On Culture

Trey Herwick and I talk about what makes community necessary and what makes it difficult and how individuality and community can coexist Get full access to The Embassy at theembassy.substack.com/subscribe

Trey Herweck and I talk about what is real - based on a recent dispatch from The Embassy - here is an excerpt: We live in a world where we, if we choose it, even if it is completely self-destructive, we can find some person or artificial companion to tell us what we want to hear, justify what we want to believe, live the way we want to live. But it isn’t real. We can’t escape reality without consequences. In attempting to do so, we embody the fool archetype in the biblical proverbs. Death and Destruction are never satisfied, and neither are human eyes. Proverbs 27:20 There is no limiting principle once we exchange the truth for a lie and what is real for the artificial. What that implies for your choice of social media or news is up to you. And what that implies regarding AI companions or therapists I will also leave for you to decide. But try to find someone real. … Read the whole article here: The Embassy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Embassy at theembassy.substack.com/subscribe

Drew Wendt (from DoYouLikeApples) and I talk Revolution, Resistance, Instagram, One Battle After Another, Eddington and other movies - and, also, talk about living. Get full access to The Embassy at theembassy.substack.com/subscribe

Trey Herweck and I talk about ‘The Algorithm’ - and how we should respond to it. This episode of On Culture is based on the most recent dispatch from The Embassy - Thanks for listening! The Embassy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Embassy at theembassy.substack.com/subscribe

This episode discusses the latest dispatch from The Embassy - Funerals and Other Expressions of Reality. Here is an excerpt - I officiated a funeral service for the mother and grandmother of friends of ours recently. I had never met the woman whose life we were remembering and whose absence friends and family were grieving. She was someone who lived within the big gospel story, who had, by all accounts, embodied the reality of this story for those who knew her. I spoke on the passage in John 11 describing the death of Lazarus, the grief of the family, the grief of Jesus as He wept with them - and the promise of the resurrection. Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” John 11:25-26 We Christians believe that Jesus is the resurrection and the life, and that belief in Him is life, even through death - and that those who live this life will, spiritually, never die - not in the old, final, tragic sense. Even though we grieve those we lose, it is our loss we grieve, not theirs. Theirs is the resurrection and, finally, the life that is life eternal. It is a familiar passage of scripture for Christians who are familiar with the gospel accounts of Jesus in the New Testament. The events of this account weigh heavier, no matter how familiar, with the casket holding a loved one a few feet away. That is the thing about funerals, or memorial services, if you prefer. They are the realest of ceremonies. The realest of things has happened. A thing that is somehow shocking while being the most ordinary of things, literally and actually awaiting all of us. The intruder we are apt to pretend isn’t visiting us. But it does visit. And so real things must be said, priorities reexamined, commitments renewed. Real things must be said, but what must be said is not always said and what must be done is not always done. The real things are sometimes not said, and nobody is wiser, or better, or even really comforted in their absence. Some years ago, I attended a funeral for a young man that many people I was close to knew very well. The young man, while remaining a story of redemption and renewal, and while bringing joy into the lives of many, tragically and, for those who knew him well, mysteriously, took his own life. Probably around 500 people attended, and almost all of them, many of them very young, knew that he had taken his own life. But this reality was never mentioned during the service. What hundreds of young people needed was some sort of connection for their young friend who had given into his darkest impulse, to this story of redemption. This was bypassed in favor of a message that, very likely for the sake of some in his immediate family, missed the chance to provide this comfort within the harshest of realities. Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed: we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself. From ‘At the Burial of the Dead’, Book of Common Prayer ~ 1549 Reality, as the saying goes, bats last - not just in death, but in life. And it is the reality that we live in a story that contains death but does not end in death (“Do you believe this?”). We avoid this reality to our own detriment and diminishing. Read the whole article here Get full access to The Embassy at theembassy.substack.com/subscribe

Trey Herweck and I share our thoughts about thoughts and prayers. This episode of On Culture - Thoughts and Prayers - is based on the article of the same name from The Embassy: Thanks for reading The Embassy! This post is public so feel free to share it. The Embassy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Embassy at theembassy.substack.com/subscribe

