discipleship with some of the prejudice that Dilo cadet does a really good job of.
[00:39:13] So I think as you read that book, observe the underlying kind of the meta narrative at the end of the book, he goes into it directly. It’s not just under the surface narrative, but just pay attention to just the analysis of how we do missions, how we approach discipleship. That’s why I think it’s a must read. Especially the third favorite book of the year is one I just read by Beth Moore. All my knotted up life, her autobiography. Beth is a woman I really appreciate.
[00:39:48] I grew up kind of. I don’t know if my mom would have read some of her studies devotionals, but she was kind of on the peripheral. But in the years of my adult life, if there are a few people just in the grander church across America, people that I look at with admiration and just deep appreciation, respect for, it’s Beth Moore. And one of the reasons I’ll just put the two people that I really admire are Francis Chan and Beth Moore. And the main reason I admire them, and I realize they’re people, they very likely have flaws. I don’t know them personally.
[00:40:37] They are human, and so they can make mistakes in the future.
[00:40:43] Yeah, I pray for them that God keeps them. But the reason I really admire them is when they had to put their reputation on the line, and particularly their celebrityism and the cost of social power or power in their religious context and settings, they were willing to put it on the line. They walked in the way of faithfulness to Jesus, not in the way of fame or in the way of perceived success. And I deeply admire that, and I want to follow in that way. They are people I look to as giving guidance in what it looks like to live the way of Jesus in a world where celebrityism, whether you want that or not, can easily happen to see that there are people who are willing to actually lay that aside, to embody, as Paul tells us in Philippians, to have the mindset of Christ in us, who he was equal with God, and yet he did not see that as a thing to be grasped and emptied himself and entered our story, to have that posture of just, instead of trying to grasp the image and the fame, I lay that aside. Maybe that’s not a fair comparison to Jesus being equal with God, I don’t know. But the concept of emptying oneself, pursuing in the way of faithfulness, counting others, is more important than ourselves. That’s what I see in them, and that’s what I really appreciate. And I think for me, I followed her on Twitter. I followed her in different speaking places, interviews and stuff. I had never read anything of hers. And I saw a bunch of stuff, saw she left the SBC. I see people commenting about her being a jezebel or demonic influence on SBC and so forth. Obviously, stuff like that really piques my curiosity, is like, oh, why are people feeling so threatened by her?
[00:42:43] And I just really enjoyed her memoir of just the raw struggle. And again, family history of mental illness. And so again, identifying, resonating with different aspects of their story. Being in the limelight when you as a family are going through really deep, dark times.
[00:43:05] I have not dealt with any limelight to the degree that Beth Moore has, but I know a little bit what that’s.
[00:43:12] So it was just interesting and to a certain degree, healing.
[00:43:22] Just refreshing to kind of read that.
[00:43:27] It evoked a lot of empathy in me for her as she just kind of laid her story out there because I know it took. Incredible was. That’s my third favorite read. Just finished it. Really enjoyed it. My second favorite read, I was going to put Beth Moore as number two, and then I was like, well, there’s maybe a little recency bias in there, but then it’s also like, well, I’m not sure that I would just say, oh, everybody should read that book.
[00:43:57] You don’t have to read that book. I think it’d be great if you want to start. We’re kind of in the middle of holidays here, and you want some light, easy like, I highly recommend that book.
[00:44:07] But the last two books here are books that I think everybody should read. You should read. Pick this up this year. Now, the Anatomy of Peace is by the Arbinger Institute. There’s a series of three books by the Arbinger Institute. The first one is leadership and self deception. Second one is the Anatomy of peace. And the third one is the outward mindset. And this was required reading by my boss this year. So it wasn’t school, it wasn’t a choice. But this series of books has been fantastic, incredibly good, and addressing kind of to what I was talking about in our inability to talk with each other and inability to move towards each other.
[00:44:51] This is a roadmap toward doing that. It’s a roadmap towards healthy interaction with people when we face disagreements when we don’t understand why certain people are coming from the certain angle they are. Now, these books are written as stories. They’re written as, I don’t know, hot parables. Like a lot of business books and organizational leadership books. That’s kind of a trend these days, is to write them as, like, these parables and then maybe unpack them. And sometimes it can make for really light writing or reading, but sometimes it seems a little cheesy. It’s like, oh, that situation turned out really well because you designed the story to illustrate that point. I feel like they actually do a really good job of getting.
[00:45:43] Obviously, the story is made up and the stories bringing threads together that say, wow, it’s really random that those happen to come together, except for the fact that an author who’s trying to unpack how to cultivate peace is writing the book. But I thought they did a really good job of bringing out real life examples within the characters within the story that are human. It’s like, oh, yeah, I know what that’s like. I saw myself in their stories.
