Ethics is always within a story.
So which story are you living out?
Are you living out the narrative that the world says leads
to prosperity, fulfillment, and happiness to the good life?
Or are you going to adopt Jesus’ story, as your own?
And only within that story can we make sense of his teaching,
because you can't separate the teaching from the teacher.
And this is really important.
Jesus didn't teach some universal truths
that smart people contemplate and go, oh yes, that's right.
Turn the other cheek. That's a good strategy.
No, we don't really understand what that means, apart from who Christ is
and how he lived.
That out.
welcome,
Charles, to Anabaptist Perspectives podcast.
And yeah, today we're going to be reflecting on,
some of the challenge that was presented to the church
in this age by Stanley Hauerwas, some of his writings, and,
especially this collection that you worked on, helped
put together called Jesus Changes Everything.
But yeah, as an introduction to that, I'd like to know a little bit,
who you are and how how Hauerwas has influence you personally.
I'm going to read a little quote, that you wrote
in the introduction to this volume and let you go from there.
So you wrote Stanley Hauerwas and his writings were a large reason
why 30 years ago, I left a professorship at a seminary
and moved 2000 miles with my wife to join the Bruderhof,
a Christian community that shares possessions
in common in accordance with the sermon on the Mount.
Disillusioned with Christianity as usual, we wanted to live like
the first Christians where no one was in need and everyone belonged.
So yeah, tell us a little more.
Well, good to be with you.
Marlin, thank you for this opportunity
to share about our latest publication from Plough.
It's, good to be with you.
And, yeah, I can tell you a little bit more about my background.
I became a Christian in the Jesus movement in California.
And, my introduction to the faith was, by and large,
from within an evangelical context.
But as I grew in my faith and, immersed myself in the scriptures,
I came to the awareness of how,
personalized, hyper individualized and spiritualized.
The evangelical perspective was, on the faith.
And, this, caused me to have to take stock of my faith
and ask myself, is all there, to the message of Jesus, of salvation.
And, eternal
life in some other, by and by.
And, I began reflecting and reading more
and, and I came across, Stanley Hauerwas’ writings at the time.
I was a doctoral student.
I had finished seminary, and I was, doctoral student,
at the University of Colorado in Boulder, studying ethics and public policy.
And, I had great hopes for that program.
But after reading, Hauerwas’ early works, I began to realize that the liberal
ideal of objective, universal ethics,
was, based on a myth of, freedom.
And this idea of neutrality.
And so, I delved more into his writings.
And when his book, The Peaceable Kingdom came out, I was thoroughly liberated from
this idea that you can only do ethics from a rational, objective point of view.
And, so I actually left that program and then went on
to, study, theology.
And in that process, I became convinced
that, the, the nature of the Christian life was such
that it had to be lived within a communal or community context.
And, so my wife and I started seeking more about that.
And after an attempt at an inner city ministry and community
and in Denver, which failed in the end,
we had come across, the Bruderhof and the publication of The Plough,
and we started exploring, that community.
And eventually we joined, and shortly thereafter,
I, was assigned a task to work in our small publishing house, The Plough
And it was then I started up a correspondence with with Stanley.
Who supported our efforts over the last, 30 years.
And, so he's been very influential in my journey,
and he's been a great support.
To us as a community.
And our publishing efforts.
So it was interesting.
The first.
The first kind of stage you mentioned was philosophical.
Like you say, you were in a public policy program.
And so
kind of first stage was leaving that
and then eventually went further into,
I guess, intentional Christian community.
That's right. I had gone to seminary.
And actually,
eventually went back to that seminary and taught for about ten years.
And, what Hauerwas convinced me of
is that you can't do ethics apart from Christ and the story of Christ.
But then, he also argued that you can't really, understand
who Jesus is apart from Israel, the people of God.
And so you can't do ethics apart from the church.
And and so I had to grapple with, well, what church, which church?
The, psychotherapeutic church, the social justice church,
the seeker friendly church, the Bible believing church, which church?
