Loving your enemy is the only way to keep from getting caught in the undertow of evil.

If you if you retaliate, well, then the enemy has now defined you.

Hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make.

We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus.

I'm your host.

Joshua Johnson, when we say God looks like Jesus, it's easy to nod in agreement.

But what if we actually lived as though that were true?

What if our image of God wasn't a mix of light and shadow, part loving Savior, part wrathful judge, but was fully revealed in the crucified Christ.

Greg Boyd has spent decades helping the church reimagine God through the lens of the cross.

In this conversation, we explore how a Jesus shaped picture of God changes everything, how we read scripture, how we think about violence and power and how we live as a people of love in a world addicted to retribution.

Greg helps us wrestle with the hard questions, how do we reconcile Old Testament violence with self giving love of Jesus?

How do we resist the pull of empire and live as citizens of a different kind of kingdom, and how do we cultivate lives that reflect the humility service and nonviolent love of the Lamb.

So join us for a conversation that looks more like Jesus, compassionate, cruciform and courageous.

Here is my conversation with Greg Boyd.

Greg, welcome to shifting culture.

Thanks for joining me.

Excited to have you on.

Thanks for having me.

I'm honored to be here.

Yeah, before we jump into God.

Looks like Jesus.

You know, I'd love to just start maybe with your own story.

In your own story, where what first unsettled your picture of God that made you really start to center everything around Jesus.

You know, I think the beginning of it was way back the second I became a Christian when I was 17 years old.

Just turned 17, but it was in this Pentecostal church that had all these I mean, it was a holiness Pentecostal church that had so many rules, and I could never live up to all those rules.

I was able to get off of the drugs I was on and clean up my act in all that ways.

But my dad was always very free.

He had a lot of porn, pornography, and he and I were living alone together, and he traveled for weeks at a time, and he didn't care if I looked at his porn.

And living in that house, as a 19 year old with access to porn, I could go a day or two or three without looking at it, but eventually I'd fall and in this church, you're only as saved as your last sinless moment.

Every sin you're getting unsaved.

So I was getting saved and unsaved daily, a couple times a day.

And after two years, I was finally sick of it.

And then I was I was gonna quit.

I was talking to a friend up parking lot after this Sunday night service church, and I was just saying, I can't live this way.

And I often got mad at God.

I started like, just reeling at God.

I talked about this in the book God to play Jesus.

And one point through my Bible on the trunk of his truck, and flopped open.

I started reading it sarcastically, because he was saying, we must be missing something.

And I was like, What are we missing?

I read this whole book, and what is it?

I threw it down, and it flock open to Romans eight, and he started reading it, there's therefore no condemnation to them over Christ, Jesus.

I said it mockingly.

It's something caught me, and I read it again.

It's like, what does that even mean?

I kept on, started going down the passage.

I got the point where, if God before us, who could be against us, you know, who can lay any charge.

And my eyes just were opened.

And for the first time in my life, I got it.

God loves me.

His love for me is greater than his disappointment of my behavior, but it's a love that's going to correct me from the behavior.

Behavior improvement isn't a precondition for his love.

I always thought God was just a behaviorist, and so if you have good behavior, well then he loves you.

But if you but if you have bad behavior, well then he's gonna send you to hell.

So he doesn't really love you.

He's loves behavior.

That was my model, but for the first time, I got it that I'm loved for free, and that changed everything.

It changed the way I viewed myself.

I'm a king's kid.

I'm better than this stupid stuff, and this is beneath me.

And for the first time, I really wanted to get rid of it.

See, before I was supposed to get rid of it, but I didn't want to.

But now I didn't want to, and it was disgusting to me, and it was beneath me.

And that was the beginning of breakthrough, of getting out of that behavioralistic God and discovering God loves me for free.

That was a long time till I really became, you know, over years.

It was in the 90s, I really began to discover the centrality of Jesus for everything, for how you read the Bible, for how you think about God, for all of that.

But the beginning of it was, I think that experience when I was 18 years

old.

I think a lot of people, when they look at the title of your book and you know something that you're distilling a lot of your stuff that you've written in other places.

That you've, you know, you've spoken about, that you think about, all in this one, it's a small, impactful, little tome that you have written here about what God actually looks like Jesus and what what you're thinking a lot of people, they'll read that title, they'll nod their head.

They'll say, Yeah, God looks like Jesus.

Yeah, it's about Jesus, okay?

But they won't really feel the weight of it.

They won't actually feel what for the ramifications of God actually looking like Jesus being cruciform.

What do we miss if we don't actually see the weight of what that really means?

What happens, I think, is that Christians will say, of course, God looks like Jesus, but they have a whole lot of other things that God looks like.

God looks like Jesus, but he also looks like the God who commanded genocide and Deuteronomy, and he looks like the God declared war god, you know.

And so most people have a smorgasbord conception of God, and all of our feelings and emotions about God are associated to how we represent God in our mind.