[00:46:17] I think you would love it. It’s an easy read. It looks somewhat thick, but you can read through it or listen to it on audiobook. It’s easy to digest and it provokes deep thinking and gives you a pathway forward of living. Inside the box is where everything is concerned about me. Outside the box is where I put myself in other people’s shoes. One of the most powerful illustrations this book talks about is when there’s a camp for kids, for youth that are coming from troubled situations. And there’s one girl runs away and she leaves the camp, and two youth go after her. Because the value, the philosophy of the camp is we don’t let people just walk away. Not in like a weird, cultic way, but rather like, we’re going to fight with you in your struggles in life. And so there’s two youth who go after her, who pursue her, but they’re not going to force her back. There’s no physical forcing. You need to come back. It’s not trapping. They’re just staying with her as she runs the opposite direction of the camp. And they run so hard, so far. She runs through water, runs through city, runs through fields, runs through woods. She eventually doesn’t have her shoes on. I can’t remember if she starts out running barefoot or not. But eventually the two youth running with her are seeing that her feet are all bloodied and blistered, and they take their shoes off and continue the chase, continue running with. They don’t force her. There’s different times where she stops, wonders why they’re still running with them. And they just stay with her. They don’t force her back. They talk with her, try to ask her questions, to try to make her think about what she’s hoping to get out of and so forth. And it’s just, I broke down in tears as I listened to that part, because that is an illustration of what we are to do in discipleship, is to enter people’s stories, to take on empathy, where we actually get into life and experience it from their point of view. And we’re going to stick with you even when you’re running down a trail. Like, a lot of folks will stand at the edge and be like, that’s a bad trail. Like, don’t go down that trail. If you go down that trail, you’re not going to end up anywhere good. And so many people won’t leave the camp with us in walking with us in our journey and our story. And I have found in walking with people, like, it is far more effective to run down the trail with them, to take on the limitations that they’re dealing with, to enter their feet, enter their story and see things from their point of view.
[00:49:00] And then I gain far more influence and have the opportunity to speak into their lives in ways that if I just stood there and criticized them for running away and the bad decision that they made. So anyways, that’s just a taste. It’s a great book. It talks about far more than just running with people. But the number one read of the year by far is Lori and Matt Krieg’s book, an impossible marriage. This is the best marriage book that I’ve ever read. If there’s a marriage book, somebody’s like, hey, what marriage book should I read? It’s this one. It’s theologically foundational, really, for our journey as followers of Jesus, period. But then even marriage, like every marriage, is impossible without Christ. Every marriage, we bring baggage into it. They have a unique story that talks about her being same sex attracted and Matt’s addiction to pornography that he brought into marriage. And so people would look at them and be like, oh, how are you ever going to make it? And they do really well at unpacking the theological foundation for why marriage? What is marriage all about? And then they have some really good practical ways of cultivating intimacy, cultivating wholeness as individuals, men and women as a couple.
[00:50:25] And so that is by far the favorite read again, one that I think everybody should read it’s a must read, even if. So, this book, I actually was recommending it. I had heard them talk and it was recommending the book before ever reading it. Gave it to some friends of ours who have a very similar story, and they were really grateful for the book. It impacted them in a powerful way. And I was like, when I gave it to them, I was like, I haven’t read it yet, but I think you guys would find a lot of help and just support just from the book. And then soon after that, I had some single friends of mine ask like, hey, have you ever read this book and just talk about how it’s the best book on marriage and sexuality? I kind of forget because they go into sexuality, human sexuality as a whole, and just like ways to cultivate healthy sexuality as individuals for the purpose of having healthy intimacy and romantic sexuality.
[00:51:32] And so it’s a book that I recommend to everybody, period. You don’t even have to be married or on the horizon of marriage. You will benefit from this book.
[00:51:44] I think it’s going to go down in history as a really good book. So maybe I’m wrong, but that is my number one read. And just a reminder, if you become an advanced member of unfained Christianity yet before the end of the year and you subscribe for the annual membership, I’ll send you, of the five books I listed, an impossible marriage by Lori Matt Krieg, the anatomy of peace in the name of mission work, all my knotted up life, or Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine. Any of those five books you sign up, you become an annual member of the advanced membership of unpaid Christianity.
[00:52:31] I will send you a copy of your choice. Whichever one of those, not one of each, just whichever book you have not read or would like to read, I will send it to you. That is it. That concludes the last of the podcast episodes for 2023. I’d love to hear from you all. What are your reflections on the last year? What are highlights? What are concerns that you see coming down the road?
[00:52:58] What are some of your favorite reads? What are books that you would recommend that I should read, that I should check out in 2024? Go ahead and leave a comment or message me privately. I’d love to hear from you. Until next year, grace and peace.
