Angela Weszely:
Well, welcome to the episode today. I'm really excited to be having a conversation with my friend Skye Jethani, he's an author, a speaker, a former pastor, and of the Holy Post Podcast. Great to have you on today, Skye.
Skye Jethani:
I'm so happy to be back. Thank you.
Angela Weszely:
Yeah. I know we've had several conversations over the years, but that was before you released this book What If Jesus Was Serious about the Church, which I love the title, and as I was telling you as I was going through this, there was just so much resonance with what we're doing at ProGrace and what you were saying. So I'm going to pick your brain about the book, if that's all right.
Skye Jethani:
I am looking forward to it.
Angela Weszely:
I've shared on the podcast my journey toward becoming so passionate about Christians having a new response to this issue. And really it started back in 2006, I began leading a Christian pregnancy organization right here in Chicago. And a lot of people were asking the question, "Okay, women won't approach Christians for help if they're considering an abortion, so how can we look neutral?" And I even interacted with some people across the country who were asking the question, "How can we look more Planned Parenthood and changed the way we appear?" And in hindsight, I know that that started kicking up discomfort in me. Now I know what it was at the time I was processing it, but this idea started bubbling up. Well, shouldn't we be a place that people would want to approach when they're hurting? Isn't that God's intention for the church? Instead of changing what we look like outwardly to draw people in, what if we actually changed how we were showing up as the church so that people would want to approach us?
And so that's why your book is resonating with me. I do interact even today with some people who kind of resigned themselves to, well, yeah, people who are hurting won't approach the church because the church is judgmental, but we're holding out this different vision as the ProGrace community that if we could have a response that was non-political and was Jesus centered, that actually we could become a safe place for this conversation and for those people who are experiencing, have a lived experience. So I just wanted to start with that question. Do you resonate with that? I know there's a lot of things going on with the church, but is that a possibility, this long term vision that we have?
Skye Jethani:
Yeah, it is. And I wouldn't just say it's a possibility. I'd say it's a reality. I mean, you know there are Christians and there are small pockets of Christians who are safe to approach and that outsiders do know and love, and they're their neighbors or their family members or others. And so often we use the word church and what we mean is the institution. We mean the 501c3 nonprofit with clergy and staff and budgets and buildings and all that. And that's an aspect of it. But really the church is the community. It's the people of Jesus Christ and there are good, wonderful, godly women and men who are the church who are safe and approachable and non-judgmental and loving and serving their neighbors. And so it's there.
Unfortunately, it's not the perception a lot of the culture has because the institution and its agendas and political activism often is what gets the attention. So I don't want to just paint with a broad brush and say the church is all one way or another. It's much more complicated than that. And when I need encouragement or hope, I look for those individuals in small pockets of groups of Christians who are really displaying the character of Christ and his kingdom. They're everywhere. We just need to highlight them and lift them up as an exemplar of what the church can and should be.
Angela Weszely:
Well, and okay, let's start there. What about uniting them? Because even your word pockets speaks to, if I were in the culture and I was facing this, I probably wouldn't perceive Christians or the church as safe because there's not, and we've talked about this, an identifiable group that's identified as safe. So are you seeing any places where or how could we as Christians come together? Because that's why we start talking about local churches. Local churches are the expression of the community of God in the world. And when people are hurting, that's what we'd love them to think. I'll go to my local church, and this is even true for people who are in the church. I'll go to my small group leader, but how can we unite these pockets or build a broader reputation because the statistics really are still very low that people don't approach Christians or churches with this.
Skye Jethani:
Yeah, there was a book put out, gosh, it's got to be 15 years ago now by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons called unChristian. You remember that one?
Angela Weszely:
Know it well.
Skye Jethani:
It was a lot of statistics and they asked people outside the church what the perception of Christians is, and it was homophobic and too political and judgmental, all those negatives that you've identified. But then they ask those people, "Well, what about Christians you know, like an actual Christian people?" Oh, they're great, we love them. They're fantastic. So there's this gap between the public perception and the personal experience. And so I think the challenge there then becomes if people have, not always, but oftentimes a positive personal experience with a Christian in their life, but a negative perception of Christian institutions and Christians in the public square, how do you bridge that gap? And unfortunately, I think that's where there is a responsibility upon the institutions and upon the leaders of those institutions who represent the community to display a different posture in the public square, in the media, in their community.
