The Airing of Gratitude with Justin Taylor and Collin Hansen

Life and Books and Everything — Clearly Reformed

00:00

The Airing of Gratitude with Justin Taylor and Collin Hansen

June 17, 2024

Life and Books and EverythingClearly Reformed

Kevin is joined once again by his friends—and by now, only somewhat special guests—Justin and Collin. Listen in as the three amigos talk about books, summer plans, and what they are grateful for. Once again, you’ll find that the guys hit that sweet spot that combines ephemeral chatter and over-long monologues.

Books & Everything:

Ask Pastor John: 750 Bible Answers to Life's Most Important Questions

ESV Teen Study Bible

Shaman and Sage: The Roots of “Spiritual but Not Religious” in Antiquity

Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975

Churchill: Walking with Destiny

The Last of His Kind: Clayton Kershaw and the Burden of Greatness

Priests of History: Stewarding the Past in an Ahistoric Age

Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion, AD 300-1300

They Flew: A History of the Impossible

The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

The American Revolution: A History

The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783

Final Pagan Generation: Rome's Unexpected Path to Christianity

Select Letters of John Newton

The Joy of Preaching

Expository Reflections on the Gospels

The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook

The Great Abolitionist: Charles Sumner and the Fight for a More Perfect Union

After Disbelief: On Disenchantment, Disappointment, Eternity, and Joy

A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living (Learning to Live)

Transcript

Greetings and salutations. Welcome to Life and Books and Everything. I'm Kevin D. Young, senior pastor at Christ, given in Church of Matthews, North Carolina.

I am joined by my moderately special guests. They are very special, but they just—they've been here many times, so the specialness is worn off somewhat, but they're all equally special in our hearts. Justin Taylor and Collin Hansen.

Welcome back to my friends, and if anyone has the pleasure of watching this online, you can see some glistening sunburns off of my fair-skinned friends. So what did you say, Collin? You were meant for Northern Scandinavia? Well, yeah, not just Scandinavia. You gotta go to the northern parts of Scandinavia.

The parts where they just never get, you know, they're just dark all the time. Yeah, that's pretty much what works for me and my family. And what's your excuse, Justin? I'm just glistening red and brown out in the Iowa Sun watching softball.

I said this to somebody yesterday. Now, I have great memories of my two years in Iowa, so any Orange City people listening. We had a happy time there, but of all the places I've lived, I think that was the worst weather.

You don't really get a reprieve in the summer. It's humid. It's still beastly hot.

It's windy all the time. Winter is actually less snow, but colder. You want to disagree with any of that, Justin? No, we're suffering here in the heartland.

I always love Jim Gaffigan's statement that fall is my favorite day of the year. You get like one day of fall and then into winter. I guess more sun than Michigan, I suppose.

I'm sure I've shared this before, but if not, because of course the part of South Dakota that I grew up in is, you know, right adjacent there. You guys, remember, South Dakota. You're Iowa adjacent, I guess.

South Dakota's motto for a long time was the Sunshine State. Really? Yeah, it was them and Florida. The two places you'd think of as being the Sunshine State.

Yeah, a lot of oranges and Florida. But of course, people retiring to South Dakota, right? Well, basically no state income tax in both locations, but they changed it to the Mount Rushmore state because nobody knew Mount Rushmore was there either, so they thought that would at least improve things. But it could be really windy and really cold and still sunny.

Yeah, true. That's that part of the country. Colin, when did Mount Rushmore become a punchline? That was a big deal when we went as a family to see Mount Rushmore.

I thought it was fine, but now it's like, oh, that's the lamest national attraction we have. Well, you know, it's become a political thing, so you've got the Republican governors against Democratic presidents. President Trump made it a really, really big deal.

In fact, during COVID, that was one of the big celebrations that he had and it was bringing back the fireworks. And then there were questions about, are they not doing the fireworks anymore because they're worried about drought and with fires in the area, which is a huge challenge, especially with all the drought South Dakota has had in recent years. Kevin is going to regret asking this question.

Yeah, exactly. Or is it because we really, looking back on it, carving a bunch of presidents into a mountain in an area that the federal government just flat out stole for gold? It kind of does feel a little bit in your face, pun, I guess, intended. So, you know what, I'm going to all be worth it when crazy horse is completed.

We should do a special episode on that. Yeah, crazy horse. I remember visiting that great great, great years ago.

It is 17% complete. Yeah. No, so I think that's your short answer, Kevin.

All right. Well, away from the South Dakota history portion. Every week.

Every week. Yeah, every week. This would be a great time to mention our sponsors.

This was the lead in they were hoping for. Crossway. Thank you.

Just in in your team. And we're mentioning today that ESV Team Study Bible put together by Pastor John Nielsen, the Bible features numerous study and resource materials. I think I even wrote one article in there.

There are thousands of study notes, 365 devotions, 200 sidebars, lots of other good stuff. I know people can can think, man, do we need more study Bibles? And there are some ridiculous study Bibles out there. But then you have teenagers and you're thankful for something like ESV Team Study Bible.

We realize, oh, this is something made for you that's geared for you at your level that you might read. So grateful for that. And want to mention again from our good folks at Desiring God, the Ask Pastor John book.

We have a stack of them in our book, Nook here at Christ's Covenant. Tony Ranky has done an amazing job taking 2.3 million words from 10 years of the podcast. Ask Pastor John and turn them into a mere 230,000 word book.

So 90% reduction for our reading benefits. Sinclair Ferguson says one of those rare contemporary books that can be described as should be in every Christian's home. So thank you to our sponsors.

