On today’s episode, Jonathan and Sy discuss why we need to rethink the amount of attention we give to white people’s opinions, the danger of not knowing what white people think, recalibrating our thoughts around Jesus’ views, and a lot more. Thank you so much for subscribing!
Articles mentioned during the episode:
Our response to the Kyle Rittenhouse case
Jonathan’s essay on suffering and what happened to his home during Hurricane Ida
Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Find transcripts of this show at KTFPress.com.
Hosts
Jonathan Walton – follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Sy Hoekstra – follow him on Twitter.
Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.
Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.
Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra.
Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.
Questions about anything you heard on the show? Write to shakethedust@ktfpress.com and we may answer your question on a future episode.
Transcript
Sy Hoekstra: Hi everybody, it’s Sy with a couple of quick programming notes before we get started with this bonus episode. You're about to hear a conversation that Jonathan and I recorded on Twitter Spaces. So this is a live conversation that we recorded. If you want to be notified when we're going to be recording anything else live and listen into that process, maybe answer a couple of questions or comment or whatever, you can follow us on Twitter. You can follow KTF Press or Jonathan @ForeverFocused, or me @SyHoekstra. Also just later in the episode, I am going to interrupt because while we were making this live recording, I told a story that had a factual error in it.
I'm going to jump in and correct myself because even though I got a couple of the facts wrong, the point that I was making was one that we wanted to leave in the podcast. So I'm just going to explain the story with accurate facts when we get there. It’s when I start talking about Charlie Kirk, and you will hear those little piano sounds that you're used to when we're transitioning in between things on this show, and I will come in and explain what I got wrong just so we're giving you accurate facts because we want to do that. Finally we recorded this conversation before the acquittal in the Kyle Rittenhouse case, so we do mention the case without mentioning the outcome.
If you want our thoughts on that case, we will link to the post that we put up the afternoon that that verdict came down, and you can read what we had to say about that. Also, Jonathan mentioned another article of his during the episode that I have also put in the show notes. So you can read about his thoughts on Hurricane Ida and suffering and the nature of suffering and kind of his different reactions to suffering and theology and theodicy, based on kind of where he grew up in the church tradition that he comes from. And now I will leave you with Jonathan doing the usual cold open to our episode. This is Jonathan talking about Jesus's invitation to us to love and suffer for our enemies. So the episode officially starts now.
Jonathan Walton: It’s important who the invitation comes from. And for Jesus being someone who has scars in his hands and in his feet and in his side from the state, it changes the invitation. I think when someone makes an invitation and has been willing to incarnate themselves into that type of suffering, it's a transformative invitation.
[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]
Sy Hoekstra: Welcome to this special subscriber only bonus episode of Shake the Dust, Leaving Colonized Faith for the Kingdom of God. It's been a little bit since we've talked to you. Hello, this is Sy Hoekstra as always, here with Jonathan Walton. We are here to talk to you a little bit today about an intentionally provocative question, do we have to care what white people think? So, but before we get started, really quickly, since you're all already subscribers, just please do remember to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at KTF Press, and to give us a rating and review on whatever podcast app you're listening on.
Also please remember to follow or subscribe in your podcast app. All those things are really, actually, honestly, very helpful to us, and we really appreciate when you do them. Okay. Jonathan, let's get started with this question today. What… Let let's just first, like I said, a little bit of an intentionally provocative question. Why are we asking this question? Why is this question important?
Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I think we're asking this question because we come back to it regularly in kind of indirect ways. So for example when we watched the news. If Steve Bannon says something, if John Piper, an evangelical pastors says something, if a criminal is doing something, race matters. Like who they are, what they represent is very important in the United States, because of our history and our context and also the impact that it has on people who are part of dominant culture. That means white is the assumed norm, and anything other than that is abnormal, even subjective, or is subject to that.
So in the DEI space it would be called dominant culture versus subordinated culture. So I think it is always a question. So one of the things that people say is like, “Oh, is this about race?” That comes up a lot, and I think the answer is always, “yes,” and we just need to change that to the default.
Sy Hoekstra: Or at least race is always a background of any question you’re talking about in the western context.
Jonathan Walton: Yeah, exactly. Right.
Sy Hoekstra: Or in most contexts actually.
Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s, if we are crossing cultures, race becomes part of the context because of colonization and capitalism having reached every corner of the planet.
