This episode is a conversation between Sy and Jonathan about how we create hierarchies of sin – implying in a million big and small ways that some sins are worse than others. They also talk about how that distortion of Christianity supports systems of control and oppression, how the hierarchy is applied more harshly to marginalized people, how we can find our way out of this flawed thinking, and a lot more!
Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Find transcripts of this show and subscribe to get our newsletter and other paid content 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
Jonathan: If you have a hierarchy of sins, then you also create a hierarchy of what's righteous. The idea that the end justifies the means is not in scripture at all. But we will say that, like, black Americans should be grateful that we were brought over as slaves because at least then we got the gospel. When in reality, the gospel was already in Africa. Well, once you have the hierarchy in place and you have systems and structures to enforce that hierarchy, then this entire ecosystem gets built around it.
[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: Welcome to Shake the Dust: Leaving colonized faith for the Kingdom of God, a podcast of KTF Press. My name is Sy Hoekstra. I'm here as always with Jonathan Walton, and we are going to have a conversation about the idea of creating a hierarchy out of sins today, and we're going to talk to you a little bit about how that interacts, that idea interacts with the things that we talk about on this podcast. It might sound a little bit abstract right now, but we promise we'll bring it down to earth real quick. But before we get started, I just wanted to remind everyone, thank you so much. This is a subscriber only bonus episode. We appreciate you very much being subscribers. We could not do what we do without you all.
If you have a minute, we would really appreciate it if you would hit follow or subscribe on your podcast app. We would appreciate it if you rated and reviewed us on that app. Hey, guess what? Spotify just introduced podcast ratings. So if you want to go on there and rate and review us on Spotify, that would be a big help to us. That helps other people find the show. Also, please follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at KTF Press. Okay, I think that's everything. Let's get started now. Jonathan let's first of all define our terms a little bit. When we talk about a hierarchy of sins, what are we talking about?
Jonathan: Yeah. So hierarchy of sins. I think the easiest way to say it, is that there is a level one sin and level two sin, a misdemeanor sin, a felony sin. Like these things that some things, and i.e. some people are worse than others, before God and therefore before us. And how we approach and engage and forgive or not forgive or withhold communion or ex communicate or, there's just levels to this.
Sy: Right, and so let's put a little bit more meat on that idea which is, like for instance, I think we're probably a lot of us are familiar with the idea of a church that would say make a really, really, really big deal out of sexual sins and then say almost nothing about things like greed or anger or narcissism or things like that. Let's contrast this with the way Jesus talks about sin, what's the difference?
Jonathan: Yeah. So something that I really like that Jesus does, is bringing sin, not just into the action, but into the posture of the heart and intentions. So we see him do this with adultery, we see him do this with anger. The reality that God is calling us, inviting us into something much more transformative than just change, a behavior change, but our posture towards one another is one that moves towards honoring and sacredness and dignity and respect, as opposed to, I'm just going to do this because I'm supposed to. I think that's just a beautiful, beautiful, thing.
Sy: Yeah, thinking about sin in terms of do's and don'ts is kind of implicit in hierarchical thinking when it comes to sin, right? Like you're thinking here are things that you can do that are like, yeah, maybe bad, but sort of acceptable, versus the things that are really, really real bad [laughs].
Jonathan: Right, right, right.
Sy: So, and then I think like what it really never takes into account, is the idea of sin as being kind of the corruption and fallen-ness of the world in general, because it's not just about individuals. You can actually talk about, you can talk about sin like as a trap, not just like as an indictment of you personally, because it's something you did, but actually something you're ensnared in, something you're born into. Something that has corrupted the world, that has made it, that has introduced darkness and evil into the world in general, not just into kind of individual things that we do. And then I think the big point for me, is that like in the gospel when Jesus is teaching, sins are actually things that you can commit without fear or shame.