And, after really grappling with that,
none of those options were viable for my wife and I.
And we we wanted to live out an alternative, community.
As depicted, in the scriptures,
and described, and that's
what propelled us to a thicker, kind of life of community with others.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Yeah. I'm.
I'm anxious to to dive into some of the, the content of this book.
Jesus changes everything and that picture of discipleship and so on.
But also I'd like to ask a few,
kind of questions about Stanley Hauerwas,
you know, this enormously well known
figure and.
Like you said, he supported
your publishing efforts at the Bruderhof.
A lot of his themes on violence.
And things like that.
Even the way he talks about church sound very familiar to,
you know, most Anabaptist groups.
At the same time,
2001 time magazine named him
America's best theologian.
And the stuff
he advocated does not seem very American, at least
as I read it.
So any backstory on that?
Well, I think that's quite ironic, actually.
You know, I think it was Dorothy Day
who said that, a radical.
The way you tame a radical in the faith is to,
name them a saint.
And I think this was one way,
the American mainstream, tried to tame Stanley Hauerwas.
He often says that the, word
or term best is not a theological category.
So. So why was he picked on?
Well, the fact of the matter is, is that his writings had become so influential.
And they actually dislodged a lot of people
from the liberal attempt to justify
Christianity in a Western context.
And, many,
many young students from, all across the,
the spectrum, including a good number of evangelical students,
came to study at Duke
purposely just to study with what Stanley Hauerwas.
And and one of the reasons why that is, is that,
I think the evangelical subculture was beginning to implode,
that this pietistic vertical notion of,
Christianity, was no longer, viable.
And, it committed Bible believing Christians
believe that the gospel had impact on the here and now.
And there is a social dimension of Jesus's, message.
And yet they were also, allergic
to, the politicization of the faith.
So you had the Moral majority,
and the beginning of the politicizing of the evangelical faith.
And there was an increasing number of,
evangelicals that were not
satisfied with that, culture war approach.
And again, Stanley, was giving, language an, a paradigm in which to live out
a social gospel that was rooted
in Scripture and centered on Christ.
And, no longer was faith to be just privatized,
character mattered, but so did
community, because you could not really grow
into the character of Christ apart from a community.
So this attracted, quite a number.
And of course, he was controversial among fellow theologians and academics
because he was questioning the fundamental presuppositions
of what the academy, had been,
working with for a long time.
So he attracted a lot of attention.
And I think that's why time, you know, dubbed him
as, America's best theologian.
Yeah.
And ironically, that
that piece came out in September of 2001.
Like,
right when the Twin Towers
came down and America responded with,
let's just say a response that was not nonviolent by any means. And.
Yes. And he he, vehemently reacted to that
and rebuked the, automatic retaliatory,
measures that our country engaged in.
So, he was also very prophetic.
So if if the time magazine had
said the most prophetic theologian,
of of the century, that would have been a little bit more befitting.
Although I think Stanley, knowing him
quite well, would have also reacted against that,
because he does not see himself or try to be in any way a prophet.
He just seeks to speak what he understands to be the truth.
Yeah.
No, thanks for sketching that out.
I'm curious.
Do we have any way of sensing, like,
kind of how wide the impact has has gone?
Has this affected American Christianity? Like it?
So it clearly made a big impact in at least certain
intellectual or academic spheres.
People found a way of talking about things that was helpful.
It seems to me like,
you know, some of these Anabaptist ideas have become
much more popular in American Christianity or certain segments of the church.
Yeah, I don't know. What are your thoughts?
Well, Yes, I, I, I think we can trace,
How was his influence?
In some direct ways.
I think that the new monastic movement,
back in the early 2000s,
they were heavily influenced by Hauerwas.
And Shane Claiborne quotes him, profusely.
And, and and part of that was,
gathering people in a more disciplined rule governed,
meaning a set of disciplines and practices,
a new set of, a living,
a liturgical life in community together.