This episode interacts with the latest dispatch from The Embassy - here is an excerpt: View Sharon Melzer, 24, has long believed in manifestation, or the idea that she can bring her hopes and dreams to life by visualizing them. Coming Soon: Your Beautiful, Successful, Confident Life - Ayson Krueger - NYT - 7/26/25 Manifestation is one of the watchwords of our time. The idea is to take an idea, a preferred future, and manifest it, or put it into the universe in order to make it a reality. It is believing in a future that isn’t here yet - and the belief that belief itself is a big part of turning a desired idea into reality. There is a part of this I accept, but the part I believe probably doesn’t qualify as what people call manifesting an idea into reality. More on that in a bit, but first, let’s look at the latest turn in manifestation, involving, of course, artificial intelligence. Sharon Melzer’s AI generated videos are an example. Now, thanks to improved artificial intelligence technology, she can be — by putting herself, or an avatar that closely resembles her, in videos depicting her ideal future. These digital vision boards are a little like movie trailers showing coming attractions. In one, Ms. Melzer is flying on a private plane, giving a keynote address to a packed room and getting a notification on her computer that she reached 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. Coming Soon: Your Beautiful, Successful, Confident Life - Ayson Krueger - NYT - 7/26/25 She says that she watches these videos, and there are about 20 of them now, when she wakes up in the morning and before she goes to bed - instead of, in her description, scrolling through Tik Tok or Instagram. She watches herself achieving her dreams instead of other people (supposedly) achieving theirs. Not a bad thing, certainly, if that is the alternative. This idea of making the right moves so you can live your best life now and into the future is not foreign to the Christian space. It is Joel Osteen’s philosophy - living your best life now is thought a birthright, something the universe, or God, depending, gives us if we make the right moves or picture the right future or have the right kind of faith. It is a bit of the main character syndrome I talked about in my last dispatch - an invented life with an outcome within my control. Using A.I. for manifestation has taken off in the past year, said Catherine Goetze, the C.E.O. of CatGPT, an A.I. educational platform. … To Ms. Goetze …, the videos look real enough that she is compelled to remind users they are not “crystal balls,” she said. “The computer has been trained to reflect back at you what you tell it, so if it shows you as a billionaire, it doesn’t mean you are going to be a billionaire. It just means you told it you want to be a billionaire.” Coming Soon: Your Beautiful, Successful, Confident Life - Ayson Krueger - NYT - 7/26/25 Well, yes … right. Otherwise, there would be a lot of billionaires. I guess. I’m not a billionaire, maybe I just didn’t manifest hard enough. Or have enough of the right kind of faith. Or have the right software. But I don't think so. I don’t want to say a positive outlook on the future coupled with positive action toward that future isn’t important, even vital. But it seems like we are talking about something else here. For one thing, using Ms. Krueger as our example, she has 20 or so videos, depicting her in various aspects of a preferred future, but some of these may not go together. If there are 20 pictures, different pictures, of your future, it is quite likely that the over/under on how many of these happen is about one half. It is quite likely, in fact, that accomplishing one of these things precludes accomplishing others. If one of these things happens, it will very likely require hard work, disappointment, redirection … it will be a journey. That journey may include a positive outlook, maybe even manifestation, and it may end with the desired outcome, but it will likely be hard earned. And here is the first thing that strikes me as I ponder this trend of manifestation. The destination of the journey is important, it isn’t just any journey that will do - but, with these caveats in mind, it is the journey that is the point. Life is the journey, the outcome doesn’t produce life, whatever outcome there may be is the fruit of a life. Or, I should say it is one fruit of a life. It isn’t even the most important fruit. It is, as I spoke of Living a Discovered Life, part of life that is “under the sun”. It is fine, great even, but it can’t be the point. I have spoken with many people who have had a difficult journey, or who are in a difficult stretch in their journey. I’m sure you have too. That might describe you right now. One of the things that I have said to others and have reminded myself of during these times is God does not promise us relief from these difficult parts of the journey. In fact, it is through these difficult parts that most of the real fruit is produced. This is the fruit we are not manifesting, partly because we don’t have this fruit in mind, but mostly because we aren’t sure what it looks like - at least not from here. AI can’t help me make a video depicting a wiser future me. Or a more peaceful me, or more contented, kinder, more faithful, more humble, more joyful, or a more hopeful me. Or a more loving me. What would that even look like, exactly? As soon as I am the point of the manifestation, these things fade out of focus - they come indirectly, by God’s grace, on an outward focused journey. If God is gracious, and if I act in the faith He gives me, and if I imperfectly persevere through the difficult parts of the journey - a measure of these fruits find their way to me, even though that wasn’t the outcome I had in mind. Faithfulness in the journey is the point of a life that is more than good outcomes “under the sun”. … Read the whole thing here. The Embassy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Embassy at theembassy.substack.com/subscribe

