Joshua, America, and the Myth of Innocence: Undoing Manifest Destiny (Daniel Hawk)

00:00:01
Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm doctor James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm doctor James Spencer and I am joined today by doctor Daniel Hawk. He is a professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Ashland Theological Seminary, and he's the author of a new book called Undoing Manifest Destiny, Settler America, Christian Colonists, and the Pursuit of Justice. And so today we're going to be talking about a lot of the concepts from the book and hopefully introducing you to some different ways of thinking about what it looks like to be a Christian in America, but maybe also a Christian anywhere else. So, uh, Dan, welcome to the program. It was really great to be here. I'm glad we can make this happen.

00:01:06
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you for your interest in the book.

00:01:08
Speaker 3: Absolutely.

00:01:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I mentioned, I'd had a couple of other sets of authors on on these very similar topics I think, you know, not necessarily straight on similar, but the guys who wrote Reading the Bible from Turtle Island, and then Terry Wildman on who's doing some of the Native American translations the New Testament, and so this is becoming.

00:01:29
Speaker 3: A really interesting area.

00:01:31
Speaker 1: So yeah, I was drawn to this work and I'm finding these these uh, these new topic areas really interesting. I guess I'm my first question for you would be what what drew you into this book? You're kind of a you're an Old Testament guy. What what drew you into this, uh, this conversation.

00:01:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it's been a long journey, and uh it started earlier in my career. I did some work in the Book of Joshua that was well received, and I had some colleagues challenged me not to just keep it within the Ivory Tower, so to speak, but to think about how my work on Joshua might impact Christian mission and related topics. So I took that to heart and I thought, well, you know, what would Joshua have to say to the United States, And immediately this kind of parallel conquest narrative shows up. I mean, so Joshua's Israel's conquest narrative. Joshua tells how and why Israel got the land, took the land, and took it away from the indigenous inhabitants under the command of God and with God's help and the help of the Holy Spirit, and our national mythology tells very much the same kind his story in one way or another. We were empowered by and called by God to establish a new nation, and we did that by dispossessing the people who were already here. And so that got me going, and that got me into reading a lot of American history on indigenous settler relationships, and it just kind of boy, the more I read, the more I thought, Man, this is this is really hard stuff, and we're not We're not. And I don't know that we've ever talked about it, either as Christians or as a nation. I mean, to the extent that it really deserves to be talked about. So long story short, I started I started speaking on this as kind of an advocation and went to some conferences met some folks, met indigenous scholars, and became developed some good and lasting frendship. It's like with Terry Wildman. I'm working with him right now. He invited me into talk on the Translation Council. We're working on genesistic genesis through Second Kings right now. So a lot of funastic. So I wrote a book about fifteen years ago called Joshua three D. And I just started writing on this topic. And I was at IVP a couple of couple of summers ago and just noticed that they were publishing a lot of works along this line. So I pitched the book and they said yes, And so I wrote it.

00:04:42
Speaker 1: For people who may not be as aware of the Joshua narrative. Why don't you give a little bit of a thumbnail sketch. I don't expect you to give the whole, you know, the whole message of your book, but help people understand and frame sort of how you're approaching this work through the lens of what of your work on Joshua.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So, so one of the things I would say about the Book of Joshua is it's a book that establishes Israelite identity, and it there's there's a real there's there's a real fusion of history and identity. Every iteration, every expression of our past as a nation, whether ancient or modern, is an active identity formation. Narratives tell us who we are and what distinguishes us from every other nation, and so on and so forth. So in Joshua, Joshua is in a sense the culmination of the promise that God makes to Abram in Genesis chapter twelve. You know, you leave your your family and your kindred go to the place that I will show you. And so Israel enters the land called by God to do so, and in obedience. So it enters the land in obedience to a divine, divine call and in fulfillment and from God's perspective, in fulfillment to promises. And they go in there, and God says, I'll do the fighting for you, and I will defeat the indigenous peoples. And your job is basically to settle and finish that operation. Settle and make sure that they don't contaminate you in any way or lead you away from God. And so there's it's a narrative that just talks about how God basically made Israel an invincible force that expelled all the peoples of the land, and then Israel settled it and they mark their settlement with monuments here and there. So when you put that against the way we talk about as Americans, this is our story. We are an exceptional nation. We are a nation that has been chosen by God or by virtue of just our unique sensibility and kind of the progress of civilization. We came here under a transcendent impulse. I should say the first English colonists came here under an impulse that was greater than they were themselves. And so for those who take a Christian view of that, God enabled the earliest English settlers to overcome the peoples of the land and just push steadily westward. And so there's the same pattern in a sense, wiping out and dispossessing the indigenous people. And then here we look at all the monuments we put up to ourselves and all the ways that we remember, because that's what monuments are. They're they're part of the catechetical structure that teaches us about who we are as a nation. Yeah.