And so I think,
there was an influence in the mainline,
tradition, which I, I grew up in, in a mainline
church, but, have not really been involved, but,
movements, like fresh expressions often refer to Stanley's writings.
So,
and of course, among evangelicals, as I mentioned, so,
I think that's had some a hands and feet,
in fact, this is one of the complaints against Hauerwas
because many people have been influenced by him and made significant changes.
And, and in a way, have decidedly turned
either away from the institutional church
or call it into question.
They find out that Stanley is a relatively staid
individual who is a part of a mainline church.
And he doesn't live particularly radical,
not like the red letter Christians or, many
who are attracted to, like Shane Claiborne early.
He, he, so, some have wondered, you know,
you write these things and, and how exactly do you live them out?
But, that's another subject.
I don't think any of us fully live out, what we confess,
but, he's the first to admit that,
he, doesn't fully put into practice
or has not found a way to fully realize the implications of his own teaching.
Yeah.
I mean, the one point on that I do want to.
The follow up.
You know, he writes some pretty strong things about, you know,
there's no second generation Christians.
Involuntary discipleship and all of that.
And in
in my tradition, we would tie that idea pretty closely
to, you know, baptism is upon your own confession of faith.
We don't bring anybody into the church automatically and so on.
But he, from what I know, grew up
and remained in traditions where,
you know, infant baptism was the norm.
And I guess he also has a very strong sense of,
you know, bringing up children as Christians and so on.
Yeah.
I'm a little curious how he puts them together.
Obviously he does.
But, you know, for some of us, those things jar a little bit.
Yeah.
You know, I'm not Stanley Hauerwas.
I'm not sure if he's fully put it together, Or not.
It's interesting.
I think one of the reasons why he has remained,
in the mainline is that
he is as a strong allergic reaction
to any kind of ecclesial sectarianism.
He really believes in the unity of the church
and that we should seek for a greater unity, in the church,
the Anglican tradition in which he is part of Methodist
previous gives wiggle room
for a greater sense of unity.
And so I think,
that has caused him to kind of remain,
in the broader historic tradition.
and then he speaks, paradoxically, that neither
the church nor the faith is something we ultimately choose.
We are chosen,
and we are formed,
in and through, the church,
or even understanding of the faith.
If we think we just freely adopt a faith
because we alone with our Bibles and in our own personal prayer closet,
come up with an understanding of Christ, that's a myth.
There's always some version of Christianity that we're introduced to.
And so, if we come to Christ in and through the church
that we don't adopt, we are adopted by that.
Now granted, we still have to, give our assent.
And give ourselves to that.
So I think there's a bit of a paradox.
He often uses the, analogy of marriage.
Because we are traditions, storied people,
and the gospel always comes through, a tradition.
We, maybe have a lot less choice than we think of.
And so he uses the, the, analogy of marriage.
She said, really?
Actually, you don't fall in love.
And then, learn to be married.
You get married and then you learn the way of love.
And so this idea of something that is over
and above and against you, is the posture.
And then we learn and grow into our understanding of what
discipleship is and what the faith is and what it means to bear witness.
So it's, there's a historic objective aspect of the church.
And yet it also has to be owned.
And there's a subjective dimension to it as well.
Yes. And I mean, to be fair,
all of us have to, to figure out how we navigate that as well, right?
I mean, and
what I mean by that is things that we understand our own responsibility
for God and then being with others who may understand things differently and
and different pieces.
Yeah.
that's true for my wife and I.
We had already been Christians for quite a long while.
And then when we felt the call to join the Bruderhof as an example,
we thought before that we knew what dedicated self sacrifice was.
We thought we knew what submission was.
We thought we knew what it meant to be free
from mammon possessions.
We thought we knew a lot of things.
And we realized that only once we joined
did we really learn what it meant to be a true brother and sister,
to humble, to live a humble
way, to learn to to serve.
So it it was actually only
once we committed ourselves to a community
did we actually grow in the depths of our, our faith.
When I read
this book and read through it, much too quickly.
