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It's our season finale! We're answering listener questions and talking:-        Staying grounded and emotionally healthy post-election-        Some mistakes people are making in their election analysis-        Why the politics of identity will never go away in America-        How the Church can and can't fight anti-Blackness and other forms of injustice-        Where you can hear us in between seasons-        And a lot more!Mentioned in the Episode:-        Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor by Rev. Caleb Campbell-        Our newsletter from last week with a worship playlist and sermon Jonathan recommended-        The Webinar Intervarsity is doing with Campbell on Tuesday – Register here.-        The article on patriarchy by Frederick Joseph: “For Palestinian Fathers, Sons, and Brothers”-        Our free guide to processing and acting on the injustices you encounterCredits-            Follow KTF Press on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Subscribe to get our bonus episodes and other benefits at KTFPress.com.-        Follow host Jonathan Walton on Facebook Instagram, and Threads.-        Follow host Sy Hoekstra on Mastodon.-        Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.-        Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.-        Editing by Multitude Productions-        Transcripts by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.-        Production by Sy Hoekstra and our incredible subscribersTranscriptIntroduction[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes in a major scale, the first three ascending and the last three descending, with a keyboard pad playing the tonic in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]Sy Hoekstra: The beauty of the church is not in how good it is. The church is beautiful in the light of Christ, not in the light of its own good work and goodness. The church is beautiful when it is people collectively trying to put their faith in the grace that governs the universe, and not put their faith in their own ability to bring the kingdom of God into this world.[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you're building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]Sy Hoekstra: Welcome to Shake the Dust, seeking Jesus confronting injustice. I'm Sy Hoekstra.Jonathan Walton: And I'm Jonathan Walton. We have a great show for you today. It's our season four finale. We're answering listener questions and continuing our discussion from our Substack live conversation two weeks ago, about where to go from the Trump election as followers of Jesus.Sy Hoekstra: And because this is the finale, let me just take a quick second to tell you where we are going from here. We are gonna be doing our monthly bonus episodes for our paid subscribers, like we usually do when we are not on a season of this show. We are going to be doing them though slightly differently. You will have the opportunity to hear them at one point if you're not a paid subscriber, because we're gonna record them like we did two weeks ago on Substack Live. So if you want to see those when they are being recorded, download the Substack app. If you get on our free emailing list, you'll be notified when we start. You just need to go ahead and get that app, it's both on iOS and Android.And if you wanna make sure that you're getting our emails in your Gmail inbox, because we've heard some people tell us they're going to the promotions folder or whatever Gmail is trying to do to filter out your spam, but actually filtering out the stuff that you wanna see, you just have to either add us to your contacts, or if it's in the promotions folder, just click the “Not promotion” button that you can see when you open your email. Or you can actually just drag and drop emails that show up in your folders to your inbox, and then it'll ask you, “Hey, do you wanna always put emails from the sender in your inbox?” And you can just click, yes. So do one of those things, add us to your contact, drag and drop, click that “Not promotions” button that'll help you see those notifications from us.Jonathan Walton: If you'd like access to the recordings of those bonus episodes, plus access to our monthly subscriber Zoom chats, become a paid subscriber at KTFPress.com. We would so appreciate it and you would be supporting our work that centers personal and informed discussions on faith, politics, and culture to help you seek Jesus and confront injustice. We are two friends resisting the idols of the American church in order to follow Jesus faithfully, and would love for you to join us. So become a paid subscriber at KTFPpress.com.Sy Hoekstra: And we've said this before, but we should probably say it again. If you want a discounted subscription or if money's a barrier to you joining us as a paid subscriber, just email us, info@ktfpress.com. We'll give you a free subscription or a discounted subscription, no questions asked. You will not be the first person to do it if you do. Other people have done it, we've given it to them. We won't make it weird because we want everyone to have access to everything that we're doing. But if you can afford to support us, please as Jonathan said, go to KTFPress.com and become a paid subscriber. Let's jump into it, Jonathan.Jonathan Walton: Yeah, man.Sy Hoekstra: We, a couple weeks ago on our Substack Live, we were talking about processing through grief and like what we have been hearing from people. We've had lots of questions and lots of conversations since then. So we're sort of combining, amalgamating [laughs] lots of subscriber questions into one, or even just questions from friends and family. I just wanna know how you are continuing to process the election and what you're thinking about grief and how we move forward, or how we look back and see what exactly happened.Staying Grounded and Emotionally Healthy Post-ElectionJonathan Walton: Yeah. So I think that one of the things I just have to acknowledge is that I'm tired of talking about it, and not okay talking about it. Like just the level of energy it takes to have regulated, like emotionally regulated healthy conversations is exhausting.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: And so, just naming that. So last week I think I was in a better place than this week recording. And so I'm recognizing I need to be able to take steps back and set boundaries so that I can be in a healthier place. And I just encourage everybody to do that. We all need rhythms and disciplines that keep us grounded. That is not like, oh, when I'm in this season, I need spiritual discipline. No. We actually are supposed to have them all the time. But I think in moments like these and seasons like this, we actually need them just in a more pointed way. It reminds us that we do. So those are things that I'm doubling down on, like starting to listen to worship music.If you check out last week's newsletter, I actually had a worship set from a worship leader in Columbus, Ohio, who basically said, if you can't sit across someone who has a different political perspective than you, then you probably can't worship with them. So let's start off with worship. And so they made a, I don't know, a six hour playlist of songs from different traditions and said like, play it without skipping it. Without skipping a song. Don't be like, “I don't like this song, I don't like this. I don't like…” This reminds me of them. Like, just listen to the whole album because somebody who is different from you meets Jesus through the words of the song. And he said, “You would never know that I don't like some of the songs that we sing [laughter], but I sing them. And I thought that was just a really honest thing.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. You said it was six hours long?Jonathan Walton: It's a lot. I haven't made it through a third of it.Sy Hoekstra: Okay [laughs].Jonathan Walton: It's long. And the sermon is also linked in the newsletter as well. It's just a great message from Pastor Joshua.Sy Hoekstra: This is a pastor in Ohio that you're familiar with?Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: How did you get connected to this?Jonathan Walton: Yeah. So someone on the political discipleship team for InterVarsity, shout out to Connie Anderson, who's written…Sy Hoekstra: Oh, great.Jonathan Walton: …a lot of our stuff. Our InterVarsity stuff.Sy Hoekstra: Yes. Not KTF stuff.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. She just, she said, “Hey, I really appreciated the sermon and I was able to listen to it, and I'm working my way through the songs. And if I skip a song, I'm gonna go back, because I'm not the only person on my Spotify. Shout out to all the Moana and Frozen tracks that get stuck in there.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: So all that to say, that's like the first big thing, is setting boundaries, trying to have healthier rhythms so that I can be fully present to my family and myself.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Having Difficult Conversations by Meeting People Where They AreJonathan Walton: Also, I think it's really important to remember, particularly when I'm frustrated, I have to remember to meet people where they're at the way that Jesus met me. I have not always known that Christian Nationalism was bad. I didn't always have another term for it that captures the racialized, patriarchal environmental hierarchy of it called White American folk religion. I didn't always know about police brutality and the rural urban divide. I didn't know about those things. And what I desperately needed and unfortunately had, was patient people who were willing to teach me. And so as we're having these conversations, there's a book called Disarming Leviathan, ministering to your Christian Nationalist neighbor. It's really, really good. We're doing an event that you will hear about in our newsletter as well with the author of that booked Caleb Campbell.Sy Hoekstra: And when you say we, in that case again, you mean InterVarsity?Jonathan Walton: Oh, shoot.Sy Hoekstra: It doesn't matter [laughs].Jonathan Walton: I do mean InterVarsity. There's a little bit of overlap here because the season is so fraught.