First Corinthians, chapter 12, verses 12 to 14.

For just as the body is one and has many parts, and all the parts of that body, though many are one body, so also is Christ.

We were all baptized by one spirit into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we are all given one spirit to drink.

Indeed, the body is not one part, but many.

If the foot should say, I'm not a hand, so I don't belong, it is not for any reason less a part of the body.

I'm going a little bit beyond 14.

Didn't mean to, but we're gonna roll with it.

The eye cannot say to the hand.

This is jumping ahead to verse 21, I don't need you.

Again, the head can't say to the feet, I don't need you.

On the contrary, those parts of the body that are weaker are indispensable.

And those parts of the body that we consider less honorable, we clothe these with greater honor and our respect.

Respectable parts are treated with greater respect, which are respectable parts do not need.

So in this pericope of scripture, Paul's writing to the church, Corinth, he's kind of just giving them like the lay down of like, hey, here's what you should do.

If you're a church, here's probably a good way to behave as the church.

Right?

Just kind of talking about how to conduct themselves.

If you want to call it the church polity, you can, whatever.

Dr. John Paul, how might this illustration extend to the context of our understanding now that we learn terms like microbiome and other things about our body?

Right.

You know, I think we can look at this from two aspects and we'll talk about the microbiome when you read through this.

This is how we should simply treat our neighbor, not just how we treat each other.

In our church or in our congregations, we all have to work together.

And we seem to be living in a period right now where there is just so much anger and at times misinformation.

And this is Christians, I think it is our responsibility to move beyond that.

Now, the microbiome, besides being scientifically fascinating, metaphorically, works very well here.

The microbiome works so that there's good human digestion, there's a good human immune function.

The microbiome, when it works best, is evened out and interacts well within itself and with the host of the human body.

And I think we can learn a lot when we think about the microbiome, about how we should act as humans to each other.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Hey, guys.

Welcome to the whole church science fair.

Earlier this year we did a job fair.

Now we're doing the science fair, getting ready for a miniseries that'll be part of the Onaza podcast network.

Your matter matters.

We'll talk more about that at the end of the series.

Today I am Joshua Null, and I'm confused because, you know, my only real job is to introduce TJ Tiberious on Blackwell, but he had to work.

So instead I'll introduce one equally as great.

The one who.

I don't know.

I'm trying to think of a ridiculous thing to say about him.

The one who is the powers that be behind the black hole in Disney's black hole.

Dr. John Pol, thank you so much for joining me, man.

Thank you.

And just to the audience, we had a lengthy discussion about the weirdness that is the 1979 Disney movie the Black Hole.

Oh, my Lord, what a movie.

It's awesome science fiction that ends with some type of weird derivation of Dante's Inferno.

I'm not really sure what's going on, but it's a Disney movie and it came out when I was.

What did we decide.

I was 11 and children saw it and it's just absolutely terrifying.

So.

Yes.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And hopefully we'll.

We'll talk about that on systematic ecology with our other friend, Will Rose.

But for now, I met John at Or Con.

I don't remember where Ork Con was.

Northwest.

It's in the Northwest.

Too high for.

For life.

In my humble opinion, having metal in your head really changes your.

Your perspective on altitude.

No, we had a.

We had a good time.

Really enjoyed talking to you then we talked about the black hole then, which is why I actually watched the film.

John, that's what happens.

That's what happens with altitude sickness.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If we were being more serious, we talk about poop.

John is the prophet of poop.

The profiteer of poop or the prophet of poop.

Yeah, He's a pediatric E. Coli, Elijah.

How's that?

I just came up with that one.

Pediatric gastroenterologist.

I won't be saying that more than once.

This is what TJ Is supposed to do, is say the big words.

He also did get his doctorate, theology of ministry from Northwind Theological Seminary, which is also with Dr. Tom, who's been on the show several times.

Our listeners hopefully are familiar with him and his work.

So we're going to probably talk some about open relational theology and a lot about poop.

So if you're into poop.

You found the right.

This is it.

This is the right show.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Sorry, guys.

I like John a lot.

We're like friends, I think.

So you're gonna have to excuse some of the chat.

Yes.

John, have you seen In Scrubs, they have the song Everything Comes down to poo.

Yes.

Is that song accurate?

Yes.

Yes.

I. I had a physician tell me one time when we were dealing with infection that you just have to realize that the entire world is covered with a thin layer of poop.

As long as you realize that you can get through the world.

How's that?

Yes.

You'll never eat again.

Now I say I can't decide if that sounds profound or just kind of crappy.

Try to keep it pg, for our.

Theology is very profound crap.

It is such profound crap.

Oh, see, that's a good title for the episode.

Some Profound Crap.

Okay, the TJ parts.

Guys, get a shirt from our store.

It's comfy and it makes TJ happy.

That's the TJ part today.

That's all we're doing.

Well, actually, check out the Amazon Podcast network.

There's other shows over there.

I'm on a few.

So I do like when people do that.

It's cool.

Okay, onto what I think is the important part, silliness.

Because you can't have division when you're being as silly as I like to be.

So, Dr. John Paul, the poop profiteer.

The Elijah.

E. Coli.

Elijah, we need you to tell me here.

I was.

I was actually.

Usually we answer this first, but as the expert, I'm going to give you a serious silly question.

So in the Star wars universe, the Force is described many different ways.

It is said that it is in, within and around all living things, but also they can measure the Force in the prequels using Mike.

Midichlorians.

Yeah.

Which is in the bloodstream.

I hated that part.

I hated that part.

And you like that part.

I don't.

I don't like it.

But okay.

And I'm Gen X.

That may be part of it because I was like, with the original trilogy.

I've always been original trilogy.

I don't.

I don't know.

I think it's because, like.

But I'll answer your question and I can do it from a microbiome perspective.

My question is, could it be possible that a microbiome be force sensitive?

Because, like, midichlorians are only in the bloodstream.

But if the Force is in all living things.

Not all living things have bloodstream.

So, like, where do we fall here?

Well, what happens if you get like a cold or you got like pneumonia and you take some antibiotics and it kills the mid chlorines accidentally?

Oh, is that.

Do metichlorians work on a bacterial system?

Yeah, they were.

They were.

They're considered.

Aren't they considered a type of bacteria in the Star wars universe?

Right, I was, you know this better.

Always confused by that because.

Okay, it's been a while since I've seen episode one, but like, remember he kind of puts that thing up to the arm and you can see the bacteria.

Don't you remember that?

And like.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

You do see it.

It definitely.

So here I'm looking in on a medium article that they're considered a symbiont that live inside all human cells.

So that makes no.

Okay, I'm getting my.

Yeah, this is so weird.

Intracellular symbionts of ticks.

But also they were named after the actual midichloria, which is a type of bacteria, mitochondria.

Milk here.

Yeah.

Named after mitochondria.

Does it say mitochondria?

Is that what they're named after?

It says M I D I C H L O R I A. I guess Meta gloria.

Huh?

They live inside of the mitochondria of tick cells.

Oh, interesting.

Now, now what's really interesting is.

All right, here we go then.

And the silly music really helps you realize that like mitochondria, which are all in what you call eukaryote cells, like all animals.

Like all animals, all mammals, birds, things like that.

Those mitochondria, the PowerPoints of the.

Or the power packets of the cell, are ancient bacteria that got enveloped into cells billions of years ago.

So it's a symbiont.