Jesus changes everything.
Is a collection of very well worth savoring.
But the predominant theme for me was like,
here's a picture of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.
Both. You know, in a community.
In a community, in,
you know, my own kind of before the Lord.
And that's really what I want to tease out.
I have a number of of questions, but they're trying to come at that.
What's this picture of discipleship?
From different ways.
But maybe even by introduction, like.
Yeah.
What does it mean to be, a disciple as as Hauerwas is helping us think about it?
Well, I think it's starting point is that,
You can't be a disciple
without joining others along the road of discipleship.
So this idea of a lone Ranger Christian is just automatically ruled out.
But then I think, secondly,
because Jesus is full of grace and truth, he is the way, the truth and the life.
To be a disciple means to live truthfully,
and to own up
where we, are duplicitous,
where we're hypocritical, where we compromise.
And it's not just,
receiving the blessings of the faith.
It's being disciplined.
Discipleship, being disciplined by God to be transformed
into the way of Christ and into his image personally.
So part of that picture is learning the way of peace
because Jesus showed us the way to peace with God and one another on the cross.
It shows,
or discipleship is about forgiveness,
not just forgiveness from God, but forgiving one another.
For every vertical dimension of faith, there is a course
spawning horizontal implication,
a practice,
I think he, Hauerwas rightly,
puts a great deal of emphasis on the sermon on the Mount, in his works.
And he, has many sermons on the sermon on the Mount, a couple of books.
And for, Stanley, this is not some kind of strict ethic.
It's actually good news.
Good news?
You can be liberated from your lust.
Good news.
You can be liberated from, procuring,
your security, you can be free from worry.
Good news.
You can be freed from your anger.
This is a good news declaration of what it looks like
to be a, a citizen of his kingdom.
good news.
You can be freed from the dictates of mammon.
So, and
and this sermon on the Mount is given to his community.
To the disciples.
Yes. There were crowds listening in,
but this is what the new Israel is to be about.
And this isn't a ethic,
of gloom and doom and obligation and hardship.
It's actually, a message of liberation.
So the Christian, the vision of the Christian life is, is very full.
Orbed, it's total it has impact now,
it's not just a personal piety.
It's it's, it affects every dimension of life.
I he is not quoted Augustine,
that I know of, but Augustine's he he once said,
if Jesus is not Lord of all, he is not Lord at all.
And I think that generates, Stanley's thought
that the lordship of Christ encompasses every dimension of life.
And that's what the sermon on the Mount, does.
In the chapters,
they, you know, he does go into more specifics, of what,
you know, would look like and, and give some very nice,
poignant examples from his own life and, and whatnot.
But, so it's not just some abstract ideal.
So you mentioned
the emphasis on truthfulness which I picked up on a very thoroughgoing
truthfulness and also a very thoroughgoing emphasis on
peace with others and not peace
in a sort of non-confrontational way, but
peace and seeking relationship.
Is there a way in which
I think he sees a deep connection there, those almost
two sides of the same coin or interrelated?
Oh, I think I think they're definitely interrelated.
There's a chapter in this collection, where Stanley reflects
on Matthew 18, where Jesus says, hey, if,
if someone has sinned, against you, go to him directly.
If they listen, you’ve won a brother.
If not, bring another brother.
And if not, if you haven't gotten through, bring it to the church.
And he says, you know, it's paradoxical.
You think, well, if you do that, you're going to ignite a firestorm.
But he actually, says
this is key, being truthful but truthfulness
with the readiness to forgive and to be forgiven,
that leads to peace.
When we're not truthful, we may have, declared truce.
We may live, parallel lives with one another,
but we do not have the fullness of Christ's peace.
And the fullness of Christ's peace is far more than just the absence
of a conflict or avoiding each other.
So we don't have further conflict.
It's a matter of really entering into the fullness, the wholeness,
of God's shalom, which restores everything,
makes everything well and right, where people and relationships flourish.
I recently asked, Stanley, I said, you know,
why do you think the especially the mainline Protestant churches is dying?