Which is like, if that makes you uncomfortable, this is kind of what I'm trying to highlight. So the thing that I thought about when we first started talking about this, Jonathan, I talked to you about this was, a small group meeting that I had when I was in college, where a group of us were talking about the place in Romans where Paul kind of tells the church not to use the grace of God as an excuse to sin. And one of the people in the small group asked, “Why would anyone do that? Why would somebody use the grace of God as an excuse? Why would Paul have to say this to anybody?” And we were all just kind of sitting there shaking our heads or scratching our heads.
None of us really had an answer and it kind of took me a long time, it's funny to think about it now, but it took me like several years to go, “Oh, it's because Paul was free [laughs].” It's because the people who Paul was talking to actually believed themselves to be free of sin, and if you really honestly live into that freedom, you're not going to be thinking all the time about the things that you need to do and don't need to do, because you're free [laughs]. So he actually had to, he had to like reel them in. He had to be like, “Hey, come back, hang on. Just because we can do anything, doesn't mean we don't actually have to pay any attention to what we're doing,” right?
And I just thought it was funny that a group, there were five or six of us. All except one had grown up in the church. All over the country, one person from not even the United States, and none of us could come up with that answer to, none of us could come up with the answer: because the gospel made Paul and these people he was talking to free [laughs].
Jonathan: Right. Absolutely. And I mean, that passage in Romans six is like, it's scandalous. Like you're talking, you live in a, these people would have lived, I believe like the highest values would have been like Epicureanism or hedonism where desires and wanting things and experiencing stuff is not bad. Whereas I would definitely say I grew up thinking that if I got what I wanted or my desire, I had to subdue them. The, what Paul is inviting them into, or the freedom that he's inviting them into in Christ, is different than the shackles that I am taking off. The contextualization and the culture that Paul is speaking with in contrast to ours is fascinating.
Sy: Yeah. Okay. So let's get into this a little bit. How does having a hierarchy of sins, thinking of sins as do's and don'ts, thinking of some sins as worse than others benefit or support systems of control and oppression?
Jonathan: All right, let’s go to the deep end real quick. We’re leaving colonized faith for the Kingdom of God, right? Like you saying, Oh, we were sitting at Columbia where you and I went to college, in this Bible study, and it's all over the world, like these people thinking this thing. And I'm like, colonization happened everywhere, right? Even the penguins I think know that something is not okay [laughs]. So when we create hierarchies of sin, we make it easier to maintain control and enforce norms.
Sy: How?
Jonathan: Yeah. So for example, and something has stood out to me. I'm from Southern Virginia and when I visited Jamestown as a kid, I saw a verse that was lifted out of context. “If you do not work, you cannot eat.” So they said like…
Sy: At Jamestown [laughs]?
Jonathan: Yes, at Jamestown in Virginia.
Sy: Oh no, that’s awful and also makes perfect sense.
Jonathan: Right, but if we think about it, it's like, oh, someone who doesn't work is not worthy of eating. And that's lifted from scripture and then applied to this place. So laziness becomes a sin that needs to be enforced more aggressively than let's say, rape or abuse or violence or sexual assault. So a man could “provide,” quote unquote, through his labor, and be abusive and be fed. But someone who was not able to work may not be given food. So there's this level that's created that is, it's like, oh, this community must value this more than that or these people more than that. And that's what I understood as a kid.
I was like, oh, if I don't produce something, I'm not worthy of receiving basic stuff. Like seeing how things are set up, reinforced my already understood mentality — because I was already working in a field by the fourth grade — that if I did not work, then I may not have food. So laziness for me became one of the, like the worst possible things that you could be. And that's personal. That's not even, I wasn't even aware of the systemic, the vagrancy laws and laziness as a crime for black people and the, like I wasn't aware of that at the time. But it creates, the hierarchy of sin creates and enforces a norm for me to belong to a group of productive people.