This is life and books and everything. We are going to start with the books. This is our summer session and people are thinking about, I hope, reading.

And so we want to talk about books. You guys can mention books you just finished, books you're in the middle of. You can talk aspirationally about books you hope to read.

If you're not reading books right now because you guys as a part of your life have to read other people's things all the time. You can mention some favorite from the past. You can mention one or two or 10 books.

But tell me what are you going to be reading over the summer and or what you hope others would be reading. I have a mere 8 books in front of me. But one of you can go first.

Colin? All right. I get to get to dive in other than the South Dakota and Scandinavian history and fiction. We're just going to leave that off at the table here and jump straight into history and fiction.

Those are different categories. Well, South Dakota history, Scandinavian fiction. So we're going to skip that section.

Just kind of assume that. I am. You're reading to Kristin Lawford's daughter again.

Actually, I do have one of Singred Unset's other books that I'm planning to read. I don't even know if you've heard of other books. A different trilogy in there.

Just read one about a 17th century pastor going to the Faroe Islands and all the things that he faced. So that's pretty interesting called The Good Hope. Anyway, this is not really, it's not a beach read.

But it is kind of a summer read when you have a little bit more time. I'm looking forward to reading Michael Horton's Shaman and Sage. Okay.

I have that book and it's really, I mean, Mike's done incredible research. It's not an easy read. It's a little bit of what I'm afraid of.

How far in are you? I read the introduction and the conclusion and, you know, flip through some others. Okay. So that's not a knock on Mike.

It's probably my learning there. But I mean, he's going, he's going all in on these sources and really doing impressive research. But it's not a, hey, give me 150 pages and get your thesis.

And the basic idea, if I understand correctly, is that secularism does not just appear in the 16th or 17th or 18th centuries with the post reformation of the Enlightenment. But in fact, there are some roots in late antiquity. Is that correct? Is that the basic idea? Yes.

I think that's it. I would describe it as spiritual, but not religious is not a new phenomenon. It's not, but it is a very deeply Western phenomenon.

Yeah. So the roots in the, the Greeks in the Romans and throughout antiquity into early Christian history, these pagan ideas of very ecstatic experiences, we might call enthusiasm. All of this is deep in the, and so we shouldn't just think, oh, Greeks and Romans, that was all very rational and reasonable.

And that's really the Western foundation. So Mike gave obviously a very truncated version of this when he did the Harold Oj Brown lectures here at RTS a couple of years ago. So he has, yeah, he has a twist on the secularization thesis.

Well, I think with my work with the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, just kind of thing that I need to be up on. And so I tend to read a lot of things in that philosophy, secularism, history category in there. So I'll see how far I get.

Yeah. And we'll see at what level I can read it, but I'm looking forward to that. Other easier reads, however, for my summer, I saw Andrew Wilson allude to this because Andrew's turning his attention to the 1960s, but he had mentioned Max Hastings book on the, on Vietnam.

And I'm doing the audio book on that it's 35 hours, I think I'm 33 and a half in. Wow. It is good.

I mean, I don't know if it's just a narration or what, but oh, it's some, I'll tell you though, guys, I had an experience today where of course I read so much Civil War and World War II, but I'm realizing that it's way easier to carry those books and the heaviness of them because you know they're going to end well. The Vietnam book is the opposite. You just know it's ending badly.

Well, the whole thing is bad. There's just not, there's not any positive at any point. And, and it is, we're at a time of way greater distrust of American government, but you can see how much of the roots of that distrust are in egregious lies and terrible mistakes in that era.

Well, Hastings does such a good job though of pointing out that just because the Americans were doing something wrong doesn't mean there was anything good in the communists. He just talks about how horrible that was as well. So it's not an easy read, but if you're just fascinated with history and especially 20th century developments was hard to imagine you could get much better than Hastings.

Colin, did you just say from live from Birmingham, Alabama that the Civil War ended well? I did. Remember South Dakota. Yeah.

When we started that premise in there. So, yeah, no lost cause here, but I mean, you see what I'm saying. It's just, you're like, you can get through 1943 is a great time to, or 42 is a great time to study with, with World War II, because you don't know what's going to happen or 1862, 63.

I mean, you do know what's going to happen, but it feels so tenuous, but you know it's going to be okay. Man. Well, it's the 80th anniversary of, of D-Day and all of those moving pictures that we've seen before of the men coming out of the boats, there's a heaviness, but there's a sense it, it was worth it.

Their sacrifice was not in vain for all our failures. There were good guys and bad guys and we were on the good, the good side and the good guys won. And it was worth it.

Just, just, I mean, just bad actors all over the place from the French to the Americans to the South and North Vietnamese. It's pretty, it's pretty rough, more positive. I'm reading through Andrew Roberts Churchill for the second time, hoping to do some writing on Churchill in the future.

That is an amazing book. If you're going to set aside time to read something that's a thousand pages, it'd be hard to do better than, than Roberts on Churchill. And then two more in here.

One is Andy McCullough's new book on Clayton Kershaw, the Los Angeles Dodgers picture. So, Andy McCullough, long time baseball writer, he's a good, he used to cover the Kansas City Royals who are my team. And then he read about the Dodgers.

Clayton is, many people will know Clayton's an outspoken, very devout Christian, but he's, he's not a Tim Tebow type, you know, he's not real friendly, he's pretty surly, he's pretty stuck in his ways, he's pretty stubborn. So it kind of makes him a, a more interesting figure in here. One of the greatest players of all time in Major League Baseball, but, and also really troubled past in terms of just real difficulties with his dad, in particular, and how the difficulties with his dad were really propelling his anxious pursuit of perfection and a routine.

