The history of racism has a parallel history of resistance. Courageous women and men have responded to injustice with lives of faith, hope, and love—bearing witness to the spirit of justice. They have inspiring stories we can learn from today. But who is willing to tell those stories? And who is willing to hear them?

In this episode Mark Labberton welcomes historian Jemar Tisby to discuss his new book, The Spirit of Justice—a summoning of over fifty courageous individuals who resisted racism throughout US history. The book is a beautiful quilt of stories and profiles, stitched together through Tisby’s contemporary cultural analysis.

Jemar Tisby is the New York Times bestselling author of The Color of Compromise and How to Fight Racism. He is a public historian, speaker, and advocate, and is professor of history at Simmons College, a historically black college in Kentucky.

Recent Books by Jemar Tisby

The Spirit of Justice *Available now

I Am the Spirit of Justice *Picture book releasing January 7, 2025

*Stories of the Spirit of Justice Middle-grade children’s book releasing January 7, 2025

About Jemar Tisby

Jemar Tisby (PhD, University of Mississippi) is the author of new book The Spirit of Justice, New York Times bestselling The Color of Compromise, and the award-winning How to Fight Racism. He is a historian who studies race, religion, and social movements in the twentieth century and serves as a professor at Simmons College of Kentucky, a historically black college. Jemar is the founding co-host of the Pass the Mic podcast, and his writing has been featured in the Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, and the New York Times, among others. He is also a frequent commentator on outlets such as NPR and CNN, speaking nationwide on the topics of racial justice, US history, and Christianity. You can follow his work through his Substack newsletter, Footnotes, and on social media at @JemarTisby.

Show Notes

• The Color of Compromise (available here)*—*the larger narrative of (Christian) America’s racist history
• Myrlie Evers Williams on her husband Medgar Evers’s death
• Myrlie Evers Williams: “I see something today that I hoped I would never see again. That is prejudice, hatred, negativism that comes from the highest points across America. She told us then with the candor that comes with old age, she said, and I found myself asking Medgar in the conversations that I have with him. Is this really what's happening again in this country? And asking for guidance because I don't mind admitting this to the press, I'm a little weary at this point.”
• Fighting for justice
• “Black people are born into a situation in which we are forced to defend, assert, and constantly so, our humanity. And that is in the midst of constant attacks on our humanity, big and small, whether it is the vicarious suffering that we see when there's another cell phone video of a black person being brutalized by law enforcement, whether it is, you know, We all have memories of the first time we were called the N word, uh, whether it is going into the workplace and wondering if you didn't get that raise or you were passed over for that promotion, if it had anything to do with the color of your skin, even subconsciously. And so we are born into a situation in which resistance is a daily reality.”
• Sister Thea Bowman, Black Catholic Mississippian Nun
• “Her holiness leaps off the page.”
• Simmons College, Louisville, KY
• Jim Crow Era: “How do you tell the story of the Jim Crow era without centering the white supremacy, the violence, the segregation—How do you center black people in that era?”
• William J. Simmons, Men of the Mark
• The history of Simmons College as an HBCU
• Ida B. Wells
• Harriet Tubman (Araminta Ross) and the Underground Railroad
• Nursing, training, service, and freeing the slaves
• Combahee River Raid (led by Harriet Tubman)—she received a full military burial
• “We need the spirit of justice because injustice is present.”
• Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn
• “And in all kinds of ways, black people chose to fight their oppression.”
• Romans 5: Suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance produces character. Character produces hope and hope does not put us to shame.
• “Hope is a decision.” (Archbishop Desmond Tutu)
• “They chose hope.”
• William Pannell, Fuller Theological Seminary—My Friend the Enemy (1968)
• Rodney King and “the coming race war”
• William Pannell’s impact on Mark Labberton
• Film: The Gospel According to Bill Pannell
• “When you see what's really motivating people, what's really stirring up fear and hatred, which can lead also to violence. It's still around race.”
• Racial anxiety and politics: “This is no longer a white man’s America.”
• The Holy Spirit
• “I’m getting so Pentecostal in these days.”
• Psalm 11:7: “God is a God of righteousness. God loves justice.”
• “When I think about what exactly the spirit of justice is, I think it's the fingerprint of God on every human being made in God's image that says I'm worthy of dignity, respect, and the freedom to flourish. And when that is taken away from me because of oppression and injustice, I have this spirit within me to resist.”
• “The spirit of justice gives us that resilience, that strength to become determined all over again. This is not a power that we find within ourselves to get back up again every time the backlash pushes us back. It is a power. the supernatural power, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, that also empowers us for the work of justice.”
• How to make a difference
• The variety of black experiences
• Jemar Tisby’s first picture book and young reader’s edition

