Why Christian Culture Is Quietly Collapsing

Nathan (00:00.846)

Hello and welcome to thinking out loud. I'm Nathan Rittenhouse and today I'm joined by Jonathan brush He's been on the show before Jonathan is on the board of thinking out loud. So put a disclaimer up front right there He's also the president and CEO of unbound which is an alternative and non-traditional higher learning platform So you should check that out sometime at the unbound us maybe Topic of conversational head in that direction, but I have

I'm giving Jonathan a hot seat quiz and exam here on cultural analysis under the title of things that will need to be built in the next 10 years. And so I didn't give him any background. We're just going to throw stuff at him and watch him squirm. then thinking along with those of you who are listening in, a series of things that we want to actually start saying some definitive things of what will you actually need to produce in your life in the next 10 years? Jonathan to first of all, thanks for doing this. You're a glutton for punishment. I appreciate it.

Jonathan Brush (00:54.577)

I'm delighted to be here. I'm half between exhilarated and scared out of my mind. So we'll see what happens. No, I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Nathan (00:59.81)

All right, I want to give you two quotes to frame where I'm coming from. One is new and one is 75 years old. The new one comes from Paul Kings North who has written a lot of things, but I don't know if it's in his book Against the Machine or one of his essays or something. I heard him say this phrase that it was interesting for him to be a child of the children of the 60s, which he classified as a time in which everything was permitted and nothing was constructed.

Now that might seem like an overly harsh analysis, and it might be shocking to some of you as you listen to it, that the 60s were a time in which everything was permitted and nothing was constructed, but it's resonated with me a bit more the longer I've thought about it. And for those of you who are thinking along and how do you maybe wrap your head around this idea, I started thinking of small family businesses.

That I that I know about and largely they're they're on the ropes, know driving down the road It's the mom-and-pop gas station the small restaurant the small manufacturing the and the small church the small school Everything small just feels like it's being sucked into a vortex of an ever-expanding globalized I don't know what you want to call it machine. I guess And I started thinking about the the family businesses that I know that you basically have the founding generation So grandpa after the war

got this trucking company going. Second generation maintains, largely, maybe scales it up, modernizes it a little bit, brings the ledger off of the green and white lines online, perhaps. But then the third generation either innovates or dies. Or is priced out or out-competed or there's... Or isn't interested. Yeah, so there's that. So...

Jonathan Brush (02:40.989)

or is it interested? Yeah, yeah.

Nathan (02:46.318)

Keep that on one hand. So that's the modern quote of like, where's this going? The old one, the 75 year old one is a bit longer if you'll bear with me, oh listener, to read a longer passage, but this comes from Richard Niebuhr in 1951. And he's talking about the culture and the formation of culture. It's a long convoluted definition of how we do life together, but he's talking about the symbols or the ways in which cultures express the values of a group of people.

And in this, he's focusing on the amount of time that we spend trying to conserve values within a cultural system. So let me read this. So he says that because of all these actualizations of purpose are accomplished in transient and perishing stuff, he's talking about the material artifacts of culture, cultural activity is almost as much concerned with the conservation of values as it is with their realization. So he's saying that in a culture,

It's not just about expressing values, but it's a lot of energy to maintain and to conserve them. Much of the energy which men in their societies expend at any time is given to the complicated task of preserving what they have inherited and made. Their houses, schools and temples, their roads and machines stand in constant need of repair. The desert and the jungle threaten every cultivated acre. Even greater are the dangers of decay that surrounded the less material achievements of the past. The systems of laws and liberties, the customs of social intercourse,

the method of thought, the institutions of learning and religion, the techniques of art, of language, and of morality itself, these cannot be conserved by keeping and repair the walls and the documents that are their symbols. They need to be written afresh, generation by generation, on the tables of the heart. Let education and training lapse for one generation and the whole grand structure of the past achievements falls into ruin. Culture is social tradition which must be conserved by painful struggle,

not so much against non-human natural forces as against revolutionary and critical powers in human life and reason. But whether customs or artifacts are in question, culture cannot be maintained unless men devote a large part of their efforts to the work of conservation." And I've just been reflecting on that and thinking, and maybe, you know, for those of you listening along the last time you were in a church board meeting or something else, what was the percentage of that?

Nathan (05:07.138)

conversation that was about maintaining and just keeping the wheels on the thing versus being truly innovating or thinking about projecting values or the construction of something. so somewhere, Jonathan, in between these two ideas of watching what feels like a culture not be able to keep up with the perpetuation of its values and looking at the amount of energy that it takes to conserve values has me wondering

Jonathan Brush (05:09.877)

Thank

Nathan (05:36.792)

Do we have have we lost have we already lost the plot in the sense of if you're a young person today? What would be the values of your parents generation that are worth your effort to try to preserve? Does So because I think this is an important starting point while we before we start getting going on the on the building side But let me take a deep breath there and just see if anything that I've said is harmonized with anything that you've seen in the world or if you want a question of clarification that

be very appropriate.