So if you're looking for a baseball book, summer's a good time for that. And then last one in here is his forthcoming from Zondraven later this year. It's Sarah Irving Stonebreaker's Priests of History.

I helped in the development of this book and I got to know Sarah through a mutual friend, Rebecca McLaughlin, who actually gone to, gone to school with her when she was not a Christian. And then Sarah later on became a Christian, taught at Florida State, now teaches in Australia. I think you got, well, first of all, it's an amazing, is a great book.

What's the book about? It's a, basically how our lack of understanding of history is causing us all sorts of problems today. So becoming ahistorical, so you'd see this as a huge pushback toward the ideological capture of historical studies. So she's pushing back as an Orthodox Christian saying, here are all the amazing things that we can learn from history, including many inspiring examples as Christians, in addition to some lessons that we should learn from there.

So I think what I just wanted to point out, because I knew this is something that stands out for us on this podcast, is how different her approach to history is from some of the recent evangelical approaches to history that have been very ideologically captured, narrow, polemical narratives where everything aligns with their thesis. That's not what she's doing. She handles history the way that I love it, which is learning lessons and becoming inspired and just immersing yourself in the story that God has been writing across the world for millennia.

So that's Sarah Irving Stonebreaker's Priests of History on Doris the Book, and really appreciate it. I thought you guys would resonate with that, with the spirit behind it. Always love your reading list, Colin.

Some books on my list. And, Kaviya, I read these books in some different ways. So here's a couple big books that I'll probably take a couple hours, dip in and out, skim through, get the gist, see how much I want to get pulled in.

One, which I've already used somewhat, is this big book, Christendom, the Triumph of a Religion AD 300 to 1300. So it's a big book. My sense is, from reading around, that it's probably more of the Gibbon approach to, it's not fair to say it's Edward Gibbon, but it's not sympathetic to Christians at various points, but it's still an impressive feat.

So always like history. So I've used that. I'll probably look in and out.

This book, have you guys seen this? This is really fascinating. It's published by Yale, surprisingly. It's called They Flu, a History of the Impossible by Carlos Iury, how you say his name, Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University.

It is a book about levitation and by location, meaning, yeah, people who are in, claim to be in two places at the same time. I thought this was about the Wright brothers. I know.

They flu. They flu. You see a person levitating.

Wow. So he starts by telling the story of visiting, I forget where, but this Catholic monastery and the tour guide is explaining, like, this is where she wrote her journal and this is where, you know, she had porridge and this is where she levitated and then, and he was just struck by the recitation of these things as if they were all obvious, ordinary facts. So, as best I can tell in the book, he is somewhat agnostic about it, but is leaning towards saying, hey, look, why do we think if this was any other event in history or recording? There are multiple witnesses, the way it's recorded.

All of the historical evidence he's saying would suggest these things actually happen and people have levitated. But we don't. So what does that say about us? I'm not sure I'm going to be convinced by the thesis or not.

So he looks at a few different, you know, Catholic mystics and nuns and monks, I think, and examples, but a really interesting thesis to try to say, what if, what if people did levitate and were in two places at the same time, which I want to say, well, that doesn't happen. But then you go, well, there's some things like that in the Bible, not the levitating as much. This is the same Carlos there who's written on the Reformation and on Cuba, same one? On Cuba.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

All right. Okay. Yeah.

So now you know about this, only because of life and books and everything. So there you go. 450 pages.

I don't know how much time I'll spend with that. I think both of you guys are reading or have finished Eric Larson's The Demon of Unrest. I'm in the second half of it, always good about the dawn of the Civil War.

Just fun read, well written, going through the months and sometimes day by day, leading up to the beginning of the Civil War. So I'll probably finish that in the next week or two. What do you guys think makes Eric Larson good at what he does? Justin, what do you think? Yeah.

He's on my list too. I've got it right in front of me. I think, you know, I've listened to some interviews with him or read some interviews where he talks about his method and he's, he's trying to find really undiscovered or underutilized resources.

So the, can't remember the lady's name where he's got kind of a day by day diary, which I think allows him to go deep and, and paint sort of a granular journalistic detailed narrative. And so you don't feel like you're just flying at 30,000 feet, feel like you're, you're dipping in. You can see the characters and you can hear their inner thoughts.

I think that's one of the key things. He knows how to pace a story and when to go deep and when to pull back. He's, it seems like he's sort of the master of it these days.

And Mary Chestnut, I think you're thinking, all right. Yeah. And he has short chapters, long chapters.

That's the, the pacing and the sense for things. And with going granular, but also he's very meticulous to say, if I say it was a bright, you know, cold, sunny day, it's because I have some record that it was. So he's not just inventing mood and he doesn't get carried away in mood, which, which bothers me with some historical narrative or fiction at times.

And that's just my, I don't, I don't need a paragraph poetic description of what the leaves are like as they fall from the trees in autumn. So he, he keeps things moving. It's very good.

All right. I'll try to be brief here with my others, some other, a little book. The American Revolution by Gordon Wood.

So I'll read that. Another one on the American Revolution, the cause by Joseph Ellis. I haven't read this before.

So I'll read the wood one that's shorter for sure. And then this one is about 300 pages. And I've started it and I'll probably decide, and do I want to skim this or not? Okay, a few more.

