Mission and the Four Questions of Faithful Presence

Open the original episode on Substack for the synchronized transcript.

0:09 Greetings and welcome to another episode of Season 2 of the Faithful Presence Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Langer, ordained minister and founder of Faithful Presence. We have been in Washington, D.C. since 2021, equipping servants and leaders working in our nation's capital to flourish as they participate in Christ's mission of making all things new.

0:34 We do that through providing spiritual, emotional, relational, vocational, ideological, cultural, and evangelical discipleship. We also support the local church in equipping their local members for Christ-centered participation and engagement with the public square. It is good to be back with you. It is a beautiful evening in Northern Virginia as I record this podcast. Since I've been with you,

1:02 my wife and I took a little bit of a vacation to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We went down to Corolla and spent five days there. It was beautiful. It was a little cloudy the first few days, but it cleared up after that. We just had an absolutely wonderful time. We've also launched... The Presence Journal,

1:21 which is now online, we've got some excellent articles in that from some podcast alumni and board members. Charlie Self has got an excellent article in there on Aquinas and the markets. Abe Cho and Greg Perry have an article. Essentially, it's the background for the interview that we did with them on the podcast in the

1:43 kind of reexamining the importance of table fellowship in developing a community that can live in faithful presence the way that we're called to do. Also shared a document that's been near and dear to my heart in two different church plants by Tim Keller. I know that there's kind of just this flood of Tim Keller information out there.

2:05 Every ministry is promoting the work that Tim Keller has done, their interactions with him. And, you know, faithful presence is no different. We are here in large part because of the ministry of Dr. Keller, the way that his ministry impacted my life, the way that I saw ministry, the way that I developed,

2:26 as he has with so many others. But back when I was at Covenant Seminary, he shared this document about about how to deal with defeaters. And basically what he says, his position is that every culture, every group has a set of defeater beliefs that are the obstacle that keep them from

2:48 moving from seeker or skeptic to true believer, to a person who's given their life to Christ. And what he says is it's important that we take those defeaters honestly, that we don't make straw men out of them, and that we actually engage them with the wisdom and knowledge that Scripture offers to us.

3:11 So we also shared that document. I think it's about nine or ten pages. It's just absolute gold. It's all over the internet. I mean, if you searched for it and you knew what you were looking for, you could find it. But we included it in the Presence Journal just because I don't know that a lot of

3:27 people know that it's out there. And then we also have an article by our own ministry resident, Nicole Rickers, wrote a wonderful, wonderful essay on the vice of sloth and how that isn't what you think it is. And by misunderstanding it, we have done serious damage to our own humanity and

3:50 that has led a lot of us to just kind of fill our lives with busyness. And that was really the larger essay that I wrote was really on this idea of what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to function as a created creature?

4:08 And how do we move from this kind of ever nagging, ever pursuing thing call to over-function, to accomplish more things, to operate at a level that is really almost godlike. And so I would encourage you to check out the Presence Journal. You can find it at faithful-presence.org, and we've got a content tab right there.

4:35 You can just click right on that and go to it. The way we've structured the Presence Journal is a good portion of the material is free. You can just take a subscription. You can kind of look at whatever you want to look at there. But then we also have premium content for a small fee,

4:52 and that includes the Presence Journal, some extended versions of the Faithful Presence podcast, as well as a deeper Presence podcast that we're working on. And probably every four to six weeks, we're also going to have a kind of in the news and cultural roundtable with some guests. Hopefully these things will all be encouraging to you.

5:12 We would love for you to check that out. So today, today on the podcast, what I want to talk about is mission statements and specifically applied mission statements. And so there's a bunch of mission statements here. Scripture. You know, Genesis 1, we have the creation mandate, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.

5:33 A couple things about that. First of all, God's talking to both Adam and Eve. The creation mandate is not given just to man. The creation mandate is given to man and woman. And that's important. It's important because I think that the church has done an absolute disfavor to the

5:57 complementary role of women that we are supposed to have. And we've done that by kind of over-projecting the role of man and under-defining the role of woman. And God says, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. And maybe you will say, oh, well, you know, after Eve sinned, then there's a new set of rules.