Jonathan Brush (06:06.837)

I might push it up a level and say that, you know, I think what you describe, and especially in that second quote, that's, that's lot of it spent on the maintaining that was first constructed before. That would be, to me, that's a reflection of the human condition, right? A child is born, they have to go through a zero to 20 process of learning how the world works. Everybody else knows how the world works, they're figuring out how the world works. Then they have to figure out what their place in it is, and they have to do that. So in other words,

you know, there is a reality of being human and being mortal. That means that successive successive generations have to go through the same process that previous generations went through, and learn what previous generations learned and then commit to carrying on that which they should carry on or rejecting it. So that seems to me to be, and I don't mean apparent, like, not a condescending, well, duh type of way, just in a it's worth recognizing that is indeed the human condition because of our mortality, that

The thing that maybe is really different and that maybe is catching us and sort of making us stop is that I think from a historical perspective, that mortality was a little more present, that the reality of that mortality was more present in people's lives. And consequently, it was easier to transfer loyalty and identity to something that was greater than the span of your years.

Nathan (07:26.52)

Mm-hmm, right.

Jonathan Brush (07:26.707)

And that made it palatable to be able to jump in and say, I'm part of this project, this church, this country, this institution, this whatever. And I know that my span here is short and therefore I want to preserve and I want to put my mark on this. And instead we have now a situation where people are very much out of touch with their mortality. They have the impression and illusion that they'll live forever. And they have a hard time grasping or identifying with a bigger picture. Consequently, they have to

they have to not only do that human condition thing of relearning everything, but they have to learn everything but redefine. have to they have to create since they're not identifying with something else. They have to recreate their entire universe. You know, they have to they have to kind of construct their entire meaning rather than attached to something else, partly because they think that they are the center of the universe and they are going to live forever. They know intellectually, that's not true. But practically, that's the way it feels.

Nathan (08:05.954)

Mm-hmm, yeah.

Nathan (08:18.798)

So what we're maybe to tell me if I'm simplifying this correctly is that we used to think about culture as something that transcended generations. And now culture is something that was like maybe nine months long. So there's a sense of which like, I'm, I'm, cause, cause it's back to that. what, does the young person today see of their parents or grandparents lives that they're like, yes, I want to keep that old car running.

Jonathan Brush (08:33.661)

Well, or you can choose it because you.

Nathan (08:47.426)

Nostalgically, but let's then bump that into the institutional level

Jonathan Brush (08:51.199)

Well, if you think about let's like look at a broader thing, like if you go back and, you know, people get nostalgic about like this region used to have an identity, it used to have a dialect, it used to have, you know, deep roots and things of that nature. In other words, would culture was was not something that you really thought about it was something that you swam in. You know, like there's the fish know it's wet, you were just part of it. And now we say, well, this church has a good culture, this company has a good culture, this town has a good culture, this neighbor has a good culture.

Nathan (09:10.253)

Yay.

Jonathan Brush (09:19.317)

there's a there's a consumerism to culture, or instead of feeling that we're part of one that we don't define, we instead go like a little culture looks like that for my church, a little culture looks like that from my employment, a little culture looks like that from where I live. And so all of a sudden, culture itself is something that becomes a menu item, rather than a we're a part of this, we didn't think about choosing to be a part of this, we have a responsibility to it, because we are by definition a part of it. Does that make sense?

Nathan (09:43.32)

Sure. I used to jokingly say I get most of my culture from yogurt, but that doesn't really apply anymore. So, Eva, did I choose it? Also, we need to address the elephant in the room is that Jonathan and I both showed up to this meeting wearing green flannel shirts. I don't know. this is, mean, but if you want to talk about like microcultures or something, don't know. Read into that what you will. So, but sort of stick with us then.

Jonathan Brush (09:48.085)

But did you choose it or did you grow your own?

Jonathan Brush (09:59.246)

We did not we did not confer about this. I don't know what that says. Yeah. Do we choose it?

Nathan (10:13.218)

You talked about a time in which a total atomization of the individual that we have to reconstruct, rebuild the narratives and define the terms as we go. And it's frankly exhausting. Everybody would admit to that. So as I'm thinking about what needs to be built in the next 10 years, you're somebody who spends a pile of time with a lot of young people who are probably not your average young American adult. There are some fascinating go-getters in your cohort there.

