Voices In My Head Episode 380

This episode of Voices in My Head is brought to you by Podbean. With Podbean, you can create professional podcasts in minutes without any programming knowledge. Best of all, everything is mobile ready right from the start. Visit podbean.com/voices to find out more. That's podbean.com/voices.

Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Now make sure to let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes. Or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. By the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSay where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head.

Hey, welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James, and I'm so glad you're here with me today. You know, the name of this show is Voices in My Head, of course, and that's because I wanted to talk about a broad variety of topics, and one way that I can do that is to just talk about sometimes a few things that have been on my mind lately. So let me start today, and what I know is going to be a pretty short podcast. We're actually in the middle of what's called District Assembly this week, and in just a few minutes our services are going to be starting up again. But I've been viewing them online because I'm trying to be safe and do social distancing and all that. But I haven't had a chance on the podcast to really talk about the new music video, Love Our Enemies. Since it has been released. And I just want to thank you all for sharing that video. It has gotten so much coverage from so many different places. Places like CCM Magazine, Jesus Freak Hideout, New Release Today. I shouldn't have started naming names because I'm now— I'm gonna forget. Howells Magazine has been covering it. And we've had places that are even overseas in Europe that have been doing things about the music video and just kind of what it has meant in this time. And even local papers here in Springfield, Ohio, the story hasn't been released yet, but I was contacted by the local paper and they wanted to talk about the Love Our Enemies music video. I'm really pleased with how it turned out. I'm pleased by the response. People have been so kind, whether they've whether they've had some qualms with it, they've been wonderful to have conversations about with that. My only regret is I'm not able to tour right now because nobody's able to tour right now, and unless you can figure out a way to do some, some drive-in radio type shows, and I haven't quite figured that out yet. But I did want to take a moment and say thank you. I also hope that you enjoyed last week's episode. I haven't been able to get guests like I would like to in the last few weeks, but last week it was fun and for me to be able to share an episode of Things Not Seen with my friend David Dalt here on this show. He has a wonderful NPR radio show and podcast called Things Not Seen, and it was so good to be able to catch up with him. And we recorded that episode a few weeks ago, and I was glad to be able to share it here on my show. Please check out David Dalt's podcast, Things Not Seen, if you enjoyed our conversation last week. He has a lot more interesting guests than me on there all the time. And it's one of my favorite shows to listen to. What else do I want to talk to you about now? Well, also along with the "Love Our Enemies" music video, the song also released on the radio the same day that the video released. And when was that? The 9th, I think, of July. That same week, by the 11th, it charted on 2 different charts. What happens a lot of times in radio, if you don't know how this often works, and you might wonder, how do radio stations get songs to play? Well, you can go through places like Play MPE, and you can have them distribute the song for you, and they'll send it out to a number of radio stations. I think it went out to over 1,000 radio stations internationally, both in the US and nationally, and they have a choice of either downloading the song or streaming the song for their stations. And the first week of release release, it charted at both number 18 for downloads and number 11 for streams through those different radio stations, both nationally and internationally. So I, I just don't think I've ever had that happen before where I've been on two different charts at the same time. I've been on a few radio charts, but a lot of these are actually reporting radio stations. So Lord willing, that'll be a help in, in this time when I can't travel like I would like to, but hopefully the message is still getting out. It's a hard thing to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, and yet that's the call that Jesus has called us to. So I'm grateful that it is getting a hearing from a lot of people and that people are sharing it, and I hope it has resonated with you.

What I quickly want to talk about for the rest of the podcast, I have been having some ideas going around through my head, and I literally am going to share some voices in my head, things that I've been thinking about. They don't all necessarily correspond to each other. They don't necessarily not correspond to each other. But I want to start with, with a joke that I have my own version of, and I've heard variations on it, but here we go. A middle-aged man was attending a political rally, and he was sitting right in the middle of the hall where this political event was being held.

