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What our evangelical tradition lacks of late is knowing how to prod and poke people past infancy. Hello and welcome to the Skypod, brought to you by Holy Post Media and Madrigal Electromotive. It's hi, it's Sky Gitani. I am back for another skydive episode. I don't know if we've ever done two skydives in a row. If you tuned in last week, you know that I did a skydive because we were supposed to do a French Friday and David French got snowed in, iced in power out in Nashville and had no podcasting abilities. Sadly, he was not able to join us this week either because I think he got so backlogged from missing so many commitments last week that he didn't have time to fit us in. This week is totally understandable and excusable. David has been incredibly generous with his time over the years in carving out space virtually every month to come on the show and talk to us. The fact that we weren't his top priority when trying to get his life back together after that storm is hardly a fault. So we do look forward to having him back soon, along with some other folks that I'll tell you about in a minute. But because of that, we're going to do another skydive and since I always have stuff to talk about, that's not a problem. We'll get into the topic for today in a little bit. A couple things though, just some business to take care of. Usually on these skydives I like to give you again a peek behind the scenes, what's going on with me, what's happening here at Holy Post Media, some other stuff that you can look forward to. So let's do that. First off, last week I talked to you about that we're getting a new puppy at our house and asked for suggestions name suggestions for the new dog and you guys sent them in. Thank you very much for that. We still don't have a name chosen, although some of your suggestions have made into our family group chat and we will give that consideration. We did go see the puppies, however. These puppies were born to friends of ours not too far away from where we live. They have a farm and they let us come by this past weekend and we visited the puppies. Their eyes were still not open. These are really young puppies, but it was adorable. The mother, who's a Bernese mountain dog, just absolutely beautiful dog, was delightful and it was just fun to play with them. There are six puppies in this litter, three boys, three girls. I don't know exactly which one we're going to get yet because we haven't chosen. You can't see their temperaments and things yet. I'm inclined to guess we're going to get another boy. Part of it's just I've always had boy dogs my whole life, with maybe one small exception when I was pretty young. But I always had boy dogs. I don't know if there's are there like boy dog families and girl dog families. We're a boy dog family, so my guess is we're going to get one of the boys. Not sure which one yet. We'll take a look at that, but I'll keep you updated. Right now, I think we're planning to bring this dog home around Easter, like late March, early April. So that's the timeline. But we'll probably visit the dogs a few more times between then and now. And I'll let you know when we've picked one and when we have a name in place. And if you have suggestions. As you know, my current dog's name is Steve. So something that might go well with Steve or not, whatever goes. But let me give you a little update on some things you can look forward to either on the Skypod or an upcoming Holy Post episode. We've got some interesting guests lined up and I'm really looking forward to these conversations. So first up is going to be Tyler Johnson. He works with the He Gets Us campaign. They have a new super bowl commercial. They've gotten a lot of buzz from these super bowl commercials in recent years. I've seen the new super bowl commercial. I think it's public. It might actually be up on YouTube already. So you'll see it this Sunday at the super bowl or you can get it online. Definitely a different tact than in recent years. They're staying away from anything that could be deemed too political. It's still great. It's a really well done ad. So he's going to be on the show soon to talk about that ad. What they're trying to convey the goals for this thing. What's going on with the He Gets Us campaign and just the big picture of how he sees things unfolding in the use of media as a way of reintroducing people to faith. So that's one. Kevin Brown, the president of Asbury University, is going to come on the show. I know, Kevin, because right before COVID hit, I was asked to be the speaker at his installation, installment. Installation, whatever it is. When you become the president of a University. They have a ceremony. I was the keynote speaker there. It was quite an honor for me to be there. And it was not long after that that actually within days they shut down the country from COVID And then if you recall, a few years ago, there was a revival that broke out at Asbury and Dr. Brown was at the center of that because he's the president of the university and he's written some pieces and he's talked to me a little bit about his perception of what's going on with this younger generation. As you know, we've had Ryan Burge on a number of times to talk about the data. Is there any evidence that a revival is happening among younger generations in America? Ryan Burch says the data doesn't show any movement. And