Have you guys read Edward Watts, the final pagan generation? Rome's unexpected path to Christianity. So he's saying, what was it like in those last generations when paganism didn't know paganism and Christianity were both there and paganism had no idea that it was about to be relatively cast to the, the dustbin of history, that Christianity and the church was going to be triumphant. So yeah, it's, you know, some people have recommended this book to say, Hey, Christians wake up, we're not going to realize until it's too late that we're in the final Christian generation or others on the opposite side of say, well, see, this is what Christians did with the power of the sword or Constantine to squash paganism.

But he doesn't really do any of that. And it's, it's a historical book more than a particular present agenda. One of the things that's really fascinating, maybe I said this before, he does at the beginning of the book is he talks about how we know this, but we don't, we think we know history and we don't really know history and we have an impression.

So the example he gives, which really stuck with me, is he talks about famous photo of Woodstock from 1969. And he says, you may have, you learned history, American history, and you think of the 60s, and you got this photo, this iconic photo of, of Woodstock and kind of with long hair and a concert in the mud and you, and you think, like, yup, that gets in your mind, that's the 60s. But then he goes through and he says, you know, it was what we're actually the top songs on the charts.

It wasn't most of these. And you know how many people were actually at Woodstock? And you know what was the best selling fashion? And he just sort of says, it's not that that picture is telling something false. It's capturing something true, but it gets put on our minds and our brains as there it is.

That's what the 60s were like. And he said, you know, that's what a very, very small segment of America was like in 1969 and actually not representative of what most of America was like in doing. But yeah, good thing for historians to remember.

OK, I'm almost done. Be quick then Justin. And then two books that I'll read carefully and slowly for my edification.

I'll read. Usually I try to read something like this in my quiet time in the morning. So one letters of John Newton.

I've read the bigger version of this years ago, but I'm assigning this book for my pastoral ministry class. So I wanted to reread it. John Newton, you just got to read John Newton for what is a mature, godly Christian look like.

And then I haven't read this book though. I've seen it, you know, cited so many times. But by Phillips Brooks, Phillips, Phillips, Phillips Brooks, he's got too many s's there, Pastor in Boston, you know, not not our go to theologian, you know, a bit broad and latitudinarian on some things.

But these were his his preaching lectures. And I always try to read one book on preaching over the summer to help rekindle that. So I hadn't read this even though, you know, Brooks is the one who said preaching is true through personality.

And that's kind of anchors his lectures there. Justin, I have talked too much. Colin was merciful to interrupt me a couple of times.

I want to get the eccentric books out of the way and then get back to the meat and potatoes for me, but maybe divide my left between Christian and non Christian or not necessarily Christian books. And most of my Christian reading ends up being part of my job or side job. So I edit co edit now with Tommy Kidd.

Steve Nichols was previously my co editor in the Theologes of the Christian life series. And so I've read work through and edited Grimke on the Christian life by Drew Martin. Grimke is a really fascinating African American Presbyterian pastor who there's some recovery of his work, but nobody's written a whole book on his spirituality.

And Drew Martin did a great job on that and then co authored book Whitfield on the Christian life. So got two new ones coming out there. My colleague at Crossway Doug O'Donnell is doing a four volume expository reflections on the gospels and the one on the gospel mark just came out.

And so I think of Doug as sort of our our JC Ryle of the the 21st century of taking the gospels and not just analyzing them at an intellectual level, but kind of doing it devotionally and marrying really good scholarship with the pastoral instinct, the genesis of the books were in expository sermons that he had given. And Doug's just uniquely talented. I think if I wanted to learn a gospel these days, I'd start probably with Doug's work rather than a commentary per se.

So that's some of the Christian reading. And then, you know, and with with Doug's, I kind of want to do that devotionally, just, you know, read a little snippet here and there and a book that's not yet out and I'm not being paid to say this, but Kevin's daily doctrine will come out this fall, which I would have paid you to say it. Yeah, I'm happy to receive your check in the mail.

Taking the genre of a devotional daily devotional and combining it with systematic theology so that somebody, it's not a devotional in the sense of warm fuzzy thoughts per se, but it's designed that each day you can work through a little bit of systematic theology. And at the end of the year, Lord willing to get a whole systematic theology under your belt. And nobody does tour a tinesque systematic theology in a compelling and clear way these days than Kevin.

So I'm looking forward to doing that. Try and do that devotionally. I, I call the book Tiny Turretin.

Tiny Turretin. Or, or Baby Burkhov. That's, that's what I am.

It's a great descriptors and great work. Well, thanks. Is that your list, Justin? We know you have to read books for a living.

Yeah, just the only other. Yeah, I have Demon of Unrest by Eric Larson and then Hampton sides, the wide, wide sea imperial ambition. First contact and the fateful final voyage of Captain James Cook and knew what I just got yesterday and started.

These are all not like I finished all these. I'm reading concurrently, but the great abolitionist Charles Sumner and the fight for a more perfect union by Stephen Polayo. And Sumner is, we all share a love of civil war and the topic of abolition and slavery, but that has not been a biography of Sumner for 50 years.

David Dunne. Do you think the size get cane? It's going to say no endorphs in Preston Brooks. No endorphs.

Everyone knows is that's the guy who got whooped. Yeah, I mean, the book opens with him basically holding Lincoln's hand as Lincoln's dying and his deathbed. And he's a fascinating figure that his life goes beyond just that.

And one of those guys who wrote thousands and thousands of letters. So there's a lot of rich source material there. So it should be an interesting read.

That's it for me. So what are what are you guys working on this summer? We'll get to some fun things, but you have any projects, a long term project. So I'm excited for the Daily Doctrine book to come out.

