Skye Jethani (Author of What If Jesus Was Serious About Justice?)

Today's episode will begin in three minutes, but first I want to tell you about something crazy I'm doing for my new book, five Mere Christians. I've never seen an author do this before, but I'm giving a money back guarantee on this book. I'm so confident you're gonna love this book that if I'm wrong, if you pre order the book, you don't love it, I'm gonna send you a $20Amazon gift card as a money back guarantee. Why? Two reasons. One, this is a different book for me, right? I know this is a very different biography is what is Jordan Rayner doing? And I know it's risky, so I'm going to de risk it for you. Because listen, in my other books, Redeeming youg Time, the Sacredness of Secular Work, Master of One, etc, etc, I am telling you and me how we can glorify God in our work, but in five Mere Christians, I'm doing something very different. I'm showing you what that looks like practically through these unforgettable life stories of five Mere Christians from history. These are the top men and women that I would love to have on this podcast today if, you know, they weren't dead, right? So that's the first reason this is a risk and I'm gonna de risk this book for you. Here's the second reason. I'm just confident you're gonna love this book. My friend Mark Batterson said, quote, five Mere Christians proves that biographies can be extremely entertaining, profoundly helpful, and mercifully short. If you're looking for a book that combines the punch of a great sermon with the pace of a great thriller, this is it. Highly recommended. End quote. But here's the thing. In order to qualify for this money back guarantee, you got to do two things. Step one, pre order five Mere Christians in any format, hardback, ebook, audiobook, whatever. And then step two, go to 5merechristians.com and fill out the form on that page and that's it. But you got to do it by midnight Eastern Time on May 9. By filling out that form, you'll also get all of the pre order bonuses listed on 5 mereChristians. Calm and be entered to win this crazy, epic trip for two to Europe. So visit 5merechristians.com right now to sign up. Now, please enjoy today's episode. Hey friend. Welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast. I'm Jordan Raynor. How does the Gospel influence the work of mere Christians? Those of us who aren't pastors or religious professionals, but who work as database Architects, crossing guards, and bailiffs. That's the question we explore every week. And today, I'm posing it to my friend Sky Gitani, the brilliant, bestselling author of with what if Jesus Was Serious. And today we're going deep on his latest devotional book, what if Jesus Was Serious about Justice. Sky and I talked about the brain science, showing that rest is a prerequisite to empathy and doing justice in the world. We talked about why it's essential to remember that Christ both saved us on the cross and killed us on the cross. We also talked about the best laugh that Sky's ever gotten from an improv stage. Trust me, you are not going to want to miss this terrific episode with my friend, Sky Gitani. Sky, welcome back to the Mere Christians podcast.

Thanks, Jordan. I love being here.

All right, I got to ask, because I thought this is a fascinating little mention in the introduction of your new book, Improv. You started improv. How new is this?

What, three or four years?

Three or four years. What was the impetus for this? You're getting bored. You got grown kids that are leaving the house. What's going on?

I have a good friend who did improv when he was a college student, and for a couple years, he's been, like, during COVID especially, he. He wanted to. There's an improv theater here in Wheaton, and they do classes, and he wanted to sign up and do these classes, and they all got canceled because of COVID So Covid was ending, and they were opening up again. His name is Josh, and he was talking to me about it, and I was kind of thinking about it, and then he. He just was like, come on, let's do it together. It'll be more fun if we do it together. Why not? We'll just take a class. So I took a class, and I was hooked immediately. And here's the thing. And it doesn't come out super strong in the book, but, like, I was fascinated by how applicable the principles of improv were to life, to relationships, to work, to faith, to all these things. And so that was intriguing to me. But then, like you, I'm. I do a lot of public speaking, and I've developed that skill over decades, and I'm. I'm pretty comfortable when I'm on a stage, but I. I don't know how you do. When I'm speaking, I usually have written an entire manuscript of my talk.

Yeah, 100%. And it's a talk you've given, like, 30 times, right?