Kevin Brown's going to come on and talk about not the data necessarily, but the anecdotal evidence that he sees of something happening in this younger generation, both based on what happened at asbury and elsewhere. Two others I'm looking forward to coming up very soon. Dr. Not Dr. Father James Martin, the Jesuit priest, well known Catholic public figure, is going to come on the show. He has a new memoir out and we'll get into the memoir a little bit. But I've been wanting to have him on for actually quite a few years because I've always been intrigued by Jesuit spirituality and his perspective as a Catholic voice in our culture today. So he's coming on and then this was a surprise. But this week on the Holy Post podcast, the flagship show, we talked about Joshua Harris and his recent Instagram post saying that he's kind of flirting with Jesus again after he had both kissed dating goodbye and kissed his Christian faith goodbye some years ago. And his Instagram post was fascinating. We talked about that. Go back and listen to the episode. Well, Joshua Harris is going to come on the show and he and I are going to have a conversation about, I'm sure that Instagram post and just his journey overall. And I'm never met Joshua before. I haven't talked to him at all. I'm really looking forward to that, grateful for his willingness to come and share with us. So those are all things you have to look forward to. We're not sure where all these conversations are going to happen. Some will be on the flagship Holy Post show, some will be here on the Skypod. But all that is coming probably within the next month. And stay tuned for all of it. Of course, to get full access to the Skypod episodes and any bonus interview content, you need to be a Holy Post plus subscriber so go to holeypost.com and sign up for that. Okay, One other thing to keep you aware of another part Part of my work is with God Daily, which is a daily devotional I've written for many years. I talk about it as the daily devotional for people who hate daily devotionals because it tries to be smarter, deeper and less sentimental than a lot of devotionals that are out there. Last year I started a series in With God Daily on Temple theology, and last year we covered a lot of the Old Testament and beginning in January I came back to that series and now we're doing the New Testament. So I've covered a lot of the Gospels and the teachings of Jesus around the temple. Now we're in the Book of Acts looking at the temple theology as it applies to the church. Interpreting the day of Pentecost through Temple Theology this coming week I'm looking at the story of Ananias and Sapphira, that horrific story that makes everybody uncomfortable when it comes up at church where two people drop dead when they lie to the apostles. And I'm going to explain how that story actually makes a ton more sense when it's read through temple theology. And then we're going to get into the rest of the epistles and eventually eschatological visions of the temple in Revelation. So I have found this series to be super interesting. I've been reading tons of theology books on it. I love being able to fill my brain with all of that knowledge and scholarship and then kind of give it to you in bite sized pieces that are accessible and interesting and applicable to our world today. So if you want to be a part of that, go to withgoddaily.com we have both paid and free versions of the Daily Devotional. It's a pay what you want kind of structure. Each devotional is both audio and written, includes the content I've written, obviously passages of scripture and a historic prayer of the church. So if you're looking for a devotional for this year and you're sick of kind of the fluffy, sentimental garbage that's generally out there in the devotional space, this is something very different. Grateful for everyone who's been a part of that over the years. Okay, let's jump into what I actually want to talk about today and it's it's kind of a part two on what I talked about last week. Last week we looked at the value of redundancy and the need to build redundancy into our lives relationally and Spiritually to build anti fragility, this ability to persevere in our faith and in our lives and not be broken by the fragility of too much efficiency. One of the core metaphors I used last week was aviation, particularly commercial airliners, and how they are antifragile because they have so many redundant systems. The idea being that if one system fails, there are multiple backup systems to ensure the plane can still fly safely. Well, I want to kind pick up that aviation metaphor for today's topic, and I want to begin with a study that came out from the FAA back in 2016. For those who don't know, the FAA is the federal Aviation Administration, the federal agency that regulates flight in America and all the commercial flights that we take all the time. So they came out with this study in 2016, and you probably didn't hear about this, and you should probably be glad you didn't hear about this because it's a little bit frightening. What they found is that commercial pilots are not as skilled at flying as they used to be, and they are, in fact, losing some of their flying skills. And they attribute this to the fact that more and more flight time on modern airliners is automated. Simply put, it's run by autopilot. They estimate that between 70 and 90% of a flight's flight