You know all our emotions are associated with images in our mind.

So your love for God and your passion for God will never outrun the beauty of your picture of God.

And since we always take out the semblance of the God that we worship, the beauty of our life will never outrun the beauty of our mental conception of God.

And so I think our mental conception of God is the most important thing in the world.

It's like the most important fact between my ears.

How do you view God?

And most people don't think about that.

They just sort of inherit something from the church tradition, or from a song they heard, or a sermon they heard, or their own Bible reading, and it all gets smushed in there.

And so they have a composite image of God, which is in some respects beautiful.

And when they think about that, they're feeling, yo, I love God, but then there's all this baggage that goes with it, and that can't help but compromise your love for God, your passion for God, because God's got this ominous, ugly side to him.

Jesus is the nice side of God, but there's this dark side God, the Father, God of wrath and all that.

But see Jesus in the whole New Testament, He says, if you see me, you see the father.

Why didn't you ask?

Show us the Father in John 14, nine Gen if you want to know what the father's like, what the character of God is like, don't look to the right or the left of Jesus, behind or in front.

Keep your eye.

Focus on Jesus, because He is the WAY, the TRUTH and the LIFE.

He is the one word of God they tell where God so he's not one of the pictures of God in the Bible.

He is the picture of God through which we misinterpret all the other pictures of God.

So I think one of the things that I 100% agree this is the problem, as you said, we have a smorgasbord idea of who God is, and so we sometimes make Jesus into our own image, and we're like, Okay, I'm going to view scripture through the lens of Jesus, but it's going to be through the lens of my own image of Jesus, and not what Jesus has actually portrayed of who He truly is.

Right?

How do we make a shift to know that we're actually reading the Bible through the lens of who Jesus is and not through who we have made him to be.

That's very good question.

It's a very question, important question, because we all can be guilty of projecting our own ideas and carrying our own assumptions to the text.

I make the case.

I think I make it pretty compellingly, that the center of what Jesus is about is the cross.

His whole ministry leads up to the cross, and it says, for this hour, I've come into the world.

And he refers to the cross as the hour in which he's going to glorify the Father.

He was always glorifying the Father, if you've seen he used to the Father.

That was true all the time, but the Father's character is most perfectly put on display when Jesus offers up his life freely, goes dies a hellish death, God forsaken.

This out of love for us and the whole creation.

And that reveals what God is really like.

In Hebrews one, it says that in the past, people got glimpses of the truth.

It says in the Philips translation, they had glimpses of truth.

God spoke in various ways to the prophets, but now, in the last days, he says, got spoken through His Son.

And by that, it means God's come down in person, no more mediated through prophets, whatever God in person.

Now the word has become flesh.

And then the author says, the sun, in contrast to what they had in the past, the sun is the radiance of God's glory and the exact likeness of his very essence.

So here we get exactly what God's like to his very essence, and it's all centered on the cross.

So a cross culminates.

I don't think of the cross as separate from the ministry and teachings of Jesus.

It culminates the message in the teachings of Jesus.

Everything about the Gospels is oriented towards Jesus is traveling towards the cross.

That's the culinary point, and then the resurrection confirms that.

So I argue that we have to read the lens, or read the Bible, and even understand Jesus's own light through the lens of the Cross, which culminates the whole thing.

And that puts really good, strong guardrails around how much projection you can get away with.

You.

It.

But you know, if I know some authors who believe they're maintaining a crystal centric reading of the Bible, but they start with Jesus cleansing the temple, and they say, see, look, Jesus is capable of violence.

I cleanse the temple, and he told his soldiers, his disciples, to get swords.

So clearly, God's okay with violence, and so we don't have to reinterpret the Old Testament.

But if you look at those passages, it's never says Jesus harmed any animals or people.

He made a whip and he cracked the web, which is a way of startling animals to run, one to cause a stampede.

And in Luke, when Jesus says, Hey, go out by so she had buy two swords or no, they say, Well, we have two swords.

And Jesus says, Okay, that's enough.

But he tells us why.

It wasn't said they're supposed to use them.

In fact, when Peter tried to use when he rebuked him, he says, because it is written, He will be counted among the transgressors, quoting Isaiah 53 So Jesus had to appear like a transgressor to justify the guard resting him and then bring him to trial.

If they had no weapons, they wouldn't have any grounds.

So there's no basis there for saying that Jesus is okay with violence.

I just think it's a weak argument.

You know, I think we have to interpret everything through the lens of the Cross, which culminates everything Jesus was about.

Hupostasis is the word he uses.

That's good.

I think, you know, the temple is he's clear in the temple.

He says, you know, the temple, I'm gonna rebuild the temple in three days.

I mean, he's really talking about the death and resurrection of himself as well, of him going to the cross.

And so I think there's so many of those signs in the book of John that is really about His death and resurrection, is about the cross, is about New Covenant.

Is the kingdom that's coming.