Well, not always. I mean, I used to preach. Every week, it was a different talk. But. But I would write a manuscript, and I would intern. I would internalize it, and I would speak without my notes. Right. So when I get up on a platform to speak, like, I know what I'm going to do. And improv required a completely different part of my brain, and I had to shut down that kind of scripted way of thinking and go to this improv. And I just. I loved the challenge of it. I enjoyed it. It was like therapy for me. And so I just kept taking more and more and more classes. So eventually I was. I was invited. Part of one of the teams at the theater. So now Josh and I are on that team together, and we perform with some regularity on the weekends.

This is amazing. We were talking before we recorded about me coming back up to Wheaton, and I got to schedule this around a Sky Gitani improv.

But here's the thing. Honestly, sometimes I am terrible, and it's just not good.

One minute on this. What's the best laugh you've gotten from the stage?

Oh, my gosh. Well, I've gotten some terrible laughs when I have.

You've gotten a lot of silence.

Yeah. There was one where I don't know how this exactly happened, but I was a toilet angel that tracks. Someone's on a toilet, and I come alongside them to, like, whisper into their ear and speak good things. And then there was a toilet demon. And in this conversation. But it was. It was wild. It was really, really weird. That got a lot of good laughs.

We're way off base. All right, I know you meant it. Improv. In the latest installment in this what if Jesus was serious devotional series, you wrote what if Jesus was serious about justice? I loved it. I'm exc. Did to contextualize it to the lies of the Christian professionals listening. But hey, man, as you know, that word justice means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. How can we define justice biblically?

Yeah, I mean, that's where the book really begins.

Is.

Is an acknowledgment that it is defined differently in different places. I made the parallel to pizza. Well, there's a lot of different pizzas out there. There's Chicago style pizza. There's New York style pizza. There's Detroit style.

Whatever.

There's different kinds of justice. Biblical justice is not the same as American legal justice or Marxist justice or whatever justice label you want to put on it. Biblical justice is synonymous with righteousness. It's actually the same word in both Hebrew and Greek. And you know, a lot of Christians have no problem talking about righteousness and righteous that, but we don't sometimes, depending on the community, find the same comfort level with the words. It's the same word. And what it simply means is for relationships to be in their proper order. So to have a righteous relationship with God means your relationship with God is in its right proper order. So justice is simply having everything, both our vertical relationship with God and our horizontal relationships with one another in the proper order that God ordained order so that everyone can flourish. Obviously those relationships get broken by sin and they need to be restored. That's justice. When they are warped or broken, it's injustice, it's unrighteousness. And so the idea of biblical justice is how do we pursue all these relationships in their proper ordering and where there is injustice, how do we cooperate with God and putting them back to the right order?

It's good. I love that you're already bringing up vertical and horizontal because you know, the theological tradition I grew up in never used the word justice. We were very much as David French says, who I love and you quote in the book Telephone Pole Christians, right. Concerned almost exclusively with our vertical relationship with God. Very little about the horizontal implic of the gospel that call us to do justice and transform the broader culture. Make the case here that we're called to both to be cross shaped Christians, if you will, concerned about both the vertical and the horizontal.

Well, how much time do you have?

Come on, take as much time as you want.

Let me get into something that's not in the book. Okay, so let's go all the way back to Genesis chapter one. And I don't want to get too far off track here, but like John Walton and other theologians have made a very compelling case that the seven day creation account is modeled on a temple inauguration ceremony which was very common in the ancient Near East.

Walton's book is fascinating.