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

“Sometimes I’m not sure even believers understand the power that exists in their sheer humanity. That there really is something that God has placed on the inside of us that when we come to some form of collected agreement—not uniformity, but just some kind of collective unity around something—that really wonderful, great, powerful things can happen.” (Rev. Dr. Jacqueline A. Thompson)

Growing up in Oakland, California, Jackie Thompson didn’t know that sociologists were referring to her neighbourhood as “The Killing Zone”—a part of the city with the highest concentration of homicides. Now, as senior pastor of Allen Temple Baptist Church, the Rev. Dr. Jacqueline A. Thompson continues to serve the Oakland community throughout its ups and downs, offering a Jesus-centred vision of justice and hope, present to the pain and suffering of the city.

In this episode Thompson joins Mark Labberton for a discussion of her local pastoral ministry in Oakland, California. Together they discuss Jackie’s life and experience as a one of the first women to be appointed senior pastor in a black Baptist church; her college experience at UC Berkeley; what it means to respond to the call of social justice and biblical faith; the blessings and challenges of pastoring a large black church in Oakland; how to centre local ministry on the pain and suffering of a community; the temptation of power; the political season and candidacy of Kamala Harris; and how to “fight for a vision of the kingdom of God where there is enough for everybody.”

About Rev. Dr. Jacqueline A. Thompson

Described as a transformational preacher, dynamic leader and ministry trailblazer, Rev. Dr. Jacqueline A. Thompson is an inspiring example of what God can do with a life committed to the call. She currently serves as the beloved senior pastor of the Allen Temple Baptist Church in her native Oakland, California. Her 2019 election made history nationwide as the first woman called to serve as senior pastor of this historic African American Baptist Church founded in 1919. Before being called in this capacity, Thompson served as the assistant pastor at Allen Temple and as youth minister at Shiloh Baptist Church of Washington, DC, the first woman to serve in both capacities.

Committed to excellence in scholarship, Thompson received her bachelor of arts in political economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master of divinity from Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, DC. While at Howard, she received the Nannie Helen Burroughs Award for Academic Excellence and the Henry G. Maynard Award for Excellence in Preaching and Ministry. Believing in the importance of both orthodoxy and orthopraxy, Thompson continued her studies at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, where she was awarded the doctor of ministry degree in African American church leadership.

She is a member of the NAACP and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. Her activism and leadership have been recognized by various chapters honouring her with the Community Excellence Award and as Distinguished Woman of the Year. Among other honours, Thompson has been inducted into the distinguished Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Board of Preachers.

Thompson is a gifted preacher, administrator, and published author travelling and ministering extensively nationally and internationally, often in arenas previously unchartered by women. In addition, she has been called on by local and national print and electronic media as an opinion leader to offer perspective and hope amid the pressing issues of the day. She is currently on the teaching staff of the Berkeley School of Theology in the area of public theology and preaching.

Her mission is to see transformation in the lives of others and is humbled by every opportunity to serve.