And he said, well, it because God's killing it.
And I thought about, well, then why is killing?
Why is God killing?
Is it because we don't live truthfully
and we don't speak truth to one another?
And, and he uses many different kinds of examples.
One of his favorite ones is that,
you know, can we be truthful with,
how much, capitalism has a grip on our life
and, consumer capitalism and, in particular,
what about before you become a member of the church, you declare
what your annual income is and how much you spend on yourself?
And the
spending choices, are we willing to be disciplined?
And Jesus speaks quite a bit about the dangers and afflictions
of mammon and and so forth, and you can't serve God and mammon.
But he says quite realistic.
People would probably rather talk more about their sex lives
than about their pocketbook.
We're afraid to tell the truth about how much in bondage we are
to the American nightmare of, making money.
Spending money and spending it on ourselves.
So we they are, inextricably bound together
because Mammon separates us from one another.
The haves and the have nots, those who are upper class
and lower class, paying services for one another.
We're in the church.
Why should we be paying, personal services to one another?
This should be voluntary, out of love and service to one another.
I mean, so that leads us
maybe to the question of, you know, how he sees
how the church fits in,
to this picture.
I think you've already started to illuminate it with those ideas of,
yeah, truthfulness with each other and, and peace.
But yeah, that's another theme,
throughout this book is the importance of that
close community.
Yeah.
And we, if we want, to be,
accountable to Christ, who is the head of the church,
then we need to be accountable to and for one another, in his body.
And so, the church is crucial.
The church is where we learn, who Jesus is in the scriptures
through our worship in our liturgy.
But it's it's where we meet
Christ in our brother and sister to, in unto the least of these.
Jesus said, I'm in your midst.
And so, the church is critical
not only for personal formation,
but to bear witness to God's kingdom.
And and for Hauerwas, Jesus is not just a personal Savior.
He's the Auto Basilea, the kingdom of God in person.
Jesus
preached the gospel of the kingdom, the gospel of God's new order
here on earth that breaks in to our midst and transforms
not just our personal lives, but the existing social order.
And if we don't have a way to live
that out as the church, then we have
we don't have much to bear witness to above the power of Christ.
We reduce Christ, to being somebody
who died for our sins and made us right with God.
And then we're just waiting to meet God, in the afterlife.
And and that that's not really great news for here and now.
It might be great news, at some other point.
So it's it's also vital the church is really vital
because this is where we learn to be free.
Not America, not not the, marketplace.
Not in entertainment and personal choices,
we learn true freedom in the context
of being a committed body, one to another, ready
to lay our lives down, one for another.
And and if we can't do that, then the world can't see
what is possible in Christ.
It can't even see what it is, he often says
that the world needs the church,
so that the world can see what it is
apart from God.
And, so,
it's vital that we, we figure out what it means to be the body
to to be the alternative, to a world that is trying to operate,
on very fundamentals from, a life apart from God.
You know, we're in rebellion against God.
This illusion of self-sufficiency.
We don't need God.
And the confusion
and the corruption and the heartache and the war and the violence and so forth.
So the church
models demonstrates this is the kind of world,
that that is possible in Christ.
Yeah.
That also helps to tie in some of the earlier
emphasis on
you know you can't make sense
of Christianity as well.
Here's a set of ethics that you can put out to the world.
Just as this is the way to live because they don't
they don't actually make sense or they can't be understood until it's,
you know, here is Jesus himself and the people who
who belong to him and each other.
And there's that picture.
Yeah, yeah. Ethics is always within a story.
So which story are you living out?
Are you living out the narrative that the world says leads
to prosperity, fulfillment, and happiness to the good life?
Or are you going to adopt Jesus’ story, as your own?
And only within that story can we make sense of his teaching,
because you can't separate the teaching from the teacher.
And this is really important.
Jesus didn't teach some universal truths
that smart people contemplate and go, oh yes, that's right.
Turn the other cheek. That's a good strategy.