I mean, the mitochondria has a human.

Has a completely different DNA than human cells, which is just fascinating.

How's that?

Yeah, that's strange.

So how do I connect this to poop?

Is Yoda's poop force sensitive?

Well, there is a. I can't believe we're doing this.

There is a medical term called explosive diarrhea.

So that's the medical.

The medical term, yes.

That's a actual medical term.

When you're really, really going.

When you're really having to go.

So maybe that's like a.

Like a force push.

Yeah.

All right, perfect.

I think that was the perfect silly question answer.

I got so worried because, you know, I listened to your show for a while and you always do like a lot of millennial type stuff or Gen Z stuff, and I'M like, I'm not going to know the answers.

But of course it goes down to poop.

So my children listen to this.

They're going to be like.

They're going to be like, what is wrong with dad?

We have to.

We have to.

So one thing we have found, you know, always helps with church unity, is to kind of hear one another's story.

Specifically in the science sphere, it can be a little interesting because people story with their faith and people story with the sciences or sometimes differently.

You know, unfortunately, a lot of people in some types of Christian circles grew up learning that a lot of science is just wrong and anti God.

And then some of them is like, oh, science is good, but only if it says this.

And some grew up more favoring science and kind of taught that, like the church doesn't like science.

And then some people are growing up really healthy relationship with both.

And those people, I feel like, are the lucky ones.

Curious for you, what's kind of your background when it comes to how you grew up with the science, faith, etc.

What got you to where you are now?

It all started with poop.

No?

Yeah, so that's a great question.

My parents were very middle of the road Christians.

We didn't have any things that we might consider some of the extreme versions that you sometimes have in your podcast.

I grew up Lutheran.

My parents were religious people.

I went to public schools, things like that.

Was allowed to listen to rock music.

My parents were both really in.

Well, my parents were both university professors, which I think actually really influenced me quite a bit.

They were not in science at all.

One was in military history and one was in English.

But the whole idea of searching for knowledge was kind of a big deal in my house growing up.

Does that make sense?

And so as I went into college, even before college, I might read some book about some scientific thing from the public library.

But I also was really into literature and things like that.

And I think that's kind of been my whole life, is that I enjoy medical science, but I really enjoy the more subjective parts of our brain.

Novels, poetry, and especially probably starting in my late 20s when I had more time to think about things, theology.

So as I traveled around and I've talked about this before, it took me a while to find a church home for a lot of different reasons.

A lot of it may have been just searching.

Some of it could have been immaturity or maturity.

Hard to tell.

So I kind of went through the atheist period for a while in my early 20s.

Probably more agnostic.

But I probably told people I was an atheist, but looking back, I probably was more agnostic.

Got married, long story that's beyond this podcast.

But I end up being an evangelical for a while.

And what I found in that setting was it really depended on your pastor.

I had one evangelical pastor who was wonderful about conciliating science and religion, who I consider somewhat of a role model.

I saw the Lutheran ministry was that way as well.

And I've always been attractive to those kind of people.

And then in the very early aughts, I got pulled in as part of the evangelical movement into the emergent church.

And I don't know if you've done any podcasts on the emergent church movement.

It's a very fascinating short little aspect of Protestant church history in the United States.

It was, in my opinion, filled with a lot of potential, but ran into a lot of problems.

And that for me personally, caused me to have, to be quite honest, quite a bit of despair about what is going on in churches when it comes to teaching science and teaching accurate science, like how important vaccinations are, the age of the earth, or just the genetics and what you call the epigenetics of sexuality.

There's just some real objective data there.

And so, long story short, I went through kind of a period of mourning there and then came up.

Now I'm a member of a Presbyterian USA church.

If you ask me what I am, I tell people I'm a Christian.

I don't necessarily say I belong to a particular denomination.

I, I like the Presbyterian USA Church and I joined just so I can help them with some of their committees and things like that.

So.

But that's kind of my, my story.

So I've had a really, probably a good almost 30 year history of an interest between science and religion.

Where are the points where they come together?

Where are the points?

They're separate, which is completely fine.

But then importantly, what can I do to help religious groups understand the importance of science?

And I think we're going through a period in our world right now where this is more important than ever.

So kind of a long story.

Yeah, yeah, no, I get it.

Side note, a really random pet peeve of mine is just about the Presbyterian and churches, specifically Presbyterian Church of America and Presbyterian Church usa.

The pet peeve is so simple.

It's just, it can be really hard to tell which is which until you attend a service and like that that could be traumatized.

Like you think you're going to a.

PC usa, and then it's just not they're, they're.

God bless.

God bless pca.

I'm not pca.

I'm God.

PC usa.

God bless them.

There are brothers and sisters in Christ, but they are, they're different in their outlook.

If I had to say something about pcsa, which I have been a member for a while now, the way we talk to each other in church is so open and accepting about all sorts of theological ideas.

I don't know what John California thought.

Yeah, I have this.

They gave me, when I joined, they gave me this little book about what's it like to be a Presbyterian.

They have a little cartoon of John Calvin and he's like smiling.

He looks like a little Smurf.

Smiling, super happy.

Like, you know, I'm five point Smurf.

But.

And that part I find really very humorous.

But I belong to a congregation downtown in Salt Lake City at the University of Utah.

And so it's a great congregation.

It's very low key about a lot of things which I need at this point in my life.

Yeah.

And no pushback from my congregation about what I do.

Yeah.

And I, I love the, I love the PC usa.

There's a, there's actually a couple of people in PCA that I'm a huge fan of.

Still not as many, but, you know.

Yeah, my, my thing is just more of a. I think it's a second tier issue, but like a lot of stuff like women preaching, where we stand on like same sex marriage, you know, all this kind of stuff.

It's.

It can be really jarring if you expect one and get the.

Probably on both sides.

That's probably true.

Oh, yeah.

I would say.

And you know, I mean, I believe that God is so infinite in love in many ways and there's different ways to understand God.

And, you know, I think that's fine.

I just wish different Christians would just accept each other in these situations, despite our differences, which goes on sometimes.

But unfortunately, sometimes it doesn't.

Yeah, yeah.

For sure.

Sure.

Also, I don't want to get on this tangent.

I just want to mention, because you.

Mentioned I can get on any tangent you want, man.

You're my buddy out here.

But you mentioned epigenetics and I just.

For me, this is weird.

So I used to have.

I don't want to call it a phase, but I think it might have been a phase for me specifically.

But there was a time in college where I really considered getting into being a nutritionist.

I found that kind of science and stuff fascinating and similar to what I do with Bible and other stories where I'm like, I actually get really into the meta narrative.

I find more interesting than the narrative.

I think that's what I do with health, is why I like.

I actually really like learning about the microbiome and epigenetics because it's like.

I feel like it's like the meta narrative of the body.

You know, it's like the stuff you won't see, but it kind of is the real story.

It is.

And so just for the audience, you know, genetics, we talk about, you know, DNA and replication and inheritance, and when it gets disrupted, you know, when you have mutations, you can get disease processes and things like that.

And believe it or not, there are millions of things that affect how DNA divides and how it mutates, both in the cell but in the environment itself.

So we always kind of think of DNA as our library, but that library of our bodies, but that library gets invaded all the time with books being taken out, books being added.

It's just fascinating.

Viruses, for example, can do this.

So, yeah, so that's the epigenetics, and it's really a big part of what we think about, especially in modern medicine with a lot of the medications we use.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

So super cool stuff.