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah [laughs]. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Jonathan Walton: Like [laughs], and so you're gonna hear about that in a newsletter as well. InterVarsity Press is promoting it, InterVarsity's promoting it. Pastors and teachers are promoting it because the reality is, we all need to figure out how to tackle difficult conversations.Sy Hoekstra: Yep.Jonathan Walton: And we use that verb specifically, like it's elusive. We have to go after it [laughs] to be able to…Sy Hoekstra: You have to go wrangle it.Jonathan Walton: Yes, because it's hard. It's really, really hard. We would rather run away. We would rather run away from difficult conversations. So meeting people where they're at, we do that because Jesus meets us where we are. Our compassion, our gentleness is in outpouring of the compassion and gentleness that we've meditated on and experienced for ourselves and are willing to embody with other people. So those would be my biggest things from the last week or last two weeks since we last talked about this stuff. What about you?Healthy Reactions to the Election Are Different for Different PeopleSy Hoekstra: Yeah, that's good. We actually had, speaking of people who have a, like a different rhythm or need to adjust something now to be emotionally healthy, we actually had a subscriber, I won't give any details, but write in who's overseas, who basically said, “I've got too much going on in the country that I live in. I can't deal with American stuff right now. I need to unsubscribe from you.” They're on the free list. And I was like, “Man, I understand [laughs].”Jonathan Walton: Yes, right. I would like to unsubscribe from this [laughter]. No, I'm just joking, just joking.Sy Hoekstra: I appreciate that he wrote in to explain why he was unsubscribing. That doesn't necessarily happen a lot…Jonathan Walton: Right. Right, right.Sy Hoekstra: But it's very understandable and it's really sad, but I totally get it. And I want people to take care of themselves in that way. And I think, I mean, the flip side of that is we had a ton of people in the last week or week and a half sign up for the free list because I think a lot of people are just looking for ways to process, right [laughs]?Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: They are looking for people who are having these conversations, which happens. We got started, this company got started during the 2020 election, putting together the anthology that we put together, and we had a lot of response at that point too, and people who are just like, “Yes, I need to hear more of this processing.” And the difference now is there are fortunately, like a lot of people doing this work from all kinds of different angles all around the country, which is a very good thing, I think. We could be tempted to think of it as competition or whatever, but the church [laughs] has to come at this from as many angles as possible. There need to be as many voices doing the work of trying to figure out how to follow Jesus and seek justice as there are people promoting Christian Nationalism, and we're… those numbers are nowhere close to parody [laughs].Jonathan Walton: No.Sy Hoekstra: Not remotely close.Jonathan Walton: Absolutely. No, they are not [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Unfortunately, that's a reality of the American church. So, anyways, I appreciate all those thoughts very much, Jonathan.Mistakes People Are Making in Election AnalysisSy Hoekstra: I think when I'm thinking about the conversations that I've had, I have a couple thoughts that come to mind. I think a lot of the things that I think about in the conversations in the last week and a half are people trying to figure out what happened, like looking back and like playing the blame game [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: And the excuses that people are making, or the blame is shifting for why Trump matters now, because you can't say he lost the popular vote anymore. Obviously he won the electoral college the first time, but he lost popular vote, and then he lost the popular vote to Biden plus the electoral college. Now he's won it, and so people are not as able to, to the extent that people were still trying to paint him as an aberration from the norm.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: …that's getting harder. It's getting harder to say, “Oh, this is just a blip on the radar and we'll come back to our normal situation at some point, some undetermined point in the future. But so they're shifting blame to other people. It's like, oh, various non-White groups increased their votes for Trump. Or young people increased their votes for Trump or something.Which Party Wins Tells Us A Lot Less about America Than Who Is an Acceptable Candidate in the First PlaceSy Hoekstra: To me, a lot of that stuff, if you're trying to say that Donald Trump represents a problem with the whole country that you're trying to diagnose how it happened, all those conversations are a little bit silly, because the problem is that he's like a viable candidate who people voted for in the first place. But the people to blame for electing Donald Trump are the people who voted for Donald Trump, which is more than half of the voters in America. Not much more, but more.And the reason it's like a little bit silly to talk about what's different than the prior elections is, the prior elections were like Trump's gonna win this election, the popular vote. Trump's gonna win the popular vote by like two or three percent probably. It could be a little bit different than that, but basically Trump's gonna get slightly more than 50 percent, Kamala Harris is gonna get slightly less than 50 percent. And that's usually how it goes. That is the reality of this, how this country works. We have a winner take all system, and so typically speaking, it's a little over 50 and a little under 50. The swings between who gets elected in any given year, president, we're playing with marginal things. Democratic strategists, Republican strategists are trying to figure out how to fiddle with the margins to get what they want.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: It was only seven states in this country that actually mattered [laughs]. Like 86 percent of the states in this country were decided and then we're just playing with seven states. We're just playing with little numbers. And so all of these, like all Black people went slightly more for Trump. Young people went slightly more for Trump, whatever. It'll go back later. I don't know if you saw this, Jonathan, on Monday this week. So last week, if you're listening to this, John Stewart brought out the map of the 1984 election. Did you see this?Jonathan Walton: Oh yeah. Oh my gosh. It was so interesting [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: It's like it was completely one color.Sy Hoekstra: It's red, yeah.Jonathan Walton: And you're like, “What? Whoa, this looks like a candy cane without the White” [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: Right, exactly.Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: If you've never seen the Reagan-Mondale electoral map, literally the entire country, except for Minnesota is red. The whole country went for Ronald Reagan. So that's like, it's one of the biggest landslides in history, and the popular vote for Ronald Reagan, I decided to look that up, was less than 59 percent.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: Right?Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: You get the whole country. You have to get 270 electoral votes to win, he got like 520 something.Jonathan Walton: Yeah, yeah.Sy Hoekstra: He crushed Mondale. But eight years later, bill Clinton is in office and we're kind of back to normal. We're back to America's normal, right?Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: It's so small, these little things, and we just have to stay focused on, the problem here is that both of our parties in different ways, to different degrees are just infused with White supremacy and White American folk religion and patriarchy and everything else. And Donald Trump can be a viable candidate in the United States.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: That's the problem [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Right, that is the problem.Sy Hoekstra: We have to stop talking about, I don't care what Gen Z did. Gen Z will change just like everybody else has changed. Election to election, things will be different. Anybody who thought that, “Oh, just a new generation of people in the United States of America growing up is gonna fundamentally change the United States of America.” How? Why did you think that [laughter]? Why? Why? Why would the children of the people, who were the children of the people, who were the children of the people who have been in the same country for years and years, generation after generation, why would that just be something fundamentally different? It's the same people, they're just a bit younger. I don't know. I never get those kinds of arguments.Jonathan Walton: [laughs].Facing the Reality of America's BrokennessSy Hoekstra: What I'm saying is, I think underlying a lot of those arguments though, is a desire to have some control over something. To have something that we can say is certain that we're changing, that we can be the good people that we thought Americans fundamentally were again, or something like that. It's about control and trying to wrap your mind around something. I think instead of just facing the reality that we live in a deeply flawed country.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: Which is, should be biblically speaking, unsurprising.Jonathan Walton: [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: But it is also difficult. It's unsurprising and it's difficult to deal with. Facing the reality of the brokenness of the world, not a fun thing to do. We've talked about this before.The People to Blame for the Election are the Mostly White and Male People Who Voted for TrumpJonathan Walton: Well, I think it would be helpful for people to remember, in all the things you're talking about, Trump did not win the popular vote last time, he won it this time. Trump won the electoral college, right? Let's actually just for a moment identify the voting population of the United States of America. So there are 336 million people in the United States per the population tracker today, right?Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: There are 169 million people who voted in the election in 2020. The numbers are not final for 2024.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. It's gonna be less, it'll be less than that though.Jonathan Walton: It's less. So let's say 165 million people voted in the election this time. And that's generous. Right?Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: So that's less than 50 percent of the country that actually voted. Then we take into the account that 70 percent of this country of the voting population is still White. Okay friends?Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Roughly, I would say. Yeah, that's true.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: People give different estimates of that, but it doesn't get much lower than like 65 [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Right. So let's even go with 65 percent.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Yeah. Right. [laughs].Jonathan Walton: So let's say 65 percent of that voting population is White, and then half of that population is male. And Trump did an exceptional job at mobilizing White slash men in the United States to go and vote. An exceptional job. Looking at that population and saying, “We are gonna make sure that you feel invited, welcomed and empowered.” Joe Rogan's show [laughs], these other influencers, how he advertised. If you look at who was on stage in these different venues when he was campaigning, all men. And the women, I think it's very important to notice this. I think when he gave his acceptance speech, his now chief of staff that they called the Iron Lady or something like that. The Ice Lady, Iron Lady, something like that.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: That's what they called her. And then she declined the invitation to speak. And so I think that when we are sitting here saying, “Oh man, how could people vote this way?” We are not talking about the entire population of the United States.Sy Hoekstra: Yes.Jonathan Walton: We are talking about a little less than half of the voters in the United States, and then we are talking about 50 percent of that group. We're not talking about people under 18, generation alpha. We're not talking about the vast majority of Gen Z. We're talking about the same voters we've been talking about for the last 30 years [laughs]. The voting population of White adults in the United States. That's who we're talking about. We could blame, oh, this group or that group, but I agree with what you're saying. We have to face the reality that at some point we have to talk about race and we have to talk about gender. When we talk about identity politics, we don't name White and male as an identity.Sy Hoekstra: Right. Yeah.Jonathan Walton: We don't. We call it something else. We say, oh, like the working class or all these other things. But we need to just say, if we look at how White people are voting and we look at how men are voting, then we have the answer to I think, how Trump was elected. But those two things are third rails. Or like in New York City, you don't touch the third rail, it's electric because of the subway.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: So we don't talk about that. And I think, I don't say that because I wanna blame people, I'm just naming statistics. These are just numbers. The numbers of people who are voting, the demographics they represent, this is the group. So when Sy says, who is responsible for Trump's election, it is the majority of White Americans who vote, and men in this country of all races who lean towards hey, opting into patriarchy in ways that are unhelpful.Sy Hoekstra: It's not of all races [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Well, I will say that the increases of Black men, the increases of Latino men, Trump did grow his share of the Black male vote by double digits. Right?Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, but it's still a minority of the Black male vote.Jonathan Walton: It is. I'm just saying, I do not want to discount the reality that patriarchy is attractive to all races.Sy Hoekstra: Oh, yeah.Jonathan Walton: That's what I wanna name. And so when Fred Joseph, amazing author, talks about the attractiveness of patriarchy, I think that is something that all men need to say no to.Sy Hoekstra: This is an essay that we highlighted in our newsletter like a month or two ago.Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: I'll put the link in the show notes.Jonathan Walton: We have to say no to patriarchy.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: And so anyway, that's my rant in response to this [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, no. That's good, and that actually gets into it, the other thing I wanted to talk about was, which even though I think some of these blame game conversations are such like nonsense, we are still able within those nonsense conversations to say a lot of things that are just demonstrably false [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Right.The Politics of Identity Will Never Die in AmericaSy Hoekstra: And what you just said is one of them. Like I've seen some people talking about, “Oh, the democrats lost because they ran on identity politics,” or, “Identity politics is over.” And I'm like, “What are you talking about [laughter]?” Donald Trump is all identity politics.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: It was all about White men and how they were gonna be comfortable and empowered how Christians are gonna be in powered again.Jonathan Walton: How women are gonna be taken care of, whether they like it or not.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah right. Men are gonna be back in power. How citizens are gonna have what they deserve, and then we're gonna stop giving it to the illegal immigrants, right?Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: Like everything Donald Trump does is about identity. And the bigger thing to say is identity politics in America is not a current or temporary trend. Identity politics is baked into the foundation of the country, and it was not Black people who did it [laughs]. It was the founding fathers who created a system where only White men could be naturalized and only rich White men could vote, and we enshrined racial slavery, all that stuff. Identity politics has been here from day one. It's not like a liberal thing. It was a thing that we baked in on purpose, and it's a thing that came from European culture and it's still fundamental to European culture to this day.Sy Hoekstra: And I, what I think what people mean when they talk about identity politics is, it's another one of the endless string of words that we use since racial slurs became impolite. We can't say the N word anymore. It's another way of saying it's Black people talking about Black people stuff. Right? When people talk about identity politics, they're saying the wrong identity politics, because everybody is talking about identity politics all the time. They're just, like you said, not calling it identity politics. They're talking about “real America” [laughs], right?Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: They're talking about, we know what they mean by real America. They're talking about White men and they're just saying this is the default culture. We're all just assuming this is the default culture, everything else is identity politics. Nonsense.Jonathan Walton: Right, right.Sy Hoekstra: So that's one of the nonsense things that shows up in the conversation as a result of a nonsense thing that we say that we think all the time on some subconscious level that we're not always talking about identity politics, even though we absolutely are. And it's because it's been forced upon us. It's not because somebody's trying to create divisions.Jonathan Walton: Right.The Democrats Are the Party the Non-White Working Class Voted ForSy Hoekstra: A similar thing is, I heard people talking about the Democrats are not the party of the working class anymore. The working class is not voting for the Democrats because, and then, obviously the White working class is voting for Trump, and then start to talk about the gains that Trump made among the non-White working class. Again, the majority of everybody in the non-White working class is not voting for Donald Trump. And assuming that voters have some idea of what's good for them and who better represents them, maybe not who best represents them, but who better represents them, the Democrats are still the party of the non-White work—we're talking about the White working class again, you know what I mean? We're trying to make it about economics and it's actually about race. That's a thing that we're doing all the time, constantly [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Well [laughs], the reality is that economics is about race.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: It's like, if we could just like get some daylight between them, then maybe we could make a separation. And so then it just becomes about keeping that separation in place, because if we bring them back together, the system falls apart. It literally crumbles if you call it out. And something that I'll just name, because I think in all these conversations, even as me and Sy are saying, oh, this Democrat about that Democrat, like this is the Republican or that race, when we call out differences, when we name things, our goal is not to dehumanize anybody, dismiss people's needs or grievances, or minimize the reality and perspectives that people have.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, absolutely.Jonathan Walton: The goal and hope is that we would actually grasp reality, name the idol and follow Jesus.Sy Hoekstra: Right. Yeah, exactly.Jonathan Walton: That is our goal and our hope and our aim, because if we can't say it as is, we will never be able to address and communicate with the most marginalized people. And we'll never be able to communicate a vision that draws people in power towards something even more loving and beautiful, unless we name the thing as it is. And so hopefully that is breaking through to folks who might come across this conversation.