Thank you, Crossway for for publishing that my summer study leave project. Some little things, but the big thing that I'm working on. I've been preaching, not preaching, I've been teaching a church history Sunday school class here at Christ Covenant every fall.

And I two years ago, I did early church. Last year, I did medieval church this fall. I'll do kind of reformation into the great awakening and then Lord willing next year, I'll do the modern period.

So four consecutive years and I'm hoping to turn those into two volumes of a church history. I mean, nobody can do let alone an amateur like me can do 2,000 years of church history, but I'm just I'm trying to highlight certain biographies. And it's not it's not the Piper approach per se, where Piper really has said he was trying to preach a sermon that was 90% illustration.

So mine's not quite like that. It's not a homiletical aim. It is a historical aim, but I'm trying to talk about these periods and themes through a particular biography.

So I'll be taking, you know, 10 or 15 of those biographical sketches that I've already done as a Sunday school class and trying to turn them into pros. And that will, that will be my big project over the next two or three years to try to turn those into a couple of readable church history volumes, which I'm excited about Colin, you got to need big writing plans. Yeah, so I mean, I've got a number of lectures to deliver in the fall, including a Dort University, right in the backyard where we've been talking about there before, I'm sure the weather is going to be lovely.

It is early October. So I'm hoping to catch the one day of fall. I'm hoping to be lucky with that.

Um, it still seems to be there in a number of other, another places with a number of lectures. I'm always adjusting my cultural apologetics lectures. Um, the, uh, I've got a couple of books coming out with crossways.

So one of them is, but those are, those are pretty much done. One on the problem of evil and the Holocaust, short book and TGC is hard question series coming out. So mostly I'm engaging with Ellie Wiesel on that.

And then we also have a book, um, engaging with Neil Postman's amusing ourselves to death. So I wrote the chapter on preaching, uh, for that one. So how preaching has changed, but it's, it's, but instead of the amusing with television, we're heading to scrolling into the internet.

And so how the internet has changed preaching or some of the challenges that we face there. So using media criticism lenses to look at that. And then, um, long term, we've got a, we've got a book that we're working on at TGC on just what is cultural apologetics, a brief introduction to that.

And so I'll write the introduction on that one as well. So those are the major projects in addition to the lectures. But I read a, I read a couple, um, I won't go into this very long at all, but I read a couple of interesting books.

Um, some people have possibly read them, both philosophical objections to Christianity, um, one called after disbelief by, by Cromman. And then another one, Luke Ferris brief history of thought. I'm probably going to try to incorporate those into some, some upcoming lectures and maybe some other writing, mainly because I was so incredibly encouraged as a Christian, as I was reading these critiques of Christianity, because in the end, the conclusion is more or less, it's just too good to be true.

And I thought, all right, we're on okay grounds. And my, one of my favorite professors, Saul Morse and his critique of Christianity is the same thing. It's just too good to be true.

I thought, okay, I can work with that. I can work with that. So it's, um, I think it's sometimes exposing Christians to that can be in encouraging.

Those are very popular critiques and interestingly, Cromman's after disbelief is all about paganism, especially reincorporating elements of that historic paganism, bringing it back to Michael Horton. So those are a few things in the works. Uh, I was, I mentioned this Phillips Brooks book on preaching and he's talking about, you know, even over a hundred years ago, the objections to preaching and people don't have the appetite for it.

And he doesn't quite use attention span, but that's the idea. And I'm used to that. And usually the preaching books say, well, you know, that's a challenge for you pastor, but, you know, Brooks says, you know what, if you were a better preacher, that wouldn't be happening.

That's basically what he says is, you know what? Look around the great preachers, people still flock to. So I found that both, you know, a little discouraging, but also encouraging. Like, yeah, you know, people will still listen to preaching.

I wonder, Colin, and we'll get to Justin, uh, you know, you do your class on cultural apologetics. Of course you wrote the biography, biography, ask of Keller. You know, as you think about Tim and it's, is your, when your anniversary of his passing just, just came by.

Do you have an element of his thought and cultural apologetics angle in particular that you, you think, you know what? That was even more insightful and more brilliant than we give him credit for. And do you have something that now you think, you know, Tim got that wrong, or maybe he didn't get it wrong, but, you know what? That was right 15, 20 years ago or right for New York City. And I don't think that same insight holds water.

You got like the best and then maybe not as helpful. Yeah, two things on that one, Kevin. So I'm, I'm doing the opening lecture at the Center for Pastor Theologians Conference in Chicago in, in September.

And it's going to be on Keller's political, um, because that's what the whole conference is on in politics or in a political engagement. I'm going to be talking about that. Um, Tim didn't have any background in politics.

Of course, I, I did work in politics before. Um, that's probably the area where I just, I personally disagree with him the most. I share his, his missional focus, but I think sometimes his approach to certain issues was, was truncated, um, and was subsumed under a broader missional project.

And so that's probably, I haven't written those lectures yet. I'm going to go back through a button, do some more research because my focus was so much on the influences on him, of which it was noteworthy. There wasn't a lot of political theory in terms of that influence on Tim.

So that's probably what I'll go back and, and look at. Um, and so that's probably where I, I expect there to be the most disagreement and where there has been the most disagreement of just how do you integrate, um, contemporary moral challenges in with your missional evangelistic project in a post Christian type environment. So that's the one area.