Yeah, it can take years or decades to build a temple, but it's a seven day ceremony that actually inaugurates its function as a temple. You see this even in the Bible. The temple in Jerusalem is inaugurated in a seven day ceremony. In the ancient near east, in a pagan culture, the very last thing that happened at the temple inauguration is the image or the idol of the deity was put into the temple. You see that in Genesis Day 6, God creates His image. His selim is the Hebrew word. It's the same word for idol. He creates the man and the woman in his image. Now here's the part you may not Get. Unless you're from the ancient near east, which none of us, of course, are. In those cultures, it was believed that a community's responsibility was to care for the image or the idol of the deity. And if you don't care for and service that image, then the deity will unleash vengeance against you. So it could be disease or pestilence or famine or natural disaster. Some terrible thing could happen to the world if you don't properly care for this image of the deity, worst case scenario, the way you maintain the order of the cosmos is by caring for this deity, the image. And so if you don't do it appropriately, you don't have the right sacrifices, the right rituals, the right incantations, whatever. The sun may not rise tomorrow, whatever terrible things will happen in the. When you take that same idea and you apply it to the Hebrew scriptures, to the Old Testament, what it appears God is saying in Genesis chapter one is the way you honor my image, the way you honor me, the way you cooperate with me in the right ordering of the universe, is by caring for my image. And my image is one another. And so then you move into the Hebrew law, the Torah, the instructions you get throughout the Old Testament. And what is it about? If you don't care for the orphan and the widow and the foreigner, if you don't care for your fellow neighbors around you, I will vomit you out of the land. I will kick you out. This is exactly what pagan culture deities would say, if you don't care for my image, I'm going to kick you out and I'm going to do terrible things. It's curses. And then you get to the prophets. In Isaiah, chapter 1, Isaiah, chapter 58, God says that the worship of his people is detestable. He rejects their prayers, their sacrifices. He says, you honor me with your lips, but your hearts are far from me. That's not about emotion. He turns and then says, because you neglect the poor, you beat one another with wicked fists, you have unfair justice in the courts. And that's why he rejects their worship. Because the argument throughout the Hebrew Bible is that the only proper way to worship and honor God is to care for his image. And his image is one another. And so then you get to the New Testament and the expert in the law comes to Jesus and says, what's the most important commandment? He only asked Jesus for 1. But Jesus responds with 2. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. Why does he respond with two? Because he's Echoing exactly what the Hebrew Scriptures enforce from the. Literally, from the opening chapter, you cannot honor and love God without honoring and loving his image, which is one another. Then you get to Paul and he talks about the cross is the place where we are not just reconciled to God, but first we're reconciled to one another. He says this in Ephesians, chapter 2. The cross reconciles hostile people to one another and makes us into one new person, and then together reconciles us to God. So nowhere in Scripture, from beginning to end, can you ever, ever, ever separate your vertical relationship with God from your horizontal relationship with his image bearers. And any form of Christianity that says you can do that is an apostate form of Christianity.

It's good. Amen. Couldn't agree more. You, you pointed something out that I never heard before, that I thought was fascinating, that in order to glorify God by loving neighbor as self, we have to rest, because rest is a prerequisite for empathy and doing justice and. Tell us more.

Yeah, I know you've talked a lot about Sabbath rest and things like that, especially as it relates to work and faith and things. When you look at the commands around Sabbath keeping in the Old Testament, there's a number of different motivations given. For the one we always go to is, well, God created in seven, six days and he rested on the seventh. And that's. That's fine. That's there. I don't disagree. But when you read in Deuteronomy, for example, about, about the Sabbath, he explicitly says that you shall rest on the seventh day. Not just you, but of course, everyone in your household, foreigners, even animals are going to rest. Why? Because you were slaves in Egypt and you'll remember that I set you free. A slave didn't get a day off. So you're going to take a day off to remember your freedom, and then you're to extend that freedom to others. And part of the benefit of slowing down is that it gives us space to think. There's been a lot of brain research that shows that when people are incredibly busy and distracted, the empathy center of the brain gets deactivated. I mean, we all know this from our own experience. When you're hurried and rushed and worried, it's very difficult to truly emotionally engage with the people around you.

Hurry hurts. Inevitably.

Hurry hurts. Exactly. So it's interesting to me that God's command to slow down is directly related then to how we treat other people. Remember, you were a slave. Remember, the people that you have authority over, don't treat them the way you were treated, have empathy. You should remember what it was like. You're only going to be able to do that if you slow down. And remember when you slow down, you build the capacity for empathy. When you slow down, that part of your brain, that system two, as some call it, of your brain has time to kind of spool up and do its empathetic work. But so much of our culture today, whether it's just work or social media or screens or whatever, keeps us in this frenetic, crazy pace. And then you wonder why we're getting so angry and we lack empathy. And there's a now an empathy deficit some people are talking about in American society. Well, we don't slow down anymore to relate to the people.

These things are correlated. Yeah.

I mean, it's not. This isn't rocket science. Not even really.

This is not rocket science. It's brain science. That's pretty well documented.

It is. But even before we knew the brain science, we knew from experience this was true. Right?