It's so amazing that it's all right there, and we've interpreted it in ways where it's really not about the cross and resurrection and new life, it's actually about something else.

Yeah, and so I think we're doing that constantly.

You make it about a whole lot of things you know, about who political party should win, and what nation's best and all the rest.

Then can you help me reconcile this, and help me reconcile genocide in the Old Testament with God.

And you write about this, and I think there's a few things that you've said in that section about talking about Canaan and, you know, wiping out the Canaanites as the Israelites are going into the land.

It really helped me to think about what God said previously, before and way he wanted them out and over time, and not just wipe them out and kill them all, because let's talk about that.

And if God is cruciform, and if the cross is Central, and if God is like Jesus, then what does that mean for us?

How can we interpret

Okay, excellent question.

I think it's important to remember that the Bible is not a theological textbook.

It's a story, and we forget that it's a story, and the story has movement in it.

There's a progression of Revelation.

You know, God a lot, you know, accommodates some things early on, but then he does it later on, and so he meets people where they're at you have to remember and rank the case for this that God is never coerced.

When God inspires people or breathes through the authors of the Bible, he doesn't take away their personality.

He doesn't take away their free will.

He doesn't all said and take over their brains.

He works with them as they are.

Paul, he writes, and this is divinely inspired in First Corinthians one.

He's talking about this dispute in current when the Corinthian who baptized to and Paul says, oh, boy, I'm glad I didn't baptize any of you.

Then he goes, Well, I didn't buy a house.

Baptize the house of Stephens.

And then he says, he goes, actually, I don't remember who I baptized ever again, but the point is not being provided.

Okay?

So God doesn't perfect Paul's memory while he breathes through him.

Scripture like that?

And so we find throughout the biblical authors that you can find their own worldview, their perspective, their beliefs, are all intact.

God influences people in the direction of truth as much as possible.

But there comes a point where to go any further would be coercive, and so then God has to accept them as they are.

So we come upon Deuteronomy seven, which says, Show no mercy, slaughter.

You know, the seven groups of Canaanites that I have given you for their land.

It says in Deuteronomy, 22 slider, kill everything that breathes, specifically mentioned, men, women, children, infants, even the animals.

They says, spare the trees because they're not soldiers.

And you would think that maybe that should apply to babies and children too, but it didn't okay.

So your choice Either you accept that that's straightforward.

That was exactly right.

And so God has this genocidal part to him, and now Good luck trying to reconcile it with Jesus, who says, Love Your and vessels appears to you do good to those who despitefully use you tune the other cheek never.

How do you fix that?

I, for years, tried to defend the behavior that's ascribed to God in the Old Testament, trying to find excuses for God and.

You know, and I respect the folks who knew that.

I understand it.

You believe the Bible is inspired, so God said it.

I believe that solves it for me.

But we often have to look deeper and push back on something, especially you're coming at this from a crucified perspective.

So I, at one point started writing a book that was going to defend God's behavior.

I got about 50 pages into it, and thought, this is not convincing.

It doesn't I'm not convinced by it, so I can't expect others to be convinced by it.

And I realized that even if I was successful and making God look a little less nasty, I looked maybe more justified in this.

The Canaanites deserve really, really bad, you know.

And he had to kill the baby because of some reason earlier, at some point, the explanations grow thin.

So I keep up on that book, and for several months, I just sat in this tension.

I on Jesus authority.

I have to believe the whole Old Testament is divinely inspired because he did, and I call him Lord.

But then at the same time, I can't accept that Jesus would ever command genocide, killing babies.

I just sat in that conundrum Origen, who's the second century theologians advise us.

He goes to the bike.

He thought the Holy Spirit intentionally puts impossible things in the Bible to force us to dig deeper to find the deeper truth.

He thought that the buried treasure underneath the impossibilities is what God wants us to dig for.

So I sat with this conundrum, and then I began to about three months later, into this cognitive dissonance, began to see how the genocidal portraits of God bear witness to the cross, because Jesus says all scriptures about me, right?

John five and Luke 23 everything was written to show that the Son of Man must suffer before he's glorified two times.

And so how does just our picture actually point to Jesus Christ, whose life of the ministry is summarized on the cross, and Tucker claims divine inspiration.

It could be Greg Boyd projecting what he wants to believe on to the screen of the Bible.

I'm open to that the Church will determine whether this is an acceptable interpretation or not.

Let's see.

But what I noticed was that when I look at the cross, I asked this question, and I think it's such an important the ultimate question, though I've never heard anyone ask it, and that is, how does this crucified Jewish man appearing guilty criminal who's crucified in the first century?

How does he reveal God to me, I look at that, I say that is the revelation of God's character.

We find that in Luke 24 here.

Because if you look at it in the natural eye, like Paul said, we once considered Christ from natural point of view, but we consider from the national point of view, all you see is a hideous, ugly, torturous picture of a guy he tortured on the cross.

But what turns that into a revelation of God for us is that we, by faith, see something deeper.

