PureTalk 2017 03 01 Ep3

Hey there, I'm Raj Nair and welcome to Pure Talk, the new innovative talk show where we're talking about culture, entertainment news, and everything in between, but through the lens of faith. And it's brought to you by Pureflix and Faithwire. First, let me introduce to you the two gentlemen. This is Greg Gudorf. He is the CEO of Pureflix.com. And Mr. Billy Hollowell, who is a senior editor of Faithwire. Now we have a very special guest here with us today. In fact, here is her book. Lauren Green. The book is called Lighthouse Faith and she is Fox News' chief religion correspondent.

Um, yes, I guess so.

And an author.

And an author.

And an author. This is very exciting. So this book comes out March 14th.

March 14th, although you can pre-order it now.

Yes, pre-order. I know, that's the other thing you plug.

We'll give you a discount. Please, go ahead.

Go over to Amazon, pre-order it. Um, I love it. So take me through the process. Why did you write this book?

Well, the book was really 10 years in the making. I mean, between the research and, you know, the writing of it and the interviews. Um, I was also a Templeton Cambridge Fellow back in 2009, and that sort of opened up another area. The Templeton Cambridge Fellowship is for journalists looking at areas of science and religion. And this book really began to crystallize, I think, around 2009, where I really understood the science and the religion kind of coming together. And reading certain philosophers and theologians saying, you know, these really— these things belong together. They're not separate because God's not separate. But then there's a personal side where I heard a sermon by my pastor, Dr. Timothy Keller, a Redeemer Presbyterian, about asking the question, "Is God a concept to you or is it a living reality?" A concept is something that you certainly believe in. I mean, the majority of people in America believe in God, right? But a concept is something that you mold to fit your life. You've made certain— and then you're the authority, basically. But a reality, God as a reality, means you mold your life to fit God. And then the next part And part of that scenario was a sermon on the Ten Commandments, looking at the first commandment really as the light and beacon of the ten, and it sits atop the Ten Commandments much like the beacon of a lighthouse does. And you can't violate commandments 2 through 10 without first violating number 1, right? If you steal, it means something is more worth more to you than God. If you commit adultery, it means something is more loving or needing than God. If you— just go down the line, and basically everything in the Ten Commandments, every commandment relates first to the First Commandment and second to every other commandment. And then sort of a revelation happened, and I thought, my goodness, if you take it out of its sort of biblical moorings, it really is kind of a pseudo, like, closed system that you can apply to anything. And then I thought, this is the template for all law. This really is it. And then the revelation came through music about how the scale's built the same way, and the scales are built really from from music's sort of vibratory nature. It's really something that man created. You know, he fashioned it, refined it, and tuned it, but it's based on its own physical nature. And they start seeing it in every discipline. Then so I decided instead of creating a book that was like 3,000 pages long talking about every discipline—

That's the hard part.

Right, right, right. I only had to create a book that took in the Trinity. Can you break the Trinity down so that it encompasses everything of creation. And that's what I did.

That does not sound like an easy task.

No, but the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the divine being, the three persons in one being, then I showed through a divine prism, refracted it into its component parts so that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are now the covenant, the sacrifice, and the glory. Do these things have a physical equivalent? And yes, they do. The covenant is physical laws. The physical laws I now look at as covenants. The sacrifice is the sun. This is biological growth. This is how things recreate through death and recreation and resurrection. And then we've got the Holy Spirit, which is music, the idea of worship. What are you bowing down to? What authority are you under? And so music becomes the application for the Holy Spirit and biological growth and blood, the idea of blood and wine and how the blood of the grapes is our sort of metaphor in the Bible. And then in the covenant architecture.

You know, sometimes we seem to lose track of the Trinity.

Yes.

Right?

We break it down into pieces, and you're stressing, no, wait a minute, this is all together.

Well, that's the problem. You know, actually, when I first presented this book, the publisher, the first inclination was to break it down into 3 different books.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, okay, let's do the covenant. Let's just create a book on the covenant and then the sacrifice and the— I said, no, no, no, no. Let's look at the Trinity as one unit because they really kind of— I mean, it's almost like a wheel and all I'm doing is turning the wheel and then highlighting one part of it, but it's still part of the same thing, right? I'm just taking the wheel. Okay, now we're going to look at the covenant. Okay, now we're going to look at the sacrifice. Now we're going to look at the glory. But all of these things operate together. And it's like Vernon Poitras, who is a great theologian, I think at Westminster, he said He said, think about the Father being the speaker and the Son being the speech, and then the Holy Spirit being the breath that brings it. They operate together just like that.

Mm-hmm.

That's so fascinating. So what do you want people to walk away— I mean, there's so many really interesting concepts here. What's the big takeaway? What would be success to you in a reader?