time is completely controlled by the autopilot, by the computer systems on the plane. Obviously, when the autopilot is engaged, the pilots aren't doing nothing. They're not, you know, doing their Sudoku or scrolling on Instagram. They're monitoring all the flight systems, ensuring the safe operation of the plane. But the problem is because they're. They're very rarely manually flying the plane anymore, they're losing that skill a little bit. It's becoming weaker. And what the FAA study found is that this poses a risk because when an emergency does arise in which the pilots do need to take manual control of the plane, they may not have the sharpest skills in order to do that. There's analogous parallels in all kinds of other areas of our lives. You can think about the way we used to have to do math, but now we don't because of advanced calculators, we've lost those skills. I think about this as a writer. I was always a very poor speller, especially as a kid in school. But once spell check came along, by the time I was in college and we were using word processing programs to write papers and I had spell check, well, I didn't have to worry about learning how to spell words correctly. Anymore because there was an automated system to do that for me. And of course AI is just going to put this on hyperspeed now with all the different things that AI will do for us so that we don't have to keep those skills honed ourselves. Now most of the time this is innocent, this is not a dangerous situation. If I, if I can't speak, spell a word properly, it's not the end of the world. Being able to fly an airplane, a commercial jet with hundreds of passengers in an emergency is pretty important. So what the FAA is recommending is that pilots actually disengage the autopilot more frequently and actually manually fly planes obviously in safe situations in order to keep their flying skills sharp. And I'm, I'm not a pilot, I'm not here to disparage commercial pilots. Super obviously grateful for their skills and, and discipline. No doubt they are honing those skills in flight simulators as well, which are required, required so that they can test their skills in emergency situations without autopilot. But it is interesting to me that the ability to fly is enhanced with hands on kind of flying, manual flying. And this gets to the point I really want to talk about today, which is the value of resistance. Another way of putting it is when things are too easy, when they're too automated, we actually lose abilities. But when there is some resistance, when we are faced with some intentional hands on engagement, it builds our skill. And we'll unpack this in a number of ways. But here's my premise that I'm working from and we'll apply this in greater depth later on. But my premise is this. A lot of the way we have constructed Christianity in the modern world or the way we've constructed the Christian life in the modern world is so easy that we in a way have lost critical Christian skills for living life with God. And we'll get into the church's dynamic and all this too, and that if we really want to grow in our faith, if we want to be pushed towards maturity in Christ, we have to turn off the autopilot and actually welcome resistance into our lives, welcome more difficult circumstances, disciplines, community, in order to actually grow. But ironically, a lot of the momentum in American Christianity and in the Church is designed to keep us immature. So to unpack this premise, let's begin with brain science. There's a very well known book that was published in 2011, well regarded award winning book by an American Israeli psychologist named Daniel Kahneman. And the book is called Thinking Fast and Slow. If you haven't Read it. There's great summaries online talks that he's given. You can find. Tons of. Lots of people have cited this book. It's been so helpful and instructive in a lot of areas. He basically outlines that the human brain functions on two systems. System one, Kahneman defines as the fast system. It's automatic, it's intuitive, it's emotional. It's your brain running on autopilot. It's just quick. And your System one tends to be engaged when you are relaxed, when you're comfortable, when you're in ordinary circumstances, familiar circumstances, you just kind of. Your brain doesn't have to think, it just intuits. It just operates quickly. System two is a different gear where the brain shifts the way it's functioning and it moves much, much more slowly. That's where you get the title, Thinking fast and slow. It's thinking in System one fast or thinking in System two, which is slow. The System two, the slow gear, is deliberate. It's analytical. It takes a lot of effort. This is, to use our metaphor, the equivalent of switching off autopilot and taking manual control of the plane. You have to be focused. You have to be paying attention. You have to be looking at all the gauges. You have to be looking out the window. You actually have to be flying the plane. It takes concentration. System two is important because that's when learning happens. That's when beliefs are challenged and reconsidered. It's when assumptions are challenged. It's when new skills are attained and acquired and mastered. It's when you grow. So the whole point of the book is to argue. If you want people to change, if you want to change, if you want transformation in your life, if you want to be educated in a new skill