6:23 Yeah, you'd be wrong about that because— God says the exact same thing after the flood, and he repeats it over and over and over again, that phrase, throughout Genesis. So we know that that phrase is intended as a mission statement for God's people to be fruitful, multiply, to fill the earth with his glory, and to subdue it.

6:48 Then you have Genesis 12 where God calls Abram and he says, you are going to be my people and through you, I am going to bless all people. He says, you are going to be a blessing. And so there's that mission statement. There's the mission statement in Jeremiah 29.7 that says that we're supposed to

7:08 seek the welfare of this city that we have been sent to, even if that city is part of a punishment, is part of being sent away into captivity for not doing the very thing that God has called us to do, to not living out his mission statement properly. Then you've got in the New Testament,

7:30 you have Matthew recording Jesus' last words as being, make disciples of all nations. All nations, not just the people that you love and know and that are familiar to you, that are easy to relate, but to make disciples of all nations. And then Luke picks up on this in Acts, where he records Jesus as saying,

7:53 in also one of his last words, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, where syncretistic half-breed idol worshipers lived. You will be my witnesses there and to the ends of the earth. to places that they couldn't even fathom or imagine. This is where this mission statement was going to take them,

8:19 to be witnesses of Christ to these other nations. Peter records a semblance of a mission statement in 1 Peter 2.9, where he says that they're called to proclaim the excellencies of the one who called them out of darkness and into his marvelous light, that there are things that God has done that are good and wonderful,

8:43 and that we should proclaim them. But I would say, as we've said probably in another podcast, that that this proclamation isn't just with words, that we are proclaiming the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light through the way that we engage the world, through the way that we do our vocations,

9:03 through the way that we interact in relationships with our friends and our families, and the way that we interact with culture. We are proclaiming the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light. And you have people throughout Scripture applying this, and just two very quickly,

9:22 which I think fit perfectly for this faithful presence theme of applied mission statements, when we're talking about serving and leading in government, you have Joseph, right? Remember Joseph? Joseph is... is in the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he's sold into slavery by being thrown in a pit by his brothers because they're jealous of him,

9:49 but also because he's a bit of a show-off. He likes nice things and likes everybody to know that his father likes him the best, and so off to slavery he goes, and he ends up in Egypt and But throughout his time there, the Lord blesses him in such a way that he earns the ear of Pharaoh.

10:10 and that he ends up in a position where he is able to give advice to Pharaoh, advice that ends up saving his entire family during a famine. Okay, so what's important to remember about this particular setting is that Joseph is serving as a follower of God in a government that does not acknowledge that God.

10:39 And the other one is Daniel, and Daniel is part of the community that is being exiled in Babylon. And when he arrives, he too is moved into this position of leadership under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar, the ruler of Babylon. And yet God's favor rests on Daniel in such a way that Daniel is in a position to

11:09 give economic advice, military advice, economic advice, political advice, social advice to Nebuchadnezzar. And again, just like Joseph, Daniel is existing and living out a mission statement. in a government that does not acknowledge the God that he serves. Which is wonderful because we need to remember that this is not a Christian nation. This is not a theocracy.

11:47 That Christians are not in charge of America. And we have more in common with somebody like Joseph and Daniel... than we do with, shall we say, Moses, who's getting instruction directly from God about the rules that should be enforced at any given time. But there's this other mission statement, and maybe it's not really a mission statement.

12:15 Maybe it's just a statement looking for a mission statement. And that's this. At the end of John, after Jesus has risen from the dead, he appears to the disciples. And he says to them, as the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.

12:33 Now, what's interesting is that the Jews, as we have talked before on this podcast— The Jews are the target audience for the proclamation of the gospel. But when Jesus shows up and makes this proclamation to his disciples after his resurrection, the place that he finds them, that Jesus finds his followers,

12:59 is in an upper room with the doors locked for fear of the Jews. And he shows up and he says, I am here. I have conquered death. I am resurrected. I am here and I'm in power and I am ruling. And all that I have told you is going to come true. And he departs.