But still, they're human and they're of their time. So you're looking at that, you spent a ton of time in all different levels of different types of church leadership. You travel the country widely, you speak to a lot of different groups. If somebody, so let's accept the fact that they've already, they already live in the atomized individualized concept of themselves and they want to start putting something back together. Where are they going to find that?

What are the reference points for doing this and how can the average person who's working their nine to five be part of that?

Jonathan Brush (11:20.607)

I first of I don't know that I know the answer to that. that's right. If I do actually get to work on that right away. We say this a lot in Unbound and I think about it a lot in that I believe we come from this cultural relic, speaking of cultures, of being an answers based paradigm, where we have this expectation

Nathan (11:23.264)

Yeah, if you do, that'd be a great book, but...

Jonathan Brush (11:47.988)

because of the advancement of knowledge and the access to information, that there is an answer to everything, and that knowing the answer is a prerequisite for action. And I want to just kind of just push that just a little bit. In other words, we see this, I see this with young people. When you ask a young person what they want to be when they grow up, that's the thing that everybody asks. That's a cultural, interesting relic in and of itself. A young person says, I want to get a job and do whatever. What kind of job do you want? I want job that I love. What kind of job is that?

And then the young person presupposes that they need to know the answer to what they were going to do and what they're going to retire from when they're 60 in order to start on that journey. And that's a cause of a great deal of stress. And I see that in my daily work life all the time. That's an answers based paradigm. And there's a whole bunch of reasons we get into is why that is. But I think that there's two things that are reality right now. First, I don't think that was ever completely true in terms of a great way to understand the world that we live in.

Secondly, that's very different in a world that has a lot of technology that gives you answers instantly. And so instead, I think the first step is to kind of readjust to a questions based paradigm, which, which says in this case, it's not about knowing the answer when I asked that question is I don't know, I know the answer that that doesn't mean so we ought not to do anything. That means we ought to ask the question. And in asking the question, we ought to then start moving towards an answer when we get an answer to our original question, it will put us in a place to ask a better question.

And that will drive us forward. And so to some extent, I would say when young people are asking those questions, instead of saying, Yeah, but you're asking those questions, expecting that you can't move until you get an answer. The the action point is to ask those questions, and then think immediately, how do I move to get that answer? And so sometimes it starts with a, this is not working for me. Why? And then if this is not working for me, what could I try that's different? How would I do that? And so

I know that that sounds really fundamental, but there's a little bit of necessity of return to fundamentals to say, look, to get out of paralysis, you, we live in a world where you can get on a podcast and we can talk about these questions ad nauseam and we can write with these questions ad nauseam. can complain about them and we can really be the center of attention at a party about them, but we won't do anything about it unless we have the discipline to ask a question and kind of get on a route to, to, to pushing into that answer. So the first part of your, your, your query there would be young adults.

Jonathan Brush (14:12.743)

If you feel like, wow, this is describing me, this is not, you know, I have inherited this kind of cultural homelessness. What would be the way to land that and what pieces, you know, what culture do I actually swim in and don't know about? And how do I then start to think about pushing that forward, supporting that, recreating that, building something new? Which of those things are necessary? Am I in a recreate spot? Am I in a build something new spot or something different?

Nathan (14:37.484)

Okay, so two thoughts on that. One of those is the, I think advice that I've been giving a lot recently to people who are like, cause it does feel very fluid. mean, I can think of, know, my great grandfather worked in the Bassett furniture factory for 40 years, same job every day, got his pension, boom. Like not a complicated, the average person listening to this podcast is going to have how many jobs in the next 50? I mean, it's the, it's

Jonathan Brush (15:02.485)

It's like the average is like 17 or something ridiculous like that.

Nathan (15:04.789)

Yeah, so it's so there there is a real shift that has happened there. Let's acknowledge that. But I have been telling people and I try to live by this myself, I think, which is putting another layer of pain on what you said is that when I don't know what I'm going to do next, I try to make sure that I am doing an excellent job at the things I do know that I'm supposed to be doing and making the most of the opportunities that I do have. And so it's it's kind of like, you know, I use the example like I can't see the front door of my house from my office. I would need to first step into the hallway in order to do it. And so.

Jonathan Brush (15:19.989)

or whatever you're doing.

Nathan (15:33.87)

You know my advice my grandpa gave me when I was a kid. He said it's have you ever noticed? It's easier to shift lanes once you're already moving

Jonathan Brush (15:41.769)

that the old man in my life said it's a lot easier to turn a horse and wagon when you move them if you have them started forward. You know, like if you're gonna turn the wagon around, it's lot easier to get them going forward before you do that. Yeah.