or ability or idea, then you need to figure out ways of shifting your brain from System one to System two. System two is where growth happens because System two involves resistance. Let me give you a couple of examples of how this plays out, just in metaphors. In ordinary life, think of exercise. If you lift weights or if you're doing cardiovascular training, if you face no resistance, you do not grow your muscle mass. You don't grow in strength. Or riding a bicycle, if the bike is going downhill, no resistance, there's no effort involved. Gravity just takes you along. If you are going uphill, that requires more muscle engagement, more strength training. It develops your. Your legs and your quads and all the muscles involved. In riding a bike. You can envision a scenario where the incline is so steep that you can't ride the bike at all. That's where you have too much resistance, and it's useless as well. But a certain amount of resistance is necessary to engage your muscles so that they grow. And the same thing goes with our brains. When our brains are at ease, when we're comfortable, when we're amused, when we're entertained, when we. When we feel no resistance, the brain just doesn't grow. It doesn't change, it isn't challenged. Put too much stress on your brain, an overwhelming amount of resistance, and that short circuits everything as well. So you're looking for shifting from system one to system two with enough resistance to engage, transformation, and change. One of the examples that's given in one of the resources I was reading had to do with listening. And what they found is that when you are in a completely quiet environment with no noise whatsoever, and you're trying to listen to a friend, a spouse, somebody in conversation, people actually don't listen very well because there's no resistance. There's no challenge involved. There's no headwinds against you. And what they found is that if there's. If you introduce some background noise, like sitting at a coffee shop where there's just clatter going on around you, you actually listen better. Because it shifts the brain from system one to system two. In order to hear what the person across the table is saying to me, I have to intentionally focus. I have to intend to drown out the noise around me and really focus on their eyes, their face, the movement of their mouth to pay attention to what they're saying. And I actually end up learning more of what they're saying. If there's a little bit of resistance in the environment, a little bit of challenge to the listening, that's kind of the core idea here. Too little resistance. Your brain stays in system one. You don't grow, you don't change. You want resistance, because that's where growth happens. All right. How does this relate then to our faith? There's lots of applications, but I want to begin with Jesus, because when I was first introduced to Kahneman and thinking fast and slow and this whole system one, system two stuff, it was fascinating to then go back and read the Gospels and look at how did Jesus engage with his ministry, how did he do with his audience and the people who were his followers or would be followers? And I think it's fair to say that Jesus intuitively, or because he has the mind of God, understood how people grow. And throughout his ministry, Jesus deliberately introduces resistance. He puts challenges in the way of his listeners and his audience in order to shift them from system one to system two. Let me give you a couple of examples. I think you see this clearly in the way Jesus communicates. I don't know how often you are in the Gospels or you have your nose in those chapters of scripture where Jesus teaches, but most of the stuff Jesus says is pretty difficult to understand. I know there's a bias within evangelicalism that scriptures are easy to access and simple to understand. And anyone with a Bible can open it up and read it, get something from it. And okay, I kind of understand the reason why that value gets trumpeted in a lot of evangelical churches, but I don't think it's being completely honest. Because when you read the Gospels, you read the Sermon on the Mount, you read the parables for sure. Like, these are tough texts. And they're not just tough because they were written to a different audience 2000 years ago in a different culture that we don't understand. That's a layer of complexity in and of itself. But when you read the gospel accounts, even within the text, there are people who are saying, we don't get it, Jesus, we don't understand what you're saying. That makes no sense. That's a really difficult. Like, they themselves, people in Jesus environment who, who were listening to him teach this in the flesh were very confused by the things he was saying and doing. One example of this is just the parables. In Matthew 13, Jesus taught a parable. I think it's the parable of the sower. The seeds and the disciples come to him afterwards and they're like, why are you making this so hard, Jesus? Why don't you just, what does this mean? Like, why are you telling us these stories and seeds and farmers and thorns and birds and like, what on earth are you talking about? And in response to them, Jesus is like, yeah, I know. I'm actually making it complicated and vague and veiled on purpose. I'm teaching in parables because I want it to be difficult for people to understand what I'm saying about the kingdom of God, and for