You know, any rational person can discover that
and other religious traditions also maybe, assert the same thing.
No, we don't really understand what that means, apart from who Christ is
and how he lived.
That out, the particularity of following Jesus.
And that's why this book centers on discipleship.
It's not an, the A book on Jesus's ethic.
It is.
It's about Jesus and the kingdom
that, breaks in through him
and into the church today.
Yeah.
And you mentioned strategy there.
So, Hauerwas tells us
that nonviolence is not optional for us.
But nonviolence is also not a strategy.
He says, you want to clarify that?
Yes. For for him, nonviolence is
is not a way to improve the world.
It is not a way to end, war or,
lessen on the likelihood of war.
Nonviolence is the fruit of being faithful to the way of Jesus.
It will bear fruit, but it can also bear great suffering.
There's no guarantee that you will get your, head cut off.
It doesn't always work in a worldly point of view,
but we are faithful, to the way of Christ
because this is how God conquers evil.
We don't have to be in control.
God is in control.
We take up arms because we feel it's it's up to us to make things right.
And we take desperate measures to make things right.
Our faith is, is placed in the one who sovereignly,
restores all things through the cross.
He doesn't skirt the cross.
It's always through the cross of self-sacrificial love.
So it's not a strategy.
It doesn't mean we can't lend, a word of advice,
or some wisdom to the world
to help lessen, the cycle of violence.
It doesn't mean we ignore the need of the world.
But, it is not a strategy.
And that's not why we follow it.
We we follow.
We don't actually don't follow nonviolence.
We follow the way of Christ.
We follow Christ.
And part of that is also rooted in our love of enemy.
While we were yet sinners, God loved us.
And so, the the way to to win the enemy
or the way to express God's love to the enemy
is to actually love the enemy.
Whether they are won by that love or not is up to God that this is,
an unconditional, way to give witness to to the love of God.
Yeah.
Thanks.
Thanks for that.
So and I think, you know, thinking back to my own
own circles and,
and tradition, you know, Anabaptist, Mennonite,
you know, we've had a sense of a similar emphasis.
We said we don't go to war, but
we're not naive enough to tell the government that, you know,
they they could have a strategy of peace that would avoid,
avoid problems or difficulty or whatever.
And, you know, a couple, Well, one way that
that has come out is we sometimes talk about being apolitical
and not being political, because
because we're not using those kinds of strategies of violence
or strategies of electoral politics or whatever.
But then, a quote here from the book
and I'm picking up on this word political, Hauerwas writes,
to worship Jesus is itself a politics,
a politics that subverts the status quo.
So if we don't have strategies and we're not exercising,
you know, Jesus teachings as a strategy,
what kind of politics is this?
Yeah. What kind of politics?
To subverts the status quo.
Well, Jesus models the politics. Okay?
He takes up a towel, and washes feet.
That's the beginning of of God's politics.
The way of humility.
We don't, solve,
our problems with each other, nor do we solve our problems,
that we confront socially by by way of coercion or having power over.
It is actually in the humble service
of, considerate,
considering the interest of others above our own.
Now that's the so the exact opposite of the world's politics.
Most people are voting, according to their perceived self-interest.
And what party will serve their self-interest.
Now, some do think that,
serving a particular party will serve the interest of the country,
not just their own, but, of course, implicit in that is that if it serves
the interests of the country that serves my own, and why that country,
Hauerwas is very critical of any form of Christian nationalism.
Our allegiance is to King Jesus and the kingdom of God,
which is a transnational, rulership of God on earth.
That not only transcends, but includes all peoples.
So to worship Jesus is a kind of politics.
It's not just a pious set of exercises
that are highly personal and removed.
It gives expression.
Another politics is that,
there will not be rich nor poor.
There's not going to be, social stratification.
This is quite different than the way the world operates.
And to say we worship Jesus means
we give our full allegiance to him
and to the way in which he reigns in the world,
and that will incarnate itself in
very public, social, concrete ways.
And it will be in contradistinction.