13:19 And then he comes back eight days later after this announcement that he is sending them as the Father has sent him and that he has been victorious. And so there is no doubt that Jesus has won the victory over death. And yet, eight days later,

13:40 he finds them in the upper room with the doors locked for fear of the Jews. And as we've talked about on other podcasts, what Jesus needs is for them to open that door and to go out because he is sending them as the Father sent him. What I love about this particular statement is it begs the question.

14:06 If you are sending us as the Father sent the Son, then the question we should have is, how did the Father send the Son? That's the question. That's the question that's going to help us apply these various mission statements. They're going to answer the question, what are we supposed to do?

14:29 And we get an answer in the book of Luke. Shortly after Jesus has begun his ministry, he steps into a synagogue, and they hand him a scroll of the book of Isaiah. Now, here are the words of the prophet Isaiah directly from the book of Isaiah. I'm reading from Isaiah 61, and here's what it says.

14:51 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord, and that's Yahweh, it's all caps, and that means the steadfast God of love and faithfulness who keeps his promises to generation after generation. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord, Yahweh, has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

15:12 He sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and and the opening of prison to those who are bound, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn. Okay,

15:29 so here's the way that Luke records this interaction that Jesus is having in the synagogue. So he shows up in the synagogue, and the standard practice of the day was that if you were a man of age— If you were a rabbi, you were expected to be able to kind of teach on command,

15:46 and so he is handed a scroll, and here's how Luke records it. And as he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him.

16:06 And he unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty all those who are oppressed,

16:22 and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor... And so this is pretty stunning stuff that Jesus is saying. Now there's some differences between how we have recorded Isaiah's words and the way that Luke records Isaiah's words, and that's not really the point what the point is is that jesus is saying that these words are

17:02 about him because he said these words are fulfilled in your favor and so what he then does is he leaves this synagogue and he begins healing people relieving people of oppression and casting out demons. He ends up going to Peter's house, the house of his mother-in-law, and his mother-in-law is sick and he heals her.

17:30 So one thing, we know that Peter was married. He heals Peter's mother-in-law and then opens the door and we're told that basically the entire community was out there waiting for Jesus to do something for them. And this is what the Gospels record for us. They record the life of Jesus and what he did.

17:51 He proclaimed good news to the poor. He proclaimed liberty to the captives. And again, Isaiah is using this to talk about what is going to happen when the people of God go back to Israel. Those who have been left there, who are desolately poor, the people are going to proclaim good news to them.

18:10 Those who are in prison, left in Jerusalem, as they come back, they're going to be let out. This is going to be a good thing that Ezra and Nehemiah will oversee the rebuilding of the city and the rebuilding of the temple. But that restoration is incomplete now.

18:32 The second temple is not nearly as beautiful as the first temple. And the people of God there never really regain their independence. When Jesus comes on the scene, they're a governed people by Rome. And yet Jesus sets out to proclaim good news to the poor, to set at liberty those who are captives,

18:55 to recover the sight of the blind. And he does this actually and physically restoring sight. He sets at liberty those who are oppressed, and he proclaims the year of the Lord's favor. Now, what's interesting is that when Jesus stops reading, he doesn't read the next phrase, which is the day of vengeance of our God.

19:17 That's what it says in Isaiah, but Jesus doesn't read that. And many of us, many theologians, people who study scripture, call this an intentional break that Jesus is making. What Jesus is saying is that the reason that I'm stopping here, that I'm not telling you that this is the day of vengeance of our God,

19:39 is he was saying this is not the day of vengeance of our God. This is the year of the Lord's favor. And so this is how the Father sent the Son, to proclaim good news to the poor, liberty to the captive, sight to the blind, liberty to those who are oppressed,

19:58 and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Now, as I say in the journal article, there's an important distinction here. We are not Christ. We are not God the Father. We are not fully God and fully man. We are finite and we are fragile. We die.

20:16 We don't have the ability to raise the dead or just to speak healing to those who are sick. But we do have the ability to offer healing to the sick through medicine and things like that. And so what we want to do on the rest of this podcast is we really want to examine this question.