As always, we use the latest dispatch from The Embassy for our discussion - here is an excerpt: The debate concerning the origin or foundation of mathematics has been around for a very long time. Particularly, this question: Is mathematics invented or is it discovered? Because mathematics describes to an unreasonable level of accuracy how the physical world operates, is it something like a part of or an addendum to our universe? Or, is it something humans are inventing, which may be what it seems like in the moment of thinking up new mathematical ideas. For those who are interested in the question, here are a few (very non-technical) minutes from Roger Penrose, one of the most prominent physicists of the past number of decades, on the question. One of the arguments against mathematics being discovered is the unresolved, and probably scientifically and mathematically insolvable question: how did it get there? God doesn’t often come up in these discussions, but that might be the beginning of an answer. I suspect this is one of the motivations of those who favor view that mathematics is invented. I have always been on the discovered end of the question, not that anyone cares. As Penrose points out, there are many examples, Einstein’s theories being some of the most prominent, where the known mathematics was extended far beyond our knowledge of the physical universe, only to find, through experimentation, that this apparently invented mathematics predicts the outcome of these experiments to an incredible degree of precision. The mathematics, along with those aspects of the universe that the mathematics describes, was waiting, from the very beginning of the universe, for us to discover it. Some on the invented side of the question seem to believe that everything is invented, that nothing exists on its own, rather we make it up and live according to these invented rules. It is all in our heads because everything is. Okay, okay, enough about mathematics, or at least let us move from mathematics to life. This is our question: is our life invented or discovered? And what difference does that make? This is our question: is our life invented or discovered? And what difference does that make? I don’t assume you have ever thought about the question, at least not in those terms. But our answer, or our assumed answer, whether we have reflected on it or not, impacts how we approach, think about, and live our lives. As Carl Trueman writes in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self … … most of us do not self-consciously reflect on life and the world as we live in it but instead think and act intuitively in accordance with the way we instinctively imagine the world to be. Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, p.73 As we reflect, with aid from Trueman and his book, we can draw on the work of philosophers Philip Rieff and Charles Taylor. Neither are religious, to my understanding, but both have wrestled with how we have thought about what life is over the course of Western Civilization. Rieff describes society’s moral values as finding their foundation in a sacred order (at least until our current age). He describes three successive worlds, with the first two worlds justifying these moral values by appealing to something transcendent, to the sacred. The first world is pagan and is controlled by fate, based on the whims of capricious gods or spirits. The second world in the West is Judeo-Christian and is characterized by faith, and at it’s moral foundation is a loving God who made us and everything else. We can move past fate because, in this second world, our lives have a purpose beyond ourselves, we are part of a larger story. The third world, by contrast, moves past belief in anything transcendent. It is only us, no larger purpose, nothing else to justify us, we have to justify ourselves. We have to invent our lives instead of discovering them in a larger story. Rieff writes, Culture and sacred order are inseparable, the former the registration of the latter as a systematic expression of the practical relation between humans and the shadow aspect of reality as it is lived. No culture has ever preserved itself where it is not a registration of a sacred order. Philip Rieff, Sacred Order / Social Order, Volume 1, p.13 - referenced by Trueman, p. 76 What Rieff calls the third world, Charles Taylor in his work A Secular Age, calls the immanent frame. Previously, as Rieff describes as the first and second world, we operated in a transcendent frame. In this shift from the transcendent frame to the immanent frame, Taylor describes a shift in how we understand our lives. In the transcendent frame, we view our life as deeper than what is on the surface, the world we see is representative of a larger reality. In the immanent frame, there is no larger reality, there is no order or meaning to discover. We are the creators of the meaning of our lives, instead of the discoverers of the meaning our lives already have. I think it is important to note that Taylor is not arguing for the transcendent frame, I don’t want to misrepresent him. He is simply noticing this shift and some of the impacts it has. I have summarized and oversimplified very large ideas - but it is clear we have moved from the idea that our lives are given to us, along with the meaning and purpose that is a part of this gift, to the idea that our lives are completely our own, that we enter in Act 1, Scene 1 of our stories and it is all about the play that we write. Which is pretty much what we are left with if we reject the transcendent frame. Many of us, perhaps most of us, ourselves, our friends, family, and neighbors experience life as chaotic, bewildering, maybe even apparently meaningless. That is true as well for Christians who have signed up for the transcendent frame, and a life of meaning - but who expect to understand the meaning at every step. At various times, I suspect, this describes all Christians, though we may not want to admit it to ourselves. We are impacted by the immanent frame all around us even as we believe in a transcendent frame. We seek to form our beliefs in this transcendent frame, but we feel the pull of a world that has largely rejected it Read the whole thing here. The Embassy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Embassy at theembassy.substack.com/subscribe

This week’s On Culture is a conversation between Trey Herweck and me about privacy and our public selves and how they relate. It uses the latest piece from The Embassy as the jumping off point. Here is an excerpt … Even though it is something I feel called to, it is a strange thing, not ever being a professional writer, to send these things off to people I don’t know. And, perhaps because of that, I want these private thoughts to make an imprint out there, with you - and, in so doing, are they no longer private? And, what impact does all of that have on me? (A not very private question to raise, but I hope you might consider the question, as it may be appropriate for you.) How much is the technologically enabled drive to go public with our lives - a public that is now global - reshaping how we understand ourselves? Reshaping the moral landscape of our interior lives, our psychological incentives, the very definition and experience of being a person? … Have we ceased believing that something of value might lie outside what other people can know and articulate about us, beyond what we can even know about ourselves? Anne Snyder, Seen and Unseen, Comment Magazine, Spring 2025 Have you ever seen one of those social media videos that are posted because they are really embarrassing to someone - they make the subject look stupid, weak, scared, awkward? And have you ever noticed that many of these videos appear to be posted to the account of the person who is the subject of these videos? I also take it for granted that the greatest threat to privacy is not prying eyes, so much as our own desire to be pried into. Anton Barba-Kay, Keep it Private, Comment Magazine, Spring 2025 Now, of course, these videos may be fake. But I think that makes the point even more clearly. We seem to live in an age where exposure, being noticed by others, is its own currency. And while I don’t think that any of you would do such a thing, such things impact us. While we value our privacy, many of us, culturally, seem to assess our value (at least partly) via exposure - whether by likes and clicks and hearts or by other ways we present ourselves to the world or to ourselves. I rarely post on social media - in fact, almost all my posts are links to this newsletter to let people know it is out there … which, back to the contradiction. I am part of the attention economy even as I analyze it. That, as I have written many times before, is how culture works - we can analyze it, but we should remember we are a part of it, even the parts we don’t want to think we are a part of. It leads me to consider (after having to admit it to myself) why I check to see if anyone has liked or shared or subscribed. It isn’t for the money - I make enough to cover the costs of my website and to help me do some consulting and coaching for churches and leaders who can’t really pay market rates for these services. (Why am I telling you this?) Anyway, it isn’t about the money. I want it because at least part of me wants the affirmation. Does that change anything about what I write? I don’t think so (see above). But it is a question I should ask myself. There are two basic wishes at play in all our privacies: the desire for solitude and the desire for society. We wish to be left alone, but it is hell to be alone. We wish to break the spell of solitude, but hell is other people. Digital technology promises to resolve this problem by affording us both … But instead of both, we get neither. Anton Barba-Kay, Keep it Private, Comment Magazine, Spring 2025 All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room, alone. Blaise Pascal, 1654 I am using this newsletter and social media more broadly as examples, but I am also thinking about the larger cultural impulse to present a curated picture of ourselves to the world, even to those we know and love, without thinking about it. We seek to present this to ourselves also, for our own approval. The perfect vacation, the perfect wedding, family, anniversary. The gleaming career, the wonderful house, the latest fashion. Many people, not all, but many, bought a certain electric car because it communicated what they considered to be the right things about the kind of person they wanted to be seen as. Some people, not all, cheered when those cars were torched when the message those cars delivered to the world changed. Some of that second group of people are also in the first group of people. The car is more than a car - it is a statement in a different package. Even statements about privacy are statements to send out publicly (I guess like this one? or from a writer I like below). I think most of this happens under the surface, beyond our personal reflection. Read the whole piece here. The Embassy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Embassy at theembassy.substack.com/subscribe