But before we get too far into this, there is something we're doing in every.

This is a shorter series, but all the episodes we're doing for our science fair.

We're actually inviting you to the whole church lab, and I have four categories of questions, and we're going to take five minutes.

I'm going to ask you one question from each category until the five minutes is up, and just see how many we can answer.

All right, let's do it.

And then I have a wild card we'll do at the end of our five minutes.

Yeah.

Okay.

Category.

I believe that category one is the Bible.

Biblical.

Biblical science.

Here we go.

When Jesus turned the water into wine, what actually happened on a molecular level?

Like, did he just switch the water for the wine?

Did the water, like, change?

What do you believe happened when Jesus turned the water to wine?

I think there becomes a point, as a Christian where you have to say, was this a miracle or not?

And I actually don't look at that as an allegory.

I think it's a miracle.

So I can't explain it at all.

But I've thought about this before.

If there was something natural going on, I've always kind of wondered what the water was in.

Was it in a skin or clay?

And did Jesus somehow manage to Pull out the carbon and potentially the sugars that were present to make some type of wine.

But I look at that as a miracle.

I can't explain that.

How did I do?

Did I do okay?

I like it.

I like it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're getting me nervous.

Category two, just religions.

Okay, John, if a Muslim call to prayer were broadcast from the International Space Station, how would they know which way to face?

To face Mecca?

They would look.

I think they would look down.

But aren't they, like, always.

Like, isn't that part of the thing?

Well, yeah.

Okay.

So I've never been.

I've not been in the space station.

Maybe you have.

So I don't know.

I have no idea.

We talked about the black hole and you started that conversation.

So I'm not really sure.

So maybe as the Earth is, you know, rotating, you would see Saudi Arabia coming and you might look in that direction.

Right.

That even if this.

And even if Mecca would be on the other side of the planet, you would still look down because you're going through the ground to the other side of the Earth.

That's how I would think.

Maybe just like, whatever direction Earth is even.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right, next up, mythology.

John, I need to know, is there anything Icarus could have done that would have kept his wax wings from melting as he got closer to the sun?

Bought an airplane ticket.

I mean, you're not wrong.

All right, this is.

I don't know.

Have you ever.

Have you.

Okay, wait, have yours.

Have you ever used Gorilla glue?

That stuff's amazing.

So he could have gotten.

Yeah, he could have gone to.

He could have gone to, like, ACE or something and getting Gorilla Glue.

And, like, it would have been done, especially if he'd, like, it was like, an ACE member.

You get a discount, like, totally.

We're saying Icarus has become an ACE member.

Okay.

Household.

Household items.

Here we go.

Why?

Yeah.

Okay, wait.

Yeah.

Why do some foods taste better reheated while others taste worse?

Is there a scientific reason?

I would imagine that it is probably the heat is restoring the chemicals.

Chemicals.

And producing more of an aroma in certain.

With certain foods, I would imagine.

What do you think?

What?

Give me an example of something that smells good when you reheat it and something that does not smell good, not counting what we're talking about today.

This is really strange.

I.

My octal nerves actually was damaged during brain surgery, so, like, I can't smell the best.

Oh, yeah.

But, like, taste wise, I feel like Thanksgiving.

Food's always great.

Reheated tacos are bad.

Reheated tacos.

Not good.

Chipotle.

You should not reheat it.

You should just throw it away.

So that's really interesting.

I was gonna say, like, Thanksgiving, like, turkey.

Turkey and gravy dressing.

I actually think that's really, really good.

It's great.

My thing.

I. I don't.

You know, people always talk about reheated pizza.

I think it just doesn't lose it.

I don't think it's his taste back.

No, the cheese just doesn't.

And, like, the texture of the dough is weird when you reheat it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that's.

There's mine.

Okay, I think we got time for one more.

I'm gonna go back.

I'm killing it.

I am killing it.

I'm going through these questions so fast.

Back up to Bible.

The Bible claims there's a Leviathan that once lived in the waters that's going to return during the end times.

Where might that creature be now if it's actually real?

Well, I mean, Leviathan, you know, I think once the Israelites probably weren't the biggest fans of the ocean, so I've always kind of figured they were seeing whales.

That's kind of always looked at it, you know, and then I've always wondered how much of this.

When people were walking around and seeing ancient fossilized, you know, dinosaurs or ancient lizards, you know, what they were seeing.

So my whole thing when I think about Leviathan, I just think that the ancient Israelites were either seeing whales in the ocean or they're walking around the desert seeing beautiful bones protruding.

So I just have never looked at Leviathan as any more than some type of legend.

Where would Leviathan exist?

Well, you know, I live in Salt Lake City and with the Great Salt Lake, and there's the legend of the.

Of the Salt Lake Monster, that there's a monster that lives in there, like the Loch Ness Monster.

Now, the only thing that actually exists in there are flies and bugs and little brine shrimp, but I've always found that really, really fascinating.

So maybe it's in.

Maybe it's in the Great Salt Lake.

I don't know.

All right, all right, all right.

We got our wild question, and we'll wrap the.

The whole church lab segment up.

Everyone's getting the same one, because I just need to know the answer.

Okay, what's with the beach and lagoon?

That's like in spongebob.

They're already under the ocean.

That's a really good question.

I think so.

I don't know.

There's a Lot of questions about spongebob that I have when I.

Well, that's the most pressing for me.

Like, yeah, I would say, like, I mean, so, you know, the Texas Gulf can be really sandy and hard to see, so I don't know how spongebob would live there because the water is just going in and out so fast.

And, like, I remember as a kid, you put goggles, you can barely see because of the ocean current.

Now my sister lives.

Lives outside of Tampa, and, you know, on that Gulf side is just gorgeous.

So I am pretty sure the spongebob lives on the tent on the Gulf side of Florida, because that water, you can look straight down, there's a lot of movement.

So Florida, man, is definitely spongebob.

That's what I think.

Yeah, that sounds accurate.

Plus, you know, there's the.

The part of Universal where you can actually see him.

Oh, that's right.

I forgot about the connection.

Good job, man.

All right, all right.

Just make sure I did okay on the quiz.

I'm like, kind of.

All right, Gen X, you're here.

Going, at least I got the spongebob.

I just needed a professor to help me in the lab, and I think we're good.

Our experiment for the day is done.

All right, so we're talking today primarily about your book.

What's funny is I was just going to call it the Microbiome Book, and I'm like, I know that's not the name, but I have it right here.

So there's a big other stack of books on top of it because I finished it and then started five other books, I guess.

Okay.

A Theology of the Microbiome.

An Intersection of Divinity and the Microbial Life Within Us.

All right.

We're mostly here to talk about that book.

If you want to just call it the Jesus Microbiome Book, I think John's fine with that.

What I do talk about Jesus in the book, so that's.

Yeah, it counts.

The Jesus Poop Book.

What?

What?

Jesus pooped?

That.

That should have been its own verse.

That could have been a book title.

Yeah.

What first inspired this book?

Was there like.

Like a light bulb moment?

Like, you were just doing your job and you were like, you know what?

This is a lot like the church, or did it kind of build?

So that is a good question.

I think this.

There was a little bit of a light bulb once I.

When I was going through my training and I was kind of understanding how the microbiome worked, one of my initial impressions of the microbiome, it kind of reminded me of a coral reef and how there's homeostasis for a health.

For a coral reef to be healthy.