Sy: Yeah. I also think, so one of the ways that I was thinking about that the hierarchy reinforces oppression, is by making the people who are, the people who most openly commit the sins that are at the top of the list, that are the worst ones, you can make them others and dehumanize them. So feminists, gay people, single mothers, people who had children out of wedlock, anyone who's had an abortion, or anyone who advocates for abortion. Like those, you can politically demonize those people because they have committed the worst sins. Whereas if you are say a pastor or a political leader, or whoever who is very authoritarian, who is angry, who wants to dehumanize — the dehumanizing itself is a sin, but it's not one of the sins at the top — if you have anger and greed and you lust after power, those kinds of things, those are excusable because they're at the bottom of the list, so you can use them to obtain power. And that does not, that's not a ding against you as a leader.
Jonathan: Yeah. And like, I mean, even to double down on that, the flip side is that it's not just that the people that are doing the quote unquote “worst sins” are marginalized. It's the people that are doing the least sin, the quote unquote “lowest level sins,” are empowered and in power. The person who owns slaves and is abusive and oppressive to women and creates systems that oppress and marginalize people who don't believe like them, i.e., Jonathan Edwards, always, they're centered and valuable and fine. Great. And the people that they deem unworthy are, stay unnamed and punished. So the other side of that coin is really harmful.
Sy: Yeah. I also think that once you kind of start grading sins on a curve [laughter], that's kind of what it is. You can excuse the ones that are not as serious, in pursuit of goals that you think are important. So take for instance, I said before, you can do things like be greedy or angry or narcissistic in the pursuit of power. So if you idolize power, whatever your idol is, but let's just say you idolize power, because we're used to that one. You can then commit a bunch of the sins for the good of obtaining the power, because power can be used in good ways, power can be used to further the kingdom, power can be used to evangelize people, to whatever.
The best example of this with which at least most Americans are familiar I think, would be church leaders who went from condemning Clinton in 1999 for sexual misconduct, to avidly supporting Trump despite sexual misconduct. Because Trump's going to get you what you want in terms of having power and putting the people on the Supreme Court and et cetera. So basically you can always, like the reason, whatever reason it is that you, that sneaks in there that allows you to commit one of the lesser sins, you can always ratchet the importance of that up more and more until it’s just basically acceptable to commit the sins that are at the bottom of the scale.
So that's… then you add that to our political climate in which we are constantly talking about how electing this next leader or this next election is the most important thing that we will ever do in our entire lives, because society is on the brink, and if the other side wins, we're all going to die [laughs]. When that's your attitude, it becomes extremely easy to do the things that you have deemed less bad than the things that are at the top of the list.
Jonathan: What's compelling to me about what you're saying, is that if you have a hierarchy of sins, then you also create a hierarchy of what's righteous. So the idea that the end justifies the means, is not in scripture at all. But we will say that, like the literal argument that Black Americans should be grateful that we were brought over as slaves, because at least then we got the gospel, when in reality, the gospel was already in Africa, pre-colonization. As we're talking about it, it's like, well, once you have the hierarchy in place and you have systems and structures to enforce that hierarchy, then this entire ecosystem gets built around it. Around how to construct, and how to perform righteousness and how to be religious in a society, and what does faithfulness look like? And what is faithfulness embodied look like? And then what testimonies get shared and what, who gets celebrated, who gets to become a saint. It's very, it's elaborate and intentional.
Sy: Yeah. Also just think of how many testimonies have you ever heard of someone talking about how they were delivered from greed?
Jonathan: Jesus.
[laughter]
Sy: You've heard drugs, you've heard sex, you've heard, you know what I mean, [laughs], but you've never heard greed.
I think one more, I don’t know, devious way that the hierarchy creates power for people in church in particular, is that people who do commit the sins that are at the top, but are still Christians, so not the people who commit them openly, not the people who are out there advocating for the abortion, not the people who are out there trying to, being single mothers and not caring that they had sex when they weren’t married. Whatever, whoever the boogeymen are. The people who have committed these sins, or who continue to commit these sins that are the bad ones, but they're still in church.