Chad Myers and I talk about the latest piece from The Embassy - The Good People and The Bad People. Here is an excerpt: About four or five years ago, a friend gave me a copy of Richard Beck’s book Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality. In this book, Beck explores how we view concepts like purity and contamination in our culture (and other cultures) and how that transfers to our view of people. Often, the people we tend to reject are those who move us to disgust. Our rejection of them is partly a reflection of that disgust. Beck asks us to imagine a glass of juice into which he drops a cockroach and stirs it around. After removing the bug, do we want the juice? Almost everyone would say no. But Beck, citing the work of Psychologists Paul Rozin and April Fallon, shares that after the juice is filtered in a way that ensures all traces of the cockroach have been removed - even if the juice is boiled after filtering - most people refuse to drink the juice. It has been contaminated for us, it has failed the purity test in a way that is permanent. It is an example of a kind of fear of contamination that comes from a reaction of disgust. Disgust and fear can be related - we fear coming into contact with what disgusts us. It is also an example of what is called negativity dominance. A small amount of the negative dominates and contaminates the larger amount. It doesn’t matter if it is a 12 ounce glass of juice or a gallon, or if it is a small or a large bug, the result is the same. The clean juice doesn’t counteract the bug, instead, it is contaminated in its entirety. As I said, I read Beck’s book about four or five years ago but pulled it off my shelf to take another look after receiving a text from another friend. He sent me a link to an interview of comedian Tim Dillon by CNN’s Elle Reeve. In his text, he described as the hour and ten minute long interview as “one of the more painful interviews I’ve ever witnessed.” Of course I watched the whole thing. Painful is not a bad description, I thought it had a bit of a train-wreck quality. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I found it fascinating. Dillon is a successful and popular comedian with a successful and popular podcast. He is a bit hard to pin down. I think that is a good thing, more of us should be a bit hard to pin down. I’ll come back to that. Dillon is gay, irreverent, irreligious (I believe), a liberal of sorts politically, but heterodox, eclectic in his thinking. As such, he has been critical of positions taken by the right and the left, politically and culturally. He has been critical of positions I hold. I forgive him this indiscretion because he is very funny. I know nothing about Reeve aside from this interview. On the other hand, the interview was an hour and ten minutes long and I watched all of it. In my reading, Reeve represented a stance that is all too familiar in our culture - and I don’t just mean it is reflected in the media, though it is prominent there. It seems to be an assumption underlying many of our interactions, social media or conversations or whatever, regarding any number of topics related to the culture and politics. Reeve’s assumption, underlying far more than half of her questions, is that there are good people and bad people. She repeatedly asked Dillon about trends in comedy, in the podcast universe, in politics that had a very similar theme. There are good people and bad people, Reeve clearly assumed herself to be one of the good people, and assumed it is the job of the good people - be they comedians, podcasters, journalists, or politicians, to expose the bad people as bad. She never attempted to make the case for this assumption, she never argued for it, it was, to her, unquestioned. This assumption manifested itself in many ways, but most prominently, Reeve considered some of Dillon’s podcast guests to be bad and wanted Dillon to do more to expose their badness. She also seemed to bemoan the reality of podcasters in general talking to politicians without asking them “are you bad?” I don’t have an opinion about the podcasts that she asked about - I haven’t heard any of them. But I think this good people / bad people assumption is behind much of our cultural division and, quite frankly, makes us dumber. As Dillon was pushing back on her assumption, Reeve said, “these are not my ‘are you bad?’ questions”, to which Dillon replied, “we are all bad.” Reeve then attempted to make a soft case that Dillon was bad, in a ‘if I was going to make the case, it would look like this’ sort of way. I think she thought, and wanted it to be clear to us, that she thought Dillon was one of the bad people (and she was doing her good people duty by pointing it out). Dillon’s response that we are all bad, though probably he is not aware of it, has a grounding in Christian theology. We are all flawed, we are all broken, we all need redemption. We should not sit in judgment, certainly not in condemnation, of others. The good people / bad people assumption (again, it is not argued for, it is simply assumed) generally means that I assume the good people position. I am joined by the people who are “like me”, the other “good people.” I or we are in a position to judge, to condemn, the badness of others. But I don’t need to be too self-critical. I am one of the good people. I’m not naive, I am aware that some people seem to do a higher percentage of bad things than others. However, the proposition that my own percentage is 0 or so low that it has no real effect in the world is worse than naive. Moreover, even people who allegedly fit into the bad category may be right in this or that particular case, they may say something true that I should hear. Which I won’t if I make it the hallmark of the good person never to listen to the bad people. Which I also won’t if I think any contact with the bad people contaminates me permanently. I must stay away, I must not platform, I must condemn - in order to maintain my purity as one of the good people. After all, the smallest exposure to the impurity of the bad people threatens to contaminate me entirely. One of the results of this assumption, painfully obvious in the interview, is a lack of genuine curiosity about other people - especially if we have already classified them as good or bad. Reeve lacked curiosity about what Dillon would say in response to her and, therefore, seemed to miss much of what he was saying. Or she didn’t interact with it, choosing instead to pursue the good/bad dichotomy. As I said, Dillon is a bit hard to pin down, a bit of a contradiction or mystery that I find interesting, but that is lost on Reeve, or on anyone else who is only interested in the moral classification. When we put ourselves in this position, we stop listening, we stop being challenged, we stop refining our own thinking. We are far poorer for it and so is our culture. Just to be clear, I find myself agreeing with Dillon sometimes and disagreeing with him maybe a bit more of the time. But if I allow myself to listen, I get to know something about someone else, I learn something about what they think, and, with Dillon, I often laugh. Check out the whole piece. Get full access to The Embassy at theembassy.substack.com/subscribe