We look beyond it and believe what Paul calls the message of the cross, which he identifies with the gospel.

He uses message of the cross and gospel interchangeably.

The message of the cross is that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not counting our trespasses against us.

It's a god would condescend.

God would stoop this distance cross and an infinite distance, to become a human being and then die a death on the cross.

We suffers the antithesis of who he is.

He suffers experiencing separation from God, which would be the most horrifying thing in the world.

And the distance God crosses out of love for us reveals the the unsurpassable distance he crosses to save us reveals the unsurpassable perfection of His love.

His love is revealed in his stooping down to need us where we're at and doing what is necessary.

So God is and this reveals what God is.

Always like.

God didn't become Christ like when, when we was incurred.

God's always been like this.

And so we should read the Bible knowing that sometimes God stoops, he'll reveal himself not on the surface of the text, because it's not the surface of the cross that reveals what God's like.

It's his stepping into it.

He thinks us where we're at.

So when you read the Bible, knowing that sometimes God will stoop to meet people where they're at, and notice that when God steps into our sin, he takes on an appearance that reveals the ugliness of that sin.

That's why the cross is so ugly.

So the cross is simultaneously hideously ugly and unfathomably beautiful, because the surface reveals the ugliness of the sin that God bears, but he's stepping into it reveals the unsurpassable love of the love that he is.

And so when I read passages like Deuteronomy seven, show no mercy.

You might be tempted to show mercy, but don't you got to kill those babies.

What reveals the surface reflects, I think, the sin that God bears, just as he does on the cross.

This is where the Israelites were at.

This is what the Israelites thought about God.

Because this is what all ancient nation people thought about God, right?

God doesn't going to give you the land.

What they hear is.

We're supposed to slaughter everyone there, and God's going to help us slaughter no one ever dreamed of a guy who would actually fight for you so you would not to fight.

But that's what the Lord told them.

If you're faithful, I'll deliver you.

Just what delivered you out of Egypt.

You won't have to lift anything.

I'll fight.

I'll go on and fight before you.

In fact, there's two passages, actually nine, but the two that are most impressive, but the Lord shares some plans he has on how he's going to fight for them, to get them into Canaan.

He says in Luke 18 that they have defiled the land, so the land will become dried up and they'll migrate off.

But he says, I'm not going to go quickly, otherwise the place will be overgrown with wild animals and wild bush.

So I'll slowly migrate them out and migrate you in another place.

He says, I'll send pests.

I'll make it pesty.

And so they'll want to migrate off, and then I'll migrate you in whatever happened to those plants?

They're a lot less violent than this whole, you know, goat slaughter them all.

Either God, mood changed.

Or what I think is happening is we're giving little snippets of what God would have liked to have happen, but because of the Israelites, hardness of heart, which is emphasized throughout the narrative, could not trust God to that degree.

The very fact that they used swords and killed people to get Lamb of King, it shows you that they were out of God's will.

Because he said, If you trust me, you won't have to pay it where all the pictures of God in the Bible that are sub Christ, like that come beneath it.

Let's see.

I think the Holy Spirit is always influencing the direction of truth, and so you have many magnificent pictures of God in the Old Testament, the spirit breaks through and always tell because it looks like Christ, and it's totally against what everyone else in the ancient Near Eastern believe.

Okay, the idea that Yahweh is our husband and that we're the bride, it's unheard of ancient Near East, and all the love and all that, it's unheard of.

And then you have other pictures of God in the Old Testament that are very much like what you find in the ancient news.

In fact, some of them are they just take the hymn that Sung, the cob hymn that sung to Baal, and they swift about and put in Yahweh.

And the ancient race ascribing violence to your God was seen as a form of worship.

They delight in saying, it's like our God will slay you.

Well, our God will slay your children and drink their blood.

Well, our God will roast you.

And that's how you exalt God, whereas, in truth, God is exalted by his humbleness and humility and servant, nature and self, sacrificial love.

It takes, you know, God doesn't course.

So it takes centuries of wooing people, working with people, and the picture gets dirt and clearer and clearer, and finally, people are ready for the absolute truth of his pulmonary

Christ, I think that's so good for us to be able to say that, and even in the Psalms, if I'm looking at, you know, as David, David is saying, Hey, God, you've slayed my enemies, who've killed everybody, like it's the same type of honor and worship that they're giving.

So we're seeing that in the Psalms, and that actually, then would start to reframe the way that I can see that, and I could see what David is trying to do.

What he's ascribing to God is not the violent nature of God, but it is about how mighty and powerful God is.

He is more powerful and awe inspiring than others, and I think that could help me look back on the Psalms where I'm like, do I really want to sing about God slaying and killing all of the people around

me, I don't really so he says, you know, you'll make my enemies dry up like a slug out in the sun.

At one point, he says, you know, may they be buried alive.

So his heart is to glorify God, but the way he does it is very ancient grief and so it but then, of course, you have other Psalms where the Spirit of God breaks through and wonderful, you know, The Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not want.

