The Strange Rise of ‘Wild Christianity’ — And Why So Many Christians Want It
Cameron (00:01)
Hello and welcome to Thinking Out Loud. I'm your co-host, Cameron McAllister.
Nathan (00:04)
and I'm your co-host Nathan Rittenhouse.
Cameron (00:06)
In this episode, I want to talk about wild Christianity or the supposed need to return to a wilder vision of Christianity. I have in mind particular figures, really Martin Shaw in particular. I'm reading his book right now, Liturgies of the Wild, about halfway through it. Not loving it, but I can think of a lot of people who will like it. I'll have some good things to say about it. I'll have some other things to say about it. Paul Kingsnorth is also in this category.
I can't remember the title of it, Nathan, but there was that piece he wrote for Christianity Today, and it's essentially the thesis of Against the Machine that Western civilization is not dying, but that it's dead. And that whatever rises from the ashes, it will have to be some sort of a rebirth and we'll need a more primitive kind of wild vision of Christianity. He wrote that in First Things. I can't remember the title of it right now. I'll try to dig it up in a second and get you that title.
It's an essay that's well worth your time, very provocative. I think it was also his Erasmus lecture for first things. So anyway, I want to talk about that today. And the reason I want to, Nathan, is because I'm getting older and so often I hear these calls for some new thing or some big return and it feels like the emperor's new clothes to me. So I was mentioning this to a friend. Hi, KJ.
And he said, yeah, the whole thing puts me in mind of John Eldridge's Wild at Heart. And I thought, yeah, there it is. That little statement kind of took the wind out of the sails. But, Nathan, I don't want to take all of the wind out of the sails of this either, because I think there's also something here that is vital and that is really good. But I don't think it has that much to do with the wild necessarily. Yeah. And I think.
You drew my attention to, so I want to bring this in here as well. You drew my attention to the, gets us ad for the Superbowl this year, which I agree with you went back and watched it. And I thought, no, this one's pretty special. This one is this, this is different.
Nathan (02:11)
Mm-hmm. We've
been critical of them in the past. So our praise here means something.
Cameron (02:14)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So, but essentially it correct me if I'm wrong, Nathan, it gives you sort of this tour of our culture, cultures, different versions of access, know, experience wealth, and it just keeps getting more, you know, more experience, more wealth, more gambling, you know, whatever it is. And then I think it culminates with a young lady who's standing in a kind of, yes, a sort of wild or
desert or wilderness setting, turning her back on all of that. And I think the final phrase is what if there's more than more? Isn't that right?
Nathan (02:52)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, what if there's more to life than more? think is that what if there's more than more or something like that?
Cameron (02:54)
Yeah. What if there's, yeah,
what if there's more, more to life than more? That sounds right. But you get the idea. Now that is powerful and the wild can factor into that, but it's, it's part of it. It's not, it's not the whole thing.
Nathan (03:10)
Well, you want know an interesting spot that this shows up is, I don't know if we're still in this. Yeah, I would say we're still there. There was, there was a transition phase in worship music when, you know, you're like, you're at a church that projects music onto the wall and they would have like background imagery and there for a while you had two options. You had the one that looked like Microsoft windows rebooting, you know, and then you had, but then definitely, I think through the 2010s onward, ⁓ a lot of nature scenes. So.
Cameron (03:30)
Yeah.
Nathan (03:39)
mountains, rivers, meadows, moving clouds, rain, deep nature imagery. And it is interesting to me that all of those were largely very urban or suburban context in which the churches that you could just look out the window and see the pine trees and the snow did not feel a need to project. So there are two things happening here at the same time. I think there is a very
Cameron (03:54)
Yeah.
Nathan (04:09)
human. And we know this from like you are statistically mentally better off if you see, you know, a plant 20 minutes a day or green spaces or open air, fresh air. Like, so we were created to be in nature. And I think there is an inherent longing in us that craves ⁓ the bike ride, the nature walk, ⁓ bird watching, just as a part of the creaturely, the shared creatureliness of what it means to be human. The reason
And that's there even for the non-Christian. some of my critique of the Christian version of this is because I've gone pretty far down the rabbit trail on the non-Christian version of this, enough to know that there's no there there. And so when we back up then and look at some of these Christian attempts to piggyback off of that,
Cameron (04:39)
Yeah.