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, I agree. I can get very passionate about these facts and stats and whatever. And I'm not trying to say that anyone who doesn't…Jonathan Walton: No [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: …agree with me is somehow a bad person. I'm just, this is, it's important, like you said. It's an important goal that I'm trying to move us toward.Jonathan, we got a great question from a listener that I wanted to talk about. You cool moving on, or do you have more thoughts?Jonathan Walton: No, no. Let's do it.What Can the Church Do about Continuing Anti-Blackness?Sy Hoekstra: Alright. So what can the church, practically speaking, do about ongoing anti-Blackness in the country? And not just correct disinformation or post on social media, what can the church practically speaking do? That was the question. Jonathan, solve anti-Blackness. Go.Support Black Spaces, No Strings AttachedJonathan Walton: There's a reason that enrollment at HBCUs is surging right now.Sy Hoekstra: Ah, okay.Jonathan Walton: And that is because when the world is unsafe or feels unsafe, or the reality that, “Oh, trying to get to the master's table and eat is actually not that great,” we're gonna recede back into our communities. And so I think one thing that the church can do is support Black spaces. So financially support Black spaces, empower Black spaces. I did not say create Black spaces moderated by you, that you will then curate for, andSy Hoekstra: Control.Jonathan Walton: Yes, control would be the right word, for an experience that other people can observe. Like, “Oh, this is what Black people really think.” Like no, just support Black spaces. Black, sacred, safe spaces that help and care for us in this moment. The number of Black women that are being harassed online, like showing up to their jobs, walking down the streets in different cities, is radically disturbing to me.And if we wanna get into the intersectionality of it, like when we talk about like Black, queer people, the numbers that the Trevor Project is recording, it's like the Trevor Project is a alphabet community support organization, particularly to prevent suicide. And so their phone calls are up in the last two weeks. So I think we as a church, as followers of Jesus need to create and then sustain spaces for Black folks to hang out in and feel a part of that we control. Kathy Khang, the author of Raise Your Voice said in a workshop that I was in one time, “Spaces that marginalized communities are in, we feel like renters, we don't feel like owners.” So we can't move the furniture. We're not really responsible for anything, but we're just, we could exist there and do what we need to do.Sy Hoekstra: But it's not a home.Jonathan Walton: It's not a home. And so I would want to encourage churches, small groups, bible studies, community groups, parachurch organizations to create spaces for Black folks by Black folks to be able to thrive in and feel a sense of community in. The other thing that I would say is that the church could educate itself around the complexities of Blackness. And so there's the Black, racially assigned Black Americans in the United States that are the descendants of enslaved people. Then there's Caribbean folks that are the descendants of enslaved Africans and the colonizers there. And then there's Central and South American and Mexican. There's a lot of beauty and complexity in Blackness.And so obviously, Ta-Nehisi Coates's book The Message, talks about that in ways that are exceptionally helpful and complex. So that would be a great book to dive into. And again, create educational, engaging spaces around. This education, quote- unquote, educating yourself, not asking Black folks to spend their time educating you. Doing that work, creating those spaces, supporting those spaces financially, time, resources, et cetera, and creating spaces for Black folks to feel and be safe, I think would be just exceptionally helpful in this season. Yes, share on social media. Yes, send messages to your friends. Yes, do all those things on your own time and on your own dime. But I think these are two things that could be helpful because it's not gonna go away the next four years. It's probably gonna be more intense. And so I think creating and sustaining of those places would be helpful.Sy Hoekstra: At least sustaining, you don't have to create.Jonathan Walton: Yeah, that's true. There are some that are already there. That's true. Find a place, donate, support, host. Hey, provide the space. Buy food, yeah.Sy Hoekstra: And the reason I say that is you could end up with people who just go to Black people and are like, “Hey, we'll give you money and you get to do a bunch of work to create a space or,” you know what I mean? And there's also the instinct to say, if we're gonna support something, we have to create it.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: We don't. We can support things that other people are already doing. There might be people in your congregation who are already doing that as their job. Just give them money. You know what I mean?Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: The more you're not in charge, the fewer strings are attached. Jonathan already talked about that. Even if those strings are implicit or not even there, but they're just perceived to be there, and that could be a problem too. So it's good to just give money to stuff that already exists or give support. Give volunteer work, whatever. Good, I appreciate that. Thank you for having practical answers.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. No worries. I'm glad you sent it to me earlier so I could think about it.Educating Ourselves on Fighting Racism Works (Sometimes)Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Yeah [laughs]. Continuing to educate ourselves is a good thing too. And I think I've actually seen some of the difference in that. I know this is, there is so far to go and there's so much to do in terms of educating ourselves, but I can personally tell you from having watched a lot of Christians go through the Trayvon Martin case and Ferguson and everything. And I'm saying Christians who want to be supportive of Black people, who want to be helpful, who want to be anti-racist, all that stuff. I saw a lot of people who in 2012, ‘13, ‘14 were just like babies. Just starting out, didn't know what to say. Didn't know whether they could go protest, didn't know why All Lives Matter wasn't appropriate. Like, “Don't all lives matter though?” All that kind of stuff.Jonathan Walton: [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: Even when you're trying to be helpful, you know what I mean?Jonathan Walton: Right, right, right.Sy Hoekstra: And then 2020 comes around and I saw a bunch of those exact same people being like, “I'm gonna go march! Black Lives Matter, let's go.” You know what I mean? So people really can learn and they really can change. And the problem is that you just have to keep doing it to every new generation of people that comes up, and it takes years to do. It's not something that you can do in a couple of sermons or one course that you take or whatever. And again, I know they're so far to go, I'm not trying to say… I understand that you can work for years. A White person can work for years, and the differences can be trivial and frustrating and like enraging. But it's also true that people can learn [laughs]. And talking about meeting people where they are, that's kind of what I'm saying to White people as we're trying to educate ourselves and others.Educating Each Other about Race Is a Long, Continuous ProcessJonathan Walton: Yeah, and to build off of something that you said before too, it's like Donald Trump was elected eight years ago, and some people were not alive eight years ago. And some people were 10 years old, eight years ago. So they didn't even…Sy Hoekstra: And now they're voting.Jonathan Walton: And now they're voting. So like Trayvon Martin was killed 12 years ago. They may not have the same knowledge as you, the same awareness as you. So yes, the education and the engagement is ongoing because there's always people that are coming up that had no idea. And I think just going back to what we said in the first part, like you were just saying again, meeting people where they're at because maybe they were too young and they just don't know. Like I was having a conversation this past week and someone said, “Yeah, my mom and dad have been sick. I've made 10 trips to another city the last two years to try and take care of them.” Maybe their world is just small because they've been engaged in loving the people closest to them through illness.We must meet people as best as we possibly can where they're at. And I confess, I have not always done that. And so being able to not be prideful and not be dismissive, and not look down on someone from being ignorant to simply not knowing. And even loving someone who's exceptionally misinformed. As we're doing this recording, one of my friends is meeting with a Christian nationalist right now. Like they're going there. They said, “Alright, can you pray for me, I'm going to have this conversation.” Because it is one conversation at a time that these things change.Sy Hoekstra: I appreciate that. You just reminded me of another story I had, and I won't give details about the individual, but there's someone in my life who is a White person who's from the south, who lives in New York City, who's just one of those people that makes Black people uncomfortable, Jonathan. Just like the moment you meet him, you're like, “something… hmm, I don't know.” And I've heard other Black people talk about him this way. I've heard stuff that's made me uncomfortable. And he was just an easy person to kind of like shun or avoid.Jonathan Walton: Yeah, for sure.Sy Hoekstra: Until I ran into another extremely kind Black person who told me… we ended up not because of me, because of someone else, in a conversation about this guy, and how he sort of makes people uncomfortable. And he was like, yeah, but he just said in not so many words, I kind of tolerate him because he lost his entire family in Hurricane Katrina, and he lives in New York City and basically has nobody and just works this kind of dead-end job and is not a very happy person. Actually, he is kind of a happy person. He's sort of trying to make the best of it, and he doesn't know what he is doing. You know what I mean? It's just like, you have one of those moments with someone where you're like, “Boy, that changes my view of this person.”Jonathan Walton: Right [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: I still don't think any of the things that you're saying to make people uncomfortable are okay, and I'll try and interfere in whatever limited way I can or whatever. But you hear something like that, your heart changes a little bit. You know what I mean?Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: Your attitude changes and like, you just, we gotta get to know each other better. We gotta listen better.We Need Endurance and Truly Practical WisdomSy Hoekstra: I think this question about what can the church do about anti-Blackness, for people who are like kind of our age or older, or people who have been through the 2010s and everything that happened up till now. It's just, it's a question of resilience. And whenever you're engaged in anti-Blackness work or any sort of activist work, you're gonna have these questions of resilience of like, what can we do, because this problem is just still going. And then there's another question of the practicality of it when you're asking that question in the church. I'm gonna define the question a little bit or reframe the question a little bit and then give answers.When you ask the question of something like, what can we practically do about a problem in a Christian context, the question is a little bit strange sometimes, and I think you just gave some good practical answers, but we have both noticed, we talked about this recently. In the Christian world, the word “Practical” often means something different than it does to the rest of the world [laughs].Jonathan Walton: That's true. That's true. Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: The phrase practical application just seems to have a different meaning to pastors than it does to everybody else [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.Sy Hoekstra: And what it tends to mean to professional Christians is, when you're talking about practical application, you're talking about a new way of thinking or a new goal for how you should feel about something.Jonathan Walton: [laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.Sy Hoekstra: Or like a new “heart posture” or something like that.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: It's a new attitude, but it's not practical. You actually said recently, you came out of a sermon going, “Okay, I kind of know how to think, I don't know what to do with my body. Now, after listening to this sermon.” You know what I mean?Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Right, right [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: I know what to do with my heart and my head. I don't know what to do with my hands and my feet. And we're supposed to be the hands and feet of Jesus, not the heart and the brain.Jonathan Walton: Right [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: And I think, actually, I don't wanna sound like a conspiracy theorist here, but I think that problem, it at least promotes racism [laughter]. It promotes institutions remaining as they are. You know what I mean? It promotes, like when we talk about practicality and we're just talking about how we kind of think about things, like the world of ideas and emotions and not what we do politically or whatever, that is a subtle way to reinforce status quo institutions.Jonathan Walton: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely, it is.Sy Hoekstra: And it's not anything to do with the person who asked the question. I'm just acknowledging the reality of how that question lands to Christian ears.Jonathan Walton: Yes. Yes. Especially institutionalized Christians. Yes, absolutely.The Church Isn't Necessarily the Best Place to Go to Fight RacismSy Hoekstra: And another thing is, I will say, we're talking about the church, the whole wide capital C church. The Black church, is gonna keep doing what it's always done. Black church is gonna do anti-racist work. Obviously, there are problems and questions and whatever that Black people have in their conversations among themselves within the Black church about how to do that best, or what things may be getting in the way of that or whatever. But if you're talking about big picture here, Black church is always fighting racism. I think we're kind of asking questions about the rest of the church. The White church in particular, and then some other churches as well. If we're just talking about the American church in general and what it can do to fight anti-Blackness, if you look at the history of just big picture American church, there are Christians in the United States on both sides of this past election.There are Christians in the United States in history on both sides of the Civil War. There are Christians in the United States on both sides of segregation versus civil rights. There are Christians in the abolition movement, there are obviously Christians in the pro-slavery movement. Christians set up the system of racism and slavery. European Christians did.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: The American church, if you just look at history, is a weird place, is a weird institution to look to, to end anti-Blackness. We have been consistently ambivalent about it for centuries. Do you know what I mean? I understand…Jonathan Walton: No, listen. It's true, and that's sad.Sy Hoekstra: Yes, yes.Jonathan Walton: That reality is depressing, right.Good Things Come from God, Not the ChurchSy Hoekstra: Horribly depressing. And so I understand, one, you just don't want that to be real. So you say, “Hey, what can we do?” Or, you want, and when I say you, again, I don't mean the question asker because I haven't had a conversation or back-and-forth. I'm just saying this is what people could be asking when they ask this question. It could also be the instinct of a lot of White evangelicals, which I can tell you this question asker is not, have the instinct when we say, what can the church do, of kind of thinking that if there's anything good is going to happen in the world, it has to come from the church, and that is so wrong. It is not biblically accurate. You can't look at scripture and go, “Yeah, everything good has to come from the church.” Goodness comes from God. God is the source of goodness, and God sends the rain on the righteous and the unrighteous, and we are very much among the unrighteous. God is the source of goodness, and so we need to acknowledge that we can find goodness outside of the church.Jonathan Walton: Yeah, that's a point worth repeating.Sy Hoekstra: Right [laughs]. We can find goodness outside of the church. I will repeat it [laughter]. We can in our congregations have fights that can go on for years and years about how we can just try and move anyone toward anti-Blackness work, and you can work for forever and you can see no fruit. And you could have spent all that time taking the few Christians, because there's always a handful, even in a [laughs], in any church, there's a few people who are sympathetic to whatever you're trying to do.Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: You can just take them and you are the church, you and your Christians, and go do work with somebody else. You can go to your local mutual aid organization. You can go to your local Black Lives Matter chapter. You can go to whoever. You can go find the people who are doing the work and work with them, and that's fine, because it's still good and it therefore still comes from God. And we don't have to subtly participate or subconsciously participate in the idea that everything good has to come from the church, which is ultimately a colonial and colonizing idea. That is what a church that is going into a country trying to colonize it wants you to think, “Everything good comes from us, so you gotta come here [laughs] for the good stuff. And all those people out there, those are the bad people.”Jonathan Walton: [inhales deeply and sighs] Right. No, I mean, yeah, everything you're saying is true. That was my big sigh there [laughter].All Justice Work Requires Real, Local CommunitySy Hoekstra: So I read a thing this week from Camille Hernandez who wrote a really great book called The Hero and the W***e, which is a look through a womanist theological lens at what we can learn from what the Bible says about basically sexual violence. Fascinating book. Anyways, she was talking about her reading of Mariame Kaba, who I've cited before in this show, who is a famous abolitionist organizer, who basically said a lot of people who have a lot of influence, activists who have a lot of influence, can be sort of confused and unmoored at times like this because they have a lot of influence. They have a lot of people that they can call to go do a march or whatever. But what they don't have is a local community. So like what I was just talking about, taking the few people in your church, if you have a few people in your church and going and doing the work somewhere else, that's your small community.You need people who are on the same page as you, who you love, and they love you and you're there to support each other, and they will ground you in times like this, doing that work together. We'll ground you in times like this and it will give you a way to move forward. It will give you a sense of purpose, it will give you accountability. That's also a fraught word if you grew up in the church [laughter]. But it will give you the good kind of accountability to be able to do the work of anti-Blackness or fight any other kind of injustice, frankly. So that's one important thing.KTF's PACE Guide Will Help You Engage Practically with InjusticeSy Hoekstra: I also think if you want a good framework for how to do things practically when you are