And so you have a mixed bag there, and it's the lens of the Cross I submit that can separate.

You know, what is the Holy Spirit breaking through versus what is where's God stooping because, yeah, people are too hard and not yet ready to change.

If our perception of God is different, and it is cruciform and is like Jesus, there, it then moves us into a place of living in this world differently than our perception of God was before.

Now it's more of a cruciform God, one that looks like Jesus.

How does that impact the way that we live in the world?

How do we embody this way of Jesus?

Yeah, we'll

see that that's that is the that is the all important question, and it has to do with discipleship.

How do we become more Christ like that?

So if you understand that, you know God is the is that the slain lamb in the book of Revelation stands, stands on the throne of God, at the center of the throne Genesis, because the same lamb defines everything that God's about.

This untranscended, all powerful God has got the character of a slain little lamb who would have thought and our job, we find this throughout the book of Revelation, is to follow the Lamb wherever he goes, to adopt the mindset of the Lamb, the behaviors of the Lamb, to take on the humility.

The Lamb, the other oriented nature of the Lamb, to get out of our self centeredness, to live modestly, so that you can have a surplus of time and energy to invest in others and to do Kingdom work, because that's when your time and money takes on eternal value.

He says, you're investing in Love's the only thing that survives the judgments and enters into the eternal new kingdom.

Our jobs purge ourselves of everything now that's inconsistent with the humble character of Christ and and to cultivate the character that is consistent with Christ, the Holy Spirit's there.

Help us.

We're gonna be doing it in community with others.

This is not meant to be a solo project.

It's a community project.

I have a hard time see women and children and men being massacred and killed in Gaza, and who see a genocide, I see some Christians justifying this and using some of the same language that they did in Deuteronomy, of like, hey, there's people that need to go away because they're evil, but Jesus calls us to love our enemies.

He calls us something different.

How do I hold that space as a follower of Jesus?

And how do I help, maybe even call people to a different way, the way of Jesus, and show people that a Jesus is calling us to something different here, and not the way that we think is going to bring about something or another.

I don't know what people, people justify it, but

Well, again, you're asking a very good question, and it's, it's a very tough question.

It's interesting to note that so the Israelites invade Canaan, and they do it violently, and it even says to do it right, that war, that war continued, that it was ongoing.

It never worked.

They thought that you only exterminated the evil people will then will have peace.

It never works.

Violence only begets more.

Violence, full stop it.

You may delay it, 1010, 20, 100 years, but it will come back.

You bomb the house of your enemy.

You just recruited all their neighbors to bomb you when they get a chance.

So just goes running around.

And so that area, Palestine, has always been a point of conflict, and what we're seeing today is a continuation of what started in Deuteronomy.

So violence be getting more violence, and it is horrific.

It's terrible.

It's gut wrenching.

I would grieve.

I haven't heard anyone say, Well, this is, you know what?

God's continuation of what God said, told him in Deuteronomy seven, that's just, that's just horrific.

There's tons of study that show when you have a violent conception of God, it inclines you towards violence.

Think it's so important that we have a non violent conception of God that will incline us towards non violence and and.

And I find that more I internalize the shalom of God, and the more I walk with cultivating love towards all people at all times, in all situations, no if and buts, maybes or exceptions, the more I do, the more I detest violence.

I got to the point about 15 years ago where I was just so grieved by the violence that permeates our world that I just made a commitment that I am going to purge all violence in my thoughts and my words and my deeds.

And it has been a marvelous when you when you commit to doing that, it changes you.

It changes what you see it, yeah, it just begins to purge you.

Don't realize how many thoughts you have that are violent, how many judgmental you know, and I define violence as anything that violates the worth of another and some people, the one thing we know about those strangers out there is that they have unsurpassable worth because Jesus died for them and paid an unsurpassable price.

And so look at them that way.

Don't even notice how fat they are, how drunk, how gay they are, or how wicked they are, how whatever.

Notice that they are a person for whom Jesus died, and many folks can love for you, love in you.

I encourage all folks to do that, and one way to keep going is to Jesus says, Pray for your enemies.

That's the only group that he ever said, Pray for.

He doesn't pray for the Samaritans.

Pray for whatever.

Pray for your enemies.

And I encourage anyone who will listen to my voice to do that daily.

Choose the top three people or groups that you have the hardest time loving you feel justified hating, and now pray for them and and that's mean you agree with them.

It doesn't mean maybe what they're doing is hideous, horrendous, terrible, demonic, but you pray that they get freed from that, and pray you know that that God limits the harm that they can do.

God changes their heart.

They pray blessing on their loved ones and whatever.

And that changes your heart.

I think it's not for their sake that we're supposed to love them.

It's for our sake.

Loving your enemy is the only way to keep from getting caught in the undertow of evil.

If you if you retaliate, well, then the enemies now define you.

You.