Nathan (15:51.83)

Yeah, so there's that. Now, I think let's give ourselves a pat on the back for good introductory advice here. But here's the reality of it, is that most of the culture that we participate in is not culture that we have built. It's built by the generation before us. And as much as I like the idea of going out there and, well, know, pulling myself up by my bootstraps and building something neat around me, it's always the generation above us that...

frankly has the relationships and the resources and a little bit more wisdom than we do. But we're often swimming in the wake of what the generation before us did. And I think that's back to King's North frustration. As he said, I'm living in that generation where there wasn't anything built before me for me to join in and be part of. And so we can talk to the young person, but let's talk to the maybe 10 years older than the young person here. And we won't use

So everybody feels like they fit in, know, and it's still young at heart. But are there things for You know, you're ten years older than me are there things that I can be building now for the people who are ten years younger than me of of the value of constructing and starting to form things that you won't be a direct participant of but are actually necessary for the generation so you're laying down stepping stones for those who have come behind and I think that's the

The interesting way because I think you're doing a lot of this in your life and what I'd like to talk to you about is what does it mean to To lay down some of those foundation stones knowing that you're probably not going to see the the completion of the thing And it's not going to directly positively benefit you But there are things that like you're you're old like you and I both quoted grandfathers And and so and so we can kind of throw those stones down as stepping pieces to a generation who doesn't know their grandfathers

So it feels to me like there will be a necessary group of us who live in the tension in between what has been and what will be that might not really be that stable, but it's leaving some hints and some clues about maybe how to human well moving forward.

Jonathan Brush (18:00.991)

So I think that so there's three things that came to mind as you're talking about that. So the first would be, think Kingsworth is broadly, so demographics are destiny, but not individual prophecy. So when I say that, you if you look at the demographics of a country and you say, or maybe it's not demographic statistics or destiny, but not an individual prophecy. I think that's, I couldn't quite attribute the quote. Yeah, I couldn't quite attribute the quote because I couldn't remember how it went exactly.

Nathan (18:26.102)

Either of those sounds great.

Jonathan Brush (18:30.921)

But the idea is this, right? Statistically, people who grew up in a single parent household have all kinds of pathologies, right? Now, so that's true, broadly speaking, when you do the research, that doesn't mean that if you grew up in a single parent household, that you have to fulfill all of those prophecies. Does that make sense? Like, like, in other words, that there's, there's, broadly speaking, that's, that's bad for society, have a lot of single parent households, individually, that doesn't mean that you're doomed. And so

broadly, Kingsworth might be right, there wasn't anything built in the 60s. But individually, that's not true. Right? I mean, there's there's you can point to companies, cultures, movements, churches, you know, whatever, probably political movement, what there's lots of things that got built, and are continuing on. So it's worth noting that culture didn't take a vacation. And creation didn't take a new creative activity and take a vacation. It may be had maybe had a wider pause. And that does have knock on effects on our culture and world that are that are apparent.

But that also means that there's places to go and grab them, right? I there's, there's, there's places for you to go and look. And so thinking about that is helpful. And then I think the second thing here is that these two things go together. If you are not immediately preserving a specific cultural thing or culture, and you're looking for a place to start. The first thing is that from a Christian standpoint, it's really helpful to know that you don't have to worry about timelines anymore.

meaning that the pressure to fix and build something and create it before you die or before you turn whatever is overwhelming because anybody with the rational mind is like, this isn't going to work. But as a Christian, we say it's not our timeline, right? I like we have until Christ returns and nobody knows when that is. And so I can plan for my grandchildren or my great grandchildren, my great, great, great grandchildren, and think about just doing that piece that links up to that and be satisfied in that. that's a, that's a, that's a cultural thing to think about.

But that's one that brings great peace and freedom. And then if you're going to default to anything, ask the question and then look for an answer that probably has to do with incubation. Meaning that if you're if you're not preserving something specific and you don't have a task and a mission already handed to you, find a way to provide that incubator for people to start to build those cultures. And that can be as simple as, you know, when my wife and I graduated from college, we had a two bedroom apartment that was already too small when there was two of us in it.

Jonathan Brush (20:58.966)

And we invited people over and sat on the floor and did a Bible study. And it was, it was little, and we didn't do it because we were doing any of these grandiose things we're talking about now. We did it because we'd had a bunch of friends in school, and then they all moved away. And we kept working for the college we knows maybe we more. So we were we were lonely, like we wanted to have some people to come in. And we happen to have a two bedroom apartment, which is bigger than most of our friends who were single that had one bedroom apartment. So everybody came to our house. And so it's it's that but but it's that kind of simple start place where you know, bring people together.