We are back! It has been awhile since our last On Culture - but I’m going to work back to my old schedule, if I can, with some exceptions. Anyway - this episode features frequent collaborator Trey Herweck and is engaged with the last issue from The Embassy - Struggling Imperfectly Forward. Here is an excerpt: K asked a question during the conference, a question I answered, but one that we discussed individually off line, probably over dinner. There is a lot of killing in K’s country - killing that is unjust, random, inexplicable, tragic, grievous, enraging. K’s question is about forgiveness. In thinking about discipleship, his own journey toward Christlikeness, K thinks of forgiveness - his most pressing issue. He asked me, but he, in many ways, knows more about it than I ever will - because Christ calls him to apply forgiveness in ways that seem extreme to me, to us. He is committed to following that call in ways it is hard, probably impossible, for me to imagine. But it is a commitment we share. A commitment to forgive, to be transformed into a more forgiving person. It is one part of the commitment of discipleship. It is a commitment we understand as foundational to Christianity, and as something we all face. As a small group of us spoke about it together, we had all struggled with forgiveness, with this commitment. I am convinced that all transformation toward the image of Christ is basically impossible for us - we are called to participate with God’s Spirit - but He must empower it because we can’t do it ourselves. That might sound good in theory, but it goes against every fibre of our grain. We have to actively and intentionally move in the direction of transformation, and, at the same time, cry out for the ability, for the desire - or for the ability absent the desire, to forgive - or to love, to have peace, to have the faith necessary to continue the journey. So to say it is hard to forgive misses the point - our part is hard, the divine component necessary is impossible. Once, when Jesus explained the difficulty for those with means to be in a right relationship with God, his disciples were greatly astonished and wondered how it was possible for anyone to be saved. Jesus told them, and us, what is impossible for us is possible with God. Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:26 Our main problem with this - the impossibility of truly following Jesus, of truly forgiving, having faith, peace, hope, wisdom, love - is that we attempt to make it possible. We want to measure it, analyze it, make it into an abstraction. We want it to be difficult, of course, but possible. If we are honest, we want to be successful at it - to feel good about our progress. And we don’t want to feel guilty about our anger with someone we have already struggled to forgive. And so we either explain away our inability to forgive that person - the injustice done is too great (but isn’t that the point?) - or we explain away the injustice into something we don’t have to forgive. But the harm remains, the hurt remains - not just for us but, worse, for people we love. To truly wrestle with it, to truly feel the injustice, the anger, to grieve the loss - an injustice, anger, and loss that does not go away - and then to forgive? It is beyond me. It is beyond you, I believe. It is beyond K. That is why he asked, I think. Thanks for listening! The Embassy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Embassy at theembassy.substack.com/subscribe

You’ll have to listen to this one: * A brief recap of the last two dispatches from The Embassy * And solo podcast explaining the lack of other podcasts Enjoy! The Embassy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Embassy at theembassy.substack.com/subscribe