Jonathan: Yes.
Sy: Having a hierarchy creates an enormous amount of power over those people,
Jonathan: Right, right.
Sy: Specifically because they have to keep coming back to you for absolution from the extra bad sins that they are committing. They have to constantly feel ashamed of themselves and they have to constantly seek righteousness and they have to constantly be afraid because they've done the really bad ones. So that fear keeps people coming back to church, keeps the pastor's authority over them solid because they need, they're just constantly looking for whatever little drips of forgiveness they can find as they continue to watch pornography or whatever.
Jonathan: Yeah, and it is, and you know, this is where we could talk about the intersectionality of things. Because I remember in high school, one of — two teachers at my high school were sleeping with each other and they were married to other people. And the woman in the relationship was brought in front of the church, forced to confess in front of the church and all these things. This was early 2000s. And I just thought to myself, “Well, where's the guy in this situation?” I also thought to myself like, “which sins do we force people to publicly confess?” Which sins will force you to experience social exclusion and collective shame? And also the idea that literally Jesus came that sin would not separate you from God.
But it seems as though we would say, no, it's not that sinfulness separates you from God, but the shame of the sin should separate you from God and community. So we're going to set that up. I don't know if I'm saying that correctly.
Sy: No, no, no you are, but I think the other thing that you're getting at, is not, it's not just what you've done. You don't just get graded on a curve of which sin is worse, you also get graded on a curve of who you are. Which is, that's the woman being brought in front of the church and not the man. And that's, I want to talk about this too, because like I said before, anger is one of the lower ones on the scale, but if you're black or if you're a woman and you're deemed angry, that's a lot worse, right? That's something that we have a stereotype about. That's something that we know how to dismiss those people.
We don't necessarily care that much when somebody, like when a white guy’s on stage in a pulpit, screaming about whatever, the Democrats, about abortions, about homosexuality, whatever. But if you are getting angry about racism, that's a completely different story.
Jonathan: Right. And I will say this too. I was once at a church in Brooklyn with, in an event with a nonprofit. And there were politicians that were there and it was very interesting to me because someone turned to me and said, “ You know, if Cuomo was here, people will be falling all over themselves to talk with him.” And they said too, they said at the time, “And they know how he treats women.” But…
Sy: Oh, when was this?
Jonathan: This was probably 2007? 2007 or 8.
Sy: Whoa, and they were saying, they know how he treats women in 2007?
Jonathan: Yeah, yeah. This wasn't a new thing, you know what I mean [laughs]? So they said, “If there was a female leader who did the things that Andrew Cuomo did, they would never let her step into this pulpit. They would never let her like come in here and speak to us. But because it's Cuomo, it doesn't matter the reputation that they have of demeaning women.” Because these things are known. They come out later, but these things are known. So it's one of those things where it's like again, like the intersectionality of it, like you were just saying, it depends on who does it. And the reality is, if someone is wealthy and in power, they are absolved for quote unquote “what they can do for the community”, which is the exact case that Donald Trump made when he stood at that church in Iowa and began to say, “If I'm in power, you will have power.”
Sy: Right. So, on top of who you are committing the sin, I think it also matters who you're sinning against. If you are… and this is like the most extreme example you can think of, but it was absolutely routine at one point in this country for slave owners who sexually assaulted black women to be members in good standing of churches, when it would not have been the case if they had gone after a white woman, right?
Jonathan: Right.
Sy: So, the curve on which the sins are graded is just so along identity lines and awful, or it can be in any given scenario that it's, I mean, I think what we're digging into here, is just like some really deep ways in which a thing that is not explicitly about power or oppression, becomes about one. Like when you distort the ways that, I don’t know, God wants society to operate, there's a whole lot of awful downstream consequences that are going to break along the lines of existing hierarchies and oppression.