Sy Hoekstra: And we're almost always crossing cultures at this point in how our society works.
Jonathan Walton: Yes. Exactly. And I also think, for people who are listening on spaces or listening to this podcast for the first time, we want to be a space where we are speaking across difference. So you may not be able to hear, Black folks who listen to me, obviously know that I'm Black. But you may not know that, so I'm Black and I live in New York City and Sy is blind. So I try to understand his background and perspective, but I also understand I’m speaking across a dominant different. I'm an able-bodied person and the authority and reality that he speaks from, I actually need to submit and listen to and do the work to understand, so he doesn't have to do that work to constantly explain. So I think… yeah, go ahead Sy.
Sy Hoekstra: I was going to say ditto for me and you when it comes to race. I have the same kind of perspective on the stuff that you say. And we have another cohost, when she isn't taking care of an extremely small baby, who is a woman. So we try and listen to her on those, on like gender issues as well. I think what you just said Jonathan, is actually, that point you just made is important. Because if you're white and you're sort of offended by the question that we're asking, then the reality, I think, that you need to grapple with, is that this is a question that most nonwhite people have to grapple with on a daily basis.
You may not be aware of that. You might not believe me saying that, but it is something that is a very broad experience that we just need to realize is a question that other people are asking. And I think as far as whether someone's offended by this question or not, that's probably all we're going to say on this subject [laughs]. I think the other important point, is that racism and white supremacy in our culture exaggerates the importance of what white people say. In particular, not just exaggerates the importance of it, but allows a lot of white people who are not experts in a whole lot of subjects to speak on those subjects in an authoritative manner.
And I think we just need to explicitly say and confront the fact that whiteness is kind of considered default objective neutral. Especially when you're talking about issues of race, but when you're talking about a lot of things really, and the people, anybody else is kind of seen as too emotionally invested or biased because of their position, but white people are not biased because of their position. So that's, I think that's kind of my answer to why we're asking this question, is we need to recalibrate how important we think white people's opinions are [laughter]. Because obviously look, I care about at minimum what one white person thinks, which is me [laughs].
I like to think that Jonathan cares a little bit about what I think, so he also cares about at least one white person. You know what I mean? Like we're just trying to drastically decrease the level of authority that just comes with someone who looks and talks like I do. Let's talk about the question of how much do we have to care about what people think from the angle of it's actually dangerous not to care about what white people think. What do we mean by that?
Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I think being Black in Southern Virginia growing up in a segregated space, the only time my mother talked about race was to warn me. That was the only context in which she brought up what whiteness was and who white people were.
Sy Hoekstra: Can you give an example?
Jonathan Walton: Absolutely. So When I, when my first book came out in high school, so I wrote my first book of poetry when I was 17 years old.
Sy Hoekstra: Like One Does.
Jonathan Walton: Yes, Like One Does. Another podcast. But shout out to all the Black mamas who sacrifice so much for their kids to do things.
Sy Hoekstra: For real.
Jonathan Walton: So we were in my elementary school, school office, and I had my book out. As I would normally do, I would just have a backpack full of them because people would see me around town and want to get one or buy one, and that, they just knew. This was 2001. So there… or 2003. So the reality was like there wasn't a bookstore within 50 miles in every direction of the house that I grew up in. So people just gave on this… so selling CDs out of the back of your car, I sold books out my backpack. So my mom asked me if a specific secretary had seen my book and I said, yes. And when my mom walked into that lady's office, she put the book on the table and acted like she wasn't looking at it.
I said, “Mom, that was really weird.” She goes, “I'll tell you about it later.” And the reality is her husband is in the clan. So she's like, “Hey.” Like she does not want me to know that she, that some way it might get back around to him, that she was interested in what I was writing and reading and being, and engaged in it.
Sy Hoekstra: Oh, but she was interested.
Jonathan Walton: But she was. Oh, absolutely, because white people always are. They always are. The reality is Black folks don't buy hip hop. The majority of consumers of hip hop, pre streaming and things like that, like CDs were bought by 70 to 80 percent white suburban America. So it’s one of those things where like Black culture can be consumed, Black culture can be used and appropriated.
Sy Hoekstra: But it’s taboo.