Who forms culture? People form culture. Well, anytime you then provide a place for people to gather, culture begins to form. And if those people gather with a vision that's worthy, then good culture forms. You I mean, you can form culture and all kinds of terrible things, but if you've got a kingdom vision of some kind, then it doesn't mean you're going to have no problems, but it means you're going to be at least progressing in the generally right direction.

Nathan (21:52.568)

Well, this is, yeah, the complication of it, just to clarify, and this is, think that...

Nathan (22:02.444)

What? So somebody said to me the other day, young guy, maybe early 20s, he said, Nathan, you don't understand. My friends and I don't know any Christian families 10 years older than us who are enjoying being part of the church and being a family together.

Jonathan Brush (22:17.546)

I also hear that on a routine basis, right?

Nathan (22:19.662)

So, it's a little different in that, like, when I was 22, I could think of, I could make that list. Like, I had a vision of what is possible to grow toward. And it seems like that's not necessarily there. So, I'm not speaking to the 22-year-old anymore, I'm speaking to the 35, 45-year-old now, of saying, if there is something that manifests itself in your life, recognize that as a phenomenal gift.

If you had a sense of identity and community that was given to you that you could just take for granted. That's great. But you probably want to start thinking a bit more strategically about how you let the drawbridge down and widen access into that vision. Not necessarily even saying that you have to... The thing that you might have to build is just the vision of the possible, not necessarily the mechanics of how it gets done. So there's a little bit of a, you know, if you're listening to this and you're on the older edge of our listening demographic, for you to do...

Because I'm doing this some soul searching and Jonathan you and your family were you know, you're ten years older than me been a big part of that of just Really thinking through what is it that I have been gifted? Well, that's good. And then how can I steward that well and invite other people? Into that as a actual possibility for their life and maybe you're going to have to lay down some stepping stones that seem really really simplistic You know like somebody wants to ask my dad like can you teach me how to visit the nursing home?

And my dad's like, you'll walk up to the door and there's a handle and like for him, you go in and you greet people and it's easy. In a hyper digitalized, individualized age, here's somebody saying, I need some training on how to go talk to older adults. And there's going to be a whole group of people that are like just banging their heads on the table right now. Like, how can this possibly be? And we can debate till the cow comes home, how we got there. But the fact of the matter is, is we are there. So given where we are, how do we move forward from here?

Jonathan Brush (24:17.578)

think that, again, I'm sure there's a specific answer. But there is a specific task. And there's a specific discipline. And I think so much of life is less about knowing the answers. Obviously, we just talked about that. And not only is and I think it's less about setting goals. And it's more about building systems and then watching how God blesses that because at least in my life, nothing has worked the way I expected it to. But I've let I've lived a really fun, exciting life. I mean, I'm not I'm not complaining about that. I'm just saying that it's laughable the things I thought were going to happen where I am. And some of those things

are I guess negative, not many, a lot of them are really positive, but things I didn't dream about, because I didn't have a big enough vision. Nathan and I were in a very strange thing that was a whole different podcast that we wound up in a strange racing scenario. And we were talking to some people about racing cars. And this guy said something I thought was really interesting. You know, if you've raced the track before, it's a huge advantage. If you haven't raced the track before, you want to be able to drive the track because then you can concentrate.

on the cars in front of you stuff like that, because you know the turns coming up. If you can tell your co-driver about the track, that gives some advantage to that co-driver going through. In other words, there's this, you know, I think as I get older, and I tell this to students a lot, when you're young, everything's exciting, everything's new, everything's wild, there's this huge energy and all this kind of stuff, but that's because you've not seen it before. And then I think that the culture, there's that word again, the broader culture,

gets this idea that they want to hold on to youth because they get addicted to the adrenaline. And first of all, I just want to submit that, you know, and my, my story is always like, when I first met my wife, you know, I got butterflies in my stomach and weak knees and all that kind of stuff. And that was very exciting. And honestly, I don't want to really spend 30 years like that, right? Like crippled every time all the eyes on her, right? So I still get excited about my wife, but in a different way, and a much deeper, richer way. And I'm glad that I don't have the butterflies and weak knees the same way I did when we were 18, right?

And so there's a there's a maturation that happens. And as you get older, the excitement is replaced with something that I think is deeper and richer, more satisfying, which is the ability to see patterns. You get older and you say, I've seen this before. In fact, I've seen it play out well. And I've seen it played out badly. And not only that, the next iteration is I've seen it played out well and saying it seemed to plan out badly. And I know what to do to impact each of those likely outcomes. And now that the final iteration is like, I've seen this before, I know what to do. Here's what to do.