And that's where it falls on pastors and church leaders and other denominational leaders when they have a microphone, when they have a camera, when they are perceived as representing the Christian community, they need to be much more careful with the rhetoric they use, the posture they take, the attitude they have towards these really challenging issues like abortion in order to communicate perhaps a firm position, but also a compassionate posture. And that's not easy. It takes a lot of spiritual maturity and grace to do that. And it's not often what leaders are selected for, unfortunately.
Angela Weszely:
Right. Exactly. Okay. I did not tell you I was going to go here, so if you don't want to, that's fine, but you made me think.
Skye Jethani:
Can't wait.
Angela Weszely:
Okay. So I'm going to just share anecdotally with you, and let's take it down to the personal level because I love what you're doing. And so let's talk about this, the church as the grassroots community made up of a group of individuals and then the church as an institution and its leaders. I actually think if both places were safe, that could bring God's kingdom like we're talking about. So anecdotally what we are seeing, and this just happened, we actually hired someone new in January, and when she went out and started telling her friends her new job at ProGrace, and she said the ProGrace approach to abortion, she had several friends who she'd known for decades say to her, "Actually, I never told you this, but I had an abortion."
And now I'm saying that because this is an interesting phenomena that it happens when we also have ProGrace groups in churches and they're going through the material that also happens. I've never told anyone this, but I had an abortion. So it is true that the church is made up of a group of individuals. Can you hypothesize knowing what you know about the ProGrace message, what is happening in those interactions? So they're definitely not going to the institution, but even if they're in an institution, in a group, or just in a relationship, this message is causing people to say, "I can come and tell you this." What do you think is happening that we can learn from in terms of growing as a whole church into this?
Skye Jethani:
Oh, that's a great question. So I'm reminded of the story of Jesus and the woman at the well, the Samaritan woman. It's a beautiful story. Many people are familiar with it, but the big division between Jews and Samaritans, which is highlighted in his interaction, is that they had a fundamental theological disagreement about worship where the Jews thought the proper place to worship God was in Jerusalem at the temple, and the Samaritans believed it was this other mountain. And so Jesus and the Samaritan woman are having a kind of discussion about this, and he finally says to her, "The Father desires those who will worship him in spirit and in truth, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem, but in spirit and in truth." And what a lot of people take that to mean that we're truth there, they think what Jesus is referring to is doctrinal truth, that you have to have your theology all figured out.
I used to think that's what he meant in that story, but it can't possibly be what he meant because it was a doctrinal disagreement that separated Jews and Samaritans. What he's really talking about there is the kind of truth that comes from being honest, and he's dealing with a woman in this case who has been hiding the fact that she's had multiple men in multiple marriages and she's living in shame. And what he's saying to her is true worship comes when we worship him honestly. When we bring the truth of who we are before him. And that's what he was creating, a safe space for this woman to be honest. And I think that's exactly the dilemma that a lot of our churches are facing is rather than creating environments of safety where people can be honest about the good, the bad, and the ugly in their lives and worship God out of that honesty, we create artificial environments where people have to be fake and dishonest because they're so worried about being ashamed that their worship isn't even honest.
And what ProGrace I think does in the environment of a group group or just two individuals talking, is it reintroduces that Jesus environment of safety where you can be honest and where honesty comes forward, then there's healing, then there's trust, then there's true worship. And I would speak to church leaders saying, "If you really want your people to worship, if you really want them to live in communion with God, if you really want them to be disciples of Jesus, then you have got to create environments where there is a safe enough space for them to be honest."
And the fact that there are probably a fair number of women in almost every church in America that have had abortions that are so ashamed to talk about it, that's an impediment to their communion with God and it's impediment to their worship because we haven't created environments where they're safe to open up about their past or their present realities. So I think that's what ProGrace is doing on a small scale at low altitude and in groups and individual conversations, it's communicating to women, you're still going to be loved and accepted here even if you're honest. And that's a reflection of what Jesus did with that woman at the well.
Angela Weszely:
Yeah, no, that's beautiful. And you're absolutely right, and I'll share the statistics. It's one in four women will have an abortion before age 45. The rates aren't really that different between Christians and non-Christians. In fact, a Lifeway study found out that four in 10 women who have abortions are regular churchgoers at the time. And their statistic of how much they talk to people at their church is not that much higher than women who aren't churchgoers. So this is a real problem. And there's also a man involved in every one of these, and that is happening often in churches. It's men as well who will say, "I never told anyone this, but I was involved." It impacts a lot of people to your point. So I'd love to actually now start with your book, and you have this point in your book about Jesus is the foundation of the church, not our mission.