And you think about all the different species and.

And, you know, in the coral reef, it's not just fish, but fish and crabs and shrimp and whales and sharks.

And I started thinking about, well, the microbiome has bacteria and archaebacteria and viruses and fungi all working together.

So I thought that was.

I remember that was something I thought about, like, wow, there's some type of homeostasis there.

And then in the late 90s, early 2000s, kind of after the human.

The human genome was understood and coded, there was a lot of turnabilities, some understanding about the human microbiome itself and how much it was involved and misunderstood in terms of human health.

I think a lot of people just did not realize, Even in the 1990s and early 2000s, how important it was.

And it became very much emphasized how that had to do with human health.

And I started seeing that when I took care of patients and some of the research that was coming out.

And then when you start thinking about.

And this is what kind of was the big step for me, and we go into detail in the book about how the microbiome can affect brain processes that made me think about, well, if it can affect anxiety or depression or diseases such as Parkinson's disease, potentially Alzheimer's, what does that mean in terms of how we think at all levels, not just in the everyday.

I'm looking around and hearing and seeing, but how we think about God?

Well, obviously it has to affect how we think about God because we know that the microbiome can affect our thinking process in general.

Well, then you expand that even further, then.

What is the microbiome doing itself to influence how we think about God?

Are the microbiome involved with the human perception of God, Human ideas about God?

Does that make sense?

Yeah, and that's.

That's, you know, so, you know, someone asked, well, does that mean bacterial worship?

I was like, I don't know if bacterial worship.

But I mean, you know, all's for the glory of God.

So perhaps there's something there we do not understand.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, and because I know we're gonna get into open relational theology and stuff, because, you know, that's a.

What one of your degrees is in.

And that's a lot of what this book talks about is weird.

I'm not sure where I fall on those stuff.

Like, I just don't like categories because I'm like, I agree with a lot of this.

But then I'm like, I'm not sure when I use open and relational terms for God, I feel like I have to subscribe to a certain ontological understanding that God exists outside of us in a way that I can have a relationship with him.

And I'm not convinced that that's the case.

Or like maybe God is the relationship.

I'm not sure.

Yeah, I just don't presume to know.

You're good.

No, I mean.

I mean, that's one of the wonderful things about theology, right, Is that there's a.

A spectrum of beliefs of how you think about God and how you can define God and what God does or perhaps does not do in the world.

And you can debate and you can refine.

I think as a Christian, I think theology is done well when the end product, as you move forward through time, is treating your fellow human and other creatures better over time, not just individually, but as a.

But as a whole human species.

Yeah, sure.

So, yeah, I mean, there's certain aspects of open relational theology that at times I kind of wonder if I would take it a little bit different direction.

And I think that's completely fine.

Well, Tom Ord specifically told me if I want to, I can say I'm.

Open theologies, I'm like, okay, cool.

That makes me feel like I'm in the clear.

But it's funny though, because I'm gonna make a weird, really weird connection.

I'm like a huge Kingdom Hearts fan.

It's like part of like, yes, I know you're.

Yes, I know you're fan.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

And I have a connection here with some of what you talk about with the microbiome and why I like these games that I think exist.

So in the games, it has a lot to do with identity.

Right.

So you see, in the one game, you're still you even without your body.

One of the games talks.

Are you still you without your memories?

And so, like, you still are.

And it makes it pretty clear.

And you're like, so how does this work?

Like, as it goes through each game, kind of exploiting something else.

Like, I'm not my emotions, I'm not my memory, I'm not my body, I'm not my soul.

What am I exactly?

And the point is, you are your relationships.

And I think that's kind of a lot of what you show with the microbiome is like the existence is in the relate in the relationship, and it's going to get to some of the whitehead and whatever stuff that kind of started A lot of process, open relational theology ideas is this whole idea, like, we're defined by relationship, right?

Like, I'm not the same cells I once was.

I'm not just my microbiome, but I'm also, you know, my cells die out and are replaced pretty frequently.

Physically, I'm not the same person I once was, but I don't think any sane person is like, oh, that's not the same Josh as six years ago.

Those are different cells, you know.

Right, right.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that's.

I think that is a very profound statement you're making.

And, you know, it does make you wonder how much of you materially are kind of like a Perseus ship.

Things are just getting rebuilt over time, and your microbiome changing over time.

You think you have this same little group of bacteria that sit in your intestinal tract and help you with absorption, helping you digest food, preventing infection, working with your immune system, and there's some degree of it that stays stable, but you are so affected by the external environment, what type of sun you're getting, your altitude, your sleep cycle and medications you take, everything like that.

And I think you're exactly right.

And I think the way I have used my theology degree for me personally is to emphasize relationships.

I mean, love God, love neighbor.

I live in a neighborhood where I have absolutely wonderful neighbors.

Jesus isn't talking about the neighbors on my street.

Jesus is talking about the neighbors in my surrounding community and my city and throughout the world.

Those should be my neighbors, and I should treat them and love them.

Just as I say, I love God, but I think, you know, loving neighbor can be.

Be extended to other organisms as well.

You know, I feel very strongly about that.

How you treat the environment, how you treat other animals and things like that.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's the new Superman movie when he stopped and saves the squirrel.

Like it makes sense.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

So I do want to ask you, though, especially since we're trying to do the faith and science bit in this series.

Your book does engage both some medical science, some stuff that maybe not everybody learned in elementary school.

I feel like some new stuff for people, probably some different theology ideas.

Were there places in your book where you found that these two disciplines kind of resisted each other?

And how did you navigate that if there were?

Yeah.

So as you read through the book, I do have a chapter that I really enjoy.

Well, I enjoyed writing every chapter, but I felt a little different about every chapter.

One chapter I really enjoyed writing was how the microbiome came to be in creatures, not just in humans, but all the way back to very, very ancient times, Precambrian life, how some of the ideas about that, I really enjoyed that.

So I think that's a very helpful thing to understand when we talk about the microbiome.

Where did it even come from?

And one problem with the microbiome in modern health is that there is so much misinformation and false advertising in terms of the microbiome can cure this, the microbiome can cure that.

You need to fix the microbiome this way and fix the microbiome.

There's a lot we still don't know.

I would kind of compare it to we have gone to the moon with humans, but we haven't even left our own solar system with humans.

So there's a lot we don't know.

So that long chapter I had about microbiome and human health, I really wanted to be very clear to the reader about what we do know, what potentially can work and what potentially cannot work.

The science is really interesting.

And the number of articles coming out every month on ways the microbiome manipulates us and how we should manipulate it, it's just immense.

But I tried to summarize that to some degree.

Yeah, yeah, I know.

I talk about my nutrition kick that I had when I was in college.

I wanted to kind of thinking about going that route.

And I remember there for a time, it felt like every book that I picked up was like, here's something new.

The microbiome could heal.

And at some point I remember thinking, maybe this one's a stretch.

There was a few that I'm like, it's gonna cure cancer.

And I'm like, I feel like we might have got a little too far.

Yeah, I mean, there is, in the book I talk about, there may be a relationship between the microbiome, an unhealthy, unregulated microbiome, and colon cancer.

If you're not taking very good care of yourself, eating poorly, not exercising, things like that.

I mean, what I tell people simplistically, but I think it makes a lot of sense if you want to have a healthy microbiome, you know, eat a balanced diet, don't eat ultra processed food, exercise, not being a marathon runner, but just walking, be able to walk 20 minutes, three to four times a day, that's been shown to improve the microbiome.