those who don't want to understand they're not going to get it. In other words, for those who are just content with system one, who don't want to work, who don't want any resistance, who don't want to try, this stuff is just going to fly over their heads. But to those who are willing to shift to system two, who are willing to really think, to slow down, to contemplate, to invite God's spirit to illuminate it for them. The truth of the kingdom of God will be revealed. The whole reason Jesus teaches in parables is because he's putting up resistance so that people will actually have to interact with, intend to want his kingdom, intend to understand his kingdom. You're not going to understand the kingdom of God by accident. It's not going to hit you tangentially one day and go, oh, that's what Jesus meant by the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God, or all these parables of seeds and coins and sheep and on and on. No, he's saying you have to actually engage. You have to participate. You have to shift into system two to understand what I'm saying. His communication is, was not clear. It was not easy, it was not comfortable, it was not put on such a low shelf that anyone could understand it. That is not what he does. The same thing goes for the community that he's building around himself. It's a very challenging place to be. It's not an easy community for people to enter into. I'll give you some examples of this. One is found in the diversity of his disciples. Remember, Jesus called both tax collectors and zealots to be his followers. We tend to find it most comfortable and easy to participate in community that includes a whole bunch of people that look just like us, that vote like us, that live like us, that, that have values like us. Like, you look around and go, oh yeah, these are my people. This is where I belong. This is easy. System one. If you were around in first century Judea and you see this traveling rabbi, Jesus, and you're intrigued by what he's saying, maybe you're willing to put in some of that effort to understand his parables. And you're like, I think I might want to be a part of this community that he's gathering and see what else is going on here. And then you get into that community, you would have been shocked. You would have been like, wait a minute, there's tax collectors a part of this community. These are Jews who are betraying their own countrymen by working for the Romans, their pagan overlords, to extract money and wealth from their Jewish neighbors, to give them to the pagan Romans. Like, that's crazy. Or maybe you're like not super weirded out by the tax collectors being there, but then you find out that they're zealots, part of this community. For those of you who don't know what a zealot was in the first century, because we use that word just to mean somebody who's Passionate or extreme. A zealot in the first century was a terrorist. This was somebody who believed in using physical violence against Rome in order to liberate the Jewish people. So Jesus has both tax collectors who are cooperating with Rome and zealots who are killing Romans in his community. This is not a comfortable, homogenous community where everyone just looks the same, believes the same, thinks the same, acts the same. This is a messy community. And of course, that continues into the New Testament church where you get Jews and Gentiles, slave and free, male and female. All these different groups of people across different strata of society coming together around one table to share one loaf and drink from one cup like this is unprecedented in the ancient world. And it was really, really uncomfortable. Which meant if I'm going to be in a community of people of that kind of diversity, I'm going to face resistance. It's going to be challenging to me. It's going to shift me from system one into system two. And then beyond that, Jesus is explicit to those who would want to be his disciple that this is going to cost you something. There's going to be a price to pay. He says this repeatedly. Luke, chapter 14, Matthew, chapter 8. He talks about counting the costs. He uses metaphors, parables. A man who's going to build a tower doesn't begin unless he makes sure he has enough to finish it. Or the king who's thinking about going to war. He checks, do I have enough soldiers and resources to go to war against my enemy? If not, I'm going to settle. Make peace now, otherwise you'll be ridiculed. Similarly, he says, you need to count the cost. Like, there is going to be a price to pay to being my disciple. And maybe most explicitly, in Matthew 16, Jesus talks about anyone who would be his disciple must take up their cross, deny themselves, and follow him to take up your cross, deny yourself. That's Jesus saying, hey, there's going to be resistance. This isn't a downhill bike ride. This is uphill. It's going to be a challenge. There are things that are going to be uncomfortable. There are people that you are going to be invited into community with that you're expected to view as your sisters and brothers who you under no other circumstance would have identified that way in any other place. Don't worry, this is not the end of the episode. There's actually plenty more. But to listen to the rest, you need to be a Holy Post plus subscriber. So head over to holypost.com skypod and sign up for just $5 a month. 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