Being at all times, not the aggressor who's threatening us.

You know, John on the scene, he said, you know, the first thing you said is, the kingdom of God has come near, right?

Repent, the kingdom of God is near.

If we think of God that looks like Jesus, we think, then the kingdom of God is a Jesus shaped kingdom, right?

And it's going to look like that.

We have a lot of people who want to take something like a kingdom and coerce people through power and have power structures actually bring about more earthly power for men.

But what then would Jesus's Kingdom look like?

What does the kingdom of God.

That is Jesus shaped to look like.

And how can we help usher that into the world?

Jesus says, like you said, The kingdom of God is near, and that's because he was near.

He was the embodiment of the kingdom of God.

So he's the walking, talking dome over which God is King.

And that's what the kingdom of God is defined by.

It's the dome over which God is King, and so insofar as anyone's life aligns with the character of the king, as it's revealed in Christ, they are in that dome.

Insofar as we're outside of it, we're outside of that dome.

But the criteria is looking like like Jesus, who gives his life for the world, for his enemies, who loves his enemies, even as They're crucifying Him Jesus, who said, don't forbid the little children to come unto me, the Jesus that was always loving the unlovable and touching the untouchable and relating to the people that were the least in society, and feeding the hungry and all of that.

That's what the church is supposed to look like.

We are the body of Christ, so we're supposed to be doing exactly what Jesus did in his first body, and that includes healing people and delivering people and teaching, but also acting in service to others.

And so if that's the criteria of the kingdom, and the church is supposed to be the embodiment of the kingdom, then the church ought to be a corporate version of the physical Jesus or and and caring about the outcast and for the least of these and visiting the prisoner and showing hospitality to the homeless and doing whatever you to improve their life, because that's what manifests the character of God.

That's our testimony.

You know, we're the two witnesses in the Revelation, the two lampstands.

We're supposed to shine in the darkness, will be a city set on the hill, but also has this effect.

There is a growing movement out there that of people who are waking up on their own.

There's it's like the Holy Spirit's doing stuff, because people are coming to this on their own, as I did in the 90s, and they're discovering a Jesus looking God who's raising up a people, a Jesus looking people, could change the world in the Jesus kind of way.

The Jesus collective, which is an organization, it's kind of a hub for parts of this movement, but the movement's much bigger than that, and it's a grassroots movement.

There's no one who's was in charge of this.

It's still off most people's radar screen, but, but I only know about it because we get contacted by him.

But if the cross is the criteria, then, if you look at the landscape in America and ask, to what degree does the church in America, the Evangelical Church, the liberal church, the fundamentalist church, whatever you want to, what degree does it look like Jesus serving the least of these dying for people, sacrificing of themselves, not insisting on their own way, because that's not what love does.

But the first, if you're honest about it, the church is not in very good shape.

If the criteria is the cross, I can't fix that, but the only thing I can do is arrange my own life.

And so I dedicate myself to being part of a community that is striving, our slogan is learning to love together.

We're striving to be Christ like and version of that, I hopefully that's a model like it begins to catch on.

One of the things we do is we have program where we build tiny homes for homeless people, and we find churches that have property and that it's available because a lot of churches, since covid do have property.

They don't need all that parking space, and they create tiny home communities, and they bring the whole church community around these folks.

And usually they'll have one person who's living there intentionally to help, because lock James is mental health issues and all sorts of other issues.

And today it's beautiful.

We've got now three of these sprung up.

We build them in our church, but our area is not safe, so we ship them out to other churches that are open to it.

And, oh, it's a beautiful it's called several sacred civil community thing that that catches down the churches begin to do this.

Wouldn't it be beautiful if there's a movement across America and to go beyond that of churches who actually are making a difference to the poor by bringing them into their community, it would just be so little.

It's what it's a Jesus looking kind of thing.

I pray every day that the church looks more like Jesus, that we actually embody the ways of Jesus, and we look more like him.

You know, as you're following Jesus and the ways of Jesus and trying to be more like Jesus, what kind of pushback.

Do you get things that really rub people people?

How does Jesus rub people the wrong way?

But you know, back in I think it was 2000 and and four, 2005 I preached the sermon series explaining why, in our church, we don't celebrate the Fourth of July.

We don't have flags in the church.

We don't weigh in on politics.

We don't try to steer candidates.

And I did that because I was getting so much unprecedented pressure from my own congregation of people saying you should tell the flock, your job is to lead the flock and tell them, you know, who the god the candidate is.

And of course, the candidate is.

And so I you know, they're influenced by what they watch on television or whatnot.

And so I thought this is the time to clarify why we're never going to do that and and so I laid it all out there to be like Jesus.

Jesus was not here giving political advice on how to run the Roman Empire.

He was talking to Kingdom people on how to live within the Roman Empire, unfortunately, and now it's even worse with it was it was in 2004 people are getting politicized, and their ideologies is they're getting caught in these chambers on the internet where everything just agrees with them.