This topic feels so big, feels so overwhelming. I've talked to listeners like Jordan. I get it. I get that I'm called to pursue justice in my work, but I'm one of 350,000 employees at PW. You see, right. Like, my role is so small. Can God really use me to do justice? And if so, how? How would you respond to that question? Sky? Wow.

The reality is, as a human being, you, gosh, you've written about this better than I have, Jordan. So I feel like I'm preaching to the choir a little bit. Or maybe the choir is preaching to the preacher. As a human being, you have authority to rule over something. And even if you're a cog in the wheel of this huge corporation with 300,000 people, like, you have authority over something. And whatever it is you do have authority over, as a follower of Jesus, you are called to cultivate that thing with justice, to have a properly ordered relationship. You may not be able to change the whole mechanism that you are a part of. So focus on what you can change. And that goes for our families. It even goes for children. I mean, we try to teach our kids like, treat, treat your siblings kindly. Like you're not the mom or the dad, but you're a sibling. Like, you have authority. You can choose how you're going to react in different ways. So I don't want to make this idea of justice like this grandiose, culture changing, world shaping. You need to totally transform the broken systems of capitalism or whatever. No, like, I get it. You're not going to be able to do that. What can you do? What relationships do you have responsibility for? It could just be the way that you interact with a co worker. It could be the fact that you've realized we are dramatically underpaying somebody in our area that is on it's unfair, unjust, whatever, like those things and you have the authority to change, change it or at least use your influence and persuasion you have over systems to the best of your ability.

Yeah, but it's that posture of like, yeah, I'm a cog in this big machine in my, my corner of creation that God has called me to subdue may be quote unquote small, but I'm going to orient myself within that space not to use the system to serve me, but to use the system however I can to bless others. And the size and scale of that is irrelevant. I love that you pointed to the Hebrew midwives as a reminder of how God can use small acts of justice. For those who don't remember. Can you briefly share that story from Exodus?

Yeah, this is an Exodus, chapter one. And Pharaoh is upset with how, how much the Hebrews have multiplied and he's threatened by them, so he enslaves them and then he's still threatened by them. So he orders that all Hebrew baby boys that are born be killed as soon as they're born. And the midwives decide, well this is wrong, this is unjust, we're not, we're not going to do it. They just defy Pharaoh's order. And then when they're dragged in in front of the officials and ask why aren't you killing these baby boys when they're born they say, hey, the Hebrew women are a lot stronger than Egyptian women and they give birth before we ever get there.

Such a great line.

It's not just a lie, but it's also a dig. But they dec to not cooperate with evil. And I think I quote Dallas Willard in that chapter where he talks about our obligation to gentle non cooperation with evil. So it isn't just about pursuing justice, but there are often times in our work, in our lives and our communities where we can just kind of go along with something we know to be wrong or unjust. And the Hebrew midwives show us, I mean these are the women at the very bottom of the hierarchy in ancient Egypt and they're defying the guy at the very top with gentle non cooperation. That's also part of our work of seeking justice is if we know that we are that something is disordering right relationship, we're just not going to participate in it.

Yeah, it's good. You said in that chapter quote, God's kingdom is subtle and often invisible rather than the spectacular and obvious. We may not all be called to lead great revolutions, but like the Hebrew midwives, we can gently subvert the evils we encounter every day. End quote. Which I love. How do you personally. Those guy, right, like you, you look around, you see all this injustice in your neighborhood, in Chicago, in the world. How do you personally pursue justice without giving in the. Into the temptation to hate the unjust? What are spiritual disciplines you have in place to love the unjust as you seek justice?

Well, I think the, the first one is from the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus talks about recognizing the log in our own eye rather than the speck in another's flipping.

The assumption that it's a log in their eye and a speck in mine.

Right. So there's that well used quote from GK Chesterton, apparently that the Times of London was doing an essay contest about what's wrong with the world and he gave the shortest response. It was just two words. I am right. So I am part of what's wrong in the world. I am an agent.

It's me. Hi. I'm the problem. It's me. Yes.