fighting anti-Blackness or other forms of injustice, go get our PACE guide [laughs]. We have a guide that we produced a few months ago.If you have signed up recently on our newsletter, or if you want to sign up for our free mailing list, you get it in the welcome email. If you were on our list before a few months ago, you have it in one of your old emails. It's basically a guide for when you encounter issues of injustice in the news or in your everyday life or wherever, how to process it and do something about it in a way that is, actually takes into account your limitations and your strengths, and helps you think through those things and help you kind of grow as you run through this cycle of steps and questions and prayers that we have for you to go through as you are thinking through these things. So PACE is the acronym. You can find out what it stands for and how to go through it if you go get that guide, sign up for our free emailing list if you don't have it. And that will give you a good sense of how to think through you personally in your context, how you can fight anti-Blackness.Jonathan Walton: Exactly.Sy Hoekstra: But yeah, on a bigger scale, the reason I'm talking about small things like community and how you personally can work, is I'm not thinking on as grand a scale as what can the church do to end anti-Blackness. Because we're not God, we are not saviors. We are not here to fix everything. God is here to do all those things. So I'm more asking, how do I join in with stuff that's already happening? And again, that's not like a correction to the question asker. It's just where I'm at [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Well no, it's a reorientation.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: I think something that, and I don't know if this is a generational thing, and I think that me being 38 years old, I have been shaped in a certain way to believe and want institutions to answer big questions as opposed to gathering a group of people and having a community instead of an institution. There's still work that God is doing in me around that, in that communities are vehicles for transformation in the kingdom and institutions it seems are vehicles for power in the world. That's something I'm wrestling with myself because I do think that one of the answers to anti-Blackness is beloved community, not as a concept, but like a practical thing. Like we are checking in on each other, we are going out to dinner, we are sharing recipes.Sy Hoekstra: Yes.Jonathan Walton: We are sending memes and funny videos like that. That is actually some aid that can lift our spirits each day amidst an empire that desires to destroy us.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. I think a lot of my journey trying to figure out how to do more justice work and follow Jesus, has been asking those smaller questions about what can I do in my own community? Just because I have, you and I, we have limited influence, and we have a church institution that has supported anti-Blackness in a lot of ways and those are just realities. And they're really sad, and the idea that a lot of the church is kind of useless and sort of opposed to the things of God, a lot of people don't wanna accept that. But I think if you don't accept that, you're gonna be running into these frustrations a lot. Like why is the church not doing this? And then trying to find probably solace in just really small things. Like okay, is my church's theology better than yours, or is my… You know, like in things that are not making a difference in the world [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Right. Right.The Church Has to Trust in Grace, Not Save the WorldSy Hoekstra: So, I don't know, man. Look, the beauty of the church is not in how good it is. The church is beautiful in the light of Christ, not in the light of its own good work in goodness. The church is beautiful because… the church is beautiful when, not because, when [laughs] it is people collectively trying to put their faith in the grace that governs the universe, and not put their faith in their own ability to bring the kingdom of God into this world. And that's such a hard thing to do. We so wanna make an institution that is good, that is fundamentally good and that we're a part of it [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Well, it's a hard thing to do and accept.Sy Hoekstra: Yes.Jonathan Walton: Because in how we have been cultured downstream of colonization, if there is no effort, then I don't get a gold star, then I'm not included. Like, what do you mean? What do you mean that I'm supposed to play a small part? No, no. I'm supposed to be a star.Sy Hoekstra: I'm supposed to change the world.Jonathan Walton: I'm supposed to change the world, and I'm supposed to build something. I'm supposed to make something. Like we're an entrepreneurial event, we're supposed to do that. And Jesus hung out for 30 years, and then went and got 12 seemingly disqualified people [laughs] to go and do this thing, and then drafted Paul who was woefully unhelpful, the majority of Jesus' journey to then go and take his stuff to the rest of the world. Come on man. This is [laughs]… it's really hard to say yes to that.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: But when you experience it like you were saying, to live in the grace that governs the universe changes your life.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. People who are free of the need to prove themselves by defeating evil, right [laughs]?Jonathan Walton: Lord have mercy [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: That—look, to me that is a beautiful thing. That is one of the things that animates me, that motivates me. That makes me want to get out there and do more. Which is, I don't know, it's counterintuitive. It's counterintuitive to me, but it also works on me. So [laughs] I'm gonna keep focusing on it.Jonathan Walton: Amen.Season Wrap-Up Thoughts, Outro, and OuttakeSy Hoekstra: Do you have more thought—I think that's a good place to end it, Jonathan. I don't know if you have more thoughts.Jonathan Walton: No, I don't have more thoughts.Sy Hoekstra: Okay, great.Jonathan Walton: I appreciate that you as a White person, or racially assigned White person who's aware of their heritage and trying to engage as best you possibly can across this difference, have so many thoughts. I think that is helpful actually.Sy Hoekstra: Oh, good. Thanks. I appreciate that [laughter].Jonathan Walton: Yeah. And I say that because there's a pastor that I follow, Ben Cremer, he's in Idaho, and experiences that I've had with different leaders, it is exceptionally empowering and feels like a burden is lifted off of my shoulders when people who don't have to carry the burden of Blackness are trying to be thoughtful around how to stop anti-Blackness.Sy Hoekstra: Oh, I mean, ditto ableism man.Jonathan Walton: [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: If this is your first episode, I'm blind and Jonathan does the same thing to me on those grounds. And I think that's a lot of why our thoughts in relationship works. I'm not good at taking compliments, so I'm just throwing it back on you [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yeah. No worries. It's all good. If you haven't seen it, somebody should google “Christian Affirmation Rap Battle” where they just try to compliment battle each other. It is amazing. [laughter].Sy Hoekstra: I'm absolutely gonna do that because that sounds like brilliant and pointed satire.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: Alright. Thank you all so much for listening. This has been an incredible season, man. I've had a lot of fun. Fun is a relative word [laughter] when we're talking about the things that we're doing. I've had, I don't know, a very motivating and helpful and stimulating time talking to a lot of the people that we talked to four years ago when we started this, who wrote for us.Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: If you haven't listened to those interviews, go back in the season, they're really, really helpful. I feel like they're probably even more helpful in light of how the election turned out. And I don't know, I just appreciate this. I feel like it's been fun. We didn't do it this time, but when we're doing Which Tab Is Still Open and adding, talking about some of our newsletter highlights, I've really appreciated that. I feel like it makes the episode very meaty when we have an interview and some other conversation in there too, and I've just liked what we've put out this season. So thank you, Jonathan for participating in that. Thank you everybody so much for listening.Jonathan Walton: Yep. Yep. And I'm deeply appreciative. I think a brief Which Tab is Still Open that I thought was gonna close was our anthology.Sy Hoekstra: Oh, alright.Jonathan Walton: [laughs] I will say we started this four years ago with the anthology and as we're ending this season, the anthology is probably one of the most relevant things.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: The leaders that wrote in it, the contributors to it, that work and those essays, I hate and love that they are still relevant.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, right. Same.Jonathan Walton: …and helpful. If you don't have a copy, you should go get one.Sy Hoekstra: Keepingthefaithbook.com, that's where you can find it.Jonathan Walton: Yep.Sy Hoekstra: Thank you all so much for listening. Remember, get the Substack app to listen to our monthly recordings of the, the live recordings of our bonus episodes. And if you want to get the recordings of those bonus episodes after the fact, or join our monthly subscriber Zoom calls, become a paid subscriber @ktfpress.com. Or get a discounted or free subscription by just writing into us if money is an obstacle. Make sure you add us to your contacts or drag and drop our emails to your inbox if they're in your promotions folder, just so that you can get everything from us that you need. That's how you're gonna get notified if you don't have the app. That's how you'll get notified when our Substack Lives start.Our theme song is Citizens by Jon Guerra. Our podcast Art is by Robin Burgess. Transcripts by Joyce Ambale, and our editing for a lot of this season was done by Multitude Productions. We are so incredibly grateful for them, they have been friendly and fantastic. Thank you, Brandon, our editor.Jonathan Walton: Appreciate you.Sy Hoekstra: I produced this show along with our incredible paid subscribers. Thank you so much. If you are one of those paid subscribers, we will see you next month. Otherwise, we will see you for season five.Jonathan Walton: See y'all.[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “And that you're building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]Sy Hoekstra: A multi disc Encyclopedia Britannica.Jonathan Walton: Basically.Sy Hoekstra: Do you remember those? Did you have that when you were a kid?Jonathan Walton: I, we definitely bought, my mama definitely bought them. You are absolutely right.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: She did. That man showed up with that suitcase and he left empty handed. That was his goal, he made it.Sy Hoekstra: Oh no [laughs]. Oh no.Jonathan Walton: And you best believe we read all them books.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs]. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ktfpress.com/subscribe