And then related to that on the, on the more positive side, I think people misunderstand that he saw dramatic changes that were against Christianity way earlier than other people saw them coming and had actually thought that through and was actually thinking about how to build durable institutions and durable churches in particular. That could be orthodox, even going through those changes. So I think for some reason, Tim has become a shorthand for people of almost like a, almost like a baby boomer seeker approach, which is just not true at all.

Um, and so, but so he's become that shorthand of see all those guys, all those boomers were so wrong. You're like, no, actually his understanding of cultural change was far more advanced. And still, I think is more advanced than most of the work that we're doing today.

So that's my short answer. If that makes sense, what do you think, Kevin? Yeah, I think that that makes sense. I think, uh, you know, I'm on record.

I reviewed Aaron Rins book on the negative world and I thought it was, I gave it a positive review and I think he had good, just very normal suggestions on how to respond to a negative world. I do think that the thesis can be challenged on, you know, the dates and how negative was the negative and it wasn't already the negative world. And he's admitted as much.

It was a very impressionistic rubric. So I think you're right that to depict Tim as, as if he was the, the paragon of, of neutral world or something, uh, is, is not fair. I mean, his, his whole, yeah, his whole cultural apologetic was trying to understand that there are these new objections to Christianity that we have to take seriously.

And, but I think your last point, or really your first point about maybe a weakness there, uh, it is right that Tim politics tended to be, it could always kind of be above the fray. And there's a, there was an impulse there that was necessary and helped him to stay on mission, you would say, and helped him to focus on what's most important and also at times, you know, maybe, maybe lent to a superficial way of approaching certain issues, or I think Tim in his mind, hardly did anything, you know, he was a very, he was the opposite of a superficial thinker. But I think the way it came out sometimes was a little column A, a little column B, we can, there's something above it all that sort of holds all of the polarities together.

But to be fair to Tim, you read back a lot of, a lot of folks were, were speaking that way, and it wasn't the same, uh, aggressive. So that, that's where I do think some of Aaron Ren's thesis makes sense. It wasn't the same aggressive cultural, uh, antagonism, but the, the cultural antagonism is where, where you look at it on what level do you look at it? It's there in the sexual immorality, but it's not as antagonistic.

Well, a quick, quick story here. I was just talking with TGC international leaders, and I was going back and reminding them of the first meeting that TGC ever had in 2005. So it'd be 20 years next year.

And Don Carson gave an address on how gay marriage would become the watershed issue for the church, similar to the way indulgences functioned in the Reformation 500 years ago. And then I asked my students, when do you guys think that gay marriage was last banned in California? The response I get is somewhere between the 1960s and the 1980s, right. And I say 2008, when President Obama was elected and their mind, you can like watch them just, it doesn't make any sense to them.

The gay marriage has been legal for decades, decades and decades. You can't even imagine it. Americans were for it for generations.

And then you're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, California in 2008. And so, interestingly, at the same time, these leaders like Carson and Keller were way ahead of the changes that came later, and yet still as we look back, the changes have been really rapid, really rapid and really dramatic. And it would have been hard to be a pastor.

Of course, you were a pastor during that time, Kevin. We were all in ministry in that time. And we saw it happen.

It was, it was quick. Justin, you can change course, talk about any summer projects or feel free to set us straight. No, I'm setting you guys straight.

I do that offline. So true, the text message afterward, exactly. Yeah, just a hop on the Keller train for one second, because I meant to mention that one of the books I'm reading as part of my day job at Crossway is Matt's Methodist, Tim Keller, on the Christian life.

And and Matt is not talking about Tim's cultural analysis or his political third way is him or anything like that, but just focusing on what I think Tim did best, which was Christian life. It's not in our theologians of the Christian life series, but it is, in my view, really, really good. And I think people are going to really appreciate what Matt's doing.

Himself is such a good writer and thinker. It's not entirely analogous to Tony Reingue's, as pastor John, but there's a similar sort of desire to synthesize an enormous amount of material. And in basically doing what Tim was never able to do himself, Tim never wrote kind of his comprehensive book on the Christian life, he kind of focused on marriage or on forgiveness or idolatry.

So that'll be out Lord willing next year. And I like to commend that to people. In terms of summer projects, I am working on a long term project related to John Piper's life.

And so Kevin, this is some breaking news because I've never mentioned this publicly before. So right right down the state, but I have been working on it for a while and we'll be continuing to work on it for a while. I did my doctoral dissertation on Piper and co-edited with David Mathis, his collected works and and worked with him back in the day.

So a fascinating life that I think we will be continuing to talk about beyond Piper's earthly pilgrimage here. I know he's influenced the three of us and a lot of listeners. So trying as the Lord gives me time and ability to try to construct something of a narrative of that man's life.

So you can pray for that if you think of it. Glad. Yes, please.

I mean, really our listeners should call Justin's been doing an amazing work with millions of words read and now written over years and with many years to come. And you think about Keller and Piper and they have some some opposites and they have some similarities, obviously, which are even more important than the opposites. I just think of one of each.

I think Keller had the amazing ability to read very widely and synthesize a lot of information and present it in a way that was new and fresh and interesting. And what is Charles Taylor and how do we sift that through? That that was his genius as a public intellectual and that's a lame phrase where where Piper has been very on the record that he doesn't read quickly. He doesn't read widely, but I don't know anyone who reads more deeply, the Bible, obviously, most of all, but anything that he does.

So he is going to think a subject or a verse all the way down to the very bottom. So it makes him always has something interesting to say, something relentlessly biblical to say. So and Piper could do some cultural analysis and obviously Keller was a close student of the Bible too, but leaning in different directions.