And so they hear things in political terms.

And so when I say, Love your enemies, I preach the sermon in a series that I did explain why our church doesn't have a flag and all the rest.

And I talked about loving your enemies, and a lady came up and said, If you preach one more anti Bush sermon, I'm going to leave this church.

And I said, What do you mean anti Bush sermon?

Because George Bush was a candidate, and as he said, Oh, when you say Love your enemies, we know who you're talking about, because this is right after the invasion of it's like I'm not trying to run the country here, ma'am, I'm talking to you.

It's kingdom.

People here.

This is our call.

But people, to this day, our job is to love the immigrant, to welcome them in.

That's a theme that runs throughout the whole Bible.

But it's, of course, the testament on foreigner, the alien.

And people think I'm, I'm trying to give these policy Oh, you think we should open up our borders and let everyone in, and that would cause chaos.

It's like I'm not trying to.

I'm not anyone's political advisor here.

All right, I the country that's above my pay grade.

You know, I don't know how type of should be, whatever, but I do know that here's a he's a person who's living in fear because they are might get deported any moment, and so what can I do to help them?

You know, my command is the same, whatever Caesar commands these, if they're nice to immigrants, my commands the same, if mean to immigrants, my commands the same.

It may cost more when they're mean, but that's the call of the gospel, but it's we got to avoid letting our thoughts get politicized and polarized and the ideology taking over the Gospel we really have to Jesus.

Was saying a I didn't come to tell you how to run the Roman Empire really well, but I came to talk about Kingdom people living in the kingdom inside the Empire.

Right now, if you know you and I are both in United States of America.

We're in the we're in an empire.

At the moment, what we're doing, and so if we're followers of Jesus, we want to be Kingdom people.

Jesus, Kingdom people.

Within the empire living like Jesus, Kingdom people, there's a lot of Christendom that have like a mesh themselves with the Empire, help us discern whether we're Jesus Kingdom people, or whether we've decided we're going to a mesh ourselves with the Empire as Christians.

And how can we stay out of the empire but actually live faithfully to Jesus within it?

That's That's an excellent question.

I wrote a book on it's called the myth of a Christian nation.

It just goes after this idea that America was what time a Christian nation, and we got to take it back for God, I've always wondered, when was that time when we were a Christian nation?

Was that before or after we imported all the slaves from Africa and got rich off the blood of their backs and or was that before we massacred the Native Americans?

When were we Christian?

When did America ever look at all like Christ or any nation?

For that matter, any nation is going to have to have some violence to keep murder in the in their kingdom and to protect against outsider.

Our job is to manifest a totally different kingdom.

The problem pouring out is one that has been there since the fourth century.

The first three centuries, the church was a persecuted minority, and they stayed pretty faithful.

Then we, in the fourth century, Constantine gets this alleged vision and decides that Jesus is going to fight his battles under the banner of Christ, which was the first time Christ was ever associated with violence.

And he gets this goes to war to the banner of Christ, and he's victorious.

So he Christianity to be legal, and then in time, it becomes the official religion of the empire.

And the church is now invited, as the church grows and influence was invited to help run the Roman Empire.

The devil offered Jesus all this, you know, he said, Hey, I'll give you all the authority of the kingdoms of the world.

And Jesus said, Thank.

Thanks.

I'll win them the kingdom way, which is by dying, not by conquering, but the Church lost sense it and be good thing that we're supposed to literally conquer the world in Jesus name.

So it's a pagan mindset like and like, you fight in the name of God.

The God was in your favor.

We'll fight with you.

And he was just unique for our God was named Jesus, even though that now didn't look like Jesus, it looked like the Roman Empire.

But with, you know, the church there to do the blessing of battles and blessing of all doing the religious functions, that's what so all are going to admit people who would say, that's not the kingdom, that's not the kingdom, and usually they're put to death, but there's always been a minority of people.

But in the Anna Baptist really came out in acting.

Neither they got Luther is a Calvin, Calvin, Kelvin, Catholics, Anglicans, they're all associated with their state, their state religions.

You belong to this the religion because you're born in that state.

And the Baptists were the ones that said, women, you have to choose.

You have to believe in Him, and you have to pledge to walk in his ways.

It's not just about what you believe.

It's about how you live.

And it got really clear about how distinct Our job is to put on display a unique kingdom that is different from all versions of the kingdom of this world, and the way it should be unique is by our humility and our service and our sacrifice to others, our selflessness.

Are not buying into the ways of Emperor, chasing after more and more, you know, not buying into that, but rather living, being content with what we have and and then, if we have surplus, then we can invest it in the service of others.

That is the that is the that is that is Jesus, and that is the

church.

As you wrote this book, God looks like Jesus.

What hope do you have people that pick up this book and read it?

What do you hope this book does for people?

I'm really hoping that it sets people free, that the coin drops in the slot.

There's a lot of folks who maybe they are what we're used to thinking and so you've always been used to thinking about God in certain ways.