And you touched on it here, what you're saying, and it feels like to me, and you can speak to this in this issue, we've gotten so focused on what we think is the mission, which is to have a belief about abortion or to have a political position on abortion that Jesus and how we interacts with us in safety and how we can interact with others in safety has gotten pushed aside. So I wanted you to speak to that and flesh that out with this issue. If we were to see Jesus as central and not our mission, how could that change our conversations about abortion and how people experience us?
Skye Jethani:
Yeah. This is a really difficult and insidious problem, particularly in the evangelical stream of the church, because in the evangelical movement, we care so deeply about the mission of the gospel, which is a good thing. But in our desire to lift up the importance of the mission of the gospel, we have inadvertently made it into an idol, and we have made the mission more important than Jesus himself. And gosh, we could spend all day talking about what that looks like and the rotten fruit that comes from that. But then when you particularize it down to the cause of ending abortion, which in many ways is a good and righteous calling, we got to be careful that we don't take what is a good effort and make it more important than Jesus himself. I mean, that leads to utilitarian ethics that says, "This work is so important that I am justified in mistreating others, lying, deception, coercion, any kind of justification to get to this good righteous end."
And that is the antithesis of biblical and Christian ethics. And that the only way to avoid that is by making Jesus the most important thing, not the work we do for him in the world. And then when I'm sitting down with somebody, whether they agree with me or not, recognizing that this person is made in the image of God and is loved by Christ and redeemed by him, therefore this person is more important than my mission, than my goal. And I cannot allow this person to be sacrificed on the altar of my political activism or my missional activism, whatever kind of activism it might be. So it's simply a call to recognize the humanity and dignity of every person first because we recognize the value of Jesus in every person.
So it's putting aside this utilitarianism that I think has just destroyed so much of the credibility of the church because so many of the terrible things that the culture accuses of the church, the church will turn around and say, "Yeah, but we had to do that because of this mission, because of this work, because it was so important," and that's never the way of Jesus.
Angela Weszely:
And so let's talk about that. How does he do that that we can apply to this issue? And that's why I love even the title of your series, what if Jesus was serious about prayer about the church? Because my perception, and you can speak to this too, is we have defaulted, sometimes I even use the word abdicated, our responsibility as Christ followers to a political approach. Even though if people say, I'm not political, a lot of times we're still using the words from the political, and this is even outside of evangelical streams because I'd love to open up that conversation too, because my dream is for us all to be unified, whether a Christian falls politically pro-choice or pro-life, that we can be unified or around Jesus and how he would respond to the people you're talking about, the woman and the child and the man.
How do we do that and could that unify the church? Because that's another thing you speak about in this book a lot is unifying the church. So what is it about Jesus and how we interacted with people? Because you're talking about a social issue, I guess that's what I'm saying. You're saying, if we think our mission is to end abortion, how would Jesus look at that? What really is he going to be focused on in an issue like that? Does that make sense, the question I'm asking? I'm maybe asking three questions in one, but we can start it.
Skye Jethani:
Well, let's take the negative side first. The politicalization of this issue, and I'm not saying there's not a political dimension to this, there clearly is, but politics did not create the problem of abortion. It preexists politics, right? And so politics alone is not going to solve the problem of abortion. So when we lock into this political framework, we're denying the multiple dimensions of this really persistent challenge. Secondly, politics, and I don't want to demean politics is all evil or bad or something. It's not. It has a good facet to it, but politics is inherently coercive because the goal of politics is to amass more power than your political opponent and then use that power to essentially force your perspective upon, at least in a democratic republic setting, to force your point of view upon the population. We're going to appoint enough justices to overturn Roe, or we're going to get enough people in Congress to pass this law, or we're going to get a president in the White House to move this initiative or whatever it might be.
But it's always against the will of some portion of your population of your neighbors. In that sense, it's inherently coercive. The difference with Jesus is he's never coercive. He's persuasive, but he's not coercive. You think about the story of the rich young ruler who comes to him and says, "What do I have to do to have life forever in the kingdom?" And he has this interaction with Jesus, and eventually comes down to Jesus tells him, "Go and sell everything you have and then come follow me." And he was very wealthy and very rich, and he couldn't do it, and he walked away and Jesus let him walk away. He didn't twist his arm, he didn't manipulate him. He didn't scold him. He just said, "Here's the offer, take it or leave it." And again, and again and again, you find Jesus and his apostles were okay with people rejecting their message, okay with people not happy about it, but he respected them enough to give them the choice and let them make their path.