I am an agent of injustice. And later in the book, I talk about how one of the enemies that Jesus defeated on the cross was me. Like in American Christianity, we always talk about how Jesus saved me through the cross, but we don't want to talk about how Jesus killed me through the cross, but he did. I am part of the problem in this world. So before I just go around talking about how terrible everyone else is, I need to recognize I am part of this problem as well. And God had mercy on me. And so that should temper my approach to the injustice I see in others. But it doesn't mean it. You know, I don't practice that perfectly, for sure, but to be reminded of our own culpability and all this is a huge problem. You know, there's this tendency, and this is not just in the church, it's not just in Christianity, but in our culture today. There's just this spirit of absolutism where we think that everyone's walking around today and they're either wearing a black hat or a white hat, right? They're either a good guy or a bad guy. And if we can just delineate who's who and push away the bad guys and exalt the good guys, and everything will be all right. And that's an incredibly naive. I remember there was one of one of these terrible school shootings that happened. Was it Sandy hook back in 2012. And the head of the NRA said, you know, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. And I'm like, people don't walk around with the label good guy, bad guy.

Like, we're not wearing name tags.

Exactly. And I know there are days where I'm the bad guy and I'm not the good guy. So it's not that simple. But that tends to be how we view everything. And we have to realize in the Christian view would be the line between good and evil does not run between us and them. It runs through every human heart. So until we acknowledge that piece of this, we're not going to be in a humble posture to be able to be an agent for justice, because it'll be, we'll be an agent of self righteousness, of really what, what we'll be.

Yeah, that's really, really good. Our listeners love how practical we make these episodes. Right. This is the question I asked you before, you know, I'm at PwC, what does this look like practically? But there is something to be said for the fact that as our mutual friend John Houghton likes to say, you can't outsource discernment. Right. In other words, like, don't rely on sky, don't rely on me to tell you what it looks like practically to do justice in your work. Discern the how yourself in communion with God and his people. Would you agree, Sky? And if so, riff on this for a little bit.

Totally 100. I remember early on when I was a pastor at my local church. I was preaching regularly and the senior pastor was giving me feedback on my sermons. One of his critiques was, know, Scott, you're not giving enough practical application in your sermons. And he, he was super helpful in a lot of ways, but he was a baby boomer. Came coming out of a very kind of practical, more mega, church inspired sort of sentence. And I'm a Gen Xer and a little bit different. And he's like, you need to give more practical instruction. I'm like, I don't know the circumstances of everybody sitting there. There's 500 people in those seats. Like, I, it's going to be applied very differently to somebody who's 25 and single versus 65 and retired and married. Like, they're totally different. I don't know how to apply this to everybody. And I still stand by that. Like you, you have been given the Holy Spirit, you have been given the scriptures, you have been given God's spirit through the community that you are a part of. And you know your circumstances better than I do. This is one of the reasons I don't give marriage advice. I don't give parenting advice. I'm trying to figure out how to be married with my wife and I'm trying to figure out how to raise our three kids. And even among those three kids, they're radically different from each other. And what works for one doesn't work for another. So you think I'm going to come up with some like, here's the catch all principle for how to raise amazing children? No, I haven't figured it out yet with my three why would I know about your kids? Similarly, in your workspace, in your environment, where are the relationships broken? Where are they flourishing? What are the temptations to cooperate with evil? What does it mean to gently not cooperate? What is the threshold where you have to say, I have to walk away from this thing because it's my, my continued even presence here is a participation in evil that I cannot tolerate as a Christian. And when is it? No, you stay in like Daniel. You're at the right hand of the pagan king and you are there to advise godly adv. I don't know. I don't know. But you have been given what you need. And to the degree that my book or anything we say on this podcast inspires or helps, wonderful. But it's not enough.

Yeah, you gotta do the work.

You've gotta do the work.