But here's the thing that that is in a way, a secret sauce that's easy to miss with both of them is their own personal piety. And that's it. We live in a day where that that sounds lame to a lot of people piety.

And I think many of, you know, online voices building a platform either have no interest in it or think it's actually a bad thing to be very interested in. But Piper is absolutely, you know, from his own devotional life and prayer life and, you know, inspection of his own heart. And then Keller, one of the things that always impress people, you meet Keller is, wow, this guy is interested in me and he's such a normal guy.

So there's a lesson for us there of two men that at least in our circles of that generation were, you know, maybe the leading kind of Christian statesmen for our circles. And yet they both were deeply and are deeply, genuinely pious, mature Christian. Which we should not take for granted.

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. In my dissertation, I tried to trace what are the four big influences in Piper's life and it's his parents who were fundamentalists. It was Dan, Dan Fuller, and then the two dead guys were Lewis and Edwards.

And two of those four overlap with Tim's influences of Edwards and and Lewis. And so I think that created some commonality between Tim and John. I think you're right.

They're both very pious guys. Tim famously didn't publish much until his later years and John didn't become a pastor until he was 30 years old and had been teaching college for a long time. So they're similarities.

And I think that that deep piety, I mean, these are guys that became quite famous in our circles and a bit beyond and yet don't have any moral skeletons in their closet, we're faithful to their wives. You know, their whole life were spent hours in prayer that nobody sees or knows about and lived in the same house or apartment that they were in when they started. Right.

And didn't, you know, live kind of high on the hog, just kind of normal, simple guys. And I know this is a big emphasis of yours, Kevin. They're weak and weak out preachers too.

They weren't working at a, at a think tank. They weren't academics first and foremost. They were preachers who, expositional preachers, and in our day and age, preachers tend not to be the influencers, unlike bygone eras of American history.

So they're fascinating guys and it'd be interesting, you know, maybe for somebody to do a study of their similarities and differences. All right. Last but not least for our final segment here, we have the last couple of years around Christmas done our airing of grievances.

What a great Christmas tradition. I have many, many complaints. I don't know if you guys saw this little clip that was going around recently.

Jerry Seinfeld was on Jimmy Fallon's show and he talks about how I hate everything about vacation. And he talks about complaining. I've had several people say, number one, Kevin, you sound like Jerry Seinfeld.

I've had other people say, you look like Jerry Seinfeld. I'm not sure if either of those are compliments. Uh, but then my wife found the clip because she said, Kevin, this sounds like, like you, you, Jerry Seinfeld says, I live a very happy life complaining about everything.

And, uh, he says, I knew vacation was going to be terrible and it was. And then I come, then I get to complain about it, which is something I do enjoy. So I am sorry to my wife.

I mentioned, I showed the clip to, to CJ Mahaney and he said, your wife will have a very long line of rewards in heaven. All of the rest of us will have to sit down and just take a break. Well, she receives all the rewards for having put up with you all these years.

So we don't want to do that. We want to do the airing of gratitude. Uh, so give us a few things in thinking summer in particular.

What are you grateful for right now? And what are you grateful for heading into the summer? This could be very deep or very prosaic. What are you really excited about? Uh, give us some things you're grateful for and you're anticipating being thankful for over the summer months. Colin.

Yeah. So I've got a few here. One of them is I'm a grateful for emergency medical personnel and other folks who just jump in to help.

Um, my uncle's heart stopped last week in an ambulance. They revived him, brought him back. Did bypass surgery and he came home.

I mean, it's just amazing. Um, a young woman, a teenager in our community, um, lost her hand and her leg to a shark. Um, this last week in the Gulf of Florida, Mexico, my wife.

Yeah, exactly. And a man ran into the ocean, ran into the Gulf, punched the shark, apparently from what I could tell, brought her back. The people on the, on the shore, they took care of her.

They, you know, then they airlifted her out. She lost two thirds of her blood and she survived. I mean, just, just do not take these.

I don't take these things for granted at all. So I met emergency medical personnel, doctors, nurses, EMTs and volunteers. Um, really grateful for them.

I am also grateful for air conditioning because it went out in our house and it's been 95 degrees. Um, also, you know, last year at this time, I was over in England, which is so lovely, so much of the year and you don't need air conditioning, except when it is 90 plus Fahrenheit and then you are grateful for air conditioning then as well. Um, I'm also grateful for lakes.

I mean, just what a wonderful thing to go sit by a lake and swim in a lake and and vote on a lake. It's a wonderful summer thing. And then finally, I am grateful for youth baseball, which has been fun to participate in and see community and team building and competition, but also a lot of good sportsmanship.

You hear a lot of the bad things about youth baseball, but not a good sportsmanship that I've seen there as well. And one of my friends is a pastor and one of the kids and their, the team, they just won a championship. His mom died last year.

He gets the game ball, but he comes around and prays for him. It's just a really cool thing to see. And then I'm grateful for Rick Woodfield here in Birmingham, Alabama, the oldest ballpark in America and where the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals are going to play and attribute to the Negro leagues on June 20th.

So I've played baseball a bunch of times in Rickwood field, seen a lot of games in Rickwood field. Actually be at the gospel coalition women's conference during this game. Anybody tunes in on Fox that night to watch the tribute to the Negro leagues from America's oldest ballpark, Rickwood field right nearby me here in Birmingham, Alabama.

So I'm very grateful for that. It's just a cool thing. And I'm glad Major League Baseball is doing that kind of stuff.