⁓ Well,
what's the non- a little bit about the non-Christian version of that.
Nathan (04:59)
Oh, the yeah, the back to the land back to the woods, the the hippie homesteading. I mean, you can go back to well forever. There's been versions of this, but really kicking off in the 60s. And I think the thing that distinguishes like the movement that started in the 60s is that most of the people who are pursuing this were very well to do. They came from privileged and you even have like, oh, who's the guy who started Whole Foods?
Cameron (05:05)
Got it, yep.
Sure.
Nathan (05:28)
You know, he talks about this, you know, the story of, ⁓ you know, hitchhiking down the road without even a shirt on his back and like, ⁓ man, he was just out there facing elements. And then he has an idea for this business. and his dad could just loan him a hundred grand in 1970 to get him going. Like he, it was all experimental. Even like the, people who came and stayed and lived in the woods around here back in the sixties and seventies that my grandpa was working with were all the sons and daughters of doctors and chemists and PhDs. And, ⁓ it was a flight from materialism.
not a vision of something else that would bind and structure them together in any meaningful way. so nature isn't enough to form community.
Cameron (06:09)
I want to, you have a pertinent quote from George Bernard Shaw on the against piece that I think would fit real well here.
Nathan (06:14)
right.
So George Bernard Shaw once said that the reason that Marxism failed is that Marx pitched himself as somebody who was on the side of the peasant, that he loved the peasant, but actually he just hated the bourgeois. And so it was using the working class and a false love in order to hide a burning hate against the other. And so there is a sense here,
Cameron (06:36)
Hmm.
Nathan (06:44)
And this is why we got to walk carefully here because I think some of the Christian vision and ⁓ mythology that surrounds nature and wild things is born out of a legitimate good that God created us to be a creature in his creation. And a lot of it is born out of a anti-materialistic, anti-capitalist, anti-host of things that's framed within a love of something else. And ultimately,
You'll know them by their fruit and it just takes a while for that fruit to ripen and mature So I've seen this go both ways and that's where we want to walk carefully here is is this really born out of a genuine love and a desire for something or ⁓ Is it a form of rebellion against a system that is unhealthy in its own right?
Cameron (07:28)
you
Well, I think on that piece, there is a clear, I think the word that comes to mind for me is exhaustion with materialism or with consumer culture for growing numbers of people. That's where the, there's more to life than more is resonating with people.
Nathan (07:47)
⁓ But
let's point this out. It's our dissatisfaction with consumer culture is not that it doesn't work It's that it does and once you succeed in it You get disillusioned that this is it
Cameron (07:54)
Correct. Yep.
It doesn't deliver the goods. Yes, it works really well.
Nathan (08:03)
I mean, how many
luxury handbags does it take to make you happy?
Cameron (08:06)
I mean, and now with, I mean, we're on the cusp of it working even better. I mean, you talk about customizable consumer experiences. ⁓ mean, AI is only going to exacerbate that, but it's not delivering the deeper existential goods. So there is that sense of dissatisfaction. Yeah.
Nathan (08:24)
the wild doesn't either. This is the thing.
Anyway, I'll stop there for now.
Cameron (08:29)
Well, yeah, so that's where we're, yeah, that's where we want to go here. Let me bring in Martin Shaw for a second, because he's been on my, on my radar for awhile. He's been around for a long time. mean, Martin Shaw, would put him in his sixties probably. So he, and as you might've guessed, Nathan kind of hippie background dabbled in, in, in paganism and, and, know, the rock and roll life's lifestyle as well. He was in a band, very serious band. And so when you read his books, you're going to, you'll get ample.
Doors references and things like that. But he also, he works deeply with myth. So part of what I like about Liturgies of the Wild, his latest book, is he says basically the stories that we're telling ourselves right now are empty and hollow. We have stories and they're real familiar. I'll repeat some of them. mean, some of them you could almost use an ad campaign. You're worth it. I mean, that's one of the stories that we tell ourselves right now over and over again.