Okay. So we've talked about all the problems that the hierarchical thinking about sins causes. How do we get out of this kind of thinking, Jonathan?
Jonathan: So I was having this conversation with Priscilla, and I was talking with her about this episode. This hierarchy of sins, what do we say when we're trying to basically defend the dignity and place of people who have quote unquote “messed up” at the table? Like they still belong there. Because if I belong there, then they belong there, because I'm not better than them. If there is no hierarchy of sin, then I can't say that I'm better than the person who is greedy or I'm better than the person who is addicted to pornography. Or better than the person who’s caught up in some addiction or abuses their spouse or murdered someone, or is sitting in prison right now. I can't say that if there's no hierarchy of sin.
And I think that the actual, one of the answers to the hierarchy of sin, is just confession. Like the reality that I am a sinner, I’m saved by the grace of God. Now, all of us are. I'm not actually, I'm not going to do in Matthew 18 what the Pharisee does to the poor man. When he says, “Hey, at least I'm not like that guy.” That's just not the way, it's not the way of Jesus.
Sy: Yeah. And you're not going to do it… I have to qualify this a little bit because I think we are extremely good at saying we're not doing that, but then doing that [laughs].
Jonathan: Yes. Right, right, right,
Sy: That's what we're talking about now. The ways that we have talked about the hierarchy of sin, is basically we're inferring through the fruit of people and their ministries, and the things that they do in church, that there is a hierarchy of sin behind, like in their minds, in their hearts. This can include people who talk all day long about grace. Who talk all day long about confession. Who confess openly in… there's so many ways that you can confess, that are designed… designed, and it could be intentionally designed or not, but that make you look good. That make you, you can confess in a way where, like the thing you did isn't really all that bad and you're up there confessing it, so look, you're humble. So we just need to be careful.
Jonathan: Yes. Like a college student or a person confessing that they are addicted to pornography. I think that used to be something that was very taboo, and very shameful to admit. But now, I hear there are books, there are conversations, there are groups. That there are things, there's an infrastructure around it to basically say, like we, that happens and we can help you with that. The same thing still does not exist for men who are abusive, or emotionally detached and don't know how to connect, and say and do things that are radically unhelpful in their relationships. I wonder what a community would look like where we weren't just confessing the things that we’re… and Nathan talks about this, my brother, he's like, we weren't confessing the things that were transparent, because we can be transparent about some things. But it's like, what if we were actually able to be vulnerable, the transparency plus risk? And it would be, I think, well, I think sometimes the things that me and Priscilla talk about make people uncomfortable because they're not used to saying the quiet part out loud, you know? Like we try to talk openly about like how hard it is to figure out how to be faithful with money, owning a house. It is, it's really hard not to think, “I need to keep up with everybody around me financially, and just accumulate more things and get that next thing.” And it's almost like this tidal wave for us of how do we step out of the road to just more accumulation?
Because in scripture, no one who follows Jesus is hell-bent on accumulating as much as they possibly can for themselves and for those they love and care about.
Sy: Yeah. That's the Luke 12 parable of the farmer who just stores up the grain until he dies.
Jonathan: Exactly. So what it leads, what it actually leads me to, if I am no better than anyone who's committed all the sins at the top, the bottom or the middle of the list, and then I go to Jesus and it's like, God, I don't want to be faithful in the way that the hierarchy has set up. I want to be faithful in the way that you set things up. Then it's really hard for me to believe that I'm even doing the right thing. When I look at Luke chapter nine or Matthew chapter seven, where it's like, they casted out demons in his name. They led the small group, they went to the church and he still didn't know them. So it's one of those things where I'm like, there is this holy moment of like, God, forgive me.
Then we flip over to Romans eight or Roman six, like your group is studying, and it's like, there is no shame or condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Sy: [whispering] That's Romans eight.