00:08:20
Speaker 1: Interesting the parallels, and I think, just to make sure I'm understanding and clarifying as we read the biblical narrative, we're seeing this and this is obviously in you know, authoritative scripture, and so we're understanding this is something that's been passed down to us as a as a faithful rendering of the story of God in Israel versus Maybe the difference between the story that we tell about America it's founding. And we do have these other Old Testament analogs as well along the way where you could sort of see parallels between what is happening with the Mayoramerica tying God into the fate of our nation in ways that would seem to underwrite basically whatever we want to do versus God saying no, you know, you've done this, but it doesn't mean that I, you know, I find it legitimate. I mean I look at some of those like even Babylon, you know, Nebukanezer is called God's servant, and yet the way that Babylon is going to treat the Israelites is going to bring punishment upon Babylon. And so there's there's this real intricate line I think that that we draw between Maybe this is my question for you. I guess when I read the Old Testament It's like, yes, God's moving the nations about, right, but it doesn't necessarily mean that he's authorizing everything that they're doing. It simply means that he needs this displaced and this moved in. But the way that that's done can be deeply problematic and outside of what God would really want to have had happen. Am I am I close on that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm resonating with a lot of what you said there. I would put it this way, The Book of Joshua is not a template. It is it is a one time. It is a remembrance of the past in which God, through God's power and in faithfulness to God's promises, established the nation of Israel in a homeland where they could bear witness to this, this God who had delivered them from from bondage in Egypt and had brought them into a good in verdant land. So when we read texts like this as a as a template, okay, so that means, okay, this is our pattern, so so that let's do it, it is I think profound. It is a profound misunderstanding gotcha of both understanding what this scripture does and how it is to shape Christian life and faith.

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Speaker 3: That's helpful.

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Speaker 1: So let me now pivot because I think this will connect in the book you talk about wanting to I don't think these are your words, but unwinding the settler narrative sort of challenge the settler narrative, And so can you talk a little bit about what that means. I assume it has something to do with this sort of templating, pulling the template over and saying we're going to do this.

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Speaker 3: But what does that look like now for us to unwind that settler narrative?

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Speaker 2: Well, that's that's the central question. Yeah, So beginning of Jamestown and Plymouth, Boston, New England, the Christian settlers who came first to these shores came with with the belief that that God had had brought them to this place. And simply speaking, they developed a whole set of of precedents and patterns and perspectives in relationship to the people who were already here. And they they had in mind, for various reasons, this belief that God has given us this land and we need to go in and occupy it. And as they did, they did some pretty atrocious and I would say sinful things. So there's there's this bit of sin that's at the root of our story as as a Christian people in this nation and as as a nation itself. There there is a script I mean, and this is from the very earliest within in in the case of Plymouth, within two years of the founding of Plymouth, there are some atrocities, preemptive strikes, treachery on the part of these English settlers who bore the name of Christ, but found a way to justify what they did. And as this script in a sense developed and replicated and revised and expanded as this nation expanded westward, there were just some really atrocious things that we did. And what we did as well was that we justified that with a myth of innocence. So everything that we did in a way had a had an explanation that we could reconcile with our values or with our Christian beliefs. I'm saying ours. I'm talking about out the white settlers, who colonists, who came here. So this colonial enterprise UH established structures social, economic, political structures for the benefit which which the colonists constructed for their benefit, and those structures have never been really addressed. They were built on kind of unequal relationships with with the peoples of the land and other people so that we could gain dominion as white Christians. Uh. But the the key point here is that they've never really been challenged. And the way to challenge that's those structures and to begin the process of healing. We're not doing this just to be angry and bash, you know, break shame, you know, shame and blame this if if you don't knowledge your sin, we all know what it does. Sin just doesn't fade away. If we don't acknowledge it and confess it and begin to turn in a different way, it's just going to fester. And so what this nation has done is created a myth of innocence that in a sense explains the structures and inequities that we have in those structures, so that to challenge the structure, you've got to challenge the narrative that justifies it first. And when you do that, then you take the you take the you know, the foundation away from kind of saying, well, you know, everything we did was good, and you begin to bring to the surface things that as as I hear people tell me often when I go to speak, I never heard that before I had no idea. Well, there's a good reason we didn't. We wanted to keep it covered because that's important. So the last piece, I would say this, this, this bears connection into the present day. Those structures are still here, and so I would propose that much of the violence that wrecks our nation, the kind of the love of guns, the racial strife, all of that is rooted in paradigms and a script that was established during the earliest colonial times and has gone all the way. It's still here, and it damages It damages us. It damages us as a nation. It continues to not address justice that has long been denied to our our indigenous sisters and brothers. And it's I believe the love of Christ compels us and and our our identity as ministers of reconciliation compels us to address this. It's time, It's it's way past time.