Do not drink excessive alcohol and don't smoke.

And you're probably going to have a very healthy microbiome.

And that's going to prevent potentially some long term health issues like the development of adult type diabetes, potentially hypertension, things like that.

So there's some aspects, just living healthy, I always like to say, you know, eat less, exercise more.

I mean that's kind of what it comes down to a lot of times.

And of course physicians can help you that.

But like you talked about dietitians, a good dietitian can be wonderful in that regard.

Yeah, but like when it comes to like colon cancer, more preventative than curine, I guess.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah.

I mean there's been some work looking at microbiome changes and trying to cure or alleviate the symptoms of some inflammatory conditions in the intestinal tract, such as Crohn's disease.

And the results are so mixed, there appears to maybe be some short term benefits, but the long term benefits are very, very unclear.

So you might feel better immediately, but probably long term, it's really not known.

And so that's why there's medicines and things like that.

So if you had a list like a top three most common things that improving your microbiome would help health wise, or maybe a top three misconceptions, what would those be, what you list them?

Well, the benefits I would say would be prevention of the so called metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, just eating right.

Your microbiome will release various chemicals and enzymes to help improve your body and prevent those things from happening.

So that's a big thing there.

I do think there's some interesting data on just eating well and long term issues with obesity.

And even in that aspect, once you get obesity, you can get some of the complications leading to dementia.

So that is, I think it does help.

I think it prevents some of the diseases that kill many Americans every year.

Now you want me to talk about the things that are incorrect?

I think that there are lots of, I mean you can watch your streaming service, you can watch your cable show and you'll see some incredibly good looking people taking probiotics for all sorts of things and they're having the best life, the best life ever.

And the sun's out, the dog's wagging their tail and you know what I'm talking about, right?

I mean that's just, that's just that, that doesn't work.

That's, that's not there.

I think worrying about vaccinations affecting your microbiome in a bad way, I think that's complete misinformation.

I think that kind of runs adjacent to some of the anti vaccination ideas that are going on currently in this country.

But I think that, I think you're waste.

When, when people ask me or patients and their families ask me about probiotics, I usually say unless it's some certain specific conditions, I'm like, you really are spending money for something that you don't know if it's even going to work.

It may be nothing more than placebo.

So I'd rather you spend your money on something else.

So a lot of times I don't recommend.

Yeah.

So I remember at some point hearing you should take prebiotics regularly and if you have to take antibiotics for some kind of illness afterwards, you need to find probiotics to balance it out.

Is that just all like nonsense?

So yeah.

So prebiotics.

So there's three things there are prebiotics, probiotics and symbiotics.

Prebiotics are all.

Are the food structures like fibers and things like that that healthy bacteria utilize to grow in your intestinal tract.

So you want good, healthy bacteria.

So you want prebiotics.

Well, you know what are good prebiotics?

I'll tell you some good prebiotics.

Fruits and vegetables.

That's great.

I can do that.

Just taking fiber, you know, it's really.

So you can buy all that, but you can also just use blueberries.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Things like that.

Yeah.

And especially with fiber is really helpful.

So that would be great.

Probiotics are just the healthy bacteria pro.

Right.

And then synbiotics are the combination you can get of pre and pre and probiotics.

Now antibiotics, Antibiotics typically do disrupt your intestinal microbiome for a small amount of time.

Typically like if you have an ear infection, it'll affect it for a little bit when you're like, if you're a child, when you're infected, it'll affect it for a little bit, but then it recovers.

There are certain situations where I will give probiotics.

Um, the data on children getting gastroenteritis, getting vomiting, diarrhea and taking probiotics, it may in certain, certain situations reduce symptoms by approximately a day.

But that's really about it.

Now in developing countries where people have, are unfortunately starving and don't have a lot of food items, their intestinal microbiome can become very dangerous over time.

And these are people who can get quite sick because they really just don't have enough food.

And you start developing dangerous, dangerous bacteria intestinal tract.

And in those situations there are certain formulas you'll give to starving children, such as Parts of Africa where they have some pre and probiotics in there to prevent you from getting super sick.

Does that make sense?

And then I will use probiotics in certain types of gastrointestinal infections sometimes, but it's pretty rare that I recommend it.

All right, that's actually really helpful.

You just saved somebody money, so, man.

Yeah, I can get into the science stuff.

It's fun.

But I want to run through a few more quick questions on your book, since that's what we're going to talk about.

In your chapter on creation, you reflect on what it means to be human with trillions of microbial partners.

How does this reality reframe ideas like imago DEI or, you know, some of the doctrines around the church, your body, stuff like that?

Well, you know, a lot of times when you talk about the human in the microbiome or any animal and its microbiome, you have what's called the holobiont.

So the organism is not just the host itself, but is everything together.

All the, you know, we talk about bacteria in the intestinal tract, but we have bacteria in our skin, in our lungs, healthy bacteria in our sinuses.

So when you think about the imago date, what does that mean?

These little creatures have been around you since the day you were born, and they're just completely separate from you.

If you didn't have them, you would simply die very quickly.

So when I think.

I think it's a way of taking the idea of the imago dei, adding in science to what we know about the human body and saying the imago DEI may be more than we even realize.

It may be all of us.

It may be all of us in nature.

And as someone who believes that God is in and around and through all of us at all times, that makes sense, quite a bit of sense to me.

And if I think about an assumption that God loves us, and I believe that God loves and that God is love, this is an assumption on my part that I think is correct.

Then God is in, through and around everything with love, which makes me feel much better about my life.

And sometimes when I go through hardships.

Yeah, yeah, I definitely get that.

Yeah.

Now God is with us all the time.

The Holy Spirit is within me.

I mean, what does that mean?

Yeah, right.

Also, a little bit goes back to the force question, except I don't think we can measure God in midichlorians.

Probably you cannot measure God in midichlorians.

Yeah, yeah.

And don't give Jedis antibiotics for a prior conversation.

All right, so Man, Yeah.

So along those lines, you write about how the microbial interdependence that we were just talking about kind of pushes us away from this idea of individualism, kind of humbles us.

Do you see that resonating with kind of how Scripture talks of community?

You think?

Oh, I think so.

I think what you were Talking about in 1 Corinthians earlier today is somewhat of a good metaphor of what we talked about.

Yeah.

So.

So let's talk about the science.

Your microbiome is going to closely match your wife's microbiome because you guys are around each other, share, touch, breathe on each other.

As you get further away from your neighbors, there's less identity in the microbiome, but there's a core microbiome that exists probably in every human, the very basic core that we all share.

Now, what does that mean?

I mean, scientifically, it means we all share something, but what does that mean from a subjective standpoint, from a theological standpoint?

I think we can use that as a metaphor of we all share our humanity together.

If we share humanity together, we should just love each other.

Which I know listeners are probably rolling their eyes going, yeah, sure, love each other.

There's a lot of terrible things going on in the world.

Well, I think that God.

This is part of the open relational theology thing.

I think God lures for us, desires for us to love the other.

But God also, as part of open and relational theology, God does not force, and I do not believe God forces at all.

So we have to make these personal decisions, no different than each individual bacteria in your gut making decision, quote, unquote, decision, because they don't have a brain, but they can do amazing things without a brain.

This is the decision to divide.

This is the decision to move over here.