Speaking of inspiration, one thing I personally found to be immensely helpful in baptizing my imagination on the how of living out the gospel in my work is reading really great biographies of mere Christians throughout history. Not only do they show me, rather than tell me what it looks like practically to follow Jesus in my work, they also renew my imagination of what's possible for God to do through my work. And I loved the story you told in what if Jesus Was Serious about Justice? From Andrew Young's biography. So here's the story I'm going to read. Evidence that God's power deliverance is still at work in the world is found in Andrew Young's book on the civil rights movement. He tells about a march on Easter Sunday in Birmingham in 1964. Five thousand people were dressed in their Sunday best, ready to march to jail where Martin Luther King Jr. Was being held. Everything began peacefully. But then Bull Connor's police force arrived with Guns and dogs and firefighters with hoses. So Bull Connor's police force arrives, the march are stopped. And here's what Andrew Young says, quote, white Walker and I are leading the march. I can't say we knew what to do. I know I didn't want to turn the march around. I asked people to get down on their knees and offer a prayer. Suddenly, Reverend Billups, one of the most faithful and fearless leaders of the old Alabama Christian movement for human rights, jumped up and hollered, the Lord is with this movement. Off your knees. We're going on. Stunned at first, Bull Connor yelled, stop him. Stop him. But none of the police moved a muscle. Even the police dogs that had been growling and straining at their leashes were now perfectly calm. End quote. And he goes on to just describe this miracle. And I think the point you were trying to make is, hey, God is still at work doing justice in this world through you and me, right, Sky?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a. It's an echo of Daniel's story in the lion's den in a way, right? Shutting the mouths of beasts and all that. But we have a part, a role to do in this, to participate. Going back to those Hebrew midwives, right? Gentle, non cooperation with evil Moses finding the courage to go before Pharaoh and say, let my people go, like God uses us. And in that story, he uses the courage of those civil rights marchers to just keep moving forward, keep moving forward. And God met them. And it doesn't always happen that way. I'm not saying that that's a guaranteed outcome, but the stories of scripture, of God protecting his people or advocating for his people or putting his people into right relationship and restoring justice. I believe that God is still active in the world today and we are invited to participate with him in that way. We need to discern what is my role.

Yes. It's not let go and let God. It's not okay. Yep, the world's unjust. We're waiting for Jesus return to do the work. We are called to play a part. We're not going to finish that work. Christ will finish that work. I don't know if you remember this. You and I were talking in Chicago really briefly about 18 months ago about Fannie Lou Hamer. Do you remember this conversation?

Yeah, vaguely.

Vaguely. Because I was starting work on this biography on Fannie Lou Hamer that's a part of a collection we're about to release in a couple of months. Although I think by the time this comes out, the book will be out. But she's a great example. I mean, she, she grew up in this incredibly segregated Mississippi in the 1960s, and she's going to church and hearing about how people with her skin color didn't have the right to vote. And she just heard this sermon one day. It was like, hey, get up out of your seats, go register to vote. We're God's not going to put it in our lap. Like, we've got a role to play in this thing. And I think that'll preach to modern believers. Today we're seeing all this news about injustice in our Facebook news feeds, Instagram news feeds. We're not just called to sit on our hands in Facebook news feeds. We're called to do something about it. Amen.

Amen. And this gets more complicated when you take these biblical principles and then you try to apply them in a modern democratic republic like ours. I mean, such things did not exist in the ancient world.

So.

And there's interesting conversations going on right now about what exactly does it mean for a Christian to engage faithfully in this way. But one of the dilemmas we have is, and I've talked to my friend Mike Erie about this, like in our constitutional system, we're not against Caesar because we are Caesar. Like it's we the people, right? So it's not as easy to say, well, that's give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and give to the Lord what is the Lord? Well, who is Caesar today? It's not the president, it's not Congress, it's not Washington D.C. the ultimate, that political human authority in our country is us. So what responsibility then do I have as a citizen, as a voter, as someone with free speech, as someone who can mobilize and use all my rights as an American citizen, what responsibility do I have to pursue justice? You see Paul in the New Testament as a Roman citizen appealing to his citizenship status to do what God was calling him to do. Well, how do we use our American citizenship status to pursue justice? There's gonna be disagreement about what that looks like and different discernment, different communities in different ways. But. But to say, ah, throw up my hands, doesn't matter. I'm just gonna be all about Jesus and not care about the Caesar thing. I don't think that's a faithful response given our context.

That's good. There's something to be said though too. I think we can have such an over emphasis on political solutions, right to injustice. But there's also cultural solutions. And in fact, when you look at history and big changes politically, they're almost always pre. By people's hearts and minds being changed by acts of culture prior to that political change. I think about William Wilberforce in Parliament and Hannah Moore writing poetry that changed the people's hearts to the issue of slavery. Who's doing that now? Like, who's doing the cultural work that you're really excited about? That's awakening, that's baptizing people's imaginations about what their role might be in solving some of the injustices that.