Nathan (26:18.958)

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Brush (26:36.694)

And if you go back that that's somebody who's raced the track successfully, who says, look, turn five, you got to set up real far outside the tracks, a mess in the inside corner, come out high and go left. mean, like, you know, it's okay. And then, then does that mean that you, that the young driver can drive it? No, they have to experience it. There's an element of doing and experiencing that is going to be necessary for every generation. But there's this ability to go like, I know that I want to prepare myself by setting myself up high, coming in the inside and going to the left.

And so I know what I'm trying to do, at least I've got that framework. What's the translation here? I don't think it's a specific this works in all cases, it's more of this commitment. If you're living whatever you're living now, if you've done it well, if you've done it poorly, one of the most important things you can do for your culture, and for the world is to turn around and say, hey, person behind me who's still in the exhilaration adrenaline stage. Do that. Also know there's a few patterns here. And I'd like to tell you about the turn. You may still wipe out

but at least you'll know how to set up to hit it the next time.

Nathan (27:35.66)

Yeah, well and the other thing that's a myth in that is that you have to have driven the track perfectly beforehand in order to be able to comment actually a lot of the wonderful things that I've learned from people older than me is like Metaphorically don't step there. It's slippery because they wiped out when they did it. And so there there's that

Jonathan Brush (27:41.204)

Right.

Jonathan Brush (27:51.526)

I had a huge crash in that turn. And it's because I came in high and said, Hello, you should not do that. Yeah, right.

Nathan (27:56.174)

Mm-hmm the you're talking about the we do live in a culture that fetishizes novelty. So it's the new thing It's a dopamine hit. I think it's a somebody will have to look this up I think it's a Bruce Lee quote where he said I don't fear the man who has practiced a thousand kicks once I fear the man who's practiced one kick a thousand times and so there is something about that comes with age and experience where you have a deeper sense of of Knowledge, but there's more power to that thing in your life because of the repetition of it

Jonathan Brush (28:12.662)

at times.

Nathan (28:24.366)

Even though it lacks the novelty or execution of it is better. But again, that forces me to ask the question. You know, if you had a blank piece of paper right now and just say, what are the things that are really important to me in life? But that are bigger than me. Like they're not, oh, you know, Nathan or Jonathan or fill in your name there. Like, oh, this is, um, but like, no, these are good things. I have, I've been blessed to be put in a situation where I know some things that are really important. Okay. Write that down. What is it that you uniquely know?

the non-digital human knowledge and all of the life experience, and then ask yourself, who do I hand this to? Or who do I, like, my dad points this out all the time, he's like, you ever meet the old guy who's like 80 years old, and he's like, when I die, I'm gonna give this car to my son. And he's like, dude, you should have done it 20 years ago, like, and you could have enjoyed 20 years of watching your son drive your grandpa's sports car.

Jonathan Brush (29:20.214)

I can, I can make it worse. Think about who held onto a business or a farm. You know, this is going to be all yours when I die. Great. So I'll be 60 years old, have lived my entire life before I get a chance to take any advantage of the stuff that, know, that's, that's a squandering of generational wealth, not a sharing of it. Yeah.

Nathan (29:24.662)

Or, yeah.

Nathan (29:35.404)

Yeah, yeah, and I think of it like, know, imagine you and I both run track cross country. Imagine a running relay where you come into the exchange zone. You're both moving at the same speed and then you hand off the baton and then you're still both moving for a little while at the same speed. And that's a healthier cultural transition. And then I think it's like the happiest old people that I know are those who have handed off the baton and are now standing in the middle of the track with their hands on their hips, breathing heavy.

but cheering like crazy for those they just handed the baton to.

Jonathan Brush (30:07.9)

we get we can take this and, you know, make it personal and go from preaching to medlin and say like, you know, you want to know the so I get asked all kinds of parenting stuff because I have more than average when it comes to children. And I'm really reluctant to give parenting advice because I think that everybody likes to give parenting advice that doesn't help anybody because it's what you learn specifically for you. And so it's more interesting to think about the principles. But I'll tell you the one principle I'm pretty convinced of. And that is that the fastest way to ruin whatever you achieved in parenting

is to forget that you're supposed to launch not keep. Which I learned from a guy named Julian Rittenhouse, which is related to one of the people in this podcast. And I asked him about raising his sons. And as somebody who was 20 years ahead of me, is that about right? Close 15, 15 years, enemy sat in his porch, a long time ago and said, Okay, fine, you've got three fine young men here. How'd you do that? And he says, I don't take any credit for it. I was like, Okay, fine. Then tell me all the mistakes you made. Like, what's the other side?