This is the decision to share a nutrient with a host here.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm just gonna be weirdly transparent.

So when I read your book, I kind of created my own visual for myself to kind of, like, mix into some of the science because, you know, I'm not the smartest science guy, so I have to, like, develop things.

So my ongoing thing, I just want to know if this is, like, kind of a correct understanding, maybe, or if I'm just completely way off that I. I don't know.

So I was thinking, like, basically all humans have microbiome, and it's made up of parts A, B, C, D. But, like, maybe me and my wife's dog, we have the same font, same, you know, capitalization or whatever.

But maybe, you know, the neighbors is pretty close.

Maybe he has a different font for one of the letters.

Or if I go, like down to Florida, they're gonna have the same letters, but maybe we're lowercase and they're all caps and we're Times New Roman, but they're, you know, some other weird font, but it's still abcd.

Yeah, I think that's a great matter of fact.

I probably will use that.

And I'm just trying to help myself.

No, that's good.

And what's the most common letter in the Alphabet is E. Right.

So whether you are United States or, you know, Brazil or New Zealand or Vietnam, we all have the letter E in our microbiome.

There's some commonality there.

Now, there's other things that change the microbiome based on your diet, your location, your altitude, the temperature around, things like that.

But we all have a very basic bacterial structure in terms of some of the basic bacteria that are in there.

Yeah, that's excellent.

I like what you said.

That's really good.

I don't want to derail us because I don't think we have time, but let me know if we should do this some other time and talk about it.

I have all the time in the world.

So what are you going to do?

That's fine.

Yeah.

But, like, I'm curious, do you think it would be worth talking about at some point?

From my understanding, if you go to church together, you're in person together frequently enough, that actually would change your microbiome to be more like one another.

Yeah, I mean, you would think about that.

How does that weigh into, like, debates on, like, physical church versus online, you know what I mean?

Like, is there actually, like, a scientific.

Like, we actually need to be a person.

That's really good.

That's really good.

Yeah.

So that's.

Boy, good job.

No, that's awesome.

So one of the points I make in the book is that for those of us, whether you go to church or temple or mosque or synagogue, whatever you do, you're sharing food with each other.

As Christians, we do the Lord's supper together.

We're touching the same food.

We're breathing on each other.

We're touching the pew.

The other person touches the pew, put our hands in our mouth.

So we're all very similar to eating in a household with your family members.

You start sharing that microbiome.

Now, as I said, as I talk about in the book, there are some issues with the microbiome and changes potentially affecting some ideas of mental Processes.

So that does make you wonder what that means, the importance of being together in a church or religious setting.

And then you're exactly right.

If you're doing it online, you're not having that interaction.

Now, I'm a big believer in online church.

I go to a church and do online because there are people who just.

Simply threw a wrench in my own thoughts.

I mean, they're, you know, pre.

Unfortunately, pre.

It's one of the things we got out of COVID The tragedy that was the pandemic.

But yeah, so, you know, we have an online service so that, you know, if you're homebound or if you're.

I've watched My wife is better in that than I am, but my wife has watched church services when we're on vacation.

So I think that's a wonderful thing.

But boy, you sure?

It sure makes you wonder about just the humanity of sitting next to someone either you know or you don't know in church, and just the possibility of that microbiome interacting very.

Not just interesting biological questions about what that does to your microbiome if it starts becoming somewhat similar, but some very deep theological questions there.

Yeah, I'm going to be a good podcaster for once, and TJ would be proud if he listened.

But I think listening to this makes me want to.

And I think our listeners should go back and listen to a roundtable we recently did on online church.

Because I remember even talking about then, how so?

I had a grandfather who couldn't go to church.

And I was like, yeah, thank God for online church.

And yet I think there's something important because you already brought up the sacraments about the Lord's Supper, taking it in person with one another.

And the thought then got brought up of how the church used to have systems with acolytes, different things like this, where they would take the elements to people.

And now I'm like, man, now I'm hearing this microbiome thing.

And I'm like, maybe it actually is important that the church, if someone can't go to church, that we take those same elements that we took in church to the person, even for a scientific health reason.

Like, it might actually just make sense.

And now.

Yeah, a lot of theological questions can unfold.

Yeah, I've seen situations where people will.

Various denominations will bring the elements to people in the hospital, which I think is interesting.

Unless someone is so immune, suppressed or so sick that they can't do it.

But I think also there just the humanity of touching, sharing.

That's not medically related in itself is a huge boost psychologically for so many people.

It can be such a tough time in those situations.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, so we already brought up communion and you mentioned that in your book.

You actually, you mentioned communion microbiome.

I was curious, what theological insights do you think we might also get for the microbiome?

When we think of like other sacraments or ordinances like baptism, marriage, fasting, footwashing even.

Is there anything like that?

You're like, that one's interesting.

Or you're like, yeah, fasting is not going to do anything for your microbiome or foot washing.

Yeah.

So let me tell you something I've thought about.

So I have no answer.

You know, I've seen different types of baptisms in my lifetime.

I think that, you know, I.

Somebody.

My understanding is that, you know, some of the initial ideas of, you know, baptism very, very early on, even pre, pre church, was.

It really was a cleansing ritual.

It really was.

I mean, now we look at more of a religious type thing, but it really was a cleansing type ritual.

So there's a lot of health benefits for that.

Right.

If you're clean, you're cleaning each other.

Yeah.

So you do not, you know, you're making yourself clean in front of God, but also you're, you know, organically, you're removing any type of dirt and things that could make you sick when you eat and things like that.

So there's, there's something there.

So I think, you know, if you're doing, if you're doing simple like infant baptism at church, I can't imagine there would be any issues there.

I've honestly wondered if you're, you know, the old proverbial, you know, getting dunked in the creek.

You know, if you get something up into your nose or into your lungs in a creek that's not very clean.

I've always wondered what could potentially happen.

I grew up in Texas and just it's warm and a lot of those creeks are muddy and there's just.

I've always kind of.

Does that make sense?

I mean, I've seen when people get, you know, immersed, they hold their nose.

But I always kind of wonder like, huh, has there ever been someone so that's foot washing.

I mean, you know, you're cleaning the feet, you're sharing the microbiome in that setting.

That's kind of interesting.

That's kind of a way to share, you know, just share by being human and serving each other.

You're kind of sharing the microbiome in that.

The Microbiome's on your mind.

It's like maybe doubly humble.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

And then marriage.

I mean, marriage is, you know.

Yeah.

In many ways the ultimate union of two people.

And, you know, God would love that union in that setting.

And that's the union of everything because you marry your wife.

I've been married to my wife for over 30 years.

Our microbiome has got to be very similar at this point.

So we're sharing more than just this conscious level.

There's multiple layers of union there.

And for our more literalist friends of the Bible, the microbiome might give them an easy out for some of that Jesus church metaphor, where it's like, you know, the husband and wife are like God and they're Christ in the church, and it's like they're one.

Well, how's the husband and wife one?

Now, you can think about it as a microbiome, and maybe it'll be a little less awkward for some of them.

Yeah, yeah.

No, it sits.

The longer you're married, the closer your microbiome is to each other and with your children as well.

So.

Yeah, that's exactly.

There's not one greater than the other.

They are both equal.

Oh, yeah.

See, I feel like it makes the metaphor better and way less cringy.

Yeah.

Way less.

Yes.

Science can help in so many ways that you would never suspect.

Yeah.

Science is a.