That's a great question. I mean, there's always been a power in storytelling. And I think what's hard. And you're younger than me, but I remember when an America existed where there were three or four network television channels and when there. When there was a giant miniseries event like north and south or I forget some of the others that were huge shogun or whatever. Like the whole country would be glued to this stuff and we'd all be shaped by the same storytelling. Or there was a handful of blockbuster movies and that was it.

But.

But we're so fractured today that the storytelling is so siloed. And I'm not saying it's not important. It is. And it doesn't have to be explicitly Christian story.

Correct. 100% Amen. I think it's often far more powerful when it's not right.

I mean, find the people who love the chosen and whatever. It's great. It's wonderful. Go for it. But like to hold up stories that emphasize the sacrifices required to make broken things whole, to restore relationships where they should be. To going back to what I said earlier, stories that honor humans as the image of God even when they are different than me, even when they believe differently than me or they live differently than me. Like there's still that basic human dignity that is the way we honor it. Like stories that emphasize that are inspiring. So I think that's one way it happens. But I think there is an inverse. As I said earlier, we're going back to those Hebrew midwives, the gentle non cooperation with evil. When there are cultural products that are deconstructing that, that are dehumanizing, that are fostering injustice and broken relationships, our minimum role is to not cooperate with those things. And unfortunately, when I look at the American church today, too often we're not just cooperating with those things, but we're advocating those things. I mean, rhetoric that dehumanizes anyone is not okay. It is against the ordering that God has for the world. And yet some Christians are cheering that on as if it's central to their faith, and it's grotesque. So non cooperation with that is just as important as advocating good storytelling and an appropriate view of our neighbors.

Did you see this as us?

No.

It's such a fascinating show. Maybe the last great network drama, right? Like, it ended on NBC, right? As streaming was eclipsing network television. But that show did more to move my heart towards orphan care than any sermon ever did. Not explicitly Christian show. I don't even know if any of the members of the writers room are followers of Jesus. By God's common grace. Frankly, it doesn't really matter. Right. They showed what it looked like to do justice practically, and, man, it was super, super powerful. All right, sky, four questions. We wrap up every show with, number one. What job would you love for the Lord to give you to do on the new earth, free from the curse of sin? Last time you were here, you said you want to keep teaching. You want to add improv to this list.

I. I think all of life is improv. There's no script.

This is improv.

This is for sure. Okay, let me think. I. Yeah, all right. Last time I. I said keep teaching. I don't know if I've shared this with you before. I'm not a cook. I don't cook. I guess there's a difference. I put it this way. I can cook. I'm not a chef. Right. Like, that's a whole different thing. But when I look at really beautiful cooking and a chef who's really gifted at that, I think that might be the perfect vocation.

Because it's idyllic.

It is idyllic, but it has all the qualities. Number one, there's beauty, right? I mean, visual beauty, smell, taste. There's abundance. Like, create something that is practically useful to your body, right? To keep it energized. And then there's this ordering. You're taking random things, and you're organizing them in a way that magnifies their potential. Like, it's order, beauty, and abundance just perfectly. So when I think of, like, what is the ultimate kingdom vocation? I think it might be a chef.

That's a killer answer. Do you know Artie Sequeira?

No.

Oh, my gosh. You should know Artie. Artie was on the show, and she is a chef on the Food Network, and she was talking about just imagining smell on the new Earth. Shake Jordan, the coffee we're gonna taste is gonna knock his socks off. Like, there's so many scents that we can't even sense right now. So I love that chef's a good answer. That may be one of my favorite answers so far. Sky. All right, if we opened up your Amazon order history, which books do we see over and over and over again that you're giving away to friends?

Oh, that's a good question. Probably lately it's been NT Wright's book Simply Christian. I just, I've had a number of people in my life recently who are just like, I need to understand the basics of this faith. And that's the one I kind of go to over and over and over again. But there are so many. Another one is Henri Nouwen, Return of the Prodigal Son. Beautiful book. Those are two that come to mind.

That's great. That's a killer list. Who would you most like to hear on this podcast talking about how their faith is shaping the work they do in the world? Ideally, somebody who's not a pastor or Christian author like yourself.

I, I may have shared this with you before, but my white whale, the one I want on my show is Stephen Colbert.