00:17:14
Speaker 1: I think what struck me when I was reading your book, and then also just some of the other things that I've looked at, is the what I'll call the construction of a civil religion. I think that the co opting, for instance, of the Exodus narrative, the framing of the British as the tyrants and the colonists as the escaping Israelites. Is a perversion of that narrative because the way it was used was, yes, we need political liberations so we can live how we'd like to. But in the Old Testament, that's not what it is. It's a it's a liberation has political you know, there is a political change of the orders, but that change of order doesn't mean that we get to live how we want to. It means that we live under the rule of God, not as our sovereign, and that these are the laws that Israel was to follow. In those kind of things, I think that aspect of the narrative is conveniently left out. And so as I was reading your book, I said, you know, I'm seeing a lot of the parallels that you're highlighting and saying they these are given enough religious language to justify what's happening, but not so much that it critiques what's happening. It always stays right there on the line of this legitimates what I'm doing, But I don't want the Bible to speak against what I'm doing. I just wanted to say it's okay, what I'm doing is that a fair assessment, just sort of broad strokes of the things you found.

00:18:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think that that puts it puts it well. I think part of the genius of our our founding fathers on this particular issue is that they they realize and held very tightly to this idea that religion is absolutely central for a healthy society. But they also were aware, and many of them have had come out of places where religion had become toxic. Christianity had become toxic, so they knew what could happen. So what they did, quite intentionally was to develop this idea that many call a civic religion. And they did that as other nationalizing groups were doing at the time, to give a sense of transcendence that could unite a lot of thirteen squabbling, bickering states into one nation, a United States. And so they needed religion to do that, and so they they transferred a lot of the Christian symbols, So you know, the Pilgrims, the Puritans err and into the wilderness became this kind of national mission. Salvation from sin became salvation from tyranny, and so on and so forth, and so Anthony D. Smith, who's written a lot on this, I think really helpfully, especially a book called Chosen Peoples talks about how these nationalizing movements like the United States basically concocted and alternative religion. So and and and if you think about it, I mean, our our our kind of national civil religion acts just like a religion. We have holy days, we have we have our own scriptures in the constitution, so on and so forth. We use a lot of the language of the sacred when we talk about our nations. So anyway, all to say, yes and amen, I think I think you really you really hit it.

00:21:05
Speaker 3: A little.

00:21:06
Speaker 2: Religion.

00:21:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, it just strikes me that there's so much of that across what you've written, And so I wanted to bring it out for folks as you challenge this setlar narrative, What do you think comes of it? You talked about some of the structures. Maybe it'd be good to give a couple of examples of those structures. When I was when I when you were just saying in earlier, what my mind went to was a particularly enduring or durable set of systemic sin and so almost like if if we made it a rule that none of us could wear clothes outdoors. That's going to have a durable effect, an ongoing effect on our livelihoods no matter how you slice it right right, And so when we say it like that, that maybe that gives people enough of a context to say, oh, okay, I could see how that would work.