Similarly, when it comes to this issue, since there's not a political solution to abortion, we also have to resist the coercive solution saying, "We are going to force upon everybody the answer we want." It just isn't possible. So I think the Jesus way then is to say, "I'm going to respect the humanity and the dignity and the choice of people in this circumstance. I want to persuade, I want to love, I want to care, but at the end of the day, I can't make them do what I want them to do." And am I okay with that? And that might make some people really uncomfortable, but that's the reality of the situation, is you cannot legislate it, you cannot enforce it, you cannot make it what you want it to be. And the way of Jesus means allowing people the freedom to sometimes make decisions that we would profoundly disagree with, but would not ever go to the extent of coercing them into doing what we want, because that would violate an even greater evil.
Angela Weszely:
Yeah. Okay. So there's a lot in what you just said, and I'm in my head thinking those Christians who hold a pro-life political view, there'll be stuff for them to wrestle with that with what you said. I think in what you said, there'll also be things to wrestle with for those Christians who hold a pro-choice political view. And I'd love to just, and you probably interact, you interact with a very diverse body of Christians through the Holy Post? And so even some words you said, it's so interesting, some words you said might trigger pro-life.
Some words might trigger pro-choice because a pro-choice believer might say, "Coercion, let's back up and actually have empathy first." You know what I'm saying? Let's take it further than what you were saying. So I guess what I'm asking is could there be a place where believers on either side politically could find this common ground in a Jesus way? What would be the Jesus common ground way, whether a Christian believes it should be legal or shouldn't, where are there places that we can say, "We can hold these separately, but we can come together in Jesus and have these common values or goals?"
Skye Jethani:
Yeah, I think the empathy thing is exactly right. I mean, when you look at the gospels, there is not a single story of Jesus rejecting anybody in need. Nobody who comes to him in need is ever turned away. He heals them all. I mean, there's multiple stories of Jesus healing multitudes, or in some cases he heals 10 lepers, but only one comes back and [inaudible 00:20:47]. But he still heals everyone. Not everyone deserved it. Not everyone was in a place of suffering because of their own... A lot of times it was their own perhaps stupid moral decisions that led them to that place and he still had compassion on all of them, says, "He looks out on the crowds, and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd." So his empathy and compassion is universal. Even though not everyone reciprocated that with worship or obedience or acknowledging him as a messiah, say, he didn't require that as a prerequisite for his love and concern.
Similarly, when it comes to this issue of abortion, when we encounter women who find themselves in pregnancies that they didn't plan or intend or in really challenging circumstances, our empathy should be universal regardless of what decisions they may make after that, whether we agree or disagree with those decisions, the empathy is the foundation from which we begin. And from there comes, okay, well, what does that empathy then animate us to do? In what tangible ways do we show care? In what persuasive ways do we try to advocate for what's best for that woman, for that child, for that family or household? In what ways do we mobilize the resources of the church? And again, you can't be coercive. It may be persuasive, it can't be coercive. And at the end of the day, we can't control the decisions people make, but we can give them every option to make good decisions and compassionate ones. So yeah, I think that empathy and compassion has to be the shared foundation from which we begin regardless of outcomes.
Angela Weszely:
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, I love this. And let's dig in a little deeper. Let's actually pull back, one thing I love about Jesus stories is I feel like he pulls back. There might be a narrow dilemma. The Pharisees are bringing him, but he pulls back and gives a broader view. So let's pull back, because some people that were suffering, it wasn't anything to do with their choices, right? In fact, they used that to trap him who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind and Jesus said neither. And so let's pull back and look at what women are told our whole lives or what we experience or the systemic things happening around abortion that if it's outside of marriage, the woman is going to bear the most responsibility. It's hard for child support. It's interesting, even in church, I've heard from women, they bear most of the shame, and the church doesn't even talk about the man who is half of the pregnancy.
There's also things happening in the church, and I don't know if we want to go there today, but there's abusive women. It's like systemic misogyny and abuse women. And then this catch 22 that then if they happen to get pregnant, then they're seen as having the biggest problem when actually there's so much done to women hidden in the church that God is thankfully bringing out. So can we even have a thought, and this is where I think we could find common ground across the lines, if we step back, it isn't even just empathy, but what about ownership?
What about saying, "This is us, this is our issue. We have all contributed to this, whether we were hiding abuse in the church or we were speaking about it so judgmentally or messages were allowing a misogyny and objectification to go toward women. All of this is connected." And I know this is a big thing to open, and I don't just do it with just anybody, but I love your focus on empathy and maybe if people, it was simply their decision, but most times in an abortion decision, there's a lot of other things that have happened. How do we enter into that reality and expand it?