You could also use enlightenment speak, like we're rational people in control of our destiny. That one as well. You make your own story. That's a big one today. I think another huge one is it's the journey, not the destination. Of course it's not the destination. We can't agree on any destination and also a destination is inherently limiting. It puts some sort of parameters on whatever it is you want and we want unfettered desire. Well, all of those stories, they are stories.
And they fuel a lot of our cultural yearnings and output, but they're not very good stories because they're hollow. And they're also not very good stories because they fail to make sense of our experience. let me, right. So let me give you, let me give an ex, a specific example and then show some of what Martin Shaw is doing and some of what I think he could do a little bit better.
Nathan (10:13)
Okay, we're on board here, right?
Cameron (10:26)
But first, okay, so you, let's say you're approaching, let's say you're a geriatric millennial, or if you're getting a little older, and you have tasted some of life's normal disillusionment. Some things have gone wrong in your life. You've lost people, things have fallen apart, you've experienced real pain and real damage in your life.
So when you're in that kind of a place, when you're in the woods, I always think of Dante's opening lines in the Divine Comedy where he says, midway through life's journey, I found myself in a dark wood. I mean, there are very few who enter life in their 40s or 50s who do not find that to be deeply relatable on some level. So when you're there, you're worth it is not really going to carry you very far.
You're a rational person in charge of your destiny. Well, that's going to make you just feel crushing guilt and feel horrible because how did you get here? Everything is so out of control right now. And so here, Martinshaw is going to say myth, as in the great myths of the Greeks and other ancient civilizations, help us because they do two things really well. On the one hand, they're really broad. You you don't need a novel for the myth. You can say it in a few sentences, but so they're really broad, but they're also
deep enough and detailed enough to be able to map onto your experience and not only map onto it, but help you to make sense of what is happening to you and make you feel less alone, a real sense of solidarity. Now that is exquisitely valuable and that is, Martinshaw uses, I think the phrase, a technology of the self, which might be a bit cumbersome, but that's right. It is. It's a technology of the self in the sense that this is what is helping you as a self.
to navigate a complex world. Now, Martinshaw also leads wilderness tours. He does long nature fasts. He spent lots of time in the woods. If you know Paul Kingsnorth, similar. He's about a decade younger, I think, but he's done, he kind of has done similar things. All right. So this is helpful up to a point, but you said, yeah, but the wilderness is, it ain't it.
So expand on that a little bit, Nathan.
Nathan (12:48)
Yeah,
so basically if you look at all the people who have from, guess we could go all the way back to throw, but an onward, all the little communes and groups that set off into the woods. And so I'm speaking some from literature from like actually reading the memoirs of the children of the hippies is pretty fascinating of cause you have some of these.
Cameron (13:11)
Yeah.
Nathan (13:15)
I won't name names here, like people who are very well known like founders and pioneers of the modern homesteading and Anyway, and then like okay, and here's what else was going on in their personal lives. It all worked They took off into the woods. We're going to you know cut down the trees and build a cabin and grow organic vegetables and ⁓ Now a lot of them realizes a lot of work and left but then of those who made it Usually within three years there was a divorce or a something that like so once you succeed in survival
Cameron (13:38)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (13:45)
you need a bigger story. Now what? And so that's the... So it's not that it can't be done. It's that when it's done, you run out of a, like, what are we doing here? Kind of thing.
Cameron (13:47)
Now what?
And here's where,
okay, that's a good segue. Here's where I so far am left wanting with Liturgies of the Wild, Martin Shaw's book. So first, this is just a stylistic quibble. He's got a lot of sentence fragments in there. He is a very good writer and this is an intentional choice on his part. You use a lot of sentence fragments. It's meant to communicate a sense of poetic urgency, but it gets on my nerves after a while. Just use traditional sentences.
Nathan (14:16)
You
Cameron (14:29)
That's fine. That's just me. But if that bugs you.
Nathan (14:32)
When you meet
anybody listening to this when you meet Cameron, we don't want any of this poetic style or poetic urgency
Cameron (14:34)
Yeah.