Nathan (30:52.876)

Yeah, 15, that's it, yeah.

Jonathan Brush (31:06.024)

And he said, Well, I don't know, Jonathan, but I'll tell you one thing, I never thought they were mine. I always thought that my job was to launch them and to get them ready to go. Well, the world has a little bit of a different take on that. In our culture, it's often like I'm going to hold on to this kid, protect them, keep them on my insurance, etc, etc, as long as possible. And so there's an interesting kind of, you know, principle there. And there's an interesting here's somebody 15 years ahead, turning around to somebody 15 years behind and saying this, that was a massive

paradigm shift in my life. And then ultimately boils down to at some point to do the best you can and go prioritize the relationship. And I had a situation recently with a child of mine, that there was something that you know, probably technically I was right on. And I all of a sudden had this realization, I can be right about this and spoil a relationship, this 20 plus years in the making, or I can release this and rest in the relationship. And ironically, and I think this happens was the time, the thing that I was worried about got fixed, because it was released.

and the relationship was preserved. That's the kind of important things that like that's not advice. Those are patterns that if you can notice them and pass them on and I can tell them to you and say, look, if you raise a child at some point, release and at some point, make sure you know that you're prioritizing relationship over whatever technicality you're hung up over, which is hard to do, but essential.

Nathan (32:25.102)

So what we're saying, just to delineate this a little bit as we're going through, I was asking the question about what are the things that we need to build and it was the wrong starting question. The first question is, what is it that you already have that you value that you need to start sharing and teaching? Funny example, 10 years ago I had an older friend in the church and I said, hey, would you start teaching me about beekeeping? He said, I will give you a hive. And he's like, it's sick, it's gonna die, you gotta get used to this, blah, blah, blah.

lot of fun learning from him about the first steps in beekeeping. So I'm reading a lot, then I'm going and I'm practicing. I'm reading a lot, I'm going and practicing. I'm asking questions back and forth. Well, shortly thereafter, a few years into, he broke his leg. And then he was sitting on the porch of his house and I was running down to his beehives and bringing him, you know, running stuff back and forth to show him. And for him, the sharing enabled him to continue enjoying the activity, even in a short time of difficulty, because he had somebody else who had gotten a vision for what was going on there. So I think if you're in church leadership,

you're running a small business that the faster that you can hand off to somebody a, a sense of this is, this is what we're trying to do here because of, really fill in those principled ideas. That is where culture is subconsciously transferred. And then perhaps after you've learned to share and transfer what it is that you already have, then I think that's the prerequisite for innovating and thinking about, Hey, maybe we do need to build a new school here.

Maybe we do need to start a new business that employs some young men at church. Maybe we do need to think about Community Project XYZ from in there. So I'm backing up my question adding a step one in there of are you already doing a good job of sharing the values that you currently have? And after working on that, then set yourself up for innovating from there.

Jonathan Brush (34:14.751)

Well, I guess essential in the sense that if you get that confused, there are people that are made that like to innovate and they're going to need a reason. It's like when most people buy things, they buy it because they want it. And then they come up with a good reason for it. And we can put, you know, I want a new chainsaw. I will come up with all the reasons my old chainsaw is not as good as I'd like it to be to justify buying the new chainsaw.

But I'd already sort of decided I wanted the new chainsaw and then I kind of went looking for the reasons that that that is more that is more common than we'd like to admit. And so an innovator will innovate and they'll look for reasons. And often those reasons wind up being destructive. And I think we have an enemy that helps us in that direction. Right. You know, I innovated, but now I'm to do it because I'm building my name and building my reputation and building whatever. Right. I want to do something new. I like the I like the rush. But to do the hard work the other way, which is one of the values

Nathan (34:43.543)

Yeah.

Nathan (34:59.767)

or the thrill of novelty.

Jonathan Brush (35:09.161)

that I've been called and given the responsibility to impart. Let me do that. now as I'm imparting them, I'm finding out we need a new school because we can't do it through the structure that we had. We need a business because we can't provide the economic base to do this, this, or this. We need a whatever, know, insert whatever it is into that. Now, you're looking to innovate off of a thing that's apart from you. And so that innovation can be done two ways. First is a healthier way for you to innovate. Secondly,

You're almost by definition, they're likely to build that with a community because the end goal is not your own glory. The end goal is to fix the problem that's already been defined. And that might be something for people to keep in mind. If you're like all hot and fire to go do something different or do something new, that's fine. I'm not in any way discounting that. But before you sort of launch that, you might step back, think really hard about the values that you're imparting as Nathan was just saying here and make sure then that that

energy is channeled into some place that's going to benefit wider than just your own satisfaction, need for novelty, or even ego.