Jonathan Walton: Yeah. But like actually appreciating using and all that stuff is definitely not, definitely a problem, you know? So another time we'd be like, whenever my mom would ask me about where I was going, I was a soccer player. Soccer is a white sport in the United States. So she would always ask, “What street are you going to?” There's a place in South Hill called Chaptico Road. There are very few, if any Black people, on Chaptico Road in the town that I lived in. So the, just the awareness of where I was, was, particularly around the people I was going to be around, was always about safety. So yeah, that's how it came up.
Sy Hoekstra: So big picture for you, this question is not like a theoretical one. It is not something about principles or ideas or how society should work. It is about where Pauline Walton told you to go to play after school.
Jonathan Walton: Yes.
Sy Hoekstra: You know what I mean? It is a matter of like just the stuff that you have to know as a child to navigate your town.
Jonathan Walton: Absolutely. And I'll tell you something else. That's hyper-relevant to me and you. Like before I came to New York City, I didn't know that Black people went to private schools.
Sy Hoekstra: At all?
Jonathan Walton: At all. Because in the south where I grew up, private schools were dangerous places.
Sy Hoekstra: The University of Virginia is where you went.
Jonathan Walton: Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Sorry, sorry. No, no private school being like…
Sy Hoekstra: Oh, high schools?
Jonathan Walton: Yeah. When I went to college, when I came to college and someone said to me, “Hey, I went to a private school,” and they were Black, or “I went to a private school,” and they were white, that told me that they were racist or dangerous. That's what it was. Because I was like, “Wait, how did you get to go there? Because every school that is private that I grew up around, was built for segregation. And Black people did not go to Keniston Forest or go to Brunswick Academy or go to any of the other segregation academies that was built up at the time. So again, the concept of race and the conversation particularly around whiteness, was always about where we were supposed to go or we were not supposed to go. Yeah.
Sy Hoekstra: So I think then for me, I know this is true for you too obviously, but for me it is more on the bigger scale, social, political questions. To me, the thing that I think of when I ask why would it be dangerous not to know what white people are thinking is, I don’t know. Like a few, a couple of weeks ago, a video went around of a guy named Charlie Kirk, who some of you may or may not know, but he's an evangelical Christian, close ties to Jerry Falwell Jr. and Liberty University. He had a political action center named after him for a while until he went too far, kind of off the tracks for Liberty even, which is a little bit of a wild degree. But my point is he's like one degree of separation from very mainstream conservative evangelicals.
And he was at an event for an organization called Turning Point USA, which if you're… some of you may know them, some of you may not. But he got up during the Q&A and asked the speaker, he said, “We are living in a medical fascist state and a real fascist,” like “the government has turned into fascism.” He said, “So I'm going to ask you like a bit of a strange question, so just get ready for this. Here's my question. When do we get to use the guns?” Was his question. And a bunch of people were kind of surprised. Some people were clearly delighted that he was asking the question in the audience, and some people were laughing at him. And he says, “No, no, no, I'm serious. This is not a joke.
How many elections are we going to let them steal before we kill them?”
[Instrumental music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out]
Okay, so here's where my mistake is. Charlie Kirk in this video is not the person who asked the question. Charlie Kirk was the speaker on stage. So the person asks all those questions, and then Charlie Kirk tells him that he's going to denounce what he's saying, and then he says, “But here's why,” and he explains. He doesn't say anything about the morality or the facts that the person has relayed. He doesn't dispute anything that he's said, except he does say that what they, and who ‘they’ is, is kind of unclear. But what they want you to do, is that they want you to be violent so that they can then violate your rights.
So he says, you shouldn't be violent, because if you do, then this fascist state presumably is going to react harshly and take away your rights. To which the person who asked the question responds, “Well, they've already done that.” And then Kirk isn't really able to get through to him at all. Okay, so now I'm going to drop you back into the conversation. This is me again talking about, accurately, about Charlie Kirk.
[Instrumental music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out]
And he is, like I said, very close to a mainstream conservative Christian. He has, I cannot even tell you how many followers. He has a daily radio show. He's got tons of people following him on social media. This is a guy that people take very seriously.
And I think not knowing that that is where we are going, puts us… or not acknowledging that that is like where a whole lot of white people in this country are going, just leaves us vulnerable to a lot of danger. I think it left us vulnerable to not expecting or understanding how powerful Trump was going to be, and I think worse things are coming if you're not paying attention to that. So I know that's an incredibly depressing thing to say, but that's why I’m talking about danger here.
Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I mean, I think because of the education that I have and because of the resources I now have access to, I can join that conversation because I have distance from it, right? Like my everyday reality is not as it was when I was a child. So now I can have that distance conversation and say, “Absolutely.” Like when Michael Flynn gets up and starts talking about one religion at John Hagee’s church in Texas, in San Antonio this past weekend.
Sy Hoekstra: Another recent viral video.
Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Right? Or even actually when Trump, the great book by Kristin Kobes Du Mez describing and dabbing into that statement that he made of a church in Iowa, like if you follow me you will be safe. Right?
Sy Hoekstra: You will have power.
Jonathan Walton: I'm sorry, yes, you will have power. And understanding that there is like a vast ecosystem that feeds. Like I would argue that 80 percent of the United States that voted for Donald Trump that considers themselves evangelical Christian, which really is about 30 percent of the United States population. Because the United States only votes in elections at about 54 percent. The vast majority of those people are white Americans. The vast majority of those people that are the most committed, are also the most religious, that religion being evangelical Christian. So it’s, those numbers work themselves out to a very large group of people that hold…
Sy Hoekstra: Thirty percent I think is high. But it is a big, it's a solid chunk.
Jonathan Walton: Yeah. So in the chapter five of my book Twelve Lies that Hold America Captive, we break down, or what I talk about is democracy as a myth. And getting at the actual populations of people who vote and who's engaged with election and who holds the amount of power on campaign finance and things like that. What's interesting about it, is we have to understand what these people, what ends up mostly being, is white conservative people that hold a vast amount of sway over media and elections and things like that. To be able to understand like you were saying, what's coming.
And I don't think it's fear-mongering to say that it’s dangerous, not because a vast amount of people will act, but because a large amount of people will not resist or be upset about or push back against the violent actions that happen, i.e. Kyle Rittenhouse, right? Like there are people that are okay with what he did.
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, absolutely. A large number of people.
Jonathan Walton: They're not going to promote it. They're not going to say it's fine, but they're not going to be against it publicly because they are for it privately. And that I think is a dangerous, a dangerous thing.
Sy Hoekstra: All right. So let's talk about Jonathan, to re-center us since this is, for the people on Spaces, a faith based podcast [laughter]. What are we talking about now? Like we have kind of some of the framework of why this is important. But let's get back to focusing a little bit on, where are the opinions that Jesus wants us to care about? What's the actual stuff that we are according to our faith, supposed to be paying attention to. Let’s just try and calibrate ourselves that way a little bit.
Jonathan Walton: Yeah. So something, why do we care about what people, what white people think, is well, it’s like, Jesus was as other from us as we could possibly get. He is divine, right? He is the son of God, prince of peace, king of Kings, ransom for sin, the one who brings Shalom. That's who Christ is, and he came to be with us, put on a body. And it is, it's an amazing thing to think that he would sit in a group of men, especially men like Peter and love them.
Sy Hoekstra: Why especially men like Peter?
Jonathan Walton: Men like Peter, so if we put the people around him, like Peter, well they're from the same space, like Galilee, right? But Peter is a rash, angry, irritable, impulsive person in scripture.
Sy Hoekstra: Violent.
Jonathan Walton: Violent. Yes, as well. And Jesus, the prince of peace, sits across from him and then says, I'm going to give you the thing that I'm building, and I'm going to come back for my bride, the church. I'm going to, it's going to be built on you. He sits across from Judas who wants to kill him. He comes into that knowledge of like, “Okay, I'm going to exchange this person for money.” He sits across from Simon the Zealot, who's angry for different reasons. But the reality is Jesus is sitting across from people who are carrying exceptional levels of difference from him and he loves them. So I think there is the fear side of what we're talking about, but the other side, there's a love portion of it.
And I think the reality is we, like people who are marginalized, followers of Jesus, have to love those people who are going to abuse and violate an exploit and capitalize, because Jesus did it. That I think is transformative. Jesus at the garden of Gethsemane, wanted these broken, impulsive men to sit up with him and keep him company. That to me, that God would desire deep relationship with us, experience comfort in our presence because we're there, right? Like that is, that to me I think is an invitation that is miraculous. That is transformative.