Show Notes

• Learn more about Allen Temple Baptist Church: https://www.allen-temple.org/
• Growing up in “The Killing Zone” in Oakland, CA
• “There was a really big difference in how we look at something and describe it and how the people who experienced it describe it themselves.”
• “At twelve years old, we started visiting all kinds of churches in Oakland, right? So I've been to every church just about storefront, larger church, every one.”
• The experience of Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland
• Matthew 28:18–20
• Dr. J. Alfred Smith—one of the most beloved heralded African American pastors in the United States
• Restlessness
• Youth ministry in Oakland
• Social justice and biblical faith
• The power of a pastor: “I miss your voice in the choir!”
• Choir for young adults
• The ministry of Dr. J. Alfred Smith—”God was absolutely central and primary, and the point of action that held everything together. And then you had this galaxy of every kind of life experience that was being represented, talked about, honoured, celebrated from children to all, all generations and ages, but also women.”
• “Pastoring was never something I wanted to do. … But what happened was life.”
• “She’s a very dignified, prideful black mom. … And she said, ‘I don’t recognize you before.’”
• Trailblazing as the first female assistant pastor of a major black baptist church
• An imaginative tour of Oakland
• Oakland is a tale of two cities—the hills and the flatlands
• Shifting the narrative about Oakland, violence, justice, and power.
• “I believe part of our responsibility, particularly at Allen Temple, but not just Allen Temple, as people of faith, as people who say that we are followers of the way and that we believe in Jesus—that we call power structures to account.”
• “Fight for a vision of the kingdom of God where there is enough for everybody.”
• Walter Brueggemann: “The numbness that can come with royal consciousness”
• Remaining connected to the epicentre of people’s pain
• Joshua crossing the Jordan: twelve stones to build a memorial
• Good Samaritan on the Jericho road
• The history of Oakland’s ups and downs
• Washington, DC, and the power centre of the world
• “There are no permanent friends. There are no permanent enemies. They’re just permanent interests. … What that taught me is that the players around the table will change. As long as the interest in the centre of the table stays the same, it does not matter how the players change.”
• Oakland as microcosm for other urban cities
• “The temptation is always power.”
• “I try and keep the centre of the cross with the vertical and the horizontal meet before the eyes of the people in a way that they can see it, that they can grab hold to it, and they can decide how that, that’s how will they, they centre and position themselves in there for the cause of the kingdom.”
• “What is the burden that you feel like you're primarily carrying?”
• “Sometimes I’m not sure even believers understand the power that exists in their sheer humanity. That there really is something that God has placed on the inside of us that when we come to some form of collected agreement—not uniformity, but just some kind of collective unity around something—that really wonderful, great, powerful things can happen.”
• Comparing Obama’s nomination to Kamala’s nomination
• Focusing on the needs of the people
• Thompson’s preaching as centring the pain on a deeper centre of Jesus Christ

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

When it comes to voting, how should we balance character and policy?

“If I'm voting for a politician,” journalist David French suggests, “I have a test. One is: Do they have the character necessary for the job? And the higher the position they’re seeking, the more character that is necessary. And number two: Do they broadly agree with me on the most important policies?”

In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes journalist David French (opinion columnist for the New York Times; formerly The Atlantic, The Dispatch, and National Review) for a discussion of character, policy, and principles for faithful, virtuous engagement in polarized American politics.

French’s commitment to Christian faith, moral character, and reasoned policy has emerged from his experience as a former commercial lawyer, military lawyer, and former president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. A political conservative, French has throughout his career been an advocate for First Amendment rights, pro-life individuals and organizations, and the ideals of democracy. He describes himself as “an evangelical conservative who believes strongly in a classical liberal, pluralistic vision of American democracy.”

Together, Mark and David discuss his Christian upbringing; his personal partisan commitments; the importance of character in party politics; the importance of nuanced and reasoned policy; why he’s voting for Kamala Harris in order to save conservative politics; two Bible verses for this election season; how to respond to our culture of fear; and how to secure a more courageous, loving, and humble politics.