00:22:05
Speaker 3: You know.

00:22:06
Speaker 1: The last place I want to be put is you know, out in a tent somewhere and think that somebody's going to you know that.

00:22:12
Speaker 3: I'm going to survive, Promise you I won't.

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Speaker 1: And so there are different structures that we can envision in our own minds having difficulty living within. Is that the sort of idea that you're trying to convey with that, that that structural problem the structures that were put in place in the colonial times that are now still causing problems.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Colonialism is all colonists set up a structure where where they have dominion and everybody else has to kind of live under their their power and their their leadership and their tied to the land. So one of the really earliest expressions of this is that the Puritans when they came here, uh, they they really strongly gravitated towards the creation mandate, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Read Genesis to Adam till's the ground. So when they looked around at this, this pagan landscape, this wild place, this wilderness. Uh. And they looked at some of the customs of the people which they were not christ They were not Christian, right, and they just viewed as satanic. And the fact that that indigenous people of the area didn't own property, I mean they they they moved in ways that sustained them based on the season where they were, so they would plant crops and harvest and in the fall then would go on winter hunts and so on and so forth. And when the Pilgrims looked at this, they said, boy, this is this is exactly what we were sent to rectify. These people are not fulfilling the basic mandate that God gave to all human beings on creation. And from the English perspective this the colonial perspective meant, okay, uh. The way you do this and for faithfully fulfill this command is you order the land, you fence it off, you, you make it into private property. You put domestic animals in there instead of wild animals. All these things, and and and so. As they expanded and got more territory.

00:24:48
Speaker 3: Uh.

00:24:49
Speaker 2: They they in a sense justified what they were doing and and in some pretty deceptive and violent ways to deprive people of the land. They you know, they exerted their own dominion and and they really didn't question whether they were right or wrong, whether their interpretation was appropriate or not. There was just this certitude, this is what God has given us to do. These people are not obeying. So that so in a sense they're less than Christians. So our you know, our kind of mandate toward them is to take care of them, lead them to christ later on that began to civilize them, make us assimilate them into two white Anglo Saxon culture in the in the nineteenth century. So it's it's this kind of idea that that the the the English colonists who came here had a very clear sense of what Christianity looked like and what they were to do, and that was to the detriment of the indigenous people who they really whose cultures they did not respect. They were savage and primitive and so on and so forth. So it was all kind of a matter of and you see this all the way through the early twentieth century. This idea that land is to be developed and or as appearance that improved proved. So here we are. Here, we are in the twenty first century, and we've commodified the land. The land is something to be exploited to enriched, drill, drilled drill, And we're still in this mode of saying the whole purpose of land is to enrich us and fulfill us in some way, rather than perhaps understanding a different relationship to creation and a different interpretation of the Bible and the Genesis text that said we are stewards of the land. We are caretakers. The land sustains us. And that's where the fact that we have refused to listen to indigenous peoples give us a different perspective that might change us. We just we've been in charge as white people and we don't need to listen to them because their ideas are not as advanced and sublime and christian as ours.

00:27:32
Speaker 1: So let me ask this because because I think, as I think about that understanding of it the way you just explained it, one of the questions and sort of pinging around on my head is it doesn't feel like this would affect the individual as much. Although I think even that way of phrasing it is probably way off, So it may be the better way to say it is. This almost feels like it's going to affect the individual in part because it squeezes out their culture. In other words, it feels like there's some sort of an invasion of collective remembering that comes in and says, no, now you're going to remember like this, and you're no longer going to be able to remember like this, and that fracturing and pulling apart does detriment to both sides.

00:28:26
Speaker 3: Yes, Jenning's work.

00:28:30
Speaker 1: On Christian imagination I think illustrates this really beautifully. You know that the displacement that happens in colonization is two ways. The person who's thrown off the land is displaced, but then the person who has come to this land is also in a foreign space and they don't exactly know what to do with it. But it just feels to me that there's a sense in which we're losing out because we're missing the beautiful aspects of their culture, the good aspects of other cultures, the true aspects of other culture, and we're assuming that ours is sufficiently complete that we don't need to hear from anyone else is that is that an appropriate way, you know, to sort of frame this issue.