Jonathan: I know, that’s Romans eight [laughs]. That's what… I was going to quote from Roman six after that. Then it's like, because grace abounds, which is what is in Roman six. So like, I think there is this radical interplay between humility before God and awareness of just like our brokenness and then just the abject amazing grace of God that swoops in and says, “But you’re mine anyway.”
Sy: And this is… okay, this is the point that I want to emphasize, because I think there are so many people who are so trained subconscious, sometimes consciously, but subconsciously a lot of times too, to be so afraid of their own brokenness. To be so afraid of their own sin, that the reason that the hierarchy is, like the hierarchy of sin is attractive, is because it makes salvation feel attainable for you. Like you can do it. You just got to avoid the bad, the real bad ones. And I think there are a lot of people who talk about, talk so much about like the depravity of sin, that they really do convince themselves that they're like just barely hanging on to salvation.
Or they're constantly talking about how, like they're constantly talking about everything before Jesus. Or they're talking about a world without Jesus. If Jesus hadn't saved me, I would be so damned. I would be so completely screwed, that I just, I need to be in like, I need to constantly remember that. As opposed to constantly remembering the reality in which we are supposed to live, which is that Jesus from the beginning of time had ordained that we would all be saved and live under his grace and in his righteousness. Like there was literally no point in human history where you were actually at risk of not being saved. Where we were at risk of Jesus not showing up. That was — in the beginning, the word was with God. Right? It's like, and taking that, I don't know, like I said, I think there is a lot of control. There's a lot of temptation on the part of a lot of pastors and denomination heads and whoever else, to emphasize how terrible you are, and so you need to keep coming back here to me and give money to my collection plate, to assure yourself of your salvation, as opposed to trusting Jesus. And
Jonathan: Yeah
Sy: Go ahead…
Jonathan: Yeah. I had a conversation with a woman. Now, she’s from Columbia and she, I asked her, we got to talking one day about faith in the elevator. And I am that person who held the elevator for two minutes on the third floor, talking to this woman about Jesus, because she asked me a question in the elevator [laughter].
Sy: Everybody in the lobby was really mad at you.
Jonathan: Yes. Yes. What she said was, the priest refused to give her communion because she divorced her husband. She said, “I just, I cannot serve a God like that. I just cannot.” And she has since married someone else, and she's converted to Islam and her life has gone in a different direction. And throughout my, as I'm talking with her, I just sat there thinking to myself like, I just could not imagine being the pastor or priest, like spiritual leader of a community, looking at someone and saying, “You can't come to this table,” and putting myself in that space.
Sy: We should clarify. You're saying, not come to this table under any circumstances, right?
Jonathan: Yeah.
Sy: Because there are, I don't know how much… when you say you can't take communion because of X, Y, and Z, like you're starting to dig a little bit at a lot of like Catholic and Orthodox doctrine.
Jonathan: It’s true, you’re right.
Sy: Which is like, which is, we're Protestants, maybe that's what we're doing [laughter]. But also, the implication seems to be like, I don't even care if you have repented of anything or whatever. Or I have eliminated the possibility that your divorce was not a sin [laughs].
Jonathan: That’s true. Well, what… Okay. So question, is sinfulness a disqualification…
Sy: To communion with God.
Jonathan: To communion with God.
Sy: Right, exactly.
Jonathan: I don't think the answer is yes, but I guess the way that I'm trying to tie it back in to what we're talking about is like, I wouldn't want to have a conversation with Maya where she's looking to me to know whether or not God loves and approves of her. Or like I become the arbiter of whether or not she's in the family of Jesus, because there's a hierarchy of sin in my house where if she, you know what I mean?
Sy: Yeah.
Jonathan: Like that just, that feels, it feels oppressive. Like it feels like I'm not supposed to have that power over someone. I can share my thoughts, I can communicate what I believe. I can communicate my convictions, but I think I have to say them in humility, that I am before an under God, just like you. I'm not between you and him.