Here is an excerpt from the dispatch from The Embassy - Show Me Something Real … Phillip Hancock was on death row at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. He was convicted of two murders committed in 2001, resulting in a penalty of death. Devin Moss was his chaplain, or spiritual advisor as Moss described it. Moss had spent much of the prior year conversing with Hancock leading up to the night of the scheduled execution, November 30, 2023. This scenario is not uncommon, at least as it relates to inmates on death row. It isn’t terribly unusual that Hancock professed to be an atheist, although inmates on death row who already have some religious belief or those not already religious finding some belief is more common. What was more unusual here is that Moss is also an atheist. Devin Moss, like Hancock, grew up a Christian but later rejected belief in God. Moss became an atheist and a chaplain, and counseled Hancock as he faced execution. There is an adage that says there are no atheists in foxholes — even skeptics will pray when facing death. But Hancock, in the time leading up to his execution, only became more insistent about his nonbelief. He and his chaplain were both confident that there was no God who might grant last-minute salvation, if only they produced a desperate prayer. They had only one another. An Atheist Chaplain and a Death Row Inmate’s Final Hours - Emma Goldberg - NYT Both men shared a familiar path to unbelief. Both grew up in homes where Christianity was at least nominally practiced. After entering prison, Hancock was at least considering a Christian faith. But all of the hardships of his life finally turned him away from a belief in God. Over his early years in prison, Hancock had come to feel abandoned by God. Then, in 2007, a court denied the appeal of his death sentence. Hancock had a revelation: “I decided, it makes more sense to me to hate a God that does not exist than to be slave to one,” he said. What did Moss have to offer Hancock in a relationship where neither believed in anything beyond themselves? The answer to that question may have something to say to those of us who profess Christianity and who find the root of answers to ultimate questions in that faith. … I’d love for you to read the whole piece on The Embassy The Embassy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Embassy at theembassy.substack.com/subscribe

This week Susan James and I talk about how and why we ruin words. As always, we are discussing the latest dispatch from The Embassy - Ruining Words - here is an excerpt … … We don’t tend to use these words with their actual meanings engaged. I think many of us don’t even know their meaning as we use them. We begin to lose the ability to talk about reality … The flattening of these words mirrors and serves the polarization of our culture. We use words as we wish in order to please our cultural patrons and defeat our cultural foes. This negative trend in our culture I have noted many times. But I want to point out that flattening all words connected to our widening cultural divide into either “good” and “bad”, or “us” and “them” has effects beyond the cultural moment. We will miss these words, their history, their impact, their meaning. In an earlier post, I said that we will miss the truth when it is gone. This is, I suppose, a way of saying the same thing. The truth of these words, something that might unify, might appeal, might challenge … we need that truth, those meanings. We will miss them when they are gone. We begin to lose the ability to talk about reality in many important areas of life, only able to describe our experience and views in terms of the cultural divide, only able to say “us” or “them”. But life is more than “us” and “them”. We need to avoid being complicit in losing the ability to say so. I hope you read the entire piece … Get full access to The Embassy at theembassy.substack.com/subscribe

Chad and I talk about how we face endings and beginnings throughout our life and how that connects with a life of faith. Here is an excerpt … Trying to find meaning in an alienated world. I’m not a Doomer Optimist, but that is actually pretty good. In fact, the Christian narrative offers meaning in an alienated world. More specifically, the Christian narrative of the end of all things, the Christian apocalyptic message is what we have forgotten in our alienated world. We have the apocalyptic message, certainly. In fact, much of our apocalyptic understanding had roots in this Christian understanding - but it has escaped, in what Jonathan Askonas called “kind of a theological lab leak”, its proper context. Of course, the word “apocalypse” comes from the Christian narrative, even as it is used in our secular analysis of history. One of the central biblical meanings of the word is an in-breaking of God’s presence in this age that ends it and ushers in another. It is part of the Christian narrative. For the secularist, apocalypse is bad in any sense of the word. Not only that, all the agency lies with us and, therefore, all the responsibility to avoid apocalypse and usher in utopia. This has resulted, many have argued, in our increasing anxiety - one false move and all is lost. For the Christian, we believe an apocalypse is certain and necessary for the full redemption and restoration of all things - utopia is not in our grasp and apocalypse is not in our ability to avoid. We are called to faithfulness in presence and service and transformation by God’s power as preparation for any future, including an apocalyptic one. For Christians, the drawing near of the apocalypse should serve (as it has throughout history) not to paralyze us or make us anxious but to spur us to bold and hopeful action. The end is coming. There will be a catastrophe. But providence still ordains that all will be well. In the Greek myth, when all the evils have fled Pandora’s box, what remains inside is hope. Jonathan Askonas - Building a Future in the Face of the Apocalypse - Comment - Fall 2024 The New Testament biblical response to the prospect of apocalypse, this coming of Jesus to us is one of hopeful anticipation - even if it means the overturning of the world as we know it. In part because of this overturning. This is the way that justice is done, all is restored, and the brokenness of humankind is healed. Of course, it is true that throughout history and throughout the world, the church has and does most often occur in contexts of poverty, sacrifice, or persecution. Apocalypse means the end of all of that - and therefore perhaps more naturally viewed with hope. Read the whole thing - Endings and Beginnings. Get full access to The Embassy at theembassy.substack.com/subscribe