I think success is to just to look at the world today and say, God is here. I mean, one thing I bring out is a little game that my great-aunt Auritha taught us called bunkum. And it was from that game that I realized it's like, you know, God is playing this sort of cosmic game of bunkum with us. He's sort of hiding in plain sight. And it's like, you know, give the analogy, it's like the trees that hide the forest, or the forest that hides the trees, the ocean that hides the drops of water. You know, God is so big and so small at the same time that we miss. You know, I look at, because of what I learned about architecture and about the idea of the Pythagorean theorem being sort of the basis of all buildings, because of gravity. I mean, that's the way you have it. It's the right triangle. I now look at buildings and I see crosses everywhere. I just see the cross holding up every building that there is. I see the cross when I see the— I know that every one of us has blood and the chemical structure of the hemoglobin is actually the shape of a cross. And I learned that from the people who were doing the research on the Shroud of Turin and how blood is— that's how the chemical— you Google it, it's in the shape of a cross. It's fascinating.

I think Louis Giglio, I think it was Louis Giglio, had a whole video on that. That was fascinating, breaking it down.

Right.

You've been covering faith for a while, and what I love about you is that you're at Fox, you're doing this, you're kind of in there, and you make it interesting because I think a lot of people assume faith coverage is not going to be interesting. And you found a way to say, no, no, no, that's not true. Look, we have these great stories here. Why do you think people assume that about faith?

Because most people don't know about faith. Most people have sort of this They don't realize that they're being catechized daily into a secular humanist religion because that's the default religion of the marketplace. And I don't think anybody realizes that they've been sort of breathing the air of Christianity, sort of living off the capital of Christianity with its tenets of love your neighbor as yourself, but they don't understand the real hardcore tenets of Christianity, which says, Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but through me." from me. And that's a part of the love your neighbor as yourself they don't understand. Not only that, Jesus said, you know, love God first with all your heart, mind, and soul. And to love God means to know God, it means to experience God, it means to obey God. And this is the level that most people are not at. They want to have the benefits of Jesus as a teacher of love, and Jesus as, you know, your friend and brother, but not Jesus as the God who you must about our own way.

Our minds like these simple comparisons though, either/or, right? A neighbor, ourselves, right? We like that. And what you're reminding us is that this has got to be this loop that pulls us, right?

I mean, it's very easy to love your neighbor when your neighbor's a nice person, right? Right.

It's like, I want to cross the street, not so much.

It's like, you know, like, well, who's my neighbor? Like, you know, Bob Newhart did that whole kind of comic routine. It's like, well, you know, who technically is my neighbor? You know, is it that guy or is it just the two on the side?

Right, exactly.

So how do you take this message to New York? Billy lives in New York, I live in Brooklyn. It's a different ballgame there in certain aspects. It's, you know, sometimes hostile. Not that it's not hostile in other places, but how does your message resonate in New York or how do you try to shape it for a New York audience?

I think what's surprising about New York is that New York has a very vibrant Christian community that is growing. And I think one of the churches that's doing it really well is Redeemer Presbyterian, who's grown over the last 25 years, has grown from like a handful of people, like, you know, a couple of dozen, to now, you know, thousands. And they've got 3 different churches, and now they're expanding to 4th. They're planting churches. They're really getting people to understand that they are— they can't just sit in a pew once a week, and that's okay, that your faith really has to be how you walk, how you talk, how you interact. Every relationship has to breathe the Gospel, has to breathe the fruit of the Spirit, and these are things that we are learning just being in the church, and now being able to— they stress being in community groups and Bible studies, reading the Bible. I mean, I really do try to read every day. I just think that all of us can be the Gospel to everybody we encounter in the workplace. You know, it's not— I gave a speech yesterday talking about being in the workplace, and it's like, you know, be the fruit of the Spirit in the workplace. Be the healing balm of brokenness that is in the workplace with people who don't understand that perhaps seeking fame and fortune is not the way to salvation.

Especially where you're doing this, where you're working. Fox is a great place, but media is a tough industry.

It really is.

It's like Hollywood and some of the other industries.

Oh, absolutely. I think that the entertainment industry is filled with people who really do have a closer understanding of spirituality. I mean, I grew up playing the piano. I'm a pianist. I have a piano degree, and I really— piano is my first love. Music really is my first love. And there was a time, and there is a time, I feel like God really does speak to me through music. And it is, I think, as close to the divine you can almost get on earth. I mean, Bach always knew that music was really about praising God. It's not about anything else. All music was about praising God. And that's why he wrote in the bottom of his scripts, his manuscripts, "To God alone be the glory." I mean, just some derivation of that. But people in the workplace do not understand that if they're not worshiping God, they're worshiping something. That all of us are bowing to the authority of something. And most people are unaware of that. And I think once that becomes more apparent, that you can say, you can approach them in a gospel presentation that doesn't involve a scripture, that seems like it's saying, "Okay, well, whatever you are, whatever is your authority, that is your master. Whatever you're living for, that's your master.