Matt 6:19-21 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matt 23:23-24 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.  John 13:1-9 It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2 The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; 4 so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. 6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” 7 Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” 8 “No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” 9 “Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!” John 13:12-17 When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. 13 “You call me ‘Teacher' and ‘Lord,' and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16 Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. HE GOT UP FROM THE TABLE  HE HUMBLED HIMSELF  HE SERVED Phil 2:3-4 Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. 4 Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Phil 2:5-8 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Matt 11:28-29 “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Matt 25:35-40 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.' 37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.' WE ARE CALLED TO SERVE, NOT SAVE. WE'RE CALLED TO RELATE NOT RESCUE WE ARE CALLED TO REACH OUT NOT DOWN.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: How to Not Save a Million Lives, published by lsusr on December 30, 2021 on LessWrong. This story is about the machine that broke my heart. Obesity is one of the world's greatest health problems. It contributes to everything from diabetes to cancer. Obesity is hard to prevent because tracking calories requires effort. It's too easy to eat absent-mindedly if you're a middle-aged woman in charge of your household's food. Manually logging your food intake is hard. Food tracking should be automatic, like a FitBit. If we had a cheap machine that could effortlessly track food intake it would save many lives and improve the quality of life of even more people. I talked to the lead engineer at company that is a leading manufacturer of wearable electronics. The company is worth tens of billions of dollars. His manager tasked his team to make a device that used IMU data to detect when a person is eating. He failed. Me and my team succeeded. Our device worked so well our test subjects thought we were cheating. They thought we had a man behind the curtain. It was all software. My friends and family would try to fake eating by pantomiming it and the device wouldn't go off until they took a bite for real. Our algorithm was so good it often detected when people were eating before they even lifted their fork. We had to program a delay into the alarm system so the predictive signal didn't disrupt the user's actual behavior. We trained our machine learning model on six hours of annotated data. The algorithm we deployed was so small and efficient you could run it all day on a Nordic SoC the size of a fingernail. I trained the whole thing on a laptop from 2016. Our system was perfectly general. You could dump a different hand movement into it and the algorithm could detect the new behavior too. All you had to do was strap a sensor to your test subject, video record them and then tell the computer where in the video the new hand movements began and ended. Press one button and my toolkit would turn that training data into a binary executable ready to be deployed on your embedded system. It did not need to be customized for individual users (except left-handers). Just put it on and you're good to go. Individual units cost us $30 to produce. Large-scale manufacturing could drive the price much lower. You might wonder "Where is this magical machine?" I threw it away. I could reconstruct it. Strap an IMU onto peoples' wrists. Manually annotate where fork movements begin and end. Apply a complimentary filter and a moving average filter. Normalize everything. Turn the continuous datastram into discrete symbols by feeding it into a random forest classifier[1]. Dump the random forest classifier into the recently-invented WarpingLCSS algorithm[2]. Add some threshold cutoffs for trigger and reset. Use Facebook's Adaptive Experimental Platform to tell you what hyperparameters to use. Port the whole thing to C. Deploy it on a microcontroller. We had experience selling consumer electronics. We had the hardware for hundreds of these wearable food trackers just sitting in boxes. But startups are hard. We had been working full-time for (basically) no pay for six years. We shut the project down and parted amicably. We all had different reasons for leaving. Personally, I didn't want to spend the rest of my life running a diabetes prevention program. The reason our algorithm could be trained on my laptop instead of a supercomputer was because I had invented a machine learning trick so new it had been invented independently and published in an academic journal within the previous two years. I had more tricks where that came from. I wanted to find out what would happen if I pushed my machine learning skills as hard as I could. I see obese people everywhere. People die every single day from a health problem I ...

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: How to Not Save a Million Lives, published by lsusr on December 30, 2021 on LessWrong. This story is about the machine that broke my heart. Obesity is one of the world's greatest health problems. It contributes to everything from diabetes to cancer. Obesity is hard to prevent because tracking calories requires effort. It's too easy to eat absent-mindedly if you're a middle-aged woman in charge of your household's food. Manually logging your food intake is hard. Food tracking should be automatic, like a FitBit. If we had a cheap machine that could effortlessly track food intake it would save many lives and improve the quality of life of even more people. I talked to the lead engineer at company that is a leading manufacturer of wearable electronics. The company is worth tens of billions of dollars. His manager tasked his team to make a device that used IMU data to detect when a person is eating. He failed. Me and my team succeeded. Our device worked so well our test subjects thought we were cheating. They thought we had a man behind the curtain. It was all software. My friends and family would try to fake eating by pantomiming it and the device wouldn't go off until they took a bite for real. Our algorithm was so good it often detected when people were eating before they even lifted their fork. We had to program a delay into the alarm system so the predictive signal didn't disrupt the user's actual behavior. We trained our machine learning model on six hours of annotated data. The algorithm we deployed was so small and efficient you could run it all day on a Nordic SoC the size of a fingernail. I trained the whole thing on a laptop from 2016. Our system was perfectly general. You could dump a different hand movement into it and the algorithm could detect the new behavior too. All you had to do was strap a sensor to your test subject, video record them and then tell the computer where in the video the new hand movements began and ended. Press one button and my toolkit would turn that training data into a binary executable ready to be deployed on your embedded system. It did not need to be customized for individual users (except left-handers). Just put it on and you're good to go. Individual units cost us $30 to produce. Large-scale manufacturing could drive the price much lower. You might wonder "Where is this magical machine?" I threw it away. I could reconstruct it. Strap an IMU onto peoples' wrists. Manually annotate where fork movements begin and end. Apply a complimentary filter and a moving average filter. Normalize everything. Turn the continuous datastram into discrete symbols by feeding it into a random forest classifier[1]. Dump the random forest classifier into the recently-invented WarpingLCSS algorithm[2]. Add some threshold cutoffs for trigger and reset. Use Facebook's Adaptive Experimental Platform to tell you what hyperparameters to use. Port the whole thing to C. Deploy it on a microcontroller. We had experience selling consumer electronics. We had the hardware for hundreds of these wearable food trackers just sitting in boxes. But startups are hard. We had been working full-time for (basically) no pay for six years. We shut the project down and parted amicably. We all had different reasons for leaving. Personally, I didn't want to spend the rest of my life running a diabetes prevention program. The reason our algorithm could be trained on my laptop instead of a supercomputer was because I had invented a machine learning trick so new it had been invented independently and published in an academic journal within the previous two years. I had more tricks where that came from. I wanted to find out what would happen if I pushed my machine learning skills as hard as I could. I see obese people everywhere. People die every single day from a health problem I ...