Nathan (36:11.694)

That's really helpful. So I want to wrap this up with a, it's a set of, it's a, it's not really a set of questions or a condition, it's just an observation from me as a 39 year old to say that I feel like I'm living in between some older generations that had a more clear sense and perhaps crazy as the world was at all times.

a more coherent view of what they meant when they said we. There was some sort of richness there that we have actually lost. And then I pivot and I look down a generation or a generation and a half and I see a group of people who is craving that again, but can't see it from where they are and feel that I'm situated in the middle of it. And so I would say that just based off of the types of questions that the people who listen to this podcast,

and the thoughtfulness and the intentionality with which people are engaging ideas is that I just want to put that out there as a point of reflection for us to say, how do we bridge the gap and connect dots to not a nostalgic hankering for the good old days? Like that doesn't get us anywhere, but were there visions of value and styles of relationship and communication that we know to actually be possible humanly speaking that

should be transmitted and translated back down. I can't think of a better place to do this than in the church. Obviously, surprise of all surprises, very pro-local church in this category, because frankly, that is where you're most likely to find the richest multi-generational, multi-ethnic, multi-socioeconomic diversity anywhere. And you have to be in physical proximity in order for many of these things to be passed along. But just to set that out there as something for us to be thinking about.

of saying, what is the translation role that if you're late 30s, early 40s, and even on up a little bit from that, what is the role of the thing that you can pass back down the ladder behind you that will be of real value to the church, for the glory of God, for your neighborhood, for the young people coming up behind you that you have seen to be good things and want to make sure that those get replicated.

Jonathan Brush (38:29.386)

Well, brace yourself because I mean, I think this is part to get excited about like I tell students all the time. Surprise, you are coming up in a generation that has really strong pathologies and problems and issues and stuff like it's almost like the world's broken. It's almost like there hasn't been a golden age and that everything's been wrong since Eden. If you think that's unique, you are not paying attention, right? And then in many ways, we can do some comparison games and say this is way cooler than the Black Death. I mean, whatever's going on right now, right?

And so there's some, but it doesn't matter. You were placed here in this time and place for this reason. So, so maybe as we kind of encompass that and pitch that big vision, say, Hey, older generation, if you're listening to this, you have precious treasures that are not well understood by those behind. And, and, and if you can do the best you can to preserve, teach, remen, reminisce, remember, record, that's going to be priceless in ways that you can't even understand. And so there's a, there's a sacred, you know, assignment for you.

Hey, younger generation, if you've got the fire in your belly and saying something is wrong and I'm against the machine and I'm trying to do something different and want to do something different, I want to do something, okay, we'll translate that energy and obviously we need it. There's new stuff to be built. And if you're in the kind of in between spot where Nathan and I are kind of both, maybe both ends, we're acting that in some extension, that's a sacred duty as well. That's kind of like a, hey, you have the ears and the understanding and the firsthand experience of that older generation. You actually can interpret what that is because you have firsthand knowledge of that.

And you're far enough ahead to say, Hey, young people come behind the energy high and turn to low and turn three. You know, I mean, like, let, let me, let me point out a few things that you can do to make that easier. Get that right. And the top generations handed down the important stuff, the middle generations filtering it a little bit and handed it down. The young generations picking up the energy. That's where we were placed that that that's the job. And whatever's lost can be re is either need to be rebuilt or maybe it need to be shifted.

But God promises a remnant and you know, this is not on us entirely. We don't have to solve the entire thing ourselves. We have to do our part and hand off. That's kind of the beauty of culture. We are part of something bigger. We all are part of something bigger, whether we recognize it or not. Maybe the excitement is to be wide awake and recognize it and say, yeah, I buy into this. I'm part of this big picture that God has called us into. And I want to do my part, no matter how small, how big that is. And I don't, I don't know that.

Jonathan Brush (40:54.89)

From my perspective, that's an eternal thing that I'll learn later.

Nathan (40:58.572)

Jonathan, thank you for your insight on that and for modeling it in your life. If you want to get a little more of a picture of what Jonathan's up to, make sure to visit beyondbound.us and see what's going on there. But yeah, thanks for your words, for your life and for the challenge. think that's a phenomenal summary and a call to action. So we'll leave it there. You've been listening.

Jonathan Brush (41:18.006)

Well, thanks for having me on. Sorry. Thanks for having me on. And I just wanted to again commend you in your amazing fashion sense. So thank you, Nathan.

Nathan (41:23.726)

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