And suddenly, without warning, he just became violently ill. He was throwing up uncontrollably. The crowd started dispersing around him. He was laying on the floor. He could just could barely move, and he just kept throwing up, and he was so sick, so sick, and nobody was helping him. And finally, one person at this political rally, full of compassion, he walked up to the man who was so desperately sick on the ground, and he put his hand on his shoulder, and with kind words he said, "I know just what you mean." I think that's a funny joke because man, do I feel like that in this season that we're in. It feels like it has been political rally season for the last 400 years, but especially now as we're less than 100 days out from the election. So rest assured, I'm not going to talk about politics on this show other than the politics of Jesus, because I'm sick of the politics of Republicans and Democrats and all those things. The kingdom of God is such a better politic, and as a Christian, you're going to be more on the left than your right-leaning friends, and you are going to be more on the right than your left-leaning friends, because you have decided as a Christian you follow Jesus, and He gets all of your allegiance. You just do not fit into any of those boxes anymore. So you speak up against things that are unjust, and you speak up against evil, and you speak up for righteousness, and for goodness, and truth. One of those truths that I wanted to revisit today— I came across it in my devotions again, and I did a short podcast on this maybe a year or two ago, but it was about the words that Jesus speaks about the poor you will always have with you. And a lot of people have justified that passage and said, "Well, that's why we shouldn't spend all of our effort helping the poor." I think that Jesus' words, "The poor you will always have with you," it's not an invitation for us to be apathetic about the needs of the poor among us. And right now there are a lot of poor among us. We have people out of work. We have unemployment at a higher rate than we've ever had since the Great Depression. People are in need. It doesn't always look like it, but there are people in need around us. And I think that these words of Jesus when he tells the church, "You will always have the poor among you," I think those are words that describe a faithful church. That a church that excludes the poor is not a church of Jesus. Almost as if to say, "The poor must always be included among you because you are my followers. The poor you will always have among you." If you follow Jesus, you will have the poor among you. If you don't have the poor among you, guess what? You're probably not following Jesus. And that's a hard truth. It's a hard reality for us. Jesus wants us Jesus wants us not only to care for the poor, he wants us not to see them as others. He wants us to make them a part of our fellowship. Because in Christ, as we know, we don't have those distinctions anymore. We don't have poor and rich, and slave and free, and barbarian and Scythian, and man and woman, male, female, gay, straight. We have our new identity that is called Christian. We are forgiven. We are people of grace, and that is who we are called to be. And so the poor you will always have with you. It was just something I was thinking about again, and that made me think of a couple other things this week too. I was just literally jotting notes, and these are not necessarily related, as I said before, but they're not unrelated. As you know, if you listened a few weeks ago to my episode with Michael Petit, we were talking about Star Trek. And I've seen, I think, every episode of every Star Trek show except for the animated series, but I've been rewatching some of the shows of The Next Generation on Pluto TV because they offer it for free, and that got me back hooked again watching Star Trek. And there was a line at the end of an episode that just flew past me probably the first time. There's an episode called The Measure of a Man, you know, and we talked about caring for the poor, um, but it's interesting what an incredibly pro-life message that Star Trek has. Especially Star Trek: The Next Generation, as you're watching it, they're always dealing with the idea of what is life, and they never want to interfere with life, and they certainly don't want to kill life as part of their Prime Directive. And, and it's just something about that show that it has revolved around for so long. And so the episode, if you don't know much about it, Data is a character who is an android, and yet he seems to, in his quest to want to be human, Uh, he seems more human than a lot of the humans on the show a lot of times. Well, there's an episode in season 2, episode 9, called "The Measure of a Man," and Data is basically put on trial to find out if he is a life form or if he is a machine. Does he qualify to be a living being? And there is a trial about this, actually, and, and part of this trial, what happens is one of his friends Commander Riker has to be the prosecutor because that's the rule of the trial that they're going by. And Captain Picard is, is defending him and is defending Data. And it really makes for an interesting episode because if, if it's proven that Data is not a life form, then he can be taken apart and treated like a lab rat, basically, because Starfleet says we own him, we can do what we want with them. And Data is of the mind, no, I am a real, you know, almost like Pinocchio becoming a real boy. I am a, I am a real living being. And it creates all kinds of discussions, especially when you're talking about what constitutes life. When does life start? What does it mean to have a life? Do you have to have blood flowing through your, your veins? Is it, is it a sentient being enough to be considered life? All kinds of questions raised. Well, at the end of the show Data— just the spoilers, you know, on a 20-year-old show— Data, the trial actually goes in his favor and Riker loses. And Riker is thankful that he has lost the prosecuting side, but he nearly wins. And Data comes to get Commander Riker and he says something to the extent of, "There's a celebration going on to celebrate the victory. Would you come join us?" And Riker tells him, "I don't have any right to be there." Says, "I almost won, and I almost had you decommissioned, and I don't have any right to be there, Data. I