20:35 What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to live as Christians? And this is a question that many, many theologians have asked. Francis Schaeffer asked, you know, how are we supposed to live? Jake Meador, who's written more recently, writes a book called What Are Christians For?, Amy Sherman, who's been on this podcast,

20:57 has a book called Agents of Flourishing, and she refers to Christians as the Tzadakim, the people of God who are supposed to use their agency to seek the flourishing of others. But again, we have to ask this question. How are we supposed to do that? Are there different answers to every single one of those mission statements?

21:26 And the answer is, yeah, there are differences. There are nuances to the way that each one of these mission statements get answered. But at the end of the day, I think that we can find a way forward. As Fox Mulder used to say, the truth is out there. And I don't think it's elusive.

21:47 So what we want to do on the rest of this podcast is we want to actually talk about something that faithful presence uses, and that is what we call the four questions of faithful presence. And these questions are actually designed to be applied to help us apply the mission that we're called to. And here's what they are.

22:08 What is good that needs encouragement? What is broken that requires restoration? What is missing that awaits creation is And what is evil that demands opposition? What is good that needs encouragement? What is broken that requires restoration? What is missing that awaits creation? And what is evil that demands opposition?

22:34 Now, here's one of the things that I like about these four questions. First, it directs our participation in Christ's mission of making all things new. It kind of gives us a grid to think about what should I do in this situation? in my unique context where I am.

22:53 And it also creates opportunities for cooperation with followers that maybe we disagree with on a number of things, but also seekers and skeptics. You know, we can all agree that bullying members of the LGBTQ community is wrong. It's heinous. It is evil. And Christians should be the first people standing up and saying,

23:21 we will have none of that when we are here. And we are telling you that these people are created in the image of God and they are not to be treated this way. That it doesn't matter what your faith proclamation is, Jew, Muslim, Zoroastrian, whatever. It doesn't matter. There are things that we can agree on.

23:47 And so when we can come alongside people and say, we agree that that is good, we agree that that is broken, we agree that that is missing, we agree that that is evil, we have an opportunity to come alongside people we might not otherwise come alongside, and that actually creates opportunities for us to share the gospel.

24:08 That we don't lead with, hey, here's the gospel, I want to make sure you know this. No, we lead with, encouragement, our restoration with creation, with opposition to things that we're agreeing on. And that sets up an opportunity for a conversation. But of course, there are places where these questions don't create resonance, they create dissonance.

24:32 There are places, there are things, there are truths that we believe that that others do not. In fact, they might believe the exact opposite, and that is going to be a point of inflection where we cannot agree. But these questions are still helpful to us because they do provide for us a way forward. Now,

24:55 I suspect that the first reaction of most folks will be the first reaction when I heard some version of these is you start just making a list, right? What is good? Here's a list. What is broken? Here's a list. What is missing? Here's a list. What is evil? Here's a list. Now, here's the problem with that.

25:13 That list has no meaning until we define our terms, right? So let's just hold off on the list for a minute and let's ask this question. How do we determine what these words mean, what the categories are? How do we determine what is good? How do we determine what is broken?

25:37 How are we going to determine what is missing and know the type of thing that needs to be created? And how are we going to know what is evil? Now, there are options. There is a cultural narrative that whatever the culture is saying is

25:58 is good or broken or missing or evil, is what is good, broken, missing, or evil. But these cultural narratives shift. As anybody listening to this podcast knows, what was culturally appropriate in the 1980s or the 1950s or the 1850s or the 1750s or the 50s, like 50s AD, has changed. And so how do we,

26:30 is culture a reliable litmus test, a reliable conversation partner in determining what is good, what is broken, what is missing, and what is evil? It certainly provides the context for the conversation, but I don't know that culture is the conversation partner we want to have when we're talking about the actual essence of these words, good, broken, missing,

26:58 and evil. I think that we're going to need something that is more, shall we say, timeless, more fixed and And maybe you'll say, well, you know, we need a worldview. We'll create a worldview, and the worldview will help us to know how we answer those questions. And I suppose that's correct, because I subscribe to a Christian worldview,

27:21 which I think is the proper one. But there's a number of worldviews, and those worldviews are going to have different answers to those questions. Take just this one, for instance, scientific materialism. Now, I'm not talking about science. Science is the study of things and how they react in various situations.