Science provides, and it's not always perfect, but science provides an objective truth.

It gets corrected all the time.

We learn more.

That's one of the wonderful things about science, whether it's biology or chemistry or physics or what I do, medical science.

And then there is, you know, in my opinion, subjective truth.

But I think that objectivity can help subjective truth.

If you learn something more about nature, you're going to update your priors and be more understanding about certain subjective ideas you've had in the past.

I would use that in the ideas of how we handle our LGBTQ brothers and sisters.

Honestly, there's a lot of science that's come on that way.

And likewise, subjective truth can help objectivity.

You can build a nuclear bomb.

You can do that.

But subjectively, is that the right thing?

And this is where pastors and theologians and religious leaders of various religions can be very helpful in pointing people to the right direction.

And I think that, done well, objective truth and subjective truth done well can come together and make the world a better place.

Unfortunately, I feel that we're in a period in our planet right now in many countries, that's not always the case.

You're sounding a lot like Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park.

We can.

Wipe away.

Yeah, but there's so many things I could ask you with your book and you get into theodicy.

A lot of really interesting things.

I think everybody should check it out.

I said one and a half last real questions and then I'll make everybody go to the book for the rest.

Yeah, sure.

So you end your book with a call towards shalom, peace and flourishing at every level of life.

What does shalom look like when applied to the microbial world?

Shalom is a healthy microbiome.

Someday I think that there will be total shalom in this world in a way that we don't understand.

I think shalom can be transient.

We can go through periods of our life as individual humans or in families or in community where we have complete peace.

We know that shalom with a microbiome, in other words, a very well regulated healthy microbiome is a happy microbiome.

How is it happy?

It prevents you from having health consequences and things like that.

Bad health consequences, I should say.

So that's where I think it's very healthy or healthy as a reference, I should say for how we as humans work.

So I do think that if we know a health.

I'm trying to see how the best way to say this.

We have a healthy microbiome.

It makes us feel better, it prevents disease.

It probably makes our.

Probably make some of our mental unnecessarily, but probably make some of our mental processes clearer.

Then that extends outward to how we treat each other.

Unfortunately, there is time and there is change.

Time and change are both good in my opinion.

But you cannot have a perfectly healthy microbiome all the time.

There's going to be some deviation.

But you try to have shalom or a normal healthy microbiome at all times.

You try.

You should try and do the best you can.

But I think that's the same as we as humans we should have.

Try to keep shalom as much as possible with our neighbor.

So I think it's a good metaphor in that regard.

A healthy microbiome should.

Should be a reflection of how we interact with our neighbor.

We're humans all.

How many other are us on the planet now?

7 billion.

We should try to have shalom with each other.

It's very hard and, and I don't do it well.

I try.

But how does that, does that work okay?

Or did I totally mess up that metaphor there?

No, you, you halfway through answer the next part of the question.

Good.

I did great.

All right, cool.

Yeah, I was actually.

Next time.

Yeah, I was going to ask you, like, like, as far as, like, shalom towards one another, we can't.

We talked all throughout this episode.

Like, the microbiome makes us realize how dependent we are on these tiny little bacterias.

We don't see that we also share with everybody else, and without them, we just die.

How does the humility that comes with understanding this microbiome and our dependence on it, like, how might that influence our ability to have unity not just with the church, but like, with.

With everybody?

Once we see that, is that a humbling thing or is that a. Oh.

I think it's definitely humbling.

I.

It is fascinating to consider and we talk about this, and I talk about this in the book, how microbiome changes have been proven and sometimes are hypothesized with fairly strong evidence to really affect how we think, how we look at the world.

And that's very humbling because you can think, oh, I am in charge.

I'm going to go through this day, and I know exactly what I'm doing.

But, you know, when you realize that the microbiome can affect how you're thinking for that day, it helps you realize that you really are not in charge.

You're one of a multitude of entities of organisms, and if you accept God as a God that loves every entity, it is both humbling, but also a feeling of profound satisfaction, potentially, or just joy that there is a God that loves you where you're at, loves you at every level of your existence, and loves you and all the extensions that come from you, whether it's your microbiome or your immediate family or your community or our planet, or extending on from our planet to our entire universe.

I find that I'm very grateful for that idea.

Do I hold it all the time?

No.

I get just as angry and stupid as every human that's ever existed.

But in my better moments, that's where I find myself.

Yeah, yeah, Good stuff.

Good stuff.

And we could chat forever, I'm sure.

But is there anything you think as far as our listeners going to consider them for a second?

I guess.

Is there anything you think they might want to know about you or your book, microbiome theology?

Anything that we haven't touched?

Sure.

I'll say a few things.

I'm a physician and I'm a physician for children at the University of Utah.

I'm a pediatric gastroenterologist, so I take care of.

You may think it's all vomit and Poop.

And a lot of it is vomit and poop.

And that makes people laugh.

It makes me laugh.

But I take care of a lot of children with very severe health conditions.

Liver transplants, Crohn's disease, gastrointestinal complications of bone marrow transplants.

And these children are very much in need.

And that it requires the community, just like the microbiomes of community to take care of them.

And we're living through a period in our country right now where there's a lot of, in my opinion, a lot of anti science nonsense.

That's very unfortunate.

We go through these peaks every once in a while.

And I cannot emphasize enough as a pediatrician and as a Christian the importance of vaccinating to prevent diseases so these children don't die.

So that's a big deal with me.

And again, I think Jesus said, let the little children come to me.

And I think that requires us as humans to allow them to come to Jesus and to learn about Jesus.

And by not vaccinating and having children die from unnecessary diseases, in my opinion is one of the great tragedies our country is going through right now.

And I don't understand right now.

Joshua and I know you and I have talked about this, what it is with certain aspects of Christianity where it is decided that somehow this is non Christian to do this.

I don't understand that aspect.

I've received many pretty ugly messages from people through my social media network about that.

But I stand very strongly that Jesus was very clear as love God, love neighbor, and I vaccinate to love my neighbor.

I vaccinate myself to love my neighbor.

You're preventing diseases.

We've had 200 years of misinformation about the wonderful miracle that is vaccination and we're at a peak right now again.

So that's my first thing.

More talking about my book.

I'm not making any money off this book.

I'm donating all the money to my seminary because I think the seminary does a very good job of emphasizing science and theology.

So if you buy my book, just realize it's going to back to my seminary.

And then if you want to follow me, I'm on a. I am on both substack and on medium where I blog quite a bit.

I'm also Blue sky and Mastodon.

But if you're interested in what I talk about, I do have accounts.

I was looking.

I never can remember my name or what I call myself on the I know my name, but what I call myself, that sounds really wrong.

Deep Conversation.

No substack.

I'm just under John Paul G. O, H, N, P, O, H, L. You'll see my picture.

And then on medium, I'm under John F. Pole, so.

And that's Pohl.

So if you are interested, what you heard today and you want to read some more about what I write, I'm on those accounts as well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Also, I feel like we should mention one of our other upcoming guests in this series has graduated now from Northwind Theological Seminaries.

Dr. Chalene Kennedy Kendrick will be on.

Talking about a very nice relational integration.

Yeah, she's awesome.

So, yes.

Very nice person and.

And.

And very easy to talk to.

Yeah.

Great person.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I tried my best to exclusively invite easy people to talk to.

It's like only playing the easy level of a video game.

It's great.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's fun.

I mean, you know, I. I don't know.