About David French

David French is an opinion columnist for the New York Times, and previously wrote for The Atlantic, The Dispatch, and National Review. He is a New York Times bestselling author of Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.

He describes himself as “an evangelical conservative who believes strongly in a classical liberal, pluralistic vision of American democracy.”

He is a graduate of Harvard Law School, the past president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and a former lecturer at Cornell Law School. He has served as a senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice and the Alliance Defending Freedom. David is a former major in the United States Army Reserve. In 2007, he deployed to Iraq, serving in Diyala Province as Squadron Judge Advocate for the 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, where he was awarded the Bronze Star.

Show Notes

• Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation
• “I was a First Amendment litigator with a writing hobby.”
• Background in the Acapella Churches of Christ: a Restoration Movement from the early-19th century
• “It turned into something kind of separatist, sectarian, and ferociously legalistic.”
• “I grew up with a real grounding. grounding and reading the Bible, which actually, ironically enough, was the seed of me leaving the church of Christ.”
• “I was a Cold War conservative and a conservative Christian. And they were related, but not, but they weren't inextricably tied together. So for me, my, you know, ideology was downstream of my faith, but I didn't think that my ideology was the inevitable result of my faith.”
• Pro-Life Activism
• Representing pro-life individuals
• Existential clash: the confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States
• Why David French is voting for Kamala Harris in order to save conservative politics
• “My party loyalty has always been related to two things. One is the ideology of the party and the other one is the character of the party. And the party leaders and the people that I vote for, I've always had a character test and an ideological test.”
• Bad character and bad policy—”why would I be attached to that? There’s no claim on my loyalty there.”
• The importance of character
• “If the conservative perspective that I have wants to have any purchase in American politics, MAGA has to lose. Donald Trump has to lose.”
• Federalism: a practical understanding that smaller government is better.
• Republican Party increasingly embracing a pro-choice platform
• “If you're going to have a healthy two party system, the distinctions should be around good people of high character approaching policy solutions from different perspectives.”
• “One of these parties has sort of left the norms of American. political engagement.”
• “I voted for Mitt Romney more than Mitt Romney's probably voted for Mitt Romney.”
• “If I'm voting for a politician, I have a test. One is: Do they have the character necessary for the job? And the higher the position they're seeking, the more character that is necessary. And number two: Do they broadly agree with me on the most important policies?”
• “I have very little patience for those people who say I'm somehow not a Christian for voting for a pro-choice candidate. When they're voting for a pro-choice candidate who's been adjudicated a sex abuser, that is difficult for me to discern how that is a more Christian stance.”
• Clear, independent thinker
• Logical reasoning and courageous statements
• A living faith by which we think through ideas
• “There's a fine line between stubbornness and courage.”
• “In these last 10 years, I've really had to ask myself: Who are you really?”
• David French’s parents’ example of faith and virtue
• Learning from World War I and World War II history
• “Some of the worst things that have happened in American history have happened because people didn't want to do hard things.”
• “I think the sanctification process, though, is difficult. It means that you're being exposed to constantly your own sin is being exposed to yourself.”
• Mark asks: “What do you want Christian people, thoughtful, committed, curious, uncertain, tenuous Christian people to, to do between now and the election?”
• 2 Timothy 1:7—“God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of sound mind.”
• Micah 6:8—”What does the Lord require of you, O man? What is good? To act justly, to love kindness, and to walk humbly before the Lord your God.”
• Ideological diversity: be curious, seek disagreement
• “If you just show affection for people and curiosity towards their views, anger tends to drain out of a room.”
• “College students are full of anxiety about conflict.”
• “Fear not.”
• The A Team—arming up for battle
• “And they find out that a lot of these folks that they were taught were going to be their enemies are actually just super kind, normal folks.”
• “They're equipping them to fight, not to love their neighbor, fight their neighbor, not love their neighbor.”
• Mark asks: “What handles would you give people in living in a fear dominated moment in American history?”
• “In receiving anger and fear, do not try to build up a bulletproof thick skin. … Because you know what that does? It often walls you off from legitimate criticism.”
• Thick skin, soft heart.
• “An enormous amount of fear is rooted in a sense—a feeling—of non-belonging and loneliness. Isolation and loneliness.”
• “People who are more isolated and alone are drawn to these authoritarian movements.”
• “Ease the loneliness, build the connection. … Lean into relationship and presence.”
• “It was just stunning to me that, against all evidence of scripture, Christians were consigning people to eternal damnation over a vote in a presidential election.”
• Miles Law: “Where we stand is based on where we sit.”
• Kindness, humility, not living a fear-based angry life
• “If you're in a community where the fruit of the spirit dominate, you can withstand a lot of disagreement.”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