27:40 It's cause and effect, things that can be measured in the laboratory. That's not what scientific materialism is. Scientific materialism is a worldview that says we don't need these old constructs of religion to tell us what is true. We can determine those things, and we can determine them through science.

28:05 We can use social science to determine socially what we're supposed to do. And I know this is going to seem like an absolute rail, kind of like the nuclear rail that just electrocutes everybody that touches it, but I want to talk about gender. So here's how you know that scientific materialism is different than science.

28:34 Science would say that our sex is binary. We are male or female, and absolutely there is a small percentage of the population that is intersex, and that's a real thing. But... The new conversation is, well, sex, gender, those are two different things. And what we're not talking about here is men and women who, you know,

28:58 like to do things outside of their kind of what would maybe be the cultural stereotype, right? Of, well, that's not culturally acceptable for a man. That's not culturally acceptable for a woman. Men sit with their legs crossed this way. Women sit with their legs crossed another way. And that in itself is culturally determined.

29:19 Men used to wear very silky, flowy material in the 1300s and 1400s. So you can't just go and say, oh no, here are the ways that you should wear blue and you should wear pink and men shouldn't wear pink and women shouldn't wear blue and women shouldn't wear paint. All of these conversations are different than saying that

29:48 Science can't tell me what gender I am. Gender is something that I can determine for myself. And you see how we've just left science behind. That once science became a worldview, it was going to be jettisoned in the same way that Christianity was, because at the end of the day,

30:12 We want to do what we want to do, which brings us to another element of the article that I wrote in the President's Journal, and that is Friedrich Nietzsche's Zarathustra, who comes down off the mountain and says, I am here to tell you about the Übermensch, that it's time for you to move beyond these silly confines of...

30:38 Christian ethics and morality. God is dead, it says. God is dead. There's no reason for you to pursue that. You do you, and you do it the way you want to do it, and you need to move beyond this crazy, crazy boundaries that have been placed upon you.

30:59 You need to become your own best version of yourself and move beyond that. And that's how we see ourselves kind of moving and passing through these various worldviews. Then your other option is authoritative instruction. My wife and I just finished this four-episode documentary on Amazon called Shiny Happy People, which is a great song by REM.

31:28 Unfortunately, the content of this documentary was not awesome. It was all about the Duggar family, and it was about Bill Gothard and his institute. And it's horrific. This is what happens when authoritative instruction basically does what Lord Acton said. Lord Acton said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

31:55 And that's exactly what you see in this documentary is that Gothard just created this version of, I wouldn't even want to call it Christianity because it's not. It's something wicked. It's something completely evil where men make all the rules. And you know that this is wicked because as we said at the beginning of the podcast,

32:21 that's not what Genesis 1 says. It doesn't say that. And so this authoritative instruction can certainly go bad. We can have dictatorial leaders who use their positions like Idi Amin or Pol Pot to increase their wealth and to slaughter millions of innocent people in order to keep their power.

32:47 But there's even a bigger question, that is, do norms even exist? Can you even find something if there was an authoritative instructor? And this really is the argument of C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, where he begins by arguing for something called Tao, which is basically the agreed-upon set of principles that are, as C.S.

33:08 Lewis says, shared by everyone. It's never virtuous to leave your friend in a foxhole that's about to be overrun. You stay there with him. That's universally acceptable. It's universally understood that that is the appropriate thing. And from there, Lewis goes on to kind of form this... Okay, so since we can determine certain things,

33:31 and certain things are true, and that they exist in the universe, they must have come from somewhere. And Lewis, throughout this book, develops this idea that that, in fact, is God. And so that brings us to this. How do we apply that? If, as Christians, we agree that our authoritative source is God—

33:55 Is the Word of God in Scripture? Are the words and actions of Christ recorded in Scripture? Are the instructions of the prophets and the apostles, if that is our authoritative instruction for determining what is good, what is broken, what is missing, and what is evil—

34:16 Then we have a path forward for determining what is good that needs encouragement, what is broken that needs restoration, what is missing that awaits creation, and what is evil that demands opposition. And so let's unpack those for a few minutes if we can. Certainly not comprehensive or exhaustive, but hopefully a framework to hang some things on.