I mean, it's.

It's one of those things I.

Look, when I do these podcasts, podcast, it's someone I know.

It's like talking to a friend when we're friends.

But, I mean, it's just.

It's just easy to talk.

So it.

Yeah, yeah, it's been.

This has been really enjoyable.

I appreciate it.

Yeah, it's great.

Yeah.

I love talking to people when I know I'm gonna enjoy it.

Occasionally you get like, this.

Probably it shouldn't be on air, whatever.

Occasionally you get people that you like.

You read their books and you love their books, and you're so excited to talk to them, and then you find out, like, how they write and how they speak are very different.

Hard to adjust.

So it was great talking to you first, and I knew.

I was like, this is gonna be fun.

So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I can't recommend.

I appreciate.

I try to keep it the same.

I. I don't always succeed, but I appreciate you saying that.

This is something I work on.

I actually think I try to have to kind of continually work on it when I do actually believe it or not, outside of theology, do write medical journal articles.

And that's a very different way of.

Of writing.

It's, I guess, more scientific.

So that's very different.

But when I.

And when I do medical lectures, they can be a little bit more scientific.

I try to keep them a little bit more personal because I think people get really bored hearing a monotone voice.

But I love doing these things because theology is.

There's so much subjectivity involved.

It's really fun to talk about to, you know, to Express your emotions and your feelings and, and anyway, you, you guys, guys, your podcast is just really great.

Five out of five stars, highly recommend.

Again, all those kind of things.

So it's a.

And I appreciate the whole spectrum of Christianity.

I mean, I think one of the problems a lot of Christians, including myself, have is we just kind of start finding ourselves in ruts with certain types of Christianity and it's.

And it's good to reach out, actually, I think it's also good to reach out and understand, become friends with people from other religions as well as well.

But at least in the world of Christianity, I just really appreciate how you guys are just very open minded about what people talk about.

So, you know, blessings for you guys.

It's great.

I really appreciate it.

And it's.

Yeah, it's been a journey.

I love doing it.

You know, I think when we first started off, the people who I find easiest to talk to now would have been the most challenging for me to speak to and vice versa.

Interesting.

Gone a long way since we started.

So I'm thankful for all the people I've met, including yourself and Dr. Ord and everybody.

I will go ahead and remind everybody.

The book is a theology of the Microbiome, an intersection of divinity in the microbial life within us.

If you google Jesus poops, you might not find the book.

So try to use the title.

You should, but that's.

You're not going to find it.

Other recommendations were, I think, berries and vegetables.

Well, you know, try those.

Don't necessarily buy probiotics.

Buy my book, use my probiotic.

Save your probiotic money and instead buy a Theology of the Microbiome.

And it's also a Kindle, by the way, and there's an audio and there.

And those are cheaper versions.

So if you're interested.

Yeah, I have the audio and the hard copy because you got me.

And I, Yeah, I find it easier to do audiobooks sometimes.

And then if I have both, I do like where I sit down and read and then it's like, oh, I need to go on a walk.

So I listen to the next chapter and then I read after that.

Yeah, that's cool.

Most people probably think of it anyway.

We do have a couple other segments before we end this.

First, we do like to ask everybody, if you had to just give a tangible action, what people could do to help better engender church unity.

What's something you think people could do right now, like just stop and do.

That would help Christian unity?

I think we have to stand by loving our Neighbor.

I will hear Christians say things sometimes that I disagree with, but I realize that they're coming from a good place in their heart.

This is something that took me longer to realize.

I had to get a little older to realize that they.

There are some.

When people say certain things, often they want the best for humanity.

It just may be in a way that I. I disagree.

So I think when you hear someone who's Christian, who you disagree with, try to think about, is there something in that that you can come to terms with?

I think that's extremely important.

I think we are much too divisive in the church these days.

There are times I think, that we actually worship politics much more than we worship God.

And maybe that's the big thing.

We throw the politics away and just say, what can I do to reach out to a fellow Christian, even if I disagree with them?

How's that?

I like it.

And what do you think would change in the world if we all kind of just started doing that and putting some of the politics and other stuff to the side and trying to really look at the motives behind what each other's saying?

The world would be better.

We would have better relationships among friends.

We'd have better relationships among our family members.

I think a lot of families are going through a tough time right now because of the religion of politics, in my opinion.

I kind of put politics up there as a type of religion that maybe is replacing Christianity in many ways for those of us who are Christian.

Heck, if throughout the whole world we did this, just think what kind of world we could have.

We would.

The poor would be clothed, the poor would be fed.

There'd be no more war.

I know that this is a pipe dream in many ways, but just taking care of your neighbor, I think there's effect that carries forward in ways you don't even imagine.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, also, if we all came closer together, we'd all have healthier microbiome.

Yeah, yeah, Absolutely.

Absolutely.

All right, man.

Praise God.

Well, with that, then, I agree.

We do always like to do our God moment segment.

TJ likes to make me go first and just share something we saw God in.

Recently, I've been pretty not feeling good, and for the duration of this podcast, my voice hasn't hurt too much.

So I feel like the hand of God kind of numbed it.

I feel like I'm getting Pentecostal on everybody, but I feel like God's, like, paused my pain long enough to do this.

So that's going to be my a God moment kind of Kind of cheating, but it's fine.

John, what about you, man?

Is there any place you've specifically felt or seen God in recently that you were like, yeah, that stands out to me.

You and I talked about this prior to the podcast, and I have tried to go every two or three years, fishing up in northern bc, salmon fishing, and just to see the whales and the orcas out in the middle of nowhere and catching fish and realizing that they were going to provide nutrients for me and for my family and for my neighbors.

And it's just absolutely beautiful up there, away from everybody.

I had a big God moment because I just saw the potential of God everywhere and the beauty of these creatures and the beauty of the ocean and the beauty of the forest up in northern Canada.

Yeah, sounds incredible.

And hopefully I can do that sometime.

That actually sounds really cool.

But, yeah, it's fun.

Sorry, I'm terrible at doing TJ Sparks because I don't tend to have to do TJ Sparks.

Yeah, good job.

You did a good job.

So, yeah.

But bear with me.

If you guys enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it.

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Especially a cousin, because the closer we get to Thanksgiving, the more obligated they feel to listen to things you send them so they don't have to sit there awkwardly when you're like, hey, did you listen to that podcast?

You don't want that, so share it with a cousin.

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Also, be sure to check out other shows on the Amazon Podcast Network.

I mentioned my pastor on here.

You know, he's the homily Pastor Chill.

Will is on there.

He will be soon starting that miniseries podcast, your Matter Matters.

And that will be part of the network as well as an association with the elca.

So that'll be fun.

I think Brandon Knight has my seminary life.

Check that out.

That's cool.

And now I have to do this other thing.

Okay.

Hope you enjoyed the show.

Coming up in the series, we will be speaking with Rachel Jordan, a marine biologist and a professional diver, and Dr. Chalene Kendrick, an expert in neuro relational and spiritual integration.

Then at the end of the series, we're going to have on, as already mentioned, a pastor, Will Rose and Thomas Johnston, to discuss their upcoming educational series miniseries, your Matter Matters.

And that's again in partnership with Amaz Podcast Network and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.

So there's that.

And at the end of season one, of course, Francis Chan will be on, but he doesn't know about it.

Someone does have to tell him or invite him, something.

We're not gonna do it.

It's up.