shouldn't have done it." And Data asks him, said, "You had no choice though, right? Because if you hadn't done that, then Starfleet would have just taken over. They required someone to be the opposing side, and if you hadn't done that, then I surely would have gone and been decommissioned for whatever Starfleet's use was." And Riker said, "Yes, that's true." And this was the line that stood out to me. Data said, "The action, that action injured you and saved me. I will not forget it." And talk about a moment of like, wow, almost a Christ-like moment. "That action injured you and saved me. I will not forget it." I think as Christians we can relate to that, can't we? As not only our Savior who laid his life down on behalf of us. It injured him, it saved us, and let us not forgive it. But in the same way that we lay down our lives for others, whether it be for the poor that we already talked about, or whether it be in just simple ways that people are being honestly such babies about— just wearing a mask, you know. So we do it for others. It's not because we're scared we're going to get it, it's because it has been proven scientifically these masks can keep the virus from spreading. And we want to take care of the people around us in the best way that we can. So, you know, the action that may injure you, if that's something that, you know, you have a hard time with, it may save another. And, and we shouldn't forget that. And so I really appreciated that in this time that we're in. When we're looking at people who are suffering, and there are many people who are suffering right now, now. One thing I heard recently from a wise Jewish rabbi, he said, "When you explain away a person's suffering, you are always wrong." When you explain away a person's suffering, you're always wrong. We always want to try to fix a person's loss, but we can't fix their loss. We can only sit with them and help them find ways of living with that loss that they experience, and help them find new life in the midst of it. The thing that's so hard right now for so many of us is we are experiencing loss. And what happens with loss is something that we had is gone and we're not getting it back. Uh, we have to come to terms with that because the way that we lived just a few months ago, that's gone now. And it causes us grief, it causes us loss because In some ways, deep down, we know we're not getting it back. No, I don't mean that this virus is gonna last forever, but things have changed, and they will change. The way that we interact with each other has changed. We're all trying to figure out what that means, and unfortunately right now, we don't have a single authoritative voice that is respected by everybody that can speak into our moment. People are so polarized right now. It would really help if we had someone with the moral authority that could stand up not talking to just Republicans, not talking to just Democrats, not talking to people from a perspective of them being voters, but someone with a moral authority almost like Nelson Mandela had in Africa, and could speak into our situation, and speak wise words into our moment, and people would say, "Oh, I needed that." You know, there's something to be said for preachers in this moment. Well, we may not have one figure like that to speak for all of our nation, but hopefully in our churches we have pastors that can speak and be that voice. I'll close with this one story that William Willimon tells, and I'm going to paraphrase it, so don't take it as a word-for-word story. But there was this town that back in the '60s, desegregation hit the town hard. People were having fights in the street about it, people who were co-workers and neighbors. That's how upset people were. They didn't want people of color in their neighborhoods, and they wanted the whites-only places like water fountains and bathrooms and all those things to continue. And this town was just being destroyed by this. And one night the town council had a meeting, and mostly it was all white people that came together in this town. And they railed on for a couple hours, and they got up to the microphone and they started talking about all those people and why we can't have them here and they're going to ruin everything. And There was a preacher from the community there that was sitting and listening. And towards the end of the evening, he had enough, and he went up to the microphone, and he turned the microphone around, not to talk to the town council, but to all the people who had been sitting there that evening perpetuating this. And he said to the town, he said, "I have been your pastor since I came here from seminary." I'm an old man now. I have married many of you. I will bury many of you. I have preached to you every week, and I would have thought that after all these years of preaching and trying to disciple you, it would have made a difference, but I can see now it hasn't. And I am ashamed to be your pastor. And he turned around and he walked out the door, and there was a silence that went over that place, and the meeting was over. That town had very few problems with desegregation again because of one faithful man with a moral authority who had lived among his people, and when the time was right to speak the truth, he did it. I want to encourage all of you to try to be that moral voice in your community. You may not be a preacher, but you do have people in your life that you can speak to. You do have people that you can love, that you can listen to, and when the moment is right to speak truth, it can be spoken. All that is to say, I love you guys. I thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. I know this was a different kind of episode, but I hope it was fruitful for you. I've gotta get off here for now because I'm going to an evening— gonna be watching an evening service of our District Assembly for the Church of the Nazarene. I hope you all are doing well. Drop me a line sometime if you want to. rick@rickleejames.com is my email. You can find me on Twitter @RickLeeJames. I'd love to hear from you. Thank you as always for listening to Voices in My Head. I'll be back soon with another guest, so you guys take care.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or a speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this will be online. And now for the benediction: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.