“It’s sort of strange to think about beauty and horrible circumstances together. But I try, probably clumsily at times, to bring beauty to a thing that's really horrible. … But in terms of covering executions, there is just a void there. The main character always dies.” (Elizabeth Bruenig, from the episode)

Despite sin, there remains an inherent beauty and goodness throughout creation … including humanity.

And even in the most divisive circumstances, when we appeal to the beauty and horror in our shared human condition, we might be able to find common ground for mutual understanding and collaboration. And sometimes, in the best circumstances, we might even find a beautiful and life-giving encounter with the other.

In this episode, celebrated journalist and self-described “avid partisan of humankind” Elizabeth Bruenig (staff writer for The Atlantic, and formerly the New York Times, Washington Post, and The New Republic) joins Mark Labberton to talk about journalism, her journey toward Catholicism, the complex moral and emotional lives of human beings, capital punishment and violence, and the prospects for introducing beauty into polarized politics and horrifying evil.

About Elizabeth Bruenig

Elizabeth Bruenig is a staff writer at The Atlantic. She was previously an opinion writer for the New York Times and the Washington Post, where she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. She has also been a staff writer at The New Republic and a contributor to the Left, Right & Center radio show. She currently hosts a podcast, The Bruenigs, with her husband, Matt Bruenig. Elizabeth holds a master of philosophy in Christian theology from the University of Cambridge. At The Atlantic, she writes about theology and politics.