Well, like, well, I yeah, I like understated elegance, I suppose, better. But anyway, it's fine. But what leaves me a little unsatisfied.
Nathan (14:49)
I'm just dwelling on the
sentence, like understated elegance and trying to decide if there's any internal contradiction in there. Anyway.
Cameron (14:54)
Yeah, there you go.
Well, part of the problem, I think, is it's just, we've got a lot of myth, we've got a lot of pagan imagery, and of course, there is a lot of profundity and a lot of truth there. Of course there is. These are, in a sense, there's a very rich reading of antiquity that sees it as
God's grace in the sense that these are anticipations of the full culmination that we see when the word became flesh. And I affirm that. think that's a wonderful, rich reading. Yes. And one of my old professors at my old program, Louis Marcos, writes a lot on that subject and I would recommend his books there. My problem here is that it's not just with Martin Shaw. He speaks for a growing
Nathan (15:34)
Fair enough.
Cameron (15:51)
group of people who like to hang out and loiter more in the hazy sort of ambiguous territory. So I think of Paul in Athens and I think of him standing before that altar to the unknown God. The altar to the unknown God is a good place to start, but you don't want to stay there. But people want to stay there because the unknown God is fun in the sense that it's okay. You know, there is something more to life than meets the eye. Yes, there is.
We all have experiences that we just, can't fully explain. Yes, most of us do. The world is weird and wild and strange. Why? Yes, it absolutely is. I'm very religious in all respects. I'm very spiritual in respects. Why? Yes, you are. Look at this altar. And people will be with you there, especially right now. I mean, our culture is, we're really open to just about anything but Christianity. That's perhaps another subject.
Nathan (16:44)
Mm-hmm. I said
that I said this phrase this week this person's problem is not that they don't believe is that they believe everything
Cameron (16:51)
Yeah, you think of GK Chesterton's phrase, you know, the, people stop believing God, problem is not that they stop believing, but they'll start believing in anything or something, something along those lines. But it's true. mean, you'll ever, mean, you bring up Buddhism. ⁓ people are excited. They're with you. Wickedness. ⁓ Wicca. Yes. Absolutely. Tarot card. Yes. Yes. Healing crystals, Hinduism, Islam even, but Christianity. So, and Eve, and I get the feeling that
Nathan (16:59)
Mm-hmm.
You
Cameron (17:21)
Martin Shaw has a little bit of that vibe himself. Now, when he talks about Christianity, now, here's the other, this is not incidental. He has also found his way to the Eastern Church.
Nathan (17:35)
Right, okay.
Cameron (17:36)
Yeah. And now that's very consistent with his wilderness emphasis, by the way, because the Eastern church is ancient, but also I think pertinent to this discussion, Nathan, it's alien to our culture. They do.
Nathan (17:50)
Well, they've got Jonathan Pagio, so they've got
their key myth decoder and iconographer there.
Cameron (17:55)
decoder and iconographer.
part of, we've, a lot of people have been talking about the appeal of Eastern Orthodoxy. And I think frankly, lot of those discussions have been pretty shallow because they're, they're narrowly focused on hyper-masculinity. That might be some aspect of it, but I just don't think that that in any way accounts for the fascination. think the deeper draw of something like Eastern, the Eastern church is, is that it is
a true alternative. Alternative is not strong enough of a word. It's alien to the culture around us. And one thing that people are feeling and that is real and I think is important is a deep sense of dissatisfaction with our consumer culture. The emptiness of it. talked not too long ago, Nathan, about the Epstein files and how one takeaway from that is that you have all of, people who have achieved
what we're supposed to want often turn out to be these decadent, wicked fools.
Nathan (18:59)
Let me run this at different angle to agree with you, but here's another thing. This isn't going to work. Cameron, when you read...
Everything from wild at heart to fill in the blank on ⁓ any of this. Like you just as your friend guessing you're never going to go do a 45 day nature fast and a tent in the national forest.
Cameron (19:21)
I mean, you know me too well. There's no way, dude.