Skye Jethani:
Well, the story that comes to my mind is from Mark eighth, the well-known story of the woman caught adultery who's about to be stoned.
Angela Weszely:
John eight, right?
Skye Jethani:
Johnny eighth, sorry. And Jesus says, "He who's without sin cast the first stone." But one of the things that's sort of unspoken in there according to the Old Testament law is where's the man?
Angela Weszely:
Exactly.
Skye Jethani:
Who was obviously participating in this adultery.
Angela Weszely:
And the law was they were both supposed to be stoned. If you look, trace it back. Yeah.
Skye Jethani:
Here's a quote, unquote sinful situation that involved both a man and a woman, but only the woman is being held to account, which sounds an awful lot what happens with pregnancies and abortions in our day. But it opens up the larger dynamic, which is we have a hyper individualized culture. And a lot of this-
Angela Weszely:
Talk about this in the book, which I love that you're highlighting. Yes, go ahead.
Skye Jethani:
A lot of this is seeped into the American church as well. So rather than viewing the raising of a child as a community responsibility, as a congregational responsibility, even as an extended family responsibility, which is how most human societies have understood it, we see it as a hyper individualistic thing where maybe it involves a mother and father, and if not, at least just a mother. Well, if you have a pregnant woman in your congregation, and let's say she's unmarried and this was unintended, where does the congregation say, "Hey, this woman is our responsibility and this child is our responsibility, and how do we rally resources to make sure that she and this child are cared for and taken care of?" Or even if it is a young married couple and they are pregnant, and how does the church rally around them to care for and support them?
It shouldn't be any different, but we are so individualized in our thinking that we don't marshal those resources. Now, take a step back, even from the congregational level and look at society. I mean, we know from statistics that the majority of women who seek an abortion do so because of economic hardship. There's a lot we could do as a society to diminish that economic hardship on women like paid family leave and better access to affordable healthcare and early childhood education and things like that, that if we put in place, we know lowers the abortion rate. But our politics is such that, "Well, no, why should I have to pay for someone else's kid to go to preschool? Or why should I pay for someone else's healthcare? Or why should I be taxed so that someone else can get an extended family leave if they have a child?
Why should I do that?" Well, because it's good for our whole society, and it's been proven to lower the rate of abortion. Isn't that what we want? But our politics, ironically, the same party that will say we're pro-life is also diametrically opposed to those economic social programs that will lower the abortion rate. So that all feeds into the collective responsibility we have for women rather than a hyper individualistic one. And we haven't even touched on the shame and misogyny that exists in many churches that you touched on earlier. But yeah, you can't say you're pro-women and pro-life while harboring sexual abuse and misogyny in our churches that don't recognize women as of equal dignity with men and made in the image of God. All of this is interrelated, but for the sake of rhetoric and political expediency, we want to surgically isolate all these things into silos and narrowly define abortion as just what does a woman do who's pregnant and isn't sure whether she wants to keep that pregnancy, and that that's an incredibly myopic and narrow way of looking at this issue.
Angela Weszely:
Absolutely. Okay. So I love that you brought up John eight. We use this a ton. So let's use John eight to talk about the misogyny and all other things happening. So there's a couple really interesting things about John eight. First it says that the Pharisees brought this question to them, to Jesus to trap him, so there was intentionality to trap him. So let's look at a couple things. How did they know a man and woman were committing adultery exactly at that time? You could speculate that there was real intentionality of a setup or potentially knowing a woman who was, maybe she... We don't know. Was she in prostitution? What was happening? We also don't know what her background was. Had she been abused to be in a place where they would know that or was she tricked to be in a place that they would know she was in this encounter?
So right there, you have a lot of really ugly intentionality. You also have the ignoring of half the law, which feels like they knew what the law was. So that was intentional. And then lastly, this idea of he who is without sin cast the first stone. Now I'm friends with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, pastor marriages of the Moody Church, and in his study of scripture, he believes that word really means he who is without this sin cast the first stone. So now you get down to issues in the Church of sexuality and how we view the opposite sex and everything you're talking about, not to mention abuse on top of that. And you have a situation that's so similar where someone who has been caught in something that most Christians will say, "Okay, it's not God's intention, sex outside of marriage," but we're going to focus all that on the woman who's pregnant and not all the other people in the congregation who have engaged in the same thing.
You've got the issue of pornography, which is all tied in with our sexuality and our view of the opposite gender. Why is that not more of our conversation and the abortion issue? What's going on, I guess, in a Christian or church setting that wants to just bifurcate one piece of that and not say, "Hey, this is all connected. Let's let Jesus into all of it." What is it about that we don't understand about him, that we can't bring it all together and like you're saying, bring our own issues to it. We want to hide our issues and point at the other person's issue. Does that make sense what I'm asking?