It's great. Can you imagine if you were the, the guy who punched a shark over the weekend and somebody said like, what'd you do over the weekend? Any highlights and punched a shark and saved a girl? Which does remind me of the greatest moment in Seinfeld. Does anyone hear a Marine biologist? I know.

And I mean, would you rather, I think I don't want to meet a shark, but I'd rather have a shark and think I, I'm going to punch the shark rather than a bear in the woods where you're supposed to just play dead. It's played, you know, the Jim Gaffigan was apparently an eight foot bull shark. And I had attacked to lather yourself in honey.

Create my certain clients. As a plate, my survival depends upon my acting skills. Yeah, it was Gaffigan's life.

No, my, my wife, love you, honey. If you listen to this, uh, I mean, sharks and bears, but in particular sharks, no matter how many times I try to say, you know, you know, the chances are better being struck by lightning or whatever. All it takes is, you know, the two stories each year of somewhere in, you know, somewhere within a thousand miles of us, there was a shark.

That's enough. No, no, no ocean. That is the Great Lakes.

I mean, the Great Lakes are great because no salt, no sharks, those glaciers move through real slowly left a wonderful into all my friends down here. It is a beach. I know when you say I went to the beach at Lake Michigan, like there's no beach.

Like, no, there is a real beach. It's beautiful sand. You can't see to the other side.

The Wisconsin side is, you know, don't go to that side. But the, the, the Michigan side, it's beautiful. Uh, I am, I am grateful for, for many things, despite my penchant for complaining.

Grateful that my nine kids are all at home over the summer. Some working, some traveling different places, but you just realize once you send kids off to college, you don't know when they're going to come back for a summer. You don't know how many times you will have all of them all together.

So it's, it's crazy and they're coming and going. And our, our driveway looks like a used car lot. I think we have five or six cars there, but grateful, of course, to have my kids around many things about summer, longer days, waking up and not having to think about, you know, the weather just going to go outside.

It's going to be hot later right now is the time to go outside and go on a walk. There are certain things about the summer that I, so baseball, I have to admit, the white socks are so epically, horribly, historically bad that I'm barely paying attention to major league baseball, but I am very excited for the summer Olympics. That is a great highlight and just watch the NCAA track and field championships coming up will be the, the Olympic trials.

So I love to watch track. And of course, the Olympics was swimming and everything else. So that is great.

I love watching and it's become something of a, a tradition annually in our family to watch the tour de France for three weeks, you know, you're not watching five or six hours a day, but I often have some time off during those weeks. So my kids get to know the names of all of these cyclists and all of these, you know, guys who are five foot seven and 125 pounds, that's, that helps when you have to ride your bike up a mountain, but it's amazing what they do. And it's just, there are so many sports things that I love to watch, but those are two of them that I love to do during the summer.

Grateful for my, my church here and for the opportunity to have some time off coming up in July after a busy season and do some study and do some vacation and looking forward to lots of things. Justin. Yeah.

My wife and I, the other night had a conversation with a family friend who is not being faithful in his marriage, is not a believer. And we tried to plead with him for quite an extended period of time and shared the gospel with him and just reflecting on that makes me thankful that I know the Lord and, you know, beneath that, the Lord knows me and saved me. I am not knee better than this friend, but, you know, the Lord opened my heart and gave me grace and gave me a wife who's faithful to me and gave us children through adoption, which, you know, is, is just a tremendous blessing.

We all know that, but it's, it's good to say that out loud, thinking about the blessings of, of having a godly boss at, at Crossway and Don Jones, I report to you. And Josh Dennis is our president and having godly pastor. And there's so many people who complain about the people above them.

You know, they're, they're pastors who have treated them poorly or bosses who are hard to work with. And just think about, that's, that's a blessing in life to, to work for people who are kind and godly and full of integrity. And think about the, in my adult life, have had four pastors, Dave Sowers, John Piper, David Sunday and now Terry Mkey.

And it's a blessing to have men who are committed to ministry and preach in season and out of season. So their life is hard, I think is the three of us, you know, move toward age 50 here in the next several years. Life is just hard in the fallen world.

And yet the lines have fallen for us in, in pleasant places. And it's a, it's a good exercise to counter blessings and think about the various kindnesses of the Lord and his grace in our lives. Thanks for prompting that, Kevin.

Well, that's a good way you're putting Colin and I to shame a little bit with our sharks and tour de France. So thank you for it. That's a great way to end.

And it's, it's very true. It's just one of the things I'm looking forward to. I'm finishing up a year long series on revelation.

And so I finally made it to 21 and 22 new heavens and new earth. And I was just preaching the other day. The former things have passed away.

And I said, really, in one sense, our lives are just two chapters. And the first chapter seems very long. And it's for almost everyone.

It has really, really hard moments in it. But the second chapter lasts forever. And the first things pass away and you have the second Adam.

You have a second resurrection. You have a second creation and that will last forever and ever so that these things will seem at that moment to be light and momentary afflictions. So they certainly don't feel that way.

So very good. One of my favorite, you know, from the Psalms, the lines have fallen for me in pleasant places and has has been very true in my life. And grateful for you guys are some of those pleasant places and those fair lines and many years of friendship.

So hope you have many good summer memories and make it through many hundreds of pages of your books. And I'm sure we will keep in touch via text and other ways and look forward to seeing you guys. The sad thing when we when we come back together is summer will be almost over and the good thing is football will be starting.

So that always is something of a ball. But grateful for you guys and thank you to our LBE listeners. Until next time, glorify God.

Enjoy him forever and read a good book.