Friends, you are in for an incredible conversation in this episode with our gal Hosanna. What does it look like to use our stories for God's glory? Hosanna is exactly who we want to talk to to help us think through this. As Jess would say, Hosanna has the spirit of John, the Baptist, and this episode is sure to encourage and equip you today. In this conversation, we're diving into: how to push past the insecurity, the fear, and the perceived inadequacy when telling our story how to share our full selves - questions, imperfections, what you like, and what you don't like - with the world, for the good of others and the glory of God who the real Savior of our stories is Hosanna is an author, pastor, and speaker, using what God has given her - a story of growing up on the streets of San Francisco to now living on mission to see lives restored by the power of Jesus - to bring hope to a broken world. She believes in your story, in the Church, and in Jesus. Hosanna shares a bit of her story in this episode, but for more, we cannot recommend her brand new book, How to Not Save the World, enough - grab it wherever books are sold! This conversation was filled with encouragement and hope, and we pray you finish this episode spurred on to go and tell the good news. We're so grateful for you, friends. Keep going, God is mighty in you.

FIRST WITH YESTERDAY'S NEWS (highlights from Wednesday on Newstalk ZB) So This is What We've Been Missing?/No Jab No Job is Coming/Smiting Melbourne/Let's Not Save the Whales

Pinning what's important on Pinterest, establishing an Instagram Story series, and tips for understanding engagement. ----- Welcome to episode 215 of The Food Blogger Pro Podcast! This week on the podcast, you’ll learn how to optimize the time you spend on Pinterest, how to establish an Instagram Story series, how to calculate engagement, and more. Share  Let’s talk sharing content! In this episode, we’re focusing on sharing content on social media. There are so many social media platforms and strategies, and this episode will help you create those processes to help you increase followers and engagement. First, you’ll hear from Kate Ahl, who is one of our Food Blogger Pro experts and who owns a Pinterest management company called Simple Pin Media. She’s here to share information about common traits of successful pinners, how to encourage readers to pin your content, and how to control what your readers share on Pinterest. Then Abby, the Social Media Manager for all of our brands, talks about how we’re using Instagram Stories for Food Blogger Pro. We use recurring series to engage our followers and constantly deliver value. And last, Bjork talks through what engagement actually is and how you measure it. We’re always talking about how important engagement is, and he’ll help you understand why that is. In this episode, you’ll learn: How pins go viral When you save vs. when you share on Pinterest Common traits of successful pinners How you communicate with pinners What Pinterest finds most important when you’re sharing content How to encourage readers to pin your content How to force-pin a specific image How much you should be pinning How Instagram Stories work How we structure Stories for Food Blogger Pro How engagement works How to calculate engagement Resources: Tailwind Tasty Pins Find pins from your site on Pinterest by using https://www.pinterest.com/source/foodbloggerpro.com/ where you replace foodbloggerpro.com with your URL NoPin: How to Tell Pinterest to Not Save an Image MiloTree Pinterest Developers Simple Pin Media The Simple Pin Collective Simple Pin Podcast Food Blogger Pro on Instagram If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for interviews, be sure to email them to podcast@foodbloggerpro.com.

The party is asked to head to the port town of New Wolfwater, and along the way, meet a mysterious new friend... and try to kill her on sight. Between this and a gang of furry tollmen, how will they ever find time to Not Save the Realm? Fang goes hunting. Raquine gets smoked. Ronah gets in the middle. Music: Owen Piper, Taking Initiative Twitter: @notsavingrealms Email: notsavingrealms@gmail.com Patreon: www.patreon.com/totccast Website: www.totccast.com

The party takes a load off, takes some time for themselves, and ultimately, says goodbye to a friend. Throughout all of this, they still somehow find time to Not Save the Realm. Fang gears up. Ronah gets a date. Sarge forges a new path. Music: Opening: Owen Piper, Taking Initiative Downtime: Easy Lemon, Kevin Mcleod Twitter: @notsavingrealms Email: notsavingrealms@gmail.com Website: www.totccast.com Patreon: www.patreon.com/totccast

The party is faced with their first real challenge in the caverns, and yet another in the tavern. Between all of these obstacles, how will they find the time to Not Save the Realm?! Fang gets smashed. Ronah swings away. Sarge makes a connection Music: Owen Piper, Taking Initiative Twitter: @notsavingrealms Email: notsavingrealms@gmail.com Patreon: www.patreon.com/totccast

The party struggles with puzzles, investigates a murder, and find the girl. All while they continue to Not Save the Realm. Fang spins a yarn. Ronah makes some threats. Sarge finds the Faith Music: Owen Piper, Taking Initiative Twitter: @notsavingrealms Email: notsavingrealms@gmail.com Patreon: www.patreon.com/totccast

Welcome, one and all, to a new adventure! Join Jay, Bonnie and Ben as they poke holes in Owen's immaculate design, enter some Dragons, slay some Dungeons and basically continue to Not Save the Realm. In reality they just bum around a pub and open a door or two though. This time: Fang breaks social norms, Ronah makes a friend and Sarge gets the round in. Music: Owen Piper, Taking Initiative Twitter: @notsavingrealms Email: notsavingrealms@gmail.com Patreon: www.patreon.com/totccast

Mark 16:15-16*1 We DISTINGUISH Water Baptism FROM the BAPTISM in the Holy Spirit*2 We DEDICATE BABIES & BAPTIZE BELIEVERS*3 WE should ALL Be Water Baptized (A. Jesus Commanded it / B. Jesus Modeled it)*4 Water Baptism is SIGNIFICANTWATER BAPTIMS does NOT SAVE but it DOES REVEAL Your Salvation

Mark 16:15-16*1 We DISTINGUISH Water Baptism FROM the BAPTISM in the Holy Spirit*2 We DEDICATE BABIES & BAPTIZE BELIEVERS*3 WE should ALL Be Water Baptized (A. Jesus Commanded it / B. Jesus Modeled it)*4 Water Baptism is SIGNIFICANTWATER BAPTIMS does NOT SAVE but it DOES REVEAL Your Salvation

Today, Jered shares with us his path to medical school specifically the struggles he faced, having to take the MCAT four times, getting into a Caribbean medical school, and having that passion to pursue medicine at all cost. Links and Other Resources: Full Episode Blog Post Follow @jeredweinstock Caribbean Medical School Interview Resources PCOM Postbac Program Session 34: #RespectTheMCAT with @PremedP Session 45: 45: 5 Reasons to Go To Medical School, and 5 to Not Save $225 on the Princeton Review’s MCAT Ultimate or MCAT Self-Paced Prep Course through March 30th 2016 by going to www.princetonreview.com/podcast If you need any help with the medical school interview, go to medschoolinterviewbook.com. Sign up and you will receive parts of the book so you can help shape the future of the book. This book will include over 500 questions that may be asked during interview day as well as real-life questions, answers, and feedback from all of the mock interviews Ryan has been doing with students. Are you a nontraditional student? Go check out oldpremeds.org. For more great content, check out www.mededmedia.com for more of the shows produced by the Medical School Headquarters including the OldPremeds Podcast and watch out for more shows in the future! Free MCAT Gift: Free 30+ page guide with tips to help you maximize your MCAT score and which includes discount codes for MCAT prep as well. Hang out with us over at medicalschoolhq.net/group. Click join and we’ll add you up to our private Facebook group. Share your successes and miseries with the rest of us. Check out our partner magazine, www.premedlife.com to learn more about awesome premed information. Next Step Test Prep: Get one-on-one tutoring for the MCAT and maximize your score. Get $50 off their tutoring program when you mention that you heard about this on the podcast or through the MSHQ website. Listen to our podcast for free at iTunes: medicalschoolhq.net/itunes and leave us a review there! Email Ryan at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net or connect with him on Twitter @medicalschoolhq

Folge 12 der IFRANZNATION Show in 2011. Radrennen ueber Wasser 2011 ist heute unser Hauptthema, dazu mehr ueber das XOOM und eine Not-Save-for-Work-Session vom Weber-Grillen bei Christian.