Skye Jethani:
Yeah, totally.
Angela Weszely:
I know it's a huge question.
Skye Jethani:
It is a huge question, and I think to oversimplify it, I think there's two dynamics going on. One dynamic is that in any spiritual community, in any religious community, there is a very sinful instinct to create a hierarchy. And we judge ourselves, though we all have sin, we secretly, we want to create a ladder of sin, and I want to make sure that I'm in the top part of that ladder and others are in the bottom half of that ladder.
Angela Weszely:
I'm not bad as this other person, right? That's something... Yeah.
Skye Jethani:
So you pick some sins that you hyper stigmatize right within the community that you can shame and make everyone else feel not as bad. Well, yes, we all have sexual sin in our lives, but at least we're not that girl, at least we're not that person. And this is exactly what Jesus spoke against in the Sermon on the Mount where he said, "The law says don't commit adultery." I say, "You don't even look lustfully upon him." He's equalizing the issue there or don't commit murder. Well, don't be angry at your brother. He's getting at the heart issue and showing the reality that permeates all of us. And if we take Jesus' words seriously, then when we find that, let's say young woman in our congregation who's pregnant, rather than having a judgmental attitude of superiority where at least I'm not her, what we ought to have is a sense of I am her.
Angela Weszely:
We all are, right? This is us.
Skye Jethani:
We are. We get it. We are all subject to the hypersexualization of our culture. We are all prone to give into temptation. We are all prone to make poor decisions. We are all prone to make mistakes and to look at her and see ourselves is what ought to then generate that empathy and compassion and understanding. But we want to take the pharisaical point of view of, "No, I'm not that girl." I am better than her. And that's why. So that's one attitude of it. But then I think the other reason this has become such a problem is the politics is we have for decades now been in a cultural environment that has made abortion the single almost shibboleth of conservative politics. And if you don't take a hard line stance on this, you're not welcomed into that tribe. So for various reasons, some good and some really, really bad, I think it has poisoned our understanding of it.
And then what's kind of ironic, not to go off into politics too much in law, but since the overturning of Roe last year and the Dobbs decision, there's been a number of fascinating things that have happened as states have tried to pass laws to severely restrict or outlaw abortion entirely. In some very red Bible Belt states, people have come out and voted those things down, which means it took conservative church going Republican, evangelical voters to say, "No, we're not okay with this." So there's some duplicity going on here where the public rhetoric is one thing, but the private action in the voting booth is something else, which I think is betraying the fact that people want to be perceived as politically more pro-life than they actually are. And until we can have honest shame-free conversations in the church about this, we're going to continue to see that hypocrisy reveal itself in our politics and in our judgmental attitude towards people.
Angela Weszely:
So let's talk about that. Let's talk about the empathy toward other Christians who disagree with us, because when we talk about engaging differently in the abortion issue, we mean engaging in conversation with each other in our community as well as in direct service to people impacted. Because I would argue we'll never be safe for anybody impacted if we ourselves don't come together and have this conversation. And you talk about this in the book, that the church's mission requires unity and that we should be previewing God's kingdom, not an earthly one. So same thing, because after Roe was overturned, I don't know if you heard this, I heard from people, I had no idea, and so fill in the blank.
And so was pro-life or so-and-so pro-choice, they posted something on Facebook and I'm not sure I can have them over for dinner. So now we've exposed a divide in the church that I kind of knew it was there from all these years of conversations, but it was not apparent until that happened a year ago. So how do we apply the same principle from John eight to empathy for our brother and sister and listening and saying, we could actually disagree on this politically and agree on it morally and agree on a solution, but how do we get to that point of even having those conversations and having a kingdom way of being unified around this?
Skye Jethani:
Yeah. I think part of this is we have to understand the difference between unity and uniformity. Uniformity was what the word uniform, everyone looks the same. Everyone holds the exact same views on every last thing. We're all uniform. That's not what we see modeled in the New Testament. What we see in the New Testament is unity, whether it's Jews and Gentiles sharing a table, and the church is Paul's writing talk about, and you've seen in the book of Acts or even Jesus with his own 12 apostles, there's immense diversity among those 12 men, including political diversity. You had Matthew, a tax collector, a Jewish tax collector working for the Roman Pagans to take money, basically stealing money from his own countrymen to give it to their occupiers. And you have Judas the Zealot who's a terrorist working for political freedom through violent means. They could not be more opposite, and yet they're united. But that's the issue then becomes, well, what unites us?