34:43 First of all, what is good that needs encouragement? If you were to open your Bibles and look at Genesis 1, you see that after every portion of creation, God says, it is good. And then at the end of his creation, he looks at mankind and he said, it is very good.

35:02 And I think he's actually talking about all creation, that all that he had created was good. And so God is speaking and defining a term, good. He's saying, this is good. This, what I have created, mankind, is good. And the fact that they are supposed to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it,

35:23 that is good. It's good because I said it's good, and I define the terms. And so we know that creation was created good, that family relationships... are good. That vocation and working, subduing the earth, doing what we're called to do through vocations are good. And we know that culture is good because people create culture.

35:50 So we know that there is a vision of creation and family and vocations and cultures that are good, that need encouragement. And so the question then is, how do we encourage people How do we encourage creation? How do we cultivate? How do we cultivate creation in such a way that we flourish and that others flourish?

36:18 We might consider Norman Borlaug, an Iowan who invented dwarf wheat that is credited for saving billions of lives in Africa because it stayed low enough and grew in places with very little water that These people who really were struggling with food insecurity were able to eat. That's a good thing to feed people, to feed families.

36:52 And so creation comes to us from God kind of a... uncultivated opportunity for flourishing. So we're called to cultivate creation in a way that leads to flourishing of humanity. We're called to encourage the family. What are the things that we can do in our positions of power on the Hill or on K Street or in cabin agencies?

37:20 What are the things that we can do that can encourage the family? And by family, I don't just mean a married husband and a married woman and 2.4 children. I mean, what are we going to do with single dads and single moms and kids in the foster care system? How do we encourage families Families that are good.

37:46 These are questions that can be answered in the Labor Department, at HUD, in Health and Human Services. We have people in Washington dealing with these questions on a daily basis. How do we encourage people in their vocations, in their workplaces? How do we come alongside people who are on the low end of a power differential?

38:10 That maybe their job is... putting cans of soup on the shelf at the grocery store. Maybe it's cleaning tables at the Chick-fil-A. Are those vocations not good? No, those vocations are good. They're a blessing. They're a blessing to the people who encounter them,

38:30 and they're a blessing to the people for whom that job is the means by which they support themselves and their family. So how do we encourage vocation? How do we encourage culture? How do we have a culture that is thriving, that comes alongside people and lifts them up out of poverty, out of oppression, that doesn't tolerate oppression?

38:54 How do we see what is good and encourage it? It's like looking at a brick house and saying, that brick house looks amazing. It does look like it needs some tuck pointing work, though. right? I've come here to do some work to encourage it, which kind of brings us to this next question, right?

39:15 So the first question is, what is good that needs encouragement? And the second question is, what is broken that requires restoration? But then again, you're going to have to answer this question, what does fixed look like? How is it supposed to look? Is it supposed to look rusted out? Is the grout supposed to be missing?

39:35 How would you know that? How do you know the way it's supposed to look? This is why these questions aren't as simple as they seem. And so we can look and we can say, well, sickness, that's something that's broken. And we can work to alleviate the implications of sickness through medicine, through research, through discovery. Poverty.

39:56 Poverty is something that we will always have. Jesus even says, you will always have the poor. But there are various reasons why poverty exists in various settings. This is where the Catholic idea of subsidiarity comes in, in that each situation requires a different solution, and that the best solution is usually done locally at the lowest level,

40:21 which is why the parish model is the model that they have. that the kind of poverty and homelessness that they might have in inner city Detroit is different than the poverty and homelessness that they might have in Topeka, Kansas. And so to try to come up with one solution that's going to fix both is going to be

40:39 ineffectual at best. And so we need to have solutions that address what is broken that requires restoration, but how is that restoration going to work in a particular context? We've got the fracturing of America that's occurring right now where we are polarizing at a rapid, rapid speed.

41:03 It used to be that some scholars believed that there's a thing that they refer to as the Overton window, which is the amount of information that you can give people to shift them ever so slightly through ideology. However, there's been a number of essays written recently that suggest that this Overton window has split.