And then sometimes it will come into conflict
with the governments of men.
And that's one and part of the reason
might come into overt conflict might be
whether the state it perceives such a witness as a threat or not.
And it's.
You refer to it as politics because it is
how we live together or what it means
to be a community and,
how we order our life, how we handle money, all of these things.
Yeah. How we make decisions together.
And and how we navigate a social life together.
That is a kind of politic.
But it's not Partizan politics.
It's not power politics.
So it's very different,
than how we usually use the word politics.
Yeah.
I mean, as kind of closing here.
A couple quotes
and I'll read here and then a few comments on them.
The one that struck me from this book,
disciples of Christ are those who journey forth
from the conventional to base their lives on the nature of God
to be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.
And then the other one that
that really caught my attention, was.
We believe that
the revolution has happened, and we are It.
Yeah, both of those are kind of.
They're enigmatic.
They're very bold claims about what it means
to be a Christian and the effect on it.
Effect on us.
Yeah.
And I think it's important to understand that when.
When House talks about perfection, he's referring to the perfection
that Jesus is referring to.
And if you look in the sermon on the Mount, be perfect as your heavenly father.
Be indiscriminate in your love.
The sun shines on both the good and the evil.
We are called to love not just our friends who pay us back,
but our enemies be indiscriminate, unconditional in your love.
It's not about being sinless.
It's not, about, being, impeccable.
Morally, we still stand under the cross.
And I think that, unfortunately, in some Anabaptist
traditions, the striving to be perfect,
there's, there's a misunderstanding of what
that is, and they, they miss, the essence.
And that is the the love of Christ.
And, and that's the revolution.
That is the revolution.
Here is a people who love,
and they take great sacrifice.
It takes great humility. It,
it it is something that really can
only come about by a perfection that is not of our own.
It's revealed in Christ and through the Holy Spirit
that, remember, holy means set apart the spirit that works in our midst,
that sets us apart, for a new world
that is possible gives us the power and the grace to do that.
It's not from ourselves, but.
But this is, what we're not only called to,
but we are actually privileged to experience in Christ.
And it's what we want to share with the world.
There is a different new kind of world that is possible, but it's in Christ
because Jesus can and does change everything.
We don't change everything.
Our piety does not change everything.
Our theology does not change everything.
Christ changes everything and makes a new kind of life together possible.
And there we ended up right back at the title of the book,
which is Jesus Changes Everything, which we will be sure to link
in our description and all of that.
Yeah.
Thank you, Charles, for joining us.
And yeah, helping us to think through some of these things.
And yeah, for the work you put into,
arranging this, collection from Hauerwas.
I guess you took stuff he written, wrote earlier and then worked with him to,
kind of condense it and put it together into this book, if I understand.
Right.
Yeah.
This book is not written for the Academy.
I worked with Stanley on a lot of his other writings, and we.
We rework them.
It made them a bit more accessible.
And we made sure that,
the theme of following Jesus, the theme of Jesus changing
everything really comes through, the entirety of these, these pages.
So, and
just for your listeners, we do have a, a group study
guide online through Plough that they can download to help them.
So it's, it's a, it's a great book to read personally, but it's even better
if you can find a group of people to, to to read it together.
The chapters are short, as you know.
They're they're crisp.
But they're packed full.
And you will feel, the heart of Stanley Hauerwas,
not just the brilliance of his mind and his ability to articulate
who Jesus is and and, what he, lived for.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thanks again for joining us.
Well, thank you, for this chance to to be with you.
I wish you all the best.
Thanks for joining us for this episode of Anabaptist Perspectives.
Our mission is to encourage allegiance to Jesus sacrificial kingdom.
Our resources include this podcast, written essays,
a lecture series by Frank Reed which is called developing as a servant.
And we're currently producing a documentary series on the history
of Anabaptism, specifically the origins in the Reformation era,
which will be filmed on site at various locations in Europe.
You can find these resources and more information at AnabaptistPerspectives.Org.