Nathan (19:23)
and and
and I've slept in a bed of ferns on top of a mountain and have I think a fairly interesting list of stories involving bears and rattlesnakes like so There's some people who look kind of forward to this and some people who kind of look backwards on this and and you and I are just like on the extremes of either side of it and critiquing it in that way, so part of it is just our Personality interseal set side of it, but but here's the here's where we share something in common
How much Lord of the Rings memorabilia and paraphernalia do you have? You don't have any swords hanging on your wall? You don't have any elvish? Okay. Do you know anybody who does? yeah, okay. So, so why? Why would you, why are there people who feel the need to have a replica of a sword from the Lord of the Rings?
Cameron (19:57)
None.
no. Yep. Nothing.
absolutely.
Well, I mean, this is a story for people that has helped them make sense of their lives and they feel a deep affinity with it. Yeah. Especially for Christians, I think that one's that's a key. I don't want to call it a myth and Tolkien would object, but it is for, you know what I mean? In the broader sense, that's a key Christian myth. Yeah.
Nathan (20:22)
There you go. ⁓
Okay, yeah, good. Correct
answer. You're proving my point here. Why is it that neither of us do?
And reason I'm going to say why I think it is in a new is like, already have a founding myth and reality that I live in. Like the true version of the story already exists and I inhabit it.
Cameron (20:44)
Yeah, I want to hear.
Yes. Yep.
And that's my problem, Nathan.
Nathan (20:55)
Like, I don't
buy plastic apples because I have an apple tree in my yard.
Cameron (21:00)
So I am not, yeah, and you don't play guitar on Guitar Hero if you have a guitar sitting around in your house. Well, okay, but I don't want anybody to hear us saying, if you own any Lord of the Rings paraphernalia, we're casting aspersions on you. No, no, no, no. But there is a sense, Nathan, when I read some of these people, where it does seem though that Christianity is insufficient as it stands, and that it needs to be given some sort of a mythic gloss in order to.
in order to pass the test of authenticity or something like that. Now that's not necessarily what's happening, but I do get that impression sometimes that, you I've told you part of my problem right now with a lot of this stuff is that there's, it might be rich on pagan mythology and a lot of people will see on C.S. Lewis's the true myth aspect. But that said,
Nathan (21:55)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (21:58)
It gets a few sentences, but there's a ton of ink spilled on, know, Psyche or various other Greek figures, which is no, which wouldn't be a problem if this weren't something that purports to be a book about the Christian journey. And I'm not, I'm not a prude. I'm not a stickler. I like literature. I love myth. I love all of this stuff. But if you're writing a book that's theology adjacent.
Nathan (22:18)
Okay, but here's... No, no, no.
Cameron (22:29)
And you have a tiny little sliver of Christ and a whole lot of the Norse myths and the Greek myths. I do think we're dealing with an imbalance here and it's indicative of something deeper that is a little problematic. The church, Christ, his word and his people is enough.
Nathan (22:52)
Okay, but here's another part of this, is that, lots of people read Wendell Berry. Very, very, very, very, very, very, very few of those who read Wendell Berry then go buy a farm in Kentucky.
So there are some of these elements that you're like, and you read the reviews and it's about sacredness and nature and personal narrative and nutritional myths and the whole. ⁓
Cameron (23:20)
Nathan, you have a very romantic view of all this, don't you?
Nathan (23:29)
I do have a romantic view, but not of this. So it seems like a good start to get the wheels spinning, but it doesn't go far enough. Does this actually cast a vision that you can participate in? That's the question. so, like, right.
Cameron (23:41)
Yeah, yeah.
And on a continuing basis,
you just keep going. You press forward. And even when on a day where it doesn't feel thrilling or wild or scary or exciting, mean, many days like that.
Nathan (24:01)
Yeah, I mean, what if you can't go do it
100 day in the forest and, know, cause you have a job like.
Cameron (24:08)
I was going yeah, the other side of this, Nathan,
that we have yet we should mention is just, the, the, privilege that attaches to a lot of this. But yeah, people who can afford to do long wilderness tours or do extensive digital fasts and all of this. Yeah.
Nathan (24:22)
So
it tugs at our heart, it tugs at our psyche. There is a spiritual call to it, I believe. But one of the key elements of Christianity is that it is intended to be livable.