So you don't even notice how you think about God, but you believe that what you're believing is true, and you probably believe what you're believing is dirt.

But I make the case as succinctly but as powerfully as I can that Jesus defines the whole of God's character full stop.

And my hope is that that will help people purge out of their minds all these sub Christ like conceptions of God, that they have the baggage that they've inherited, that smorgasbord of different pictures of God floating around.

No, I pray it would be singular.

The character of God's completely defined by the cross when the coin drops in the slot, that you're in love this way, and that every person's love this way.

And our call is to replicate the Father's love, who causes his rain to fall on the just and the unjust and the sun to shine the righteous and the unrighteous.

His love is indiscriminate, and so our distinctiveness should be.

We love like he loves.

In fact, Jesus says that in John 545 he goes, love like the father loves, like the rain falls, like the sun shines, that you may be children of your Father in heaven, that's the criteria he gives for being a child of God.

When we reflect the Father's character by our indiscriminate love, we're a knock off.

We're a chip off the old block.

We show that we're born from above.

We've got the father's DNA in us with all that love.

It's not manifest.

You couldn't have a more important teaching than that.

Well, God looks like Jesus is available anywhere books are sold.

Is there anywhere you'd like to point people to either connect with you or to get this book in a specific place?

I have a ministry called renew, R, E, K, N, E, W, rethink everything you thought you knew and renew.org and if you buy the books through there, we get a little kickback from Amazon, but you buy me anywhere that books are sold.

Greg,

I have a couple quick questions at the end that I like to ask.

If you could go back to your 21 year old self.

What advice would you give?

I went back to my

What advice would I get?

It major in the 21 year old so Whoa.

majors and minor in the minors.

Don't sweat the small stuff.

And most of it's small stuff, you know, PQR and the prize, yeah, I would have had more focus on that less anxiety over stuff that really I could have just let pass.

I think that that would have been it.

Anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend, That's good.

I have been watching a podcast called the great simplification.

I wouldn't advise people watching that if you're struggling with mental health issues, because it's pretty heavy, heavy, but they talk about that, the meta crisis that the world is facing.

And I talk about this as well in the last chapter in my book, that we are facing some serious ecological and geopolitical risk crises, and the future is going to be interesting.

It's all.

Already getting very interesting.

It's changing so fast.

The planet is warming up and the Antarctic is melting like crazy.

Last three years, it's just shock scientists.

It's all sudden.

Just so what does it mean to have hope in Jesus in a time like that?

And I think it's all the more important.

There was anchor.

As we go in the future, I'm convinced that more and more people wake up to just how serious a problem we're facing.

And people tend to hoard.

When they get frayed, they tend to get, you know, build a fortress and compound and whatever, and a call of the gospel is to go in the other direction.

The worse it gets, the more we just keep on serving and shining with this other oriented love.

And we don't, we don't cling to this life.

We always know this was stepping stone.

So it shouldn't, it shouldn't freak us

out the God does win in the that was on my list of things.

I wanted to talk to you about the poly crisis, this meta crisis that we're facing, and how to live faithfully.

Jesus could go, say, go watch the great simplification, just so that we could know what's going on in this world, and then we could figure out, what does it look like to live faithfully while this future is happening, right?

He has guests on and they look at the simplification is his word for collapse.

All things tend to simplify.

And we have a very, very complex global society that he was convinced.

It's already in the process of simplifying.

It's kind of fragmenting down.

It has major implications for for everybody, but for believers.

Complexity always simplifies.

You know, we're told that.

I don't know if we're coming to the end times or not, you know, but certainly, kind of looks like it.

I have an easier time maintaining the attitude of the New Testament.

In the New Testament, everybody is expecting the Lord to come in their lifetime and and that it's pervasive.

Most of my ministry, I totally neglected that.

I didn't I burned on an eschatology in my first two years, I had rapsitritis, get raptured out of here.

I have no idea now what it looks like.

I don't think we're going to get sectioned out of here, because the call is not to run away from suffering.

Is to move towards it.

God's people don't like yay.

We get to get out of here while you suffer.

No move towards suffering, because God moved towards us, and it constant suffering.

So be grounded in that hope, confident that however bad it looks, love wins.

In the end, the cross is the victory over evil, and in time, it will be manifest some kind of cataclysmic way.

I know not how, but I'm confident of it, and so that you have a piece about you and don't have to during the anxious human race, anxiety is already anxiety and loneliness is epidemic.

Yep, yeah.

Well, that's beautiful.

Greg, thank you for this conversation station.

I love talking to you.

I love talking to you about a God who looks like jeez, and that we could actually help have this conception of who got in mind, so that we could live faithfully to Jesus here and now in this world, that we could look like Jesus embodied the ways of him, and that, you know, we do follow and serve this cruciform king.

And so thank you for this.

It was a fantastic

conversation.

It's the best news in the world, and I love to share it Amen.

You.