And maybe you need a new master." What you just said about "To God be the glory," I actually have one and only tattoo. It's right here. It says, "Sola Deo Gloria." To God alone be the glory. As someone in the entertainment business, it doesn't take a genius to see that now everyone wants to be famous, right?

Right.

So as someone who's kind of, I guess you could say, like, made it, what advice would you give to the young people that want to make it one day and be famous?

Oh, just— that's hard because at one point that was me. I just want to be famous. I want to have my picture in the papers and the TV and be a star. Then you realize perhaps it's not you. Maybe God kind of like takes you on this journey, and then you realize, okay, well, I'm not gonna be the star, I'm not gonna have the prime time show, I'm not gonna do this, and I guess I'm still alive, and it's okay. But I think I started to learn that when I was a teenager. I was involved in pageants, and I lost a pageant that I really, really wanted, and I thought I was gonna die. And I didn't. And I came back and I was able to compete again with this attitude like, "Hmm, I can do this." And it doesn't matter. If I do well, I do well. If I don't, I don't. And I think the advice I have to give to young people is if your fear of losing is greater than your desire to win, you are between a rock and a hard place. You just will not win. You just can't. You just can't, and life will always be horrible for you because you will be afraid that you will want to win only because you just don't want to lose because you think it'll kill you and crush you.

It's not the journey or the path, then. It's the attitude that you take through that.

Right, but it takes losing and losing something you really want in order to understand that, and I was blessed enough to learn it at an earlier age. People who learn it when they're adults or middle-aged, it's painful for them.

It's harder because we live in this social media world where everybody is flocking to Facebook or Twitter to be famous, right? You have the Vine celebrities.

I mean, you're kind of famous on Twitter. I don't know about that.

I don't even know how to tweet.

I'm like, what?

What's going on?

What's this here?

How do you do this? But it's a vehicle. I mean, people are using it as a vehicle to try to build their own brands up. I think there are more people chasing this than ever. They will say things to try to make it happen. They will do things to try to make it happen. So there's another level of this that I think is troubling.

It's just so hard because I remember when we were at the Templeton Cambridge Fellowship and journalists were talking around and some journalist from a London newspaper, I won't say which one, it was one of the big ones, and he'd been in the industry for a long time and he was probably in his 40s, you know, and he said, you know, I get these young kids in the office and all they want is their own blog. They just don't want to do a story and not get a byline. They just don't want to do the work. They all want to be stars and snarky. And I said, and he says, you know what, write the story as a good journalist. Just do that. But this is what we've noticed about the generation is like, they all want to be stars. And I don't know how we created this, that it's not good enough to just be one of the workers. You gotta like be the star.

Yeah, no, it's a millennial problem too. And who knows the next generation after? Hopefully it's fixed, but I don't think it will be.

Well, I mean, this is something— where we are now didn't just spring up out of nothing. I mean, there was a seed that started long ago, and somehow we nourished it, we built it, we watered it, we fed it, and now it's the way it is. And who knows where it's going? I mean, Tommy Nelson of Denton Bible Church said— in Denton, Texas, he said, "What one generation tolerates, the next generation embraces." And just think about how that goes from one generation to the next, to the next, to the next. At one point we say this could never happen, and 30 years later, well, it happens.

So we tolerated participation trophies.

Well, we tolerated in order to breed tolerance, in order to say, oh, that's just young people, and then we build it to the point where, no, this is not good, but nobody knows the difference because we've traded a truth for a lie. And Isaiah warns about, woe to those who make evil evil good and good evil.

Exactly.

What would you say, um, and this is my last question for you, I don't know if anybody else has anything, but you've had this career, you've had this impact, you've covered these stories, you now have written a book about faith. Um, what has been the most rewarding part of all of that for you?

Getting it done. This book really was 10 years in the making, and it was like, what is this about? What am I doing? Um, you know, this is just, um, the rewarding part is hopefully that it will help spread the gospel, that people will see God in a different understanding, that it's not something that's out there. It's right here in front of you. And you just need to sit. You can bow your head right now and worship the living God because he's right there. All he needs is for you to open the door of your heart to come in, and he will transform it in ways you would never imagine.

Preach. That's the mic drop right there. Thank you so much. This segment was brought to you by the colors pink and green, apparently. But again, thank you so much, and check out the book Lighthouse Faith by Lauren Green. And also check out PureFlix.com and Faithwire.com for more news and entertainment.