Show Notes

• Elizabeth Bruenig shares about her religious and philosophical background
• Bruenig shares about her journey toward Roman Catholicism
• The Eucharist and embodied experience of God
• The real presence of Christ in the Eucharist
• “I don't need to be studying and getting degrees, I need to just be living my life radically as a Christian.”
• Journalism, paying attention, and compassionate
• “I'm very interested in people and people's moral lives. Things like honor and shame, guilt—you know, very complex emotions—interest me a lot, and I think everyone has them all the time. People have these spiritual, ethical, moral struggles going on inside them. And so everybody is a little universe unto themselves.”
• What it means to be a Staff Writer
• Journalism with narrative, story, opinions, and arguments
• “I have found that to be a very successful way of garnering stories. It's just to listen to people.”
• “The first execution I ever witnessed, I witnessed for the New York Times, it was during Trump's spree of federal executions. I think they executed something like 13 people in six months, really unprecedented. I wanted to report on that.”
• Media witnesses as
• The Executions of Alfred Bourgeois, David Neal Cox, James Barber, Kenny Smith, and Alan Miller
• “I have had the opportunity to speak with men who were about to die.”
• “The Man I Saw Them Kill”
• “The idea of execution promises catharsis. The reality of it delivers the opposite, a nauseating sense of shame and regret. Alfred Bourgeois was going to die behind bars one way or another, and the only meaning in hastening it, as far as I could tell, was inflicting the terror and the torment of knowing that the end was coming early. I felt defiled by witnessing that particular bit of pageantry, all of that brutality cloaked in sterile procedure. So much time and effort goes into making executions seem like exercises of justice, not just power. Extreme measures are taken at each juncture to convince the public, and perhaps the executioners themselves, that the process is a fair, dispassionate, rational one. It isn't. There was no sense in it, and I can't make any out of it. Nothing was restored, nothing was gained. There isn't any justice in it, nor satisfaction, nor reason. There was nothing, nothing there.”
• Faith, the void of execution
• “I find that reading great essays summons language in me.”
• On Beauty and Being Just by Elaine Scarry
• “Beauty inspires reproduction”
• “It's sort of strange to think about beauty and horrible circumstances together. But I try, probably clumsily at times, to bring beauty to a thing that's really horrible. … But in terms of covering executions, there is just a void there. The main character always dies.”
• “I had a religious conviction going into the first execution that I was at that executions were wrong and it wasn't really based on anything that I could point to. I just had the, you know, very simple notion that killing people is wrong and that it's wrong in, in all cases, even if the person is a very bad person.”
• Two executions in the New Testament: the one Jesus halts, and the one that kills Jesus
• Execution as a subhuman act
• The logic of criminal justice system and capital punishment
• The difficulty of introducing beauty into polarized politics
• “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8)
• Groaning beauty
• “All of creation groans under the weight of sin.”
• “The holiness of creation, the goodness of it, is so strong that it can't be, I don't think, entirely blotted out by sin. I just don't think that humans have the power to rob of beauty that which was made beautiful.”
• Finding beauty in visual culture, pop culture, museums, essay writing, and art
• On Beauty, Eula Biss— “… her prose, you know, glitters to me. I think it's fantastic. Not too melodramatic, restrained. And elegant.”
• Marilynne Robinson, imagination and beauty
• The political landscape
• Fears
• “I think when what's up for debate is like the rule of law, then I'm going to go with the candidate who whatever other faults is actually in favor of the rule of law. I think that's very important.”
• Assisted Suicide and Physician Assisted Suicide
• “I don't think I can write without bringing in theology, because it's so much a part of what I consider to be true. And so to give readers an honest view into what I'm thinking I have to provide the theological Issues that I'm thinking through.”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

“We have to go back to the very basic thing of understanding our shared humanity. And we’ve departed a long way from that—even the best of us, I’m afraid. It is just stunning. I mean, we are such a danger to everything we value.” (Marilynne Robinson, from the episode)

Today on the show, Mark Labberton welcomes the celebrated novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson to discuss her most recent book, Reading Genesis. Known for novels such as Housekeeping, Gilead, Home, and Lila, she offers a unique perspective on ancient scripture in her latest work of nonfiction.

In this enriching and expansive conversation, they discuss the theological, historical, and literary value in the Book of Genesis; the meaning of our shared humanity; fear and reverence; how to free people from the view of God as threatening; the complicated and enigmatic nature of human freedom; the amazing love, mercy, and long-suffering of God on display in the unfolding drama of the Genesis narrative; and overall: “The beautiful ordinariness of a God-fashioned creature in ordinary communion with one another.”

About Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson is an award-winning American novelist and essayist. Her fictional and non-fictional work includes recurring themes of Christian spirituality and American political life. In a 2008 interview with the Paris Review, Robinson said, "Religion is a framing mechanism. It is a language of orientation that presents itself as a series of questions. It talks about the arc of life and the quality of experience in ways that I've found fruitful to think about."

Her novels include Housekeeping (1980, Hemingway Foundation/Pen Award, Pulitzer Prize finalist), Gilead (2004, Pulitzer Prize), Home (2008, National Book Award Finalist), Lila (2014, National Book Award Finalist), and most recently, Jack (2020). Robinson's non-fiction works include Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution (1989), The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (1998), Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self (2010), When I was a Child I Read Books: Essays (2012), The Givenness of Things: Essays (2015), and What Are We Doing Here?: Essays (2018). Her latest book is Reading Genesis (2024).