Like when Jesus said, come follow me, it wasn't theoretical. It was an actual put down your fishing net and let's roll. So there's a sense here that I, I do want people to have a, a deep theologically rooted sense of ecology and appreciation for creation and nature. And I want that to all be Theo centric and to be a, a, a tributary.
of a component of a deep and profound physically embodied spirituality that I think is helpful and that God intended. Thumbs up there. I'm on board with that. ⁓ But what are the actual access points here of like, well, I'm in my city of six million people. I read this. I lived the entire day on asphalt and neon lights.
and have a longing to watch the ocean waves in silence. ⁓
What's the next step here? do, how, so, so for me, the casting of the vision is fine and is the easiest part. But then how do I learn to live into participating in that vision? And so I think Cameron, when, and I wasn't making fun of people who have Lord of the Rings swords either. I was just highlighting why maybe you and I don't. But this then is a push back onto those of you who are involved in churches and church leadership and that kind of thing is like.
Cameron (25:51)
Yeah. Yep.
Nathan (26:11)
What part of the gospel are we not communicating well? That this is a craving and a desire that needs to be fulfilled through fiction, fantasy, or Norse mythology.
Cameron (26:22)
Well, the other piece here, Nathan, that, and then I'll turn to more positive matters for a second, but this tends to be individualistic. We don't realize it at first. Yeah, rant away.
Nathan (26:31)
⁓ Hang on. I have a rant on this. Can I jump in here? so here's
the thing. Here's why we love nature is that it gives us it does give us a sense of something bigger than ourselves it gives us a sense of something that transcends us and Doesn't seemingly demand anything of us morally or communally
Cameron (26:49)
That communally piece is massive here. That's a big part of, because, well, I tell you something about, want to, you know, make, I have a vision of being wild at heart and I want to go back to nature. The picture that comes to my mind at least immediately is one of a lone pilgrim, you know, making his or her way through a vast wilderness and figuring things. Yes, Jeremiah, Jeremiah Johnson, figuring things out for yourself or it's Emerson's vision of,
Nathan (26:52)
A tree doesn't tell you what to do.
I'm Jeremiah Johnson. If you know, know.
Cameron (27:17)
turn your back on society and go into the woods. My problem with that is that's just the same old very American hyper individualistic vision of you. And there's an apologetics version of it as well, by the way. I heard it recently. I hear it all the time when somebody's interviewing somebody who became an apologist and they say something to the effect of, I was young. And they don't say it in these words. going to, I am going to caricature a bit because with age comes that comes that privilege to be able to do that. So here it is. And you know, I've been there, done that.
Well, when I was young, I had lots of, I was brighter. I was just one of these really bright people and I just had all of these really intense questions and guess what? Nobody could answer my questions. They were unique questions. So I decided I had to go find answers for myself. And eventually that led me to the church. I'm sorry, I don't buy it. Did some people not have answers to questions? Sure. Were your questions utterly unique? No.
Were there people who could have answered your questions? Absolutely. Were you some lone pilgrim wandering into the intellectual forest to figure everything out for yourself? By no means. That's not true of anybody. You were made by a community and a community nurtured in you the ability to even raise the questions and the ability to search out the answers. Stop, let's stop patting ourselves on the back for this stuff. That's not the way human beings are. So I think, yeah.
Nathan (28:42)
Okay. Can I give
you a funny anecdote on that? you, so you know the, no. Okay. Well, you know, know the phrase go West young man, right? Where did I run into this? ⁓ so I just looked it up. So Horace Greeley wrote go West young man and grow up with the country. And then went and became the editor of the New York tribute. So, so, so, so it, it, it embedded in that whole.
Cameron (28:45)
Sure, you said you were gonna rant and then I ranted.
yes, yes.
come on.
Nathan (29:10)
Pilgrim go west movement is somebody who went to New York and made it fortune.
Cameron (29:15)
Yeah. And
wrote in cafes in the most urbane of settings. But also, Nathan, so I do think the vision that the recent one that I think is more profound here comes from, okay, David Foster Wallace, Cameron, very on brand here. But the picture he gave to us of the church is AA. It's not going into the wilderness. It is a group of people who are recovering from horrible habits.