Angela Weszely:
Yes. What united those guys, that's an interesting-
Skye Jethani:
What united those guys was Jesus. They were all committed to Jesus. And that's supposed to unite the church is we are sisters and brothers united in Jesus. We are not necessarily united in politics. We're not even necessarily united in what we believe to be the right solution to ending abortion, but we should be united in Jesus. So what I would want to see happen is two or more believers sitting down together in the unity of the faith, in the unity of Christ and saying, "Okay, let's have an honest conversation about abortion and let's all begin in the same place. Let's begin with Jesus." What are the shared convictions we have? Those things like compassion and empathy, the dignity of all human life, including unborn humans, created in the image of God, all these things that we share in common. And then go, "Okay, we all are united in that.
Now let's talk practically about what does it look like to advocate for those things in our very diverse pluralistic society? What can law do? What can it not do? What can politics do? What can it not do? What can the church do? What can it not do? What can we as a community do, and what can we not do? And what ultimately is up to a single woman that none of us can do other than that woman?" And that's where you're going to find a splintering of thought and ideas and diversity of experience and approaches. And that's where there needs to be grace. There needs to be understanding and learning. Hopefully we can hear from one another go, "Wow, I never considered that aspect of it. I'm glad I heard that from you," but it's coming from a community of trust and unity in Christ rather than, "Oh, you vote that way and I vote this way. Therefore, we can share nothing." I mean, that's a non-starter. That means we're trying to get our unity in politics rather than our unity in Jesus. And that's not what the church is called to.
Angela Weszely:
Absolutely. Yeah. Now, okay, you may not know this, but do we know any more about those two, Matthew and Judas the Zealot? Can we imagine? I'm sure it was really hard. I guess what I'm saying is they were so polar opposites that first it was really hard. Secondly, they both were going to have to lay down the most extreme of what they did. But could we assume that they probably never fully came to the middle because they had these beliefs that had caused them to go extreme. So even if they're in Jesus and they're not doing those actions anymore, they're still going to have experiences and thoughts that led them to think that was the answer. How can we value those? How can we listen to our brother or sister and say, "Tell me your experience. Tell me your story. I may not agree with the outcome, but I want to hear you."
Skye Jethani:
Well, that's a great thing to explore. So I think one way to understand Matthew and Judas the Zealot is they both came into relationship with Jesus with a preexisting idolatry.
Angela Weszely:
Oh, right.
Skye Jethani:
Matthew's idolatry was money, right? He was a tax collector. And in that society at that time, he was a greedy person seeking wealth and fortune. Judas's idolatry was nationalism. He was a politically active advocate for his nation, for Judea against his political enemy, the Romans. So he came with his ideology of nationalism and the process of discipleship to Jesus meant that over time, we don't see this intimately, but we have to know that over time, they both, at some point were asked to lay down those idols.
Angela Weszely:
Idolatry, yeah.
Skye Jethani:
And make their primary allegiance to Jesus first. That's what discipleship is. So in our churches, the question we need to be asking ourselves and everyone else is where have we put our allegiance and where have we built our identity other than upon Jesus? If it's in being a conservative Republican or if it's in being a progressive Democrat, even if it's in being pro-life, or if it's in being pro-choice, those are idolatries that if they are more important than my allegiance to Jesus, something's wrong. And if I come into a conversation with a sister or brother, and my allegiance is not primarily to Jesus, or if their allegiance is not primarily to Jesus, it's going to be, excuse my French, a shit storm. Because you're going to have a competing set of idols that don't compromise with each other. But if you're both coming with primary allegiance in Jesus, then suddenly everything opens up.
Everything becomes possible. Matthew and Judas can sit down at a table where their allegiance is primarily Jesus and say, "Help me understand why you hate the Romans so much or help me understand why you worked with the Romans so much." And maybe Matthew says, "You know what? I didn't realize how terrible these guys were. I was just greedy for money." And Judas might say, "I know the Romans are terrible. I didn't realize how bad my own side was that we were doing a lot of things that were contrary to the nature of God as well." And that's where the honesty then opens up to say, "I'm not blinded by my allegiance to this idol. My eyes are opened through my allegiance to Jesus."