00:29:16
Speaker 2: Well, I think the one of the important things that that you've just said there is is the sense that you know, the the damaging aspects of colonization damage both sides. So the Indigenous people are in need of healing, I mean in terms of all that that they have had to endure. Yeah, but white society needs healing because you know, the colonization has warped us in certain ways. And so the focus isn't I don't think it's property to lay blame too much on either side at this point, is to say, how do we begin too to create a space where we can begin to repair our relationships. And in order to repair relationships, you've got to give the dig You've got to give dignity to the people who are on the other side and hear their stories and let them talk about their pain. And that is something that historically white society has and even white Christianity has not really been willing to do. We need to create these spaces so that in a sense acknowledging the settler history. I think it's a way of saying to Indigenous people, Okay, we you know, we here's a way that we can begin to show you that we're listening by embracing this. But but we want to create a space we're all true can be told and without being judged, and we we work together to under the under the guidance of the spirit and the love of Christ, to to take these two different narratives, because, yeah, Nigenous people they've experienced, they've experienced the you know, the really shadow side of of of colonialism and and and we've suppressed it. And so to have somebody say, you see what you're doing here, let me tell you, let me tell you how that feels, and where that's coming from, and what it looks like. We need to create those spaces if if we're going to heal our land and heal our church.

00:31:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's almost like we've blunted our own imaginations about what this could be by bracking out the perspectives of other people. A lot of times, I use the analogy of I used to be into art. I used to do a lot of art in high school. And so you'd have the still life, basket of fruit in the middle of the table, right, the stereotypical still life, and then people would sit around the table and draw it, and no matter how accurately you rendered your side of that basket, there was an aspect of it that somebody else was seeing that you couldn't. And it just feels to me like that's the spirit of the work that you're doing, is you're saying, like, look, these folks, we've closed ourselves off and we've decided that it's only our perspective that matters that it captures the truth of the basket. And that's obviously not the case because people are seeing this from different angles, and it's not a denial of what you're seeing. It's a supplementation, broadening of our understanding of truth because we're pulling in different perspectives. Now, obviously some of the things that we have have to be corrected as well, and that's where some of this stuff starts to come in. But I don't know, I uh, I just find this to be a really I like the way you approach the work in terms of combating that set lar narrative, because I really feel like it's the stories that we're telling ourselves that are creating and perpetuating some of these enduring structures exactly as opposed.

00:33:21
Speaker 3: To trying to and you said it.

00:33:23
Speaker 1: You know, it's not about placing blame at this point, like we've all been living with this kind of unwittingly for a really long time. And so we've got to get underneath and understand why the story is wrong and and fix it.

00:33:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there is a considerable legacy of colonialism going on in in this in this land. And uh it again, it's it's so important to just get this sense that and I hear this that too. Yeah, you can't blame me for what happened in the past. I don't take ownership of that. And and and that's exactly right. I can't be responsible for you know, this massacre or this deceitful thing. But as a servant of Christ, I suggest I do have an obligation to to bring healing into this space. And that requires some pretty difficult work to own that history and to say, all right, how, how how having acknowledged Because we don't acknowledge it, then we don't go anywhere. And as you know, we have a movement in the United States right now to replace the history with the mythology once again, and to reset and replace and restore that myth of innocence that that says we're not going to talk about any of the bad stuff. We're only going to talk about the good stuff. You know, talk about the bad stuff is a downer and it makes people uncomfortable. We talk about the good stuff makes us feel good about ourselves. And so there are those patterns there. Those those go all the way back to the colonial era, and at some point we've got to rewrite the script.

00:35:25
Speaker 1: I ask you kind of a curve ball question. I don't know whether you've thought about this much, but when you look out at sort of trends like globalization or the advancement of technology, and you know the sort of fetish we have for progress, Let's say, do you see in that sort of resonances of the settlar narrative that these like almost echoes, that these are non landed right, extensions almost of the setular narrative.