Ooh.

And I've heard him talk briefly at times about his faith. He did an interview once with d'. Alupa. Is that her name? Lupa Dia Dalupa, whatever her name is. Anyway, and she asked him, how does your Catholic faith inform your comedy? And he had an answer right away. It was amazing, like, and it was really good. I think it's on YouTube somewhere. I would love to have a longer sit down conversation with him or listen to you have a conversation with him talk about how Christian faith impacts comedy and entertainment.

That's a great answer. We've never invited Colbert.

I've tried.

I mean, obviously tough get, right. But hey, you miss 100 of the shots you don't take. We've, we got a lot of yeses that we shouldn't have gotten on the show. We're gonna make that ask. All right, sky, you're talking to this global audience of your Christians doing a bunch vocationally. What's one thing you want to say or reiterate to them before we sign off?

Oh, man. It's probably the same thing I've said on your show before, but a reminder that God does not need them, but he does want them. And we talked earlier about, hey, we're called to cooperate with God in this work of justice. Absolutely. But he doesn't need us.

The with comes before the four.

Exactly. He's going to redeem all things with or without us. And as valuable as you are to him, and as valuable and meaningful as your work is, he can do it without you. And the most important thing is that you're actually in communion with him. He wants you. So that's always my go to message for people. And I think if you have that foundation, then the rest falls into place.

I'd love to have a conversation with you and Oliver Berkman on this tension of the cosmic significance of our work and the cosmic insignificance of our work. Because he's handing at this in 4,000 weeks. I'm like, there's something really, really juicy here that we gotta unpack sometime. All right, sky man, I want to commend you as always for the exceptional work you're doing for the glory of God and the good of others. Thank you for the reminder that to fully follow Jesus means, yes, vertical but also horizontal righteousness and for helping to baptize our imaginations to the end. Guys, Sky's new book is what if Jesus Was Serious About Justice? It is excellent, as is everything Sky's putting out. Sky man, thanks for hanging with us.

Thanks, Jordan.

I love that episode with my friend Sky Jatani. I hope you did too. Hey, if you want to dive deeper into a super practical example of what it looks like to work for justice without hating, the unjustice guy and I talked about I could think of no better example than Fanny Lou Hamer. This woman who I mentioned in the episode, Fannie Lou Hamer, was this poor black sharecropper and Mississippi who in 1962 was falsely imprisoned and beaten by police for having the audacity to register to vote. Which, oh by the way, was legal. And the abuse she suffered as a result would have led many people to hate those who oppressed her. But by God's grace, she boldly confronted the injustices of her day and refused to hate, refused to cancel, refused to retaliate against her enemies. I tell you the full story for life with super practical takeaways that you can apply in your own work today in my new book, Five Mere Christians, which drops May 6, you can visit five merechristians.com right now to learn about the other four men and women featured in this book and order your copy. Thank you guys so much for listening. I'll see you next week. Hey friends, this is your last chance to claim all the amazing pre order bonuses for five mere Christians before they go away at 11:59pm Eastern Standard Time on May 9. I've never offered this many pre order bonuses on a book before, so when you fill out the form@5merechristians.com number one you're going to be entered to win an incredible trip for you and a friend to tour CS Lewis's favorite spots in Oxford, explore Olay, Kirk Christensen's former stomping grounds at Lego headquarters in Denmark, and much more. Number two, you'll be invited to join my first ever interactive reading, culminating in a zoom call with me and my co author on this book, Kaylee Cox. Number three, you're going to be getting a money back guarantee to try the book risk free. And number four, you'll also get access to a free course I'm not selling anywhere called how to write a book 10x faster and better with an Affordable co Author. You can claim all these bonuses in just two simple steps. Step 1 Pre order 5 mere Christians in any format you want. It can be hardback, ebook, audiobook, whatever. And you can order it from wherever. Doesn't matter to me. Step 2 Go to 5Mere Christians.com and fill out the form of that page. And that's it. I'll send you all those bonuses. You'll be entered into the sweepstakes with one simple form submission. But hey, don't wait all of these off, all of these offers, all these bonuses. They're going away at 11:59pm Eastern Standard Time on May 9th. So visit 5Mere Christians.com right now to claim your bonuses.