41:25 And so the ideologies of these two different groups now are just kind of free to move away from each other kind of at lightning speed. And the thing that I think is helping, I don't think, I know, the thing that is helping to drive this, it's exacerbating it, is social media,

41:45 where we're able to basically look at the information that we want to look at. And that's broken. It is broken and it is breaking America. And so what does fixed look like? How do we come back together from the polarized place that we're in? How do we think about workplace safety?

42:06 How do we think about the toxic chemicals that people are exposed to in the workplace? The work that they're doing is good, but how do we help to ensure that they are able to do it in a safe environment that doesn't cause birth defects or cancer later?

42:22 One of the individuals that I know well and worked with when I was in Iowa City was a law enforcement officer who really got drawn into something called data-driven justice. And we'd love to have him on a podcast and kind of explain it in detail, but essentially... this is what data-driven justice is. It is saying,

42:41 I know that you think that the solution to homelessness and crime by drug addicts and alcoholics is to crack down on them and arrest them and fine them and move them on. Data-driven justice says, well, let's look at the data. Let's get the data on what those incarcerations are costing the city and the county and the state.

43:06 Let's get the data on what it costs for a homeless person to have their toes amputated and go through the rehab that the hospital is going to have to write off. What does it cause, I'm sorry, three, two, one, what does it cost to have malnourished children in the emergency room getting IV fluids, Because they're sick.

43:34 So these things don't actually... The amount of money that you're fining these people is not... It's not fixing the problem. that in fact the far less expensive option are actually social service interventions. And I know that there's a whole discussion that needs to be had about social service interventions,

43:55 but to say that social service interventions are a waste of money is what data-driven justice is all about saying, yeah, that's actually not accurate. In some cases, it is far less expensive to just get the homeless off the street and get them into housing. Which brings me to another example of what is broken that requires restoration.

44:20 If you just Google... DOJ lawsuit against Google and Facebook regarding housing, you'll come up with a number of articles where what happened was there was technology that was developed, which is good. Google is good. Facebook has good things about it that allowed these landlords to advertise that they had housing available,

44:47 which is good because people who need housing need to learn about it. And most people don't get the newspaper anymore. But what Google and Facebook did is they went to landlords who had large blocks of HUD housing, Section 8 housing, and they said, look, we can give you guys an algorithm that will completely meet the federal

45:09 requirements for advertising this property, but yet absolutely miss advertising it to anybody that you don't kind of want to see. And they got sued, as they should have been, because the Department of Justice looked at that and said, this is broken, and it needs to be fixed. And they won.

45:31 And the privilege that I've had in Washington is knowing some of the people that were involved in that and knowing that they understood that's broken and it can be fixed. It can be repaired and restored. So what is good that needs encouragement, what is broken that requires restoration, and what is missing that awaits creation?

45:52 Now, this is the hard one. This reminds me of a comedian that has a whole shtick on Steve Jobs just walking into the office one day, munching on an apple and saying to the engineer technician there, hey, you know what I'd like?

46:07 I'd like it if all of my music was in my phone and also my calendar and all of my correspondence and all of my files. And I would like to be able to communicate with people electronically, but not actually use the phone. So if you could just go ahead and do that, and that'd be great.

46:25 And it just walks back out in his little black turtleneck. And now we can't imagine living without the iPhone. And so we'll just say that knowing what is missing, it's hard. But it's not impossible. Again, I would take you back to Iowa City where one of the things that was missing in Iowa

46:44 City is what's called a wet shelter. And a wet shelter simply stands for weather extreme temperature. So most cities that take community development block grant money to open up homeless shelters, they are required to ensure the safety of the people who use that homeless shelter.

47:03 So there are a number of people who can't get in, people on sex offender registries. And that's appropriate and it's good. In most communities, people who are actively using cannot get in. People who are drunk or high can't get in. But here's the problem.

47:22 When it's going to be 15 degrees below zero and they can't go into the local homeless shelter, where are they going to go? So what they do is they break into buildings. They break into buildings. college campuses, they break into churches, they break into various locations and try to sleep.

47:40 And so one of the things that we recognized when I was pastoring in Iowa City is that this was a problem and we needed to do something. And we formed a coalition with this particular police officer I mentioned earlier, and we got together and we said, okay, what can we do?