That I would be able to sit across from someone who’s racially assigned is white and the United States, express a need for their presence and for them to meet me across the differences that are set up for us to, that we're socialized into. I think that is the flip side of the divine reason why we care about what racially assigned white people think in America.
Sy Hoekstra: And loving white people across the table like that does not equal agreeing with or supporting in any way, you know what I mean? Jesus had absolutely no problem with telling Peter when he was wrong. He made that real clear [laughs].
Jonathan Walton: Right.
Sy Hoekstra: You know the same thing, obviously with Judas, right? That's not the quite, the question isn't do you support people? Do you let their violent or terrible instincts go? That's not a part of the interaction that you're talking about, right? You're talking about something very different, which I think is very cool.
Jonathan Walton: And ML, sorry, MLK actually said this. You could put it anywhere in the podcast, but he said to our, this is from his book or essay, The American Dream. He said, “To our most bitter opponents we say, throw us in jail, and we will still love you. Bomb our houses and threaten our children, and we will still love you. Beat us and leave us half dead, and we will still love you. But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.
That right there is something, it feels other worldly to me in the culture that we live in. And it is not as bad from, in the seat that I sit in, as it was in 1963 when he wrote these things.
Sy Hoekstra: I would also add one more, since we're on the subject of how much we care about what white people think, that idea that you just said from King, I hear not that quote, I’ve never heard that quote exactly, but ideas of nonviolence of just like, do things the right way like Dr. King did, and take your time with your little protests, and don't do it too quickly and blah, blah, blah. That coming from, that comes from white people, and it is very different for that idea to come from white people than it is for it to come from Martin Luther King. Who also said a whole lot of stuff to the white moderates that were trying to get him to slow down or stop or, you know what I mean?
Jonathan Walton: Right. Right. Right.
Sy Hoekstra: So I think I want to draw that distinction because I think that's what makes that quote so uncomfortable for so many people, is that King, or Jesus asking you to do something like that is a whole lot different than me for instance asking you to do something like that. Or somebody who is opposed to any sort of protest or change telling you that you need to behave in that way. That you have to do that. So it usually comes up in response to when there is a, like building burned during a protest or something, right? That's when that sort of idea comes up from King, and I just, I don't know, I wanted to make that point.
While we're talking about what Jesus wants us to focus on, I also want to come back to a point that I made earlier, which was that a lot of times we see whiteness is the default and it's the objective. Like the people in power are the objective ones and the people who are not in power, the people who are oppressed or harmed, or just lower status in a society, as being the biased ones. And Jesus thinks, like never says anything like that, you know what I mean? There's no point where you're going to hear Jesus say, “Oh, this poor person does not understand how wealth operates. This poor person doesn't understand what economic oppression, how it works, because they're too biased because of their poverty.”
He never says anything like that. “This person who's not a Roman citizen, doesn't understand Roman oppression.” Like you'll never hear anything like that. What you'll hear from him all the time, is how wealth and power and status makes you irrational. It makes you biased, corrupts your thinking, leads to more… leads to a higher likelihood that you're going to behave in an immoral way toward other people. So I just wanted to point that out, that a lot of the assumptions of the way that white people, white Christians think in America, is genuinely precisely the opposite of anything you're going to get from Jesus.
Jonathan: Right. Like the love of money is a root of all evil, not the lack of money, right?
Sy Hoekstra: Right, yes.
Jonathan Walton: [laughs] Yeah. Jesus is amazing. Like it's, I feel like obviously that is, there are songs and books and all the things that talk about the Son of God, but there's, yeah. Things like that are other worldly. And they, and similarly to what you were saying before about who it comes from, like it's important who the invitation comes from. And for Jesus to say things like that, being someone who has scars in his hands and in his feet and in his side from the state, it changes the invitation. I think when someone makes an invitation and has been willing to incarnate themselves into that type of suffering, it's a transformative invitation, which makes the suffering worth it.
Otherwise it wouldn’t, I don't think passages like, oh, we'll be perfected. Our faith will be perfected and suffering and things. Perseverance and all of that stuff, that makes no sense apart from a suffering savior.
Sy Hoekstra: Yes. Also the caveat to that is, that doesn't mean that you need to come up with immediate reasons for why you suffer and have an explanation and tie your little story up in a bow. Like people can still grieve and lament and be; like I know you know all these things, but there are so many people that hear that and think, “Oh, that means anytime I suffer, what the Christian thing to do is come up with a reason for it, and say, this is the reason that God told me, and now I understand it, now I don't care about the suffering anymore, because it was all worth it. The end,” you know?
Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Yeah. Fortunately I wrote about that with the essay about the hurricane: “I Don't Ask Why Bad Things Happen” [laughs]. And Sy, you, I think how suffering is viewed and how suffering is used in America, and in just like the colonized church kind of context is always something I think we have to ask: like “why this message now?” and “who is bringing it?” And that I wish we were free from doing, but it's just the context that we live in.
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. All right. So our last little subject here, how much do we have to care about what white people think given mental health, given exhaustion and that sort of thing [laughs]?
Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I was… can I jump in first?
Sy Hoekstra: Of course. Yeah.
Jonathan Walton: I was having a conversation about this with a friend, and they said, Jonathan, but like, why do you do it? I said, “I do it because God said I had to.” I think that for me, it was a very specific explicit call. Like Jesus said, I will be on the bridge between the haves and have-nots; The poor and the rich; And physical and spiritual resources for those who want to go back and forth. That's what he said. Then in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, it says we have been given the ministry of reconciliation. That “he who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God. Therefore we are Christ ambassadors.” And that passage to me, Jesus just blew open. He's like, “You got to be on that bridge.” So I do think it's a, we have to ask ourselves. And as we listened to Jesus and investigate scripture and live in community, it gets easier to hear him so we're able to respond more quickly. But we can ask God like, “Hey, should I talk with this person? Should I engage with this person?” If he says, “yes,” he will give us the inner and external resources to actually do the work over the long-term and the short-term. That when I get exhausted, it's usually because I'm doing work that I, that God did not tell me to do.
God did not tell me to go change every white person I have a conversation with, or fix every man that says something terrible towards women, or correct every person who says something bad about disabled people. Or jump up every time someone says something for mass incarceration or the school to prison pipeline or climate change. He didn't say that. He did say I am to be his witness, and I literally have to grow in intimacy with God so that I don't burn myself out. If I tried to react and respond to every point of injustice that I notice or engage with every day, then I do believe that I would end up with some severe injury.
Like I would be, I would end up in therapy, as I am. I would be, I would experience more trauma than I have. And I believe that I would be being disobedient to Jesus. Like there is a call to Sabbath and I think Sabbath is also a part of our resistance, because we're saying Jesus is Messiah, not me. Like there's, I think there's something radical in the yeses to respond to injustice, particularly racism and responding to dominant culture in the United States, in this conversation about white people. And I think there's also a radical trusting when we say, “You know what God, I don't have the energy.” And that's okay.
Sy Hoekstra: To add on top of that, when Kyle Howard was on our show, he said, not everybody in fact is called to do that. Like not all Black people are called to the ministry of reconciliation, right?
Jonathan Walton: Yes.
Sy Hoekstra: And he was, he made what I think is a very good point, which is, he was just like, if you're not called to it, you don't need to do it. What you need to do is go have your freedom and your joy, because those are also things to which God calls people. And if you follow the things to which you weren't called, like Jonathan is just saying, you're going to burn out. Jonathan, I think that's all I had. Do you have anything else?
Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I mean, the only thing I would add is like, Jesus is amazing. And I’m just like, if we… to sit and look at the life of Jesus, and there's lots of different ways to look at the life and ministry and death and resurrection of Jesus. One of the ways that feels like the most necessary at this moment for me, is I'm just wondering how he stayed in the room with these people, how he trusted these people, how he loved these people, these men, these women. Like, yeah, it is the, my, the awe and wonder of God that I have, it's just increasing as I think about Jesus inhabiting chaotic moments. Like it's just, yeah, that's all. I don't know if that really said anything, but I think… [laughs].
Sy Hoekstra: I appreciate it. I know that it's a kick that you've been on in particular. Kick is flippant, but it's something you've been thinking about a lot in your own personal discipleship and everything, and I do think it's relevant and I appreciate it. Thank you so much everyone for listening today. We really appreciate it, we really appreciate your subscription. Please remember to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at KTF Press. Also subscribe and rate and review this podcast. Those things are really helpful to us. We appreciate it. Our theme song as always is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra. Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam, and we will see you for our next bonus episode in December.
[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]