Nathan (29:18)
Yeah.
Cameron (29:44)
That's how it starts that will destroy you. Admitting that and then having to acknowledge, originally you didn't acknowledge a higher power, you bowed the knee to Christ. When A.A. Alcoholics Anonymous first began, ⁓ the spiritual language is dialed back now for obvious reasons in our culture, but that's closer to the actual.
Nathan (30:02)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (30:07)
day in, day out experience of being in a church, living life in community with a group of recovering sinners who are worshiping the Lord, helping one another along on, yes, it is a journey. It is a spiritual journey. And there are really wild and crazy and terrifying aspects. I think for me, I mean, there are key Christian, you know, stories that guide this Lord of the Rings is one, the Divine Comedy is another, but for us Protestants, the Pilgrim's Progress, which is a very humble but lovely, amazing piece of writing.
Nathan (30:33)
for sure.
Cameron (30:37)
from, yeah, mean Bunyan, I think based on a dream that he had in the Bedford jail. mean, that's pretty, but all that to say that the vision of the messy, gritty, aggressively unglamorous world of living life side by side with other people who are going to annoy you, who will bring up problems, you'll have to work through things, you'll have to deal with real sin.
And all of the pain and consequences that come along that, the church, you know, it's filled with human beings, but the head of the church is Christ holding it all together. just trying to take us in a more, yeah, realistic journey. I'm not averse. I don't think Nathan is either. I don't think either of us are averse to, certainly not to the beauty and the wildness of nature. It's wonderful, but there's a kind of romanticism behind some of this.
that can be harmful in the long run, just because, well, it's untrue or whatever, but because it burns out very quickly and it's not sufficient to keep you going.
Nathan (31:43)
Yeah. Well, and so the thing of it is, is, and I've mentioned this in the past, is that I went on a spree of reading Christian biographies a couple of years back, big stack of them. don't know. And like through the first 20 of them, I recognized the theme that all of them. you, you take your, even your Calvin's and Edwards and Augustine's and, Newton's and, ⁓ Finney and Wesley and I have a whole, Whitfield, the whole crowd, all of them to a T.
Did spend significant time walking in the woods, walking in the meadows, early morning in the fog along the river, contemplative, prayerful, wandering in nature, reflective, found peace. We see that in Jesus going off to pray. So I'm not, we're not talking about that. And reminds me of this GK Chesterton quote that sure many of you have heard where he said, the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order,
The chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild. There's a difference in what he is saying there because he's saying that there was room for the good things to run wild, not in the wild we find the good things. And that's different. So he's saying that there is an established rule and order within Christianity that allows for the flourishing of the good in wild places, not that we go to the wild places to find the good.
Cameron (32:57)
Mm. Mm. Yeah.
Nathan (33:11)
The difference there might sound subtle, but I think as people who want to be committed to The vision that Christ has given us where are we from? Where are we going? How do we fit in? How do we behave? What does this all mean? ⁓ That that story is good in and of itself ⁓ And doesn't really need a whole lot of extra layers of paint to touch it up. Really what it needs is clarification For those of us who have followed to be able to tell the story in a way
not that just cast and sets an ideal, but provides an invitation and then establishes a order in which people can come to know who God is, to receive the Holy Spirit, to live into this, not as a metaphor, but as a reality because the Holy Spirit isn't metaphorical. And so I think in that we find a, ⁓ it gets back closer to Lewis's true myth kind of idea here of one day waking up and recognizing, a second, this is really real.
And this is how I've decided to order and pattern my life. And in doing so therein lies great adventure.
Cameron (34:17)
wonderfully said. And I think that's a good place to close this particular conversation. Thank you for sticking with us throughout this. And if you have Lord of the Rings swords or paraphernalia, don't throw it away. We're just, just, we jest or do we joust. Anyway, enough, enough. All right. You've been listening to Thinking Out Loud podcast where we think out loud about current events and Christian.
Nathan (34:35)
too much.
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