Angela Weszely:
Wow. I literally love ending on this point because it goes back to is this actually a possibility? And you're saying, yes, if we take this seriously, this allegiance, [inaudible 00:42:06] used the word apprenticeship, which you can really see in the disciples. That's what they did. I mean, they really apprenticed themselves, attached themselves to him that we could be a community that is safe for this conversation with each other. And for those with lived experience. What are some of your final words? I think we've talked a lot even about the grassroots level. Do you have some thoughts for leaders? I mean, it's all the same principles, but what is incumbent upon leaders in churches or people who have a platform to pave the way for this? We all are going to be responsible. And I do think a lot of change will come at the grassroots level as we have conversations. But what could be done from a big picture or from a church perspective to pave the way for some of these conversations?
Skye Jethani:
Yeah. Good question. And none of this is going to be easy, there's a price to pay for it. I think in my limited exposure to local congregations over the last couple years, I kind of think they're falling into two categories right now. At least in the circles I move in. By far, the biggest category are pastors who just don't talk about it at all.
Angela Weszely:
Exactly. I agree. That's what I see.
Skye Jethani:
It's too controversial. They don't want to go there at all. And so they remain silent or they talk very obliquely about it. I think that's an error because with so much social media and news coverage all the time, the whole society is talking about this, and the church needs to model how to talk about this issue in a Christ centric way rather than a politically centric way. So silence is not an option. But then the other category are pastors who do talk about it, but they are talking about it in a partisan way in one side or the other because their churches are heavily progressive or heavily conservative. And so for that pastor, the challenge is going back to Matthew and Judas, how do you talk about it with allegiance to Jesus first? And that's where I feel like one of the best things a church leader can do is not necessarily for that leader to speak about it himself or herself, but to host conversations with other people who are modeling it.
So bring together two mature believers from your congregation who have slightly different active approaches to tackling abortion and put them in front of the congregation and moderate a conversation between them that really puts Jesus front and center and models all the things we've talked about, and let them see, "Oh, this is what it looks like." So it's not all on the pastor, but demonstrating it, modeling, using your curating responsibility in the church to demonstrate it for others, I think is a really helpful way of doing it. But you have to break that political idolatry first, and you have to find the courage to even broach this topic rather than remain in a cowardly silence because you don't want to stir up any trouble or rock the boat.
Angela Weszely:
Yeah, I'm walking away from this idolatry word. It's just sticking in my mind. And I think that's something for us to really wrestle with going into another, what is shaping up to be very contentious political cycle with this issue and some others, but this one really at the forefront. How can we say, "Let's do it. Let's show up differently this time. Jesus. How do we do that?" And I think going to him and asking about idolatry, I'm even sitting here going, "Have I made some of my views on this idolatry?" And I think that's a huge thing to hold open. And then I really love the faith. You're stirring up faith that Jesus is big enough to do this. It's almost like getting back to basics or unpacking things. So maybe that's freedom for people too. We're not talking about adding on, that's the pressure, add on this or add on that. But if we're actually talking about unloading things from ourselves and just getting back to him, you're saying that's what could really make the difference.
Skye Jethani:
Absolutely. Yeah. And to go back to something that we started with, I think churches and church leaders need to remind their people, again, politics did not create the abortion problem in this country, and therefore politics alone cannot solve it. It's a component. I'm not saying it's not a factor. It is. And law is a factor, but you can pass all the perfect laws that you think should be there. And as David French says, "There's a difference between banning abortion and ending abortion." And there's a lot of things you can do to ban it. It's not going to end it. And so if our goal is to see life lifted up and cherished throughout our society, then the church needs to have a far more nuanced approach to this than just a political partisan hammer.
And for church leaders to recognize that and to say that is a way of saying, "I'm not here to demonize your politics, whatever they may be, I'm just saying they're not going to solve the problem. So let's have that bigger conversation rather than narrow it." And I think that's the biggest lie that we've bought into on all sides, that this is a political problem that requires a political solution, which is also why church leaders don't want to talk about it because it's political.
Angela Weszely:
Exactly.
Skye Jethani:
It's far more than that. And we need to acknowledge it. And I think that actually lets people exhale a little bit and realize, "Oh, there's multiple facets here that we need to look at. And the church is the right place to be having those conversations."
Angela Weszely:
Exactly. And I think that's it. This is a human need and it's happening because needs aren't being met. And there's a whole host of things. We don't have time as we're wrapping up to go into, but to reframe it as a human need. And like we talked about, this is us and being community rather than a political issue. I agree with you, is it's the way forward. So thank you so much, Skye, for the hope and unpacking a lot of this. And again, highly recommend your book and the Holy Post podcast for people to go further. Thanks for being with us today.
Skye Jethani:
Thank you. And thank you for the great work that you and ProGrace are doing.