Sy: Can I just add one? Well, this is not going exactly off of what you just said, but just one last thought that I had is, a lot of what tempts people into doing things like being angry or narcissistic or whatever else, the sins that are not that big a deal on the chart, is trauma. Is like things that have happened to you that have made your life hard, and anger or narcissism or whatever, that's the way that you're reacting to difficult things that have happened to you in your life, and so there's a temptation then, like we said, to make those sins less of a big deal instead of doing the harder but better thing, which is deal with your trauma. And that's not easy. I'm not, I don't mean to make light of dealing with your trauma.
But we've talked about the importance of emotional health before, and this is another one of the million different ways that being an emotionally healthy person will stop you from being someone who participates in oppressive systems. So I just wanted to get that note in there before we finished.
Jonathan: So I wonder, because one of the, if we're going to talk about like the sins we don't care about, nobody cares about the Sabbath and rest [laughs]. So like, oh, I wonder what fear, what trauma, what boogeyman sits at the other side, sits on the other side of the table when we sit down to confess. If I sat down and confessed that I'm a greedy, what is the fear, anxiety or trauma on the other side that prevents me from doing that? That prevents me from saying I'm an angry, wrathful person.
Sy: I think that would be a very helpful exercise for a lot of people to go through.
Jonathan: I need to do that myself [laughter]. So I think that naming that, and then it's a high possibility that those who inhabit the same, this dominant or subordinated identity as you may be carrying that same fear or trauma or anxiety.
Sy: Yes, right. This is one, a couple episodes ago when I was talking about blindness, and like my need to be productive and amazing because I don't want to confirm people's low expectations of blind people. That’s what that is, right? that's why I don't want to rest. I can tell you specifically why I don't want a Sabbath. It’s because I try to justify myself in that way because people have made their expectations of me clear and it makes me feel sad. And dealing with the sadness would be a whole lot better than the, all the effort that I put in towards being more efficient and being more self-justifying. It would be a whole lot better than all that.
Jonathan: Yeah, and I think I inadvertently made a connection in myself that if I don't work, I don't think I deserve to eat. So we'll just let that sit there.
[laughter]
Sy: Hey look, we came full circle to Jamestown.
Jonathan: Right [laughs] 1619.
Sy: We probably should have said that at some point. For people who don't know what Jamestown is, it was one of the original colonies of Britain in America.
Thank you all so much for listening. If my calculations are correct, when we come back to you for our February episode, we should have our third co-host back.
Jonathan: Suzie!
Sy: I'm so excited [laughs], I told Jonathan I've been going back and listening to the shows that, like some of the stuff from season one, and I'm like, “Man, this show is better when Susie's on it.”
Jonathan: It's a much better show when Suzie is on it.
Sy: Listen, it’s still good. Still listen to us please, we want you to listen.
Jonathan: Five stars, five stars.
Sy: Five Stars [laughs]. So yeah, please rate and review us, speaking of five stars [laughter], wherever you can. And follow or subscribe on your podcast player, or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at KTF Press. You know what, write in to shakethedust@ktfpress.com if you have anything that you want us to be covering, either in the next couple of bonus episodes or in season two of the regular show. Because we have started planning a little bit for some of that, and we are very excited about the ideas we have, but we would love to hear from you if you have anything that you want to hear. Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra. Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam, and we will see you all next month.
[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.]
Sy: All right, Jonathan today we are going to be talking about a concept that may not immediately be clear why it fits into what we’re talking about. So it will become clear. But we are talking about…
[sound of a door opening]
Child’s voice: Dolly, dolly, dolly!
[laughter].
Child’s voice: Where is she?
Jonathan: Maia, your dolls are on the edge, by the, by, on the right side. Thank you.
[sound of a door closing]
Jonathan: Lord have mercy. You got your blooper right there [laughs].
Sy: I got my blooper. That, everyone, is the joy of kids being back at home doing virtual school.