47:55 And what we came up with was a plan to basically use an empty Aldi building that Aldi had moved out of. They'd moved into a new location, and so there was this empty building. And we went to the city and said, hey, you should let us have this building. And I called the local Boy Scout camp.

48:12 I got some cots. We put some cots in there. The police stopped by every hour on the hour to kind of check and make sure everybody was behaving, but they weren't doing warrant checks. That's how we made sure that people would feel safe to come, is they knew they wouldn't have warrant checks on them.

48:29 But what happened in that is tied to the data-driven justice piece is the number of people that went to the emergency room that winter went way down. The number of arrests went way down, and it saved the city and the county money. And we know that because we got information from the university and the veterans'

48:48 hospital that proved that out. And so what we determined was that what we needed was a temporary shelter And that was going to require some work and some grant money and some coordination with the city that had to do with zoning. And so we went, we got some things changed.

49:08 And that project over the course of the past 10 years has turned in to an actual 25-unit apartment building. That houses people who are experiencing long term homelessness and a shelter that is available to people for, you know, 12 hours a day when there are extreme weather conditions that keep them safe and alive. And that was missing.

49:37 And now it exists. And so sometimes it's just getting together with people and talking and asking, what is missing? What could we do? How could we maybe address this situation? And finally, what is evil that requires opposition? Most of us would say that this one's probably pretty easy. Devaluing human life, human trafficking,

50:02 harming of children is wicked and evil and always needs to be opposed. Exploitive stewarding of the planet, toxic pollution, strip mining. I saw an article in the news the other day about how Russia is mining resources from a Central African Republic where there basically is no government.

50:27 But as they say in one of the episodes of The West Wing, when Jed Bartlett asks Charlie, his body man, why are white lives more important than black lives? And Charlie Young says, I don't know, sir, but they are. And that really did not sit well with the president. It kind of shook him,

50:53 and it should have shook him, but he came to realize that's exactly the problem that we have, is that we're able to get ourselves to a place where we tolerate wicked and horrible things happening to people because we have decided they are not important enough to do anything about it. But Christians are called.

51:16 to encourage what is good, to restore what is broken, to create what is missing, and to oppose what is evil. And listeners to this podcast will know that I'm a big fan of the Baskin-Robbins pink spoon metaphor and analogy, and it works like this. Everybody knows what the Baskin-Robbins pink spoon is supposed to be used for.

51:39 You go into Baskin-Robbins, you say, I'd like a sample of that. They take your little pink spoon, they... give you a taste and you say, man, that tastes so good. I would like to have an entire cone of that. Maybe I'd like the key lime pie ice cream and I'd also like the chocolate mocha

51:57 crunch because those two things just seem amazing and I want them. I would like a double scoop cone. Please give it to me. And so Baskin-Robbins spends millions of dollars every year on these throwaway pink spoons because they know that their ice cream is good and if you taste it, you will want it.

52:14 But these pink spoons are plastic and they're hard. And if you hold them just right, you can poke somebody's eye out with them. But that's not what they're intended for at all. And yet the church, so often, when we are called to be pink spoons, to encourage what is good, to restore what is broken,

52:32 to create what is missing, and to oppose what is evil, instead we have a tendency to grab this pink spoon and go around poking people's eyes out. And that is absolutely not the mission that God has called us to. So that's it for this episode of the Faithful Presence podcast. We will be back.

52:51 I'm actually headed out tomorrow. I'll be in Memphis for a week at the Presbyterian Church in America's General Assembly. The week after that, I'll be in Denver at the Evangelical Presbyterian Church's General Assembly. But we will be back. We look forward to talking to you soon.

53:09 We are so thankful that you have joined us today for this podcast. I want to thank just once again, really want to thank Nicole Rickers for her post-production work. She goes through, she edits out a whole bunch of stuff that you won't hear because she's edited it out. She makes me sound wonderful.

53:29 Also want to give a shout out to our most recent hire, our communications director, Laura Holroyd. She is doing a wonderful job of helping us get content out there. We'll see you soon. I want to just say right now for everybody out there,

53:44 may God bless you and keep you and make his face shine upon you and give you peace. See you soon.