00:36:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe not of the settler narrative, but of the colonial narrative. So kind of deo colonialism now on the part it's it's not so much nations as multinational corporations yea. And so colonialism has I think is morphing yet again, as as nation states kind of move away or deal with the legacies of European colonialism in various ways. But settler colonialism is is is a subset of the colonial process, and the difference between settler colonials and garden variety colonizers is that settler colonialists colonists want land there after, land that they can they can use, as opposed to most of the expressions of colonialism European colonialism that went into places to exploit labor, exploit natural resources, take the wealth back to the colonial center. So the United States in the United States is a settler colonial state, Canada, Australia and so forth. As some would say, it's after land.

00:37:24
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:37:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, So so.

00:37:29
Speaker 1: We got about ten minutes left, So I kind of want to jump into what do we do about this? I think you've done a really good job in the book of kind of laying out all the different aspects of the narrative, and I know we're not scratching the surface on those which we weren't really intending to in a forty five minute podcast.

00:37:43
Speaker 3: That's why you wrote a book.

00:37:46
Speaker 1: But as just everyday Christians look out at this thing and they say, what do I do? You know, I don't want to become an activist, But I do want to address these things, and I need to understand how to approach some of the history that I've I've really become accustomed to in ways that allow me to start unwinding that setular narrative and really start understanding. I would argue that it's it's a matter of discipleship, understanding and putting that history that we learn under the authority of Christ, so that the truth really is what matters, not some sanitized narrative.

00:38:26
Speaker 3: So what what what would you what advice.

00:38:29
Speaker 1: Would you give for Christians who are just sort of moving into this after you've been in it for a long time.

00:38:36
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, the first yeah, I've walked, I've walked this this this path. So the first thing to do, I think, just based on my own experience, is just learn read and particularly if you're if you're captured by this, look into the stories of your own locale. Who are the indigenous people who are here? What happened to them? Why are they no longer here? Where are they? And and when you begin to to go down that line, then and and I uh, begin to address the you know, your own local stories, then you can have a sense of how this whole process has impacted the perspectives and the practices. And it may not be directed toward Indigenous people, it may be directed toward other people. But but once you get a sense of how that's worked in in in in your own space, you begin to kind of develop a larger perspective. A great book called Healing Haunted Histories by A Lane Ends and Chad Myers, is a good, good way to very practical way to look into that talk about how the stories are, and they talk about family stories. They both provide us resources and and really expose some things. So I would say that The other thing I would say is is begin to make connections with Indigenous people. So go to pow wows Uh, visit an Indian center when there's there's an event, or just and and and just begin and and and acquaint yourself with some of the issues that that various Indigenous people are facing socially, politically, whatever, and get a sense of how you you might or are inclined to stand with with them local internationally. Those are three out of.

00:40:51
Speaker 1: A number, just one question. I mean, I have a ton of questions, but I only have time for a couple. So I'm picking them a thinking about what content we consume. We're in a world right now that media has become increasingly proficient at reinforcing whatever narrative it is that we happen to believe in the first place. And so, you know, folks who are listening to this podcast may be sitting there quasi offended or frustrated that this conversation is happening or what have you know, it may hit some people wrong.

00:41:29
Speaker 3: I guess that is all I'm saying.

00:41:31
Speaker 1: And so I mean, aside from encouraging, what I try to encourage listeners to do is just calm, thoughtful theological conversation. Right, don't be offended, think about it. Right, you don't have to accept it, but don't reject it either. But as you interact with content, I know you're in a more scholarly space. What advice would you give to people about where to turn for good wisdom on these matters? You know, how do they interact with the news on a nightly basis? How do they interact with the you know what I'm saying, like, how do they escape? Because you're talking about unwinding a narrative, but the narrative is all around us.

00:42:12
Speaker 3: So yeah.

00:42:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, And and the media, as we all know, you know, makes a bundle by keeping us separated and kind of getting us looking at the extremes rather than finding finding a way to come together.