Trey Herweck, pastor of Refuge Church here in St. Charles, and I talk about faith and doubt and certainty and mystery. As always, we riff on the latest edition of The Embassy - Certainty, Doubt, Faith, Mystery. Here is an excerpt: About that path to God - much of the New Testament interacts with this question - what is the way (or way back) to God? Almost the entirety of the book of Hebrews stresses the unique and irreplaceable role of Jesus as the only One who can bring us back to God. One of Jesus’ disciples, Thomas, responds to Jesus’ message at the end of His life that He is returning to His Father - Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” John 14:5-7 As we read in Acts 17, Paul, in the early years of the church, arrived in the heart of the philosophical world - Athens - and saw idols all over the place. He did not respond with distress, though he was distressed, he responded with a loving, engaged, culture honoring and culturally informed call to a God they did not know about, referencing an idol to an unknown god that adorned the square among all the other idols. He walked through a door they opened in language they understood to tell them about one who died and rose to invite them back to God and called them to turn from their beliefs to a commitment to this path to the true God. Some believed, some scoffed, and some wanted to hear more. All of these are very particular invitations to a very particular, a scandalously particular, path. And there are dozens more I could reference. This is a central message of the New Testament that has been believed by the church for many centuries. Again, others have a different understanding of scripture and the way to God - and I respect their views. But the church has taught this central message for almost two millennia. Can God apply His grace, in Jesus, through His Spirit to those who don’t have all their beliefs in order? Yes, of course. At least I hope so. We all should hope so, because none of us has all beliefs in order, whatever that means. That is part of the central meaning of grace. God’s grace is God’s - He applies it as He sees fit. But he tells us something - something scandalously particular - about how He ordinarily applies that grace. Faith is required, and faith isn’t certainty - but it is a knowledge and foundation for life and action, grounded in our understanding of what God has said to us. It is a gift of the Spirit, so we can be transformed and transformative. Is there a mystery here? Yes. We are not promised a life without mystery. And, God being the one who loves us best and knows what we need the most, we shouldn’t seek a life without mystery if that is the life He has for us. But acting in the world requires us to assume some belief about us, about God, about others, about the world - even if are not aware of these beliefs, even if we claim uncertainty about them, when we act, we live out some belief. We can say we want to dwell in the mystery, but acting requires us to express some belief - held in faith, with humility … but held. We are not quantum elements existing in a state of indeterminacy - when observed, we particularize. And we are always observed … called to act under His loving observation. One of the tragedies of our moment is that some cling to a certainty that binds them in angry, fearful, pharisaical concrete. Another tragedy of our moment is that others drift - lacking agency and purpose because all is mystery and nothing holds any particular meaning Read the whole piece … Get full access to The Embassy at theembassy.substack.com/subscribe

This episode of On Culture interacts with this latest dispatch from The Embassy. Here is an excerpt - Some commercials stay with you. Perhaps they resonated during a particular time or place, or became a cultural talking point like Apple’s 1984 Super Bowl spot introducing the Macintosh or Wendy’s iconic question - also, interestingly, from 1984. Or perhaps they resonated with you because you just enjoy them. Or maybe you like the product and a good commercial for it validates … you somehow. Because commercials are about desire. And your desire, met by this product in some way, is validated by this commercial, this 30 second expression of why anyone would or should desire this thing. You probably have a favorite or two. Infiniti made a splash in 1989 with its introductory commercials. It was a new luxury brand - we had seen, and desired as symbols of luxury, Mercedes and BMWs for years, and this was to be a new offering in this status driven category. How did they introduce us to their new luxury car? They did it without really showing us the car. It was about a feeling, a sense, a “true idea of luxury”. These spots were both widely criticized and widely successful. We bought the idea, the feeling, the vibe. A more recent series of ads has an update on this vibes strategy. Matthew McConaughey stars in a number of Lincoln spots where the car is present, but secondary. We are encouraged to identify with the driver. Not the particular idiosyncrasies of this particular movie star, but the person of means who goes his own way - who has his (or hers, I suppose, but men appear to be the target here) own idiosyncrasies. It may seem strange to appeal to a vision of unique idiosyncrasies in a mass market ad, but we don’t analyze the appeal, we experience it. I can drive anything, and I know other things might appear to have more status, but, because I am me, I am bestowing my own status on this Lincoln (along with Matthew McConaughey - who may not actually drive one). … God’s people - and all people with them - have been faced with this question from since there were God’s people. You may be familiar with the tragic history of God’s people in the Old Testament, the nation of Israel. Most of that history can be explained as a cycle of failed attempts to get what they wanted instead of what was offered them by God. Instead of blessing, they, over and over, sought what seemed like security from pagan gods or alliances with neighboring kingdoms. Over and over, God called them back to a simple dependence on Him, which is what would truly satisfy them. Here is just one of those appeals, through the prophet Isaiah - “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you, my faithful love promised to David. Isaiah 55:1-3 Read the whole piece! Get full access to The Embassy at theembassy.substack.com/subscribe