Marilynne Robinson received a B.A., magna cum laude, from Brown University in 1966 and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington in 1977. She has served as a writer-in-residence or visiting professor at a variety of universities, including Yale Divinity School in Spring 2020. She currently teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. She has served as a deacon for the Congregational United Church of Christ. Robinson was born and raised in Sandpoint, Idaho and now lives in Iowa City.

Show Notes

• Get your copy of Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson
• Mark introduces Marilynne Robinson and her most recent foray into biblical interpretation
• Overarching narrative of God’s time vs. Human time
• Theological, biblical, historical, and literary categories
• Why Genesis? Why biblical commentary?
• “Genesis is the foundational text, and God’s self-revelation is the work of Genesis.”
• The expansiveness of the creation narrative from the beginning of everything to two people hoeing in a garden.
• Elohim and the universal God-name
• Monotheism and the enormously cosmic assertion of the nature of God
• From cosmology to granular human existence
• Amazement and the Book of Genesis
• “God saw the intentions of our heart and they were only evil always.”
• Conjuring the idea of a vindictive God—as opposed to a merciful, long-suffering, and loving God
• “It's hard to wiggle people free from the idea that God is primarily threatening.”
• The role of fear in sin, temptation, and evil
• “I think the fall is a sort of realization of a fuller aspect of our nature, which is painful to us and painful to God. But it's our humanity.”
• From the book: “The narrative of scripture has moved with astonishing speed from let there be light to this intimate scene of shared grief and haplessness. There is no incongruity in this. Human beings are at the center of it all. Love and grief are, in this infinite creation, things of the kind we share with God. The fact that they have their being in the deepest reaches of our extensionless and undiscoverable souls only makes them more astonishing. Over and against the roaring cosmos, that they exist at all can only be proof of a tender solicitude.”
• Ancient Near Eastern mythology
• “Meaning cannot leak out of this. It’s absolutely meaningful.”
• Genesis is a “particular series of stories that are stories of the tumbling, bumbling, faithful, faithless, violent, peaceable, loyal, disloyal agency of human beings.”
• Mystery
• Theology as a vision, a revelation
• “The beautiful ordinariness of a God-fashioned creature in ordinary communion with one another.”
• The impact of Genesis in the history of our understanding of humanity, freedom, relationships, and so much more.
• Law as a liberation of one another: it limits your behavior and is emancipating to everyone around you.
• God’s patience with human freedom and the ability to go wrong
• The enigma of freedom
• “From the very beginning, the Bible seems aware that we are our enemy and that we are our apocalyptic beast.”
• “Our freedom is very costly. It’s costly to us. It’s costly to God.”
• Imagination and the dynamics of freedom
• “An enhanced reverence for oneself has to be rooted in a reverence for God.”
• “The idea of the sacredness of God and the sacredness of the self.”
• Fear and reverence
• “You are holding in your imagination … and helping us to see, feel, and hear the voices and see the actions of ordinary human beings, who are both (like Psalm 8), ‘a little lower than the angels,’ and at the same time, ‘we are dust and to dust you will return.’”
• Paying attention
• Marilynne Robinson’s upbringing, access to nature, access to books, and plenty of solitude
• Joseph and the ending of the Genesis narrative: How might the story of Joseph speak to our time?
• “We have to go back to the very basic thing of understanding our shared humanity. And we've departed a long way from that—even the best of us, I'm afraid. It is just stunning. I mean, we are such a danger to everything we value. We are a danger to everything we value. And the fact that we can persist in doing that or tolerating it … there we are, you know? … We've always been strange, we human beings.”
• The perplexity of freedom
• “The way that Joseph understands his history is a comment on the idea of divine time.”
• “Joseph did enslave the Egyptians.”
• “There is no bow to tie around anything. There's simply whatever it yields in terms of meaning and beauty and so on.”
• Matthew 28 and the Great Commission
• “Christianity sliding into empire”
• The value of resolution and the open-ended nature of the Genesis narrative

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.