00:42:31
Speaker 2: I think humility is a big part of the enterprise where I just want to follow Christ and and and and respect you and hear you. And as you said, let's let's let's you know, let's not go into this with with me trying to define to defend myself or my beliefs. I don't, I don't. I don't think Christ is looking for defenders right now. He's looking for disciples and and the way and the voices. I think you you, you, and why appreciate podcasts like this. I mean, if we can find some places where people are actually modeling uh uh, congenial, respectful conversations together. Uh, I think not only will we find a way forward, but we'll here are we'll find some healing. I mean, we're not, as you alluded, we're not gonna we're not going to help ourselves ultimately as individuals are a nation by just you know, defending our you know, our position against that other group. And yeah, we're we're we're children, we're Disciples of Jesus Christ. Let's let's be a peaceable people. Let's let's put relationships over prince, over over ideology. Yeah yeah, let's let's let's love each other.

00:44:04
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:44:05
Speaker 1: It seems like a pretty simple thing to do, right.

00:44:08
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's not a little sappy to sell, but really, I mean, how can you love God whom you cannot see if you do not love your brother's sister whom you do see?

00:44:19
Speaker 4: Right?

00:44:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, I think it's really good.

00:44:24
Speaker 1: I mean I appreciate not only the book, but I appreciate hearing kind of your journey with this because it's led you to some really cool places. You mentioned before the podcast, you're going to be working on the translation committee with the with Terry Wilman I've had on the show before, but maybe talk a little bit about that.

00:44:40
Speaker 3: It's sort of a this is a nice journey you've had through this.

00:44:43
Speaker 1: I mean, you start with just the basic Old Testament stuff, right, doing some good work there, and then all of a sudden you end up writing a book that's.

00:44:51
Speaker 3: Really outside your niche.

00:44:52
Speaker 1: I mean you know what I'm saying, Like, Yeah, there's something about a specialty that tends to keep you a narrow, but you've really gone different direction. And so yeah, just talk a little bit about what you're going to be doing on the editorial board.

00:45:06
Speaker 2: Well, the Translation Council. Yeah, Yeah. Terry and his wife Darlene are folks that I met while I was out speaking, and we have just become really great friends. And so you may be aware that Psalms and Proverbs First Nations version has has been published as well. And so actually Terry invited me up to the Translation Council when they began work to launch that particular volume and asked me if I would serve as a Hebrew language consultant, and I immediately said yes, because I will play my hand here. I love being an indigenous space. It's just so healing and different. There is it's different, and it nourishes my soul. And just being a part of that group. The way they think, the way they talk, the way they honor Christ, it's just I'm so grateful. So I VP wants to do the whole Old Testament, I guess. So Terry calls me up after we get to solve some proverbs out and he says, hey, if you like doing Genesis through second gigs, sure, let's do. Yeah, it's been a great experience. I'm sure if Terry kind of talked to you about all the decisions that have to be made and how difficult that is to to reframe translation in an indigenous mode.

00:46:44
Speaker 1: Well, and you all are cranking them out at a pace that I wouldn't anticipate as possible, So kudos to that. But yeah, it was a fascinating conversation. He was really helpful, and so I feel like those conversations, this conversation are kind of leading me down a path as well, which is great.

00:47:03
Speaker 3: And so I really.

00:47:04
Speaker 1: Appreciate you being here today to talk this through. Where we're kind of up on time, so I want to respect your time as well. But this has been fantastic and I really appreciate you being here.

00:47:13
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, Jan, Thank you so much for the invitation. As you may have detected, this topic lights me up. Yeah, I just I so much appreciate your your invitation to talk about it and where see where things go?

00:47:35
Speaker 1: Absolutely well everybody. So this is an IVP published book. I think you probably picked that up. So we listeners get twenty percent. There's a discount code in the show notes, and so if you order it, off of ivp's website, which that link will be there as well, and you put into the discount code, you'll get twenty percent off this book.

00:47:53
Speaker 3: I would really recommend it.

00:47:55
Speaker 1: I think undoing Manifest Destiny approaches this ties one of the books I've read that I felt was very approachable for someone who might be new to this conversation. I thought it was just a really nice way to enter this conversation and think about it, and so I'd recommend it highly.

00:48:14
Speaker 3: Check it out.

00:48:15
Speaker 1: I'mdoing Manifest Destiny Setler America, Christian Colonists and the Pursuit of Justice by L. Daniel Hawk, And like I said, the link will be there in the show notes. So again, Daniel, thanks for being here and thanks everybody for listening. We'll see on the next episode of Thinking Christian take care of Everybody. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.