This episode of On Culture is an extension of the latest article there - A Redemptive Arc. Here is an excerpt: When I showed up for that coffee with my friend, I wasn’t thinking about redemption. Because, as far as I knew, it hadn’t arrived. As far as I knew, the redemption that has seemed to arrive, wasn’t going to. It is a thing that takes many forms and often arrives in an unexpected packages. Sometimes you don’t know it has arrived until sometime later - in the moment, you may not think of it as redemption at all. That is the thing about it - we reach what we think is the end of our rope, and redemption may show up - or we may discover that someone has given us more rope, or tied us in more securely, instead of pulling us up from the darkness. Sometimes, that is the only redemption we will receive in this part of our story. I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me! Job 19:25-27 I’m not sure we think of Job’s story as a redemption story. But that is our misapprehension of redemption. It is most obviously the classic case of someone dealing with suffering. But redemption comes through suffering. We are redeemed not only to something, but from something and through something. But redemption comes through suffering. We are redeemed not only to something, but from something and through something. Thanks to Susan James for the conversation. Until next time - grace and peace. Get full access to The Embassy at theembassy.substack.com/subscribe

This episode of On Culture interacts with the most recent dispatch from The Embassy - The Noble Lie. You may want to check it out before or as you listen to this. Here is an excerpt … You may have heard of what we call the noble lie. It can be a bit subjective to define, but, simply, it is a lie for a good purpose. You may have noticed that we have a difficult time agreeing on what ‘good’ means. The classic example of a noble lie is exemplified by the inhabitants of the French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in World War II. The history of Le Chambon and its environs influenced the conduct of its residents during the Vichy regime and under German occupation. As Huguenot (Calvinist) Protestants, they had been persecuted in France by the Catholic authorities from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries and later provided shelter to fellow Protestants escaping discrimination and persecution. Many in Le Chambon regarded the Jews as a “chosen people” and, when they escorted those who were endangered 300 kilometers to the Swiss border, the guides were aware that they were following the same route that their persecuted Huguenot brethren had traveled centuries earlier. Le Chambon-sur-Lignon - The Holocaust Encyclopedia A village of 5000 sheltered close to 5000 people, most of them Jews, who were hiding from the Nazis - at great risk to themselves. They were motivated by their Christian beliefs and led by Pastor Andre Trocme of the Reformed Church of France and his wife, Magda, and his assistant, Pastor Edouard Theis. On June 29, 1943, the German police raided a local secondary school and arrested 18 students. The Germans identified five of them as Jews, and sent them to Auschwitz, where they died. The German police also arrested their teacher, Daniel Trocmé, Pastor Trocmé's cousin, and deported him to the Lublin/Majdanek concentration camp, where the SS killed him. Roger Le Forestier, Le Chambon's physician, who was especially active in helping Jews obtain false documents, was arrested and subsequently shot on August 20, 1944, in Montluc prison on orders of the Gestapo. Le Chambon-sur-Lignon - The Holocaust Encyclopedia Read the whole thing … and thanks for listening. The Embassy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Embassy at theembassy.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Susan James and I talk about gratitude. This episode is based on the latest dispatch from The Embassy - Counting Blessings. Here is an excerpt … Most of us take what we have for granted and many of us feel that we are losing out on something that others have. Or, even if things are better now, that we lost out before on something so we are not as far as we ‘should’ be. Everything is relative to a set of expectations that excludes a fallen world and our own fallen nature - so any setback is not placed next to the many blessings we have received but can so easily ignore. And so we lack gratitude. If we expect a life of unbroken health for ourselves and our loved ones, of ever rising success and prosperity, of continuing security, of constant enjoyment … all expectations that surely won’t be met in this actual life in this actual place among these actual people - we will not be filled with thankfulness. We will think we have grounds for grievance, even if we, in what we convince ourselves is virtue, don’t act on the grievance. I have experienced many young people who feel that they have, uniquely, a legitimate grievance because they have grown up in a time of economic uncertainty. I will pass over the observation that I have lived through all of those times as well. Even so, a useful question in life is “compared to what”? Those who grew up in almost every decade in the last century certainly had things worse - WWI, the great pandemic, the crash, the depression, WWII, the Cold War, war in the Middle East, assassinations, hostages in Iran, stagflation, domestic bombings in the 70’s, the dot com bubble crash, 9/11 … etc. But these previous generations may not have had things worse compared to their expectations. We listed some reasons above why it doesn’t usually seem like things are better. There is another one - things may not be better in some important ways. It is better in ways we take for granted, and worse in ways we take for granted. We are broken and so is the world and economic progress does not make that go away. That might be another misplaced expectation - that if we all move toward prosperity together, all the big problems will fade. The world is worse in ways it couldn’t be worse before - precisely because we have more wealth than we need - worse in ways that only wealth makes possible. Read the whole article. Links Travel Advisory for Ethiopia - U.S. State Department Our World in Data - Economic Growth - Global Change Data Lab A Goose in a Dress - Tonya Gold, Harpers, September 2015 Get full access